Sotuta de Peon

Today we the last of our travels around Mexico. We leave next week to go back to the states, back to reality. Back to a land where I have to do my own laundry, cook my own meals, pay the bills, etc. But back to a land where I don't have to constantly worry about carrying my identification, where I can breathe clean air with no foul smells, where the bus systems aren't so rickety, and where public restrooms are free and rather easy to find. It will be a bitter sweet ending here shortly. Anyways....

For today's travel, we went to the hacienda se llama Sotuta de Peon. It is a historical site because it functions as the older haciendas do. I was super excited!!

We arrived early, and walked around the pueblo a bit. Then school let out for recess and some of the group members played with the elementary-aged kids. It was so cute. There was a group that played duck-duck-goose and another group that played soccer, just shooting goals. The kids were so happy to play with us and everyone had a great time. As we had to leave, the teacher commented on how it was a pleasure for the kids to interact with us. They all loved us so much. As we left the hacienda a few hours later, David played with them as we suben el autobus and then a group of boys blew kisses to all us girls later. Way cute!!! They live so simple, and yet they are so happy.

The hacienda was awesome, just as I expected it would be. The grounds were beautiful with fountains, gardens, etc. The house was furnished with furniture from the 19th century with only two original objects.


There was a small pool to the side, and a restaurant in the back. Since henequén is not profitable enough now to support the large hacienda, the restaurant, hotels, and tours of the hacienda make up for the difference.

Henequén, or oro verde del Yucatan (green gold of the Yucatan) as they say, was very popular during the hacienda period of the late 1800s, early 1900s here in the Yucatan. Haciendas functioned as their own private production facilities for the material. Henequén is used to make ropes, baskets, hats, etc. The good was exported to Europe and the United States.

We saw how the hacienda functioned as a henequén factory. The plants grow like a catcus.


They don't need any extra irragation or water. The leaves are the part that is used to make the material. The plants are spaced one meter apart. To transplant and grow new plants, the top of the plant is just cut off and then planted in the ground. The leaves eventually become the roots.

After chopping the leaves off the plant, they are placed on carts that function on a small railway system just for the hacienda. The carts are pulled by mulas o mules, horses, donkeys back to the main hacienda. Then the leaves are put through a machine and are stripped of their hard covering and the pulp is hung out to dry on racks.


After being dry for several hours, it was exported. Or a small supply was used to make ropes on the hacienda.

In a different building the hacienda had machines from Europe and the US and showed us how the henequén was used to make ropes, etc. It was just facinating.







As we toured the henequén farm, a old man who used to work on the farm lives there. He was so funny and so cute.


He showed us how the mayan, Koreans, and Chinese laborours used to cut the henequén and transport it back to the hancienda. He let us take a tour of his mayan house. It was small and simple. Nothing much. It was a humbling experience to know that possessions don't create happiness, and that there are people who live with only the basics literally: a hamaca, to sleep in, three bowls for food, and a tool that grinds corn to make tortillas. He also had a little shrine built to the Virgin. Im sure he receives help from somewhere because he doesn't have a garden in the back to glean food from and no animals for protein, things that most people have who live that way. He said hello to us in about ten different languages though, and the whole presentation was done in Maya, and then translated into Spanish.

Then we went swimming in one of the local cenotes. We passed two others on the way. The water was clear, cool, and amazing! It was so refreshing.




As usual there were bats flying around above us and it was dark and cool inside the cave. David forgot his swimming trunks so he wore his shorts tied with a rope made from henequen that the guide gave us. Good use of local supplies.

After the tour of the hacienda, we ate at the restaurant with our señoras. Yosy, my señoras, is so funny. She kept bringing up how expensive it was to eat there and how there should have been more food. We continuously asked for more glasses filled with ice because it melts so fast!!! Then at the end, we didn't get served dessert. She must have stopped every waitor in the restaurant and asked why we weren't served dessert. The owner was there, an older gentlemen. She would say Jovencito!! (young one) Postre? And then continue on as most Mexican women do to explain that we were missed. 10 minutes later the dessert arrived, but by that time I was laughing so hard that it was difficult to eat the arroz con leche. Yosy definitely knows how to enter a room and take control of it. She cracks us all up.

Everyday: There is no carpet here, that I have witnessed. In most homes in the US carpet is popular in the bedrooms, living rooms, classrooms, etc. Everything here is tile or rugs. Yosy said that because it is really dusty and really hot it makes carpet hard to clean, so everything is tile.




Tile in the haciendas, tile today. The floor in the mayan home...dirt. It is really different and not very soft at times when all I want to do is just lay out and strech. But it is cheaper.

One more: PEMEX. People think gas prices are bad in the US, which I agree they are, but here there is only ONE gas station, PEMEX. The prices are fixed by the government because the government owns the company.


PEMEX is the sole provider of all gasoline, so it is useless trying to drive around finding the cheapest price because there is only one price. Take it or ride the bus or walk. Those are your options. And so I have heard (because I can't seem to find the price of gas anywhere) that the gas is rather expensive. Yosy said it is really expensive, but the younger drives just say it isn't cheap.

Chao from Mexico!!

Silent Movie at Night

Friday, May, 27

After classes, I went to the Museo Archaelogia, which has its own post. Then I came back for alumerzo, and then went back out to see a silent Vampire movie: el Vampiro. It was a series, like a television show, and most of my companeros didn't like it so much, so we left after a while. I enjoyed it though. It was silent with English and Spanish subtitles. It was so much fun to watch a silent movie and how they explained the proceedings and events through the titles, but also the music and facial expressions of the characters.



After the movie, we walked around town for a while. We eventually decided to go to the helerderia, or ice cream shop. I bought a pina colada drink. So amazingly wonderful. Then we went home.

Im not quite sure what this buidling is at the moment. It is directly across from el Palacio Gobierno and in between the catedral and the ayunamiento. But most of the buildings in the Plaza Grade are lit up like this. It's like Christmas everyday.



And of course this is the catedral at night.



Everyday: Most people here have fences of some sort. Some of there are just cement plastered on top of rocks. For these kinds of fences broken glass bottles are spread across the top. (Other more expensive fences have spikes as decoration). The broken glass is used to keep things out, and people of course. But sights like this are very common as I walk about through the neighborhoods.

Dzonot = Cenote = Waterhole

Saturday, May, 28, 2011

One of the best experiences here: going to the cenotes. Our group traveled to Cuzama to swim in the cenotes there. It off the beaten path. We parked and then got off the bus to see this site before us.



We were confused. Then after some explaning, we were suppose to ride on the carts. In groups of four we loaded onto the carts. The carts were on railway tracks. Then a driver came up with his horse and the horse pulled the carts along the tracks. Such as below. It was a bumpy and uncomfortable ride at times, but we all made it through.



There were three cenotes in total. All of them were awesome. They were all underground, so we had to climb down into the ground about 3-5 meters depending on the cenote. It was scary at times, but it was straight down. I just didn't think about it too much. Some of them had docks to jump off as the only real way to get into it. It was about a 10 foot jump, too. Didn't really think too much about that either. Just lived for the moment.



I didn't take a lot of photos because it was wet, and dark. The water was cool and clear though. It was said to be cleaner than the water running through the tap, which I totally believe. They are located in caves, so it was fun to float around and just look up at the tree roots and the bats flying around. I didn't think about the bats too much though. It was just a great experience. Everyone should do it.



Everyday: So here are a few photos of the old-fashioned beatles that people drive down here. As you can see, they are used for a vareity of puposes. Very versatile.


























And then there are the markets. Like I am accustom, there are standards for the way meat is handled, with vegetables, animals, and clothing. However, in the markets here the FDA is not in charge. Therefore sights like the one below are very common. Chickens just hanging there. But the markets are a lot of fun and one can find most anything there. There are flowers, shoes, clothes, vegetables, fruits, meat (obviously), toys, music, videos, etc. There are several markets, too, all around the city. Some of them feature a base of permanent shops with surrounding make-shift tiendas. Others are all make-shift with just tents and the merchandise for sale. The venders always call out to you to lure you in. Careful because they are slick talkers as requires their job. And being an American puts me at top of the list for sucker.

El Museo de Antropología

Time is fleeting, and there is still so much to do. My laziness is getting the better of me at times. However, on Friday I went to el Museo de Antropología aqui en Merida. It is one of the more famous museums here.

The museum itself is on the Paseo Montejo in one of the rich older manisons of the Porfiriato era. The architecture on the outside is lavish as well as on the inside with internationally imported marble stair cases and floors. There are many decorative columns.




The permanent collection of the museum, houses artifacts from the Mayan civilizations. There are jade offerings excavated from the bottom of the sacred cenote in Chichen Itza, ball court rings from Chichen Itza, estuco masks from Uxmal and more. Here are some of the more interesting things I found.

Some of the maya used to change the shape of their babies skull just a few days after birth to signify different things such as wealth. They would put a board on top of the head that then attach a strap around the chin and back of the neck to make the board fit tight. After a period of time, the skull would become deformed as it worked to solidy during early childhood development.



Another thing I found interesting were the copper bells. They were used for currency in trading between different groups. They look like the bells today.



Also the Maya painted their objectives and temples. There is coloring on this statue for example of the god Hun Nal Yeh. You can see blues and reds. Facinating.



Here are just some more images of things.




There was a special exhibit on the second floor of the Porfiriato era and the Mexican Revolution. It was photographs from the different time periods.

One can see the difference in class structure here. The women on the left are wearing nice European dress, while the indigenous women and her daughter are wearing rags and dirty clothing. The contempt on the look of the faces of the upper class women reflects the disdain for the lower classes in Mexico during the Porforiato era. Much of the European influence today came during this time period.



Maderistas, Ciudad Juarez, Mayo 1911




Everday: People ride in the back of vehicles. All trucks have passangers in the back whether on busy roads or on highways. It is crazy. But these sights are not uncommon. But I guess that's kind of obvious. So one more.



The world is powered by the sun or sol, literally.
This beer is really popular down here. The slogan can be found on T-shirts, seats in bullfighting rings, athletic stadiums, on the outside of bars, etc. The world is literally powered by Sol. The company sponsors many events and has a huge vested interest in community affairs down here. The only place I haven't seen the marca or brand in on schools. But if you see Sol you know your in Mexico. Mexico has soul (or Sol). :-)





Chao!!

Celestún

Yesterday, we went to Celestún. It is said that the area would not be a tourist attraction sin the pink flamigos. And they were gorgeous.

We got on the bus and headed toward the city, what turned out to be a 2-hour drive, a little farther than we were originally told. One the way down we went through little towns along the way. It was so interesting to see how a rural Mexican area appears (mind you from the nice air conditioned, tour bus; not really integrating with the culture). All the homes are cemet, and when the people abandon them, they sit there are a living moment to history. And there is a lot of abandonment, in these parts. The areas are just left desolate begging for someone to come along and clean them up. Also on the way back we passed old haciendas again. The homes were smaller now, but the large markings of territorial gates still stood.

One home was completely destroyed a menos que for the grand central stair case that remained standing in the wilderness of the brush. It was finely decorated from what I saw. I can't imagine how pretty the house would have been.



Some of the houses along the way had thatched roofs made from local shurbry. The roofs weren't flat and were much taller than those compared to the cemet houses. Trash lingers in the yards, and sometimes there are just communal waste dumps, which shows that their isn't an organized trash system. People sit out on their porches and talk and relax. Often the parks were full of older people relaxing and gathered around benches, while the little ones played on the playgrounds and ran around. It felt slightly uncomfortable to know that this big bus were interrupting their lives. I felt like a fish out of water. In what bigger way can you say, "Hello, Im American, big, loud, and proud".

Many homes are adjacent to the shops the people own as their source of income. Unlike Merida, the big names such as Wal-Mart, Burger Kig, Super Bodega, Mega, Office Depot, KFC, McDonald's, etc. don't exist down there. It isn't profitable. Por lo tanto, many of the small speciality shops still exist because of the lack of corporate competition. There were panaderias, papelerias, ferrocarriles, farmacias, etc. Also on the walls of some of the larger stores, the political parties of PAN and PRI wrote their messages. There were several completing slogas in the smaller towns. Here in Merida, I don't see them as often; however, there are large buildings are the party headquarters for the town.

And I saw the coolest thing. So futbol, or soccer, is very popular down here, obviously. Many of the parks have mini soccer fields, and the schools, which by the way are huge, like community college campus size huge, have soccer fields that are on cement, like basketball courts. So what happened is similar to what happened in Spain where there became a vested interest in basketball, but it never really caught on. Now many basketball courts have been turned into soccer fields, although basketball is by far more popular here than in Spain.


So what I saw that was so cool, was a basketball hoop, soccer goal thing. The base of the mechanism was the width of a soccer goal, then two pipes emerged from the top and connected up higher to support a basketball hoop and backboard. I thought it was the coolest thing. The picture just doesn't do it justice. But one can see how the contrapcion has put one thing to serve two purposes.

So after bouncing around for two hours, we exit the bus, and head for the restaurant we will be eating at later. First we go on a boat ride to view the Ria Celestun Biosphere Reserve, which was way cool.

The boat ride...not so much. It was some old, rusted out boat. We get in and Im one hundred percentaje sure that we are going to capsize. I have a backpack full of things that can't get wet...anxiety sets in. I really had to psych myself into this one. This was just not my thing, not accustomed to these things in my life, before. Now I can handle it. So we get in and go.....rather fly. The boat driver literally has half the boat airborne for most of the ride because we are just flying through the water. I am so blessed that I don't have motion sickness or get sea sick because I would have been vomiting like nobody's business. After a few minutes, I just decided this was normal, so relax and enjoy. What's the worse that can happen? We capsize, Im stuck in an ocean with fish and other animals and things, I don't really what to touch, my backpack gets wet with several things ruined and probably lost, and I ride the bus back wet. OK. No big deal. :-)So I just put my feet up, pull my hair down and relax the whole way. Life turned out to be quite nice after I did this.

We saw several things on the tour. Birds, flamingos, mangroves, etc. Totally worth the bumping, crashing through the waves, bruising boat ride (and I swear he just did it on purpose sometimes).
The ria was so pretty. I felt like I was in part of a jungle. The reserve extends down into Campstre from the Yucatan. The birdwatching was great. There were sticks water marking the path like a highway for the boats to use. Many of the birds just perched on the sticks.


Also the mangroves, as pictured here, I thought were the best part. There was an area cut through for boats to travel down. It was thick and filled with wildlife. Fish swam through, and it was fun to try and see what one could find lurking around watching us. Supposedly there were alligators in the mangroves, 1.5 to 2 meters long as the guide told us. I don't know how they could travel around with all the roots of the mangroves being that big; however, I was not going to put my hand in the water and find out! The amound of wildlife that is lurking in those waters...it would have fun to just stick a camera down there and see. I once saw a national geographic speacial on the mangroves and how they are just teeming with life. I was excited to see them in real life.

So the flamingos inhabit one general area of the ria. They stick out like red stop signs on the road against the greenery. In November and December there are thousands of them, and they line most of the area. May is the end of peak season, so we only saw a small portion of what it looks like during the climatic months, but it was still awesome. The boats can't get too close because the birds scare easily, so this was the best I got picture wise. We did see two birds go at it though when we first entered the area. Talk about aggressive. Swaqking and making such a racket. Unbeilevable. They are such pretty birds.

Afterwards, we ate fish at the restaurant, and then played around on the beach. The waters are different colors because it is so shallow. And there were huge, pretty shells everywhere. The beach doesn't get a lot of traffic, so it was nice to be an uncrowded area unlike Progreso. The entire day was well worth it, even the rocky boat ride that I thought at times I was going to die, was just all part of a great experience.

Chao!

Hacienda Yaxcopoil

Today we went to the Yaxcopoil Hacienda. I was so excited because I really wanted to visit one of the old haciendas in the area. Even though I have a TON of homework (about 15 pages to write and a presentacion) I still decided to go, and it was well worth it.

It is in the city of Uman. We rode the bus out there and then took taxi vans back. It was about a hour to get there. It is in the direction of Uxmal. When we entered the city it was different a feeling than in Merida. There were a lot more indigenous people and it was a poorer area. It was a little more of what I imagined Mexico to be like.

The hacienda is located a little farther out from the main city central. A local said that there are about 12 near by haciendas. I of couse want to visit them all, but sadly we are on a time constraint. The area around the hacienda is inhabited by people who live in tiny houses. There was a carnival outside the hacienda grounds. When we entered, you were suppose to drive through the main gate, as pictured above, but we went in through another enterance.

The whole thing is just huge, facinating, and totally run down.




Here are the steps going up to the platform of the building. You can see they are worn with many people who have climbed them. There story tells us about how often people visited the hacienda and how it was busy with human traffic. They are testaments to the large scale production from the haciendas and how they really were like small towns in and of themselves.







The buildings were huge. Tall with columns and other neoclassical elements. After entering in the main hall, there was a area separating the reception from the other parts of the house, as seen here. Most of the walls are falling apart and what once was fine detail has eroded away. But it is still very gorgeous. It is really sad to see it all fall apart.














There are many gardens rooms. There were currently vacas, cows, using the land. Just as the buildings are falling apart, the cows are ill-fed and one can see their skeletal structure quite well. There was no grass to eat because everything has dried up and is withering away. What once was profitable and well taken care of now just withers in the wind. More picture following.






This is where the farm management took place. There is still the old machinery, stables, etc. As seen some of the buildings didn't even have roofs. All that stands as a memory is the facade and the wooden frame, which is falling apart quickly. Soon all that will be there are the stone facades of the building.

























Everyday One of the things, I have come acustom to seeing is the white paint at the base of the trees. Most of the trees on public property are covered with this stuff. I have never seen it before. At first we all thought is was so that at night people could see the trees, ie traffic purposes.
However, senora said that the paint is a mixture of anti-bug stuff so that bugs and other small animals won't climb the trees. I believed her until we passed a tree and I saw a trail of ants climbing up it. Either the paint was old, or the stuff is just a deterant because everybody knows there really is know way to deter all insects and animals. Or it has another purpose. Who knows? But sights like this are all around.


Chao!!