February 2016 – Boomer Away

Dinner time, hilarity ensues…

Eating in Mexico is so easy. Just walk down any street and you will find foods of all descriptions and nationalities. On Sunday, we walked all of two minutes from our hotel to the mercado (outdoor market). There we found an area with tables and benches, with cooks in chef’s jackets waiting to serve their Sunday Special, Super order of Chicken. As my Spanish is limited (Si, No, Gracias, blinking or vacant stares for anything else), Deb asked about the Special, and enquired about the price. The chef stated the price (noventa y cinco or 95 pesos) and Deb relayed it to me as sentena y cinco or 75 pesos. The chef immediately said “95” in English. With the price now verified, we ordered the dish, along with a couple of beers.

This is a big platter. Enchiladas with a potato stuffing on the left, fried potatoes on the right, chicken leg and wing in the middle, and cole slaw in the front. Also, at the top, a large pickled jalapeno pepper. Now, notice the yellow peppers. They were on top of the slaw and I moved them to their current position. This is a safety measure you need to adopt if you travel to Mexico. You never know what you’re getting in the way of heat.

I thought about eating healthy, so I tried the slaw first. Pretty spicy for just cabbage with a light dressing. I told Deb about the heat in the slaw, so she could avoid the heat. We continued trying various parts of the dish when it happened.

I looked at Deb and I realized she seems to be panting. She looked like she was in labor. Then I noticed she is growing red in the face. I mean really red. Her eyes start watering. I was about to ask her if she tried the slaw when she points to the yellow pepper rings. Remember those? The peppers that were on top of the slaw? She tried a pepper ring, thinking it was like a bell pepper. Wrong.

20160218_112405 — Pepper from Catalina’s pepper tree.

Notice the above. This is a pepper from a garden of one of our Couchsurfing friends. When I say pepper tree, I meant it. This plant was over six feet tall. Our Couchsurfing friend pronounced these as “muy caliente” or very hot. This is what was on top of the slaw. Deb is still gasping and sweating (not “glowing”). I try to help. I eat a pepper ring in sympathy. And it’s really hot. Drink some beer, I offer. Eat some more food to counter the inferno. Don’t blame me, I hope. All you can do is wait it out. And we learned a lesson: Let Matt try it first.

This morning’s breakfast

This morning we woke up to a dwindling assortment of food that we’ve acquired in the mercado. We’re using up some of the leftovers while I stretch and get ready for the new day.

In the market I asked a vendor what these were, and she promptly broke one open with her thumbnail and pushed it into my hands. It’s a granada china, she said, and she made motions to say: you reach in and grab the entire seed packet, scoop it out and chew it up. The seeds come out in one gooey stuck-together glob. I didn’t want to be rude, even though it felt gross and looked kind of disgusting, so I reluctantly plopped it in my mouth. To my surprise it was lightly sweet and the texture of the seeds was slightly crispy. I gave her 10 pesos (55 cents) and she gave me a bag of 9 pieces of fruit. Granada china translates to Chinese pomegranate, but the resemblance is minimal. After some further digging on the Internet I find that it is a variant of the passion fruit, the product of a passion flower vine. It has antioxidants and sedative properties, and it provides vitamins A, B2, B3, B6, B9, C, E and K; and minerals such as calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, selenium, sodium and Zinc.

Next we have lima beans. I hate lima beans, one of the few vegetables I really can’t want. But here they are roasted and salted with a touch of lime flavor, and they are a delightful snack.

Our new friend Jennifer from Morelia told us that people can take classes here on how to make decorative flower jello molds. I couldn’t picture this, but then we found them in the streetside market along the secondary plaza here in Patzcuaro. They are beautiful, and completely made of gelatin, no hidden plastic components. It’s created upside down in a disposable plastic cup, so the artist must have quite a job to make one. I bought one for 13 pesos (75 cents) and the seller helped me take some photos of her wares.

Gelatin flower, scooped out so you can see the insides

Lastly, there are the mandarin oranges and “regular” oranges which are sold from the back of a pickup truck a few doors down from our hotel.

Oranges cost 20 pesos ($1.10) for 5 kilos (11 pounds.) Mandarin oranges are 15 pesos (75 cents) for 2 kilos (4.4 pounds.)

Monarchs on the mountaintops

The monarch butterflies from north central USA and Canada migrate to Michoacan state in central Mexico to spend the winter on top of remote, almost inaccessible mountaintops, living in hibernation, clumped in tall oyamel fir trees. If you are in my age group and you didn’t know this, it’s not because your teachers were negligent. It’s because this wasn’t known to the wide world until 1976. For more information, check out the discovery story and monarch migration discovery.

Back home in Wisconsin Matt has devoted himself to the preservation of monarch lives. He guards milkweed in the wild. And from the plants he harvests the butterfly eggs, no bigger than a sesame seed, then takes them home to foster them, about 150 per year. In the wild only 1 in 10 will survive to adulthood, so this is the equivalent of 1,500 wild eggs. All summer long, from the butterflies’ first arrival in Wisconsin around June 1 until the last babies fly away in October, Matt is collecting and washing milkweed leaves (food) and caring for his brood. He raises them in 3 foot tall net tents in the kitchen.

Caterpillar in J, ready to become a chrysalis

Monarch chrysalis; note the markings that look like real gold

After each monarch hatches he protects it for 8 hours until its wings are strong and dry, and then he logs the date and sex of the baby, and sets it free.

A banner day for butterfly hatching, 2010

Generations 1, 2 and 3 are born and live out their lives in the US and Canada. Generation 4 is the Methuselah generation. These late-fall babies rise up a mile into the atmosphere and migrate to Mexico, where they will hibernate until spring, mate, and THEN fly back to Texas. On autumn evenings you will find Matt on our deck, pointing southward, and telling them to FLY! (If the neighbors think this is odd, they have not said so.)

Once there in Michoacan the butterflies huddle in heavy masses on the Oyamel fir trees, so many monarchs that they bend the branches toward the ground. Incredible! How many are there, in a pound of butterflies?

Last year Deb got the chance to go see the butterflies in Michoacan, Mexico at the Sierra Chincua site. It was January, and the monarchs were mostly hibernating in the chilly overcast winter air. It was beautiful, but this year’s trip was much more exciting. On Valentine’s Day the butterflies were awakening, and love was in the air. Now they will breed, the males will die here, and some of the females have already started their long trek to Texas. All of this is jump-started by the warming air and sunshine, and the newly flowering bushes with nectar for the journey.

We set out at 4 AM on February 14th to catch a tour bus from Queretaro to Piedra Herrada in Michoacan, near Angangueo. It’s a 3 hour trip over unfamiliar mountainous terrain, so a tour bus is the best bet for most visitors. We were joined by our host Grace, and another US expat, young Eric. Our bus was among the first arrivals in the cool mountain air around 7:30 AM, and the local women were just opening their simple wood kitchen huts and stoking fires to start cooking breakfasts. We sat on folding chairs under a propped-up tarp and fueled up on strong traditional olla coffee (sweetened and flavored with cinnamon, usually served in an earthenware mug), and handmade blue corn tortillas filled with mild white cheese and stewed mushrooms and chicharron (pig skin.) The hot sauce was homemade and dangerously spicy. We were nicely warmed by the food and drink.

Afterwards Matt and Deb elected to mount up on horseback and ride most of the way up the mountain. Grace and Eric decided to walk all the way up. More visitors were arriving and the path up the mountain was filling up. The bus driver had given us each a blue disposable face mask, and now its need was apparent; the path was full of fine loose dust, and the horses and people were on the same path together, kicking up the silt and creating a significant cloud. Up on the horse the dust was bearable, but many of the walkers were holding their hands or scarves over their faces. I was very glad to have the horse, especially since the climb is steep and rocky, and remember you still need energy to climb down at the end.

After 50 minutes of riding the guides had us dismount about 15 minutes from the top and we proceeded on foot, climbing slowly at 10,500 feet of altitude, careful of rocks and ankle-turners at every step. Now it was about 10:30 AM and the air was warm and sunlit. We had seen butterflies soaring around us in twos and threes, but here there was an incredible sight: more butterflies than you could count, more than your mind could comprehend. We were kept behind a yellow tape line and cautioned to stay quiet and not disturb the scene, so I found myself laughing giddily in wonderment, but without sound. A silent dance of joy inside and out. I wiped tears of happiness out of the corners of my eyes. Strangers of all ages and many nations made eye contact and nodded at each other: yes I see it, you see it too, can you believe this? all without saying a word. And yet there was more: more hanging in huge clusters on the trees, more around the corner, more down the bend a ways. My mind reeled.

At first you only see clumps high in the trees

My brief video: Monarch butterflies in Michoacan

At a distance they look like dead leaves

Deb and Matt, at the summit of the viewing area

Monarchs just out of hibernation, feeding on new flowers

After the allotted time of 20-30 minutes we reluctantly headed down to the foot of the mountain. This was number one on our Places to See list, and it was everything we had hoped for. Afterwards I sat on a log far away from the people and just contemplated the beauty of this place. It will stay with me.

Mummies of Guanajuato

At times in my life my mind goes wandering off on its own, seeking out things that are best left unthought. Then I remember to stop thinking those things and I reel that sucker back in. Here’s a thought I sometimes have, that might be best left alone: if we dug up the bodies in a graveyard, what would they look like? Eeewww, should we just forget about that and move on? Well, right now is your chance to close the page and walk away, because we’re going to talk about it.

You’re still here?

OK, your choice…

The city of Guanajuato is built atop a honeycomb of mines, where the indigenous people laboriously harvested precious metals for their rulers and the rulers of Spain. It is a beautiful city, with plentiful walking spaces since the roads and parking lots are mostly underground in the old mines.

Historically the bodies of the dead were interred in above-ground crypts, 7 layers high. The interments were not permanent, as such: the relatives of the dead were supposed to keep paying on the use of the space, kind of like apartments for your elders. If you didn’t keep paying then your elders got evicted, and if they were really unlucky, they wound up standing upended in a showcase, mouth gaping in a silent scream. This is what you are going to see if you go there, to the Museum of the Mummies of Guanajuato.

The land in this area is quite arid, so some of the human remains have dessicated, not rotted. The internal organs have been removed and/or are not visible, but the skin, hair (combed and braided), teeth, fingernails, and most of the clothing is still there on display. I’ve been told that the mummies used to be in open air displays, but some visitors collected “souvenirs” and as a consequence all of the mummies have now been encased in glass display cases.

This disinterment is not an ancient practice, not nearly as ancient as you would hope. Some of these folks died in the early 1900s, meaning that their great-grandchildren may still be able to stop on by and say hello. But let’s not meet these recently-dead first. As we entered the museum we were first introduced to some older characters, and foreigners to boot; does this soften the blow a bit?

The first fellow is a medical doctor from France, who was disinterred in the 1850s. The display informs us that, regretfully, he left no heirs in the area to pay for his ongoing burial. He was a sharp-dressed man with a nice beard, but well, now he’s on display.

Dr. Remigio Leroy, what's left of his earthly remains — Dr. Remigio Leroy, what’s left of his earthly remains

The second person we see is a female who appears to be of Chinese descent. This is the only burial with its coffin intact, according to the information on display.

Based on her features, she is presumed to have been Chinese

After that we see more bodies, a lot more, over 100. My stomach was churning as I contemplated their lives,their families, their demises and unfortunate resting places. And I contemplated mortality, and how I am using this one precious life. Because after all, whether we end up on display or elsewhere, every body is going for the long dirt nap.

This fellow is purported to have been stabbed to death, and there is a visible hole.

I’ve decided to leave out some of the more disturbing mummies, those whose deaths were clearly too gruesome or too soon. Why should I draw the line there, when I’ve already crossed some boundaries? I do think there is a line somewhere, and this is where I choose to place it.

There is a lot of misinformation about the mummies, including some of what you’ll find on Wikipedia. For example, they might state that all of these people were buried in 1833, but the displays contradict this. If you’re looking to learn more, the most factual site I’ve found is located at txstate.edu.

(Please note, I paid the museum’s extra fee to take photos, and did not use flash photography.)

Can we do that in Mexican now?

(a story of how you do a birthday party, in 3 cultures and multiple generations.)

This is Chava. Happy birthday Chava! We introduced him to you in our prior blog on Couchsurfing, the organization we both belong to. His sister spilled the beans on the fact that this is his nickname.

Urbandictionary.com definition: “Chava is the born-nickname given to people in Mexico whose real name is Salvador. This nickname was set on stone when you were named Salvador.”

From my prior conversations with friends here in Mexico I hear that there is a widespread fascination with slang words that begin with CH. For example, a person who was born in Mexico City is a Chilango. (Just yesterday I saw a street argument between car drivers, where one called the other a Chilango. Back home we have our own terms, for Chicagoans; but I digress.) There are books devoted to this; for example check out El Chingonario on Facebook.

After we met him he invited us to his birthday party. It was hosted and cooked for by (our new friend) Loretta from Florida, who moved to Juriquilla in July. Here is Loretta preparing the awesome barbeque:

Juriquilla was a small exclusive suburb north of Queretaro, centered around a gorgeous lake. Over the last few years it has morphed into a larger subdivision, with rolling hills studded with gated communities, all of which are painted white. There is a stark contrast between life in Juriquilla and life in downtown Q. In Juriquilla your home is new, your streets are new, you are snugly enfolded inside of a gated town. You have a car, and you drive to the stores. It feels very much like life in the States. In downtown Q, you may choose not to have a car; if so you walk a lot (5 miles a day, for us.) Your home is old, centuries old, and there is always something that needs a bit of fixing. You buy your things from small bodegas and/or from the ancient mercado/market. (Occasionally you run to Costco, where you will see your friends from Juriquilla. Most of us love Costco.) You can fall sideways into a cheap “comida corrida” (food on the run) restaurant, and spend $3.50 for a complete meal. But you run the constant risk of twisting an ankle on the cobblestone streets and sidewalks, and there is always the doggie doo-doo to watch out for. Moving between Juriquilla and downtown is like moving between countries, there is a big difference.

Salvador’s family and friends were there when we arrived, and they greeted us warmly. After drinks and conversation the food was ready and so were we. The spread of meats and salads was fantastic, and we all chatted away merrily.

dinner

At Chava’s party we sang Happy Birthday 4 different ways. First, there was the traditional USA way. Next, we sang the old traditional Mexican version, Cumpleaños Feliz.

After that we sang Las Mañanitas, a beautiful song that played on the radio station 90.9 FM every morning at 7 AM as my coworker Monica and I rolled into the workplace here in Q. Here are the translated words from Wikipedia:

This is the morning song that King David used to sing.
Today being the day of your saint, we sing it to you.

Wake up my dearest, wake up, see now that the day has dawned
the sparrows are singing, the moon has finally set.

How lovely is this morning, when I come to greet you
we all come with joy and pleasure to congratulate you.

The very day you were born all the flowers first bloomed
and in the baptismal font all the nightingales sang.

The dawn has come my darling, and the sunlight is here for us.
Rise up and shine with the morning and you’ll see that here’s the dawn.

Then we did the African-American version. Who knew? Not me. Check it out, move up to the 1:32 mark for a snippet:

After that we relocated the furniture out to the walls and started line dancing. First, party dances led by our African American friends: Cupid Shuffle, Electric Slide, etc. Then, Matt and I taught 2 line dances from our dance group: Uptown Funk, and Shut Up & Dance. Last, our Mexican friends broke out a line dance that was so energetic I had to stop to catch my breath. What an awesome exchange that was!

When the karaoke started I was tempted to join in, but it was time to call in an Uber driver and make our way back downtown. How very fortunate we are to find such warm, loving people who have opened their homes and hearts for us!