Mexican Foof

“Dulces?” asked the security agent in Mexico City. The same agent who, only two minutes before, urged Chris to drain whatever liquid remained in his water bottle and grinned wryly to the people in line behind us as Chris proceeded to chug a full 20 ounces. The unidentified dulces in question were Lemon Heads that once lived in a box but which became loose when the agent removed said box from Chris’s backpack to investigate the potential terrorist threat more closely. And once they became loose, they were everywhere and the most pressing concern was how to dispose of them. Ultimately, with a shrug and a bit of a smile, they were thrown back into the bag and it wasn’t until the other side of the x-ray machine that a different agent wondered at the Tupperware of potato salad. In Chris’s defense, he didn’t know there would be an in-flight meal. In Chris’s defense, my mom’s potato salad is really good. In Chris’s defense, he took what was an otherwise painless and easy travel day and added a few moments of tension (Will he be thrown in a Mexican prison? Will I? Will we make our connecting flight?) followed by some whole body laughing once we made it all the way through customs and security. 

We arrived in Oaxaca at 10:30 in the evening which was a blessing because the airport closes at 11 and the travel book indicates that late flights are diverted to other cities. Susan is with us from the start this time which is new and fun albeit a tempting of fate since Kristen, Andy, Archie, Chris, Susan and I all left for vacation on the same day this year. I assume my parents said a quick prayer of safe passage for us all. And ours was safe. Our collectivo deposited Susan at her hotel first. We made plans to meet at 9:30 this morning and then we were off before seeing if Sue got in alright. In the dark, it can be difficult to assess a neighborhood fully, though in Guatemala City we were instinctively glad to be on the inside of the charming barbed wire fence that surrounded our pension. This Oaxacan neighborhood did not seem to require such safety measures but I couldn’t help but to think as I looked out the window to her on the street that my mom would probably be super pissed if we lost her the first night. The driver took a long, circuitous route to our apartment and we were sad since we had tried to plan our accommodations carefully and within walking distance of one another. It was only a moment or two before we realized that they were far apart by car due to one way streets and a giant plaza, but by foot we were only two or three blocks away from where we had left Susan.

Our place is sweet in the old fashioned, atmospheric sense of the word. There are four apartments on an interior courtyard anchored by a constant, tiered water fountain and dense with tropical foliage. Ours is two rooms plus bath. The main room is a small sitting room with a dining table and kitchenette and our bedroom is off of that. There are three banks of French doors spanning our rooms that open to the courtyard and we slept with them all wide open last night which was cool and comfortable and the sound of the fountain is hypnotic. As soon as Chris unpacked his suitcase and stowed it away under the desk in our bedroom, a cat promptly entered and curled up to sleep on top of it and as soon as we turned out our lights for the night and curled up ourselves, she relocated to the foot  of the bed. We had to chase her out with a broom this morning so we could lock up without trapping her inside but she’s back now wrapped around my ankles as I write this. We’ll have to ask the caretaker what her name is, but for now we’re just calling her Mexican Foof. 

We had arranged to meet Sue at a church between our two places, but when we opened our street door this morning, she was right outside and excited already to show us something. I pictured her up early walking the grid of the city waiting patiently for us to haul our lazy selves out of bed.  She is staying at Hotel Azucena and right across the street is a primary school and today was the final day of classes. Everyone was out in the courtyard in all manner of finery and costume and there was dancing. This last day of school was such a celebration and it rang on for hours. We went to the roof of the Azucena for coffee and to watch the folklorico festivities from above. 

After street tacos right outside the hotel, we wandered. 

The Plaza of Dances separates us and it was what we chose to explore first, visiting the Basilica de Neustra Senora de la Soledad, a place that promise to be grand but which we didn’t enter due to a packed mass. There is a museum behind the church which documents both the faith of the Oaxacan people and also the mysterious event which occurred here in 1620 when Jesus and a virgin appeared to what seems to be everyone in town. Needless to say, Jesus and the virgin are now the patron symbols of this city (oh wait, and every other city we’ve ever visited in Mexico). 

We went to the Zocalo to the Catedral de Oaxaca—an earthquake resistant structure built in 1733 to replace the earlier 1550 original, destroyed by an earthquake in 1669. Everything gleams. The gold leaf. The polished mahogany. The flames of the penny candles. It reminds me of St. Peters in Rome in its grandeur and in its design; there are many different sections of the church in which to worship and each place is so stunning you’re shocked to realize you still haven’t found your way to the main altar. It is also the home of Santa Cruz de Huatalco, one of four crosses made in 1612 by Bishop Juan Cervantes, who used materials from the “original mysterious cross” which indigenous people were said to worship before the conquest. According to legend, the mysterious cross was erected by a mysterious white-robed stranger who promptly disappeared. The story has some seriously holy holes in it, but they’ve built a heck of a cathedral around the cross so I’ll not ask any more questions about this mystery. 

The Templo de San Felipe Neri is down the street and this building, like this section of town, blazes like Emerald City because so many facades use green volcanic cantera stone.

We visited the local market—Mercado Juarez—which was as we expected it to be: full of nearly anything one could imagine from belts and shoes to floral arrangements to butter to lucha libre masks. While we’ve been to many markets in our travels, this was the first we’ve visited where vendors readily passed over samples so we were able to try different chocolates for the making of mole and Oaxacan cheese. The market as always is at once captivating and revolting to me. I want to see and smell and hear everything at the same time I desperately want to shut out certain sights and smells. Never mind hockey masks, a horror film to me is 25 feet of stalls all of which have angry yellow chicken feet protruding into the aisle right at my eye level and bored men lazily fanning flies off every cut of pig that is possible including head and hooves.  All the meat is fresh and I’m sure wonderful but the sheer volume creates an olfactory assault that doesn’t seem to bother anyone else. Read that Chris and Susan. They’re both more adventurous eaters than I am. Here, a local treat is fried crickets dusted in salt and chile powder and these were readily available in the market. While Sue didn’t have any today, she mentioned that she certainly would while we are here. And I’ll be right there next to her writing about it.

The market is close to the oldest church in Oaxaca, the Templo y Ex-Convento de San Juan de Dios. Like so many other churches here and in Antigua, what we actually visited was the church sitting on the site of the oldest church in Oaxaca, a church which was destroyed by earthquake. In any case, there has been a church in place there since 1521 and the original was adobe. Inside the current structure are murals depicting among other things the discovery by the Spaniards in 1700 that the native people were secretly worshiping their original gods. According to the murals, these “Idolators of Los Cajones” were dealt with handily, the Spaniards using both swords and fire to put them in their place and remind them who their real god was.

Susan suggested siesta so I’ve been writing, Chris just braved our “the water heater is broken” outdoor shower and next we’ll settle in for the evening here with beers and homemade guacamole made from vegetables we picked up at Mercado Juarez. That said, maybe we’ll walk Susan home this evening because while the Plaza of Dances seems like it would be full of dancing what it is really full of is helado.