Mexico—Work Trip, January 2022

I’m going to continue the tradition of bitching about WordPress—they removed the theme I’d used for years so when I tried out another one momentarily I was unable to go back and wound up trapped in this theme that breaks all kinds of formatting I did before. Which is something of a relief in a sense because now the fact that I can’t embed the flag the way I used to isn’t so much of an issue because none of the embedded flag graphics show up embedded properly anyway. I’m really glad I’m not paying for WordPress here.

Anyway—now that I have that out of my system, I went to Mexico again. More or less the same itinerary for the work part of it as last time, but I went some different places at the end, and the company was a bit different. This time I was joined by D, a co-worker from here in California. She’s made a couple trips to Mexico with me over the years but this was the first this year and the first time she got to spend any significant amount of time Guadalajara, so I was kind of psyched to show her some of my favorite places.

I’ve basically given up on my grudge against Volaris, since they always seem to be the most convenient option for my flights to Mexico. We flew from San Jose on a mostly empty flight—there were several empty rows on either side of us, but for some reason I’d be stuck in row with two other people next to me, and D had one next to her despite all the empty space. Luckily they let us move after people had boarded, so we moved back a row. It was rather nice to spread out. I got the clever idea of attaching my GoPro to the window shade to take a time lapse of the flight, which I still think is a fun idea, but the clip didn’t want to hold—I need to bring my suction cup if I’m going to pull that off.

We landed around 8 and headed to our hotel, the Ramada Encore in Tlajomulco, which is our usual first night hotel as it’s on the way out of town. We checked in quickly and I went up and threw down my stuff and headed back down to enjoy my complementary beverage at the hotel bar. Usually I get the frozen margarita but they didn’t seem to have it as an option, so I had a glass of red wine instead. I’d downed about half of it when D appeared, and we headed out to find dinner at the Gourmeteria next door. We settled on La Hamburgueria, enjoyed our dinner and headed back.

When I went through security I’d noticed I forgot my bag of toiletries, and I really wanted at least a toothbrush, so I asked about it at the front desk (the first attempt got garbled in translation and resulted in someone trying to set up an airport shuttle for me) and they told me they didn’t have any, but that there was an Oxxo just up the street, so I walked over there and bought a toothbrush and toothpaste, and texted with my wife a bit on the walk back.

The next morning, we ate at the buffet-that-is-not-a-buffet and caught our ride to O’s house, then headed for Michoacan. The first stop was Purepero. The route to Purepero features the constant threat of protests blocking the road, so we decided to head there first so we could go by the highway and avoid them. That part worked, but the next part, as we headed to Tangancicuaro, was where it broke down. Soon after we hit the road, we came across a police roadblock, warning us that there was a protest blocking the road. So we made a change of plans and took an alternate route that I’d never traveled before.

We passed through the town of La Jabonera (“The Soapery”?), which had several strikingly large, nice houses in what appeared to be a small town in the middle of nowhere. We paused to use the grungy public bathroom in the pristine and very empty town square. The women’s restroom was padlocked, but the men’s was not only open but completely lacked a door, so O stood guard while D used it. I wandered around a bit, checked out the gazebo and the angular, modern church across the street.

The gazebo on the square at La Jabonera

We continued on to Tangancicuaro, checked out the fields there, and back to Zamora, where we checked into the Meson del Valle, our hotel. This time we were in the tower, which was always nice, as it tends to be quieter and the views are better. Just to see how it worked, I clipped my new action camera (an Akaso Brave 7) onto the curtain pull, and set up a time lapse view out the porch door (it wasn’t a particularly interesting view, just some buildings and water tower, but I thought it might be cool to see night fall and clouds scoot by).

We had dinner at the Gordo Grill in Zamora, and my after-dinner meeting with Australia got canceled, so we lingered for a long time, enjoying tacos, asparagus, bone marrow. I had a cocktail (unusual for me) with mezcal and pineapple, which was really nice, as well as sharing a bottle of wine. After desert, we headed to back to the hotel. I checked the camera and was pretty pleased with the results. I’m still adjusting to the sense of what I can do with this camera (and my older GoPro Hero4 Silver)—my mindset has never really shifted from just taking pictures with a standard camera, so I forget I can do things like time lapse, or underwater, or mount it on a car or things like that…so I keep bringing it on trips to so I can get used to thinking about it and the sense of possibilities. I’m still not sure why I need these cameras, but I do have fun with them, so they’re more toys than anything. Apparently I can’t post the video on WordPress without paying, and it’s not really worth it, so you’ll just need to trust me that it’s pretty cool.

The next morning we drove to Tapalpa, crossing the lakes like the last trip. There’s a surprising amount of water in them still—usually at this point in the season they are mostly dry, and it’s actually been a pretty dry winter up to this point, but the fall was super rainy, so I guess the lakes started the winter pretty full. There weren’t as many birds as last time, but we still saw black-necked stilts, avocets, northern shovelers, and lots of other ducks.

Heading south over the lakes, towards Nevado de Colima

Things looked great in Tapalpa, although with the onslaught of Omicron in Mexico they had moved all the offices outside (this was the case in Tangancicuaro as well). The farm manager was outside in the shade shelter on his laptop interviewing a job candidate. Anyway, we checked things out there, and then sat down for another cup of Uruapan coffee before heading back to Tapalpa.

The last couple trips we’ve had a driver to take us back to Guadalajara from Tapalpa so that O can stay there to work the next day. The driver always shows up earlier than planned, so we don’t wind up spending that much time in Tapalpa (we probably could, but I often want to get to Guadalajara). One of these days I’m going to spend the night in Tapalpa and then explore more there—I’ve made a number of short visits to Tapalpa, but never really explored far beyond the main square and nearby streets.

Looking out of the new church towards the old church in Tapalpa

A few times when I’ve been there I’ve seen people in the tower on the new church, but I could never figure out how they got there—usually in these churches there’s a stairway tucked away near the front door (usually it’s locked, but I figured if there were actually people up there maybe it wouldn’t be). But in this case I could find it. It turns out that the entrance isn’t inside the church—it’s outside. There’s actually an external “tube” with the staircase in it running up the back of the tower. Unfortunately it was padlocked, so I still couldn’t get in there, but now I know where it is. (There are public bathrooms back there, so when I went to check it out, people asked me if wanted to use the bathroom. I didn’t.)

The spiral staircase tube up the back of the tower. I assume there are stairs inside that go to the second level of the tower.

After hanging out in Tapalpa a bit, D and I hopped in the car and headed back to Guadalajara. It always feels like it takes longer than it needs to from Tapalpa, but the hotel I’ve been staying at is right in the historic center, so there’s a lot of driving on downtown streets that doesn’t go super fast.

We checked into our hotel, Hotel Morales, which has been my base of operations for the last couple trips. I like it—it’s a historic building, once a mecca for celebrities in Guadalajara (the bull ring was nearby, and many famous matadors used to hang out in the bar), but most importantly, it’s also right by the historic center so it’s really convenient.

We had made reservations at a restaurant I’d never been to, called Xokol. It seemed to be getting a lot of interest from both local and foreign press, as a place making creative cuisine with traditional ingredients. I wasn’t sure we’d be in Guadalajara in time, but it turned out the restaurant was open until 11, and actually we weren’t able to get reservations until 10, so we had plenty of time. After checking in at about 7:30, dumped our stuff in our rooms and met up again downstairs, and decided to walk around a bit and go to Xokol on foot—about a 40 minute walk, but we had time.

People worry about Guadalajara at night (and maybe I should) but I’ve spent a lot of time walking around after dark and I’ve never really felt unsafe in the places I’ve gone. There are lots of people around, and the streets are reasonable well-lit. We walked up to the plazas surrounding the cathedral, which were bustling with people. We went past the cathedral to the north and stopped at the Rotonda de los Jaliscienses Ilustres, which honors the most significant citizens of Jalisco.

The central rotonda

There’s a central rotonda in the middle of the square, where many of the people are entombed (mostly after being exhumed from their original resting places), which you can’t enter, and then around the edge of the square are statues of the people honored. D was really interested in the people, so we made our way around and looked up a lot of them. Since the last time I spent much time looking at them, they’d added QR codes to them that could be scanned for more info. We were excited that one of the scientists, Leonardo Oliva, was holding a plant. It’s always nice when people actually recognize the value of what we do (or at least what Leonardo Oliva did, but I’ll take my imaginary accolades however I can get them).

Leonardo Oliva

After that we swung through the Plaza de Armas, and paused to see bullet hole in the clock on the state capital building, and the gazebo, covered in lights.

From here we made our way across town, down Avenida Juarez. I kind of enjoyed playing tour guide—this is the first time I’ve actually been in Guadalajara with someone I know. Generally I’ve wandered around alone, and the exceptions were with tour guides. It turns out I’ve actually absorbed a lot of information, which D gamely let me babble at her while we walked around (hopefully she enjoyed it). We stopped to look at the statue of Matute Remus moving the telephone office, and swung by the Barragan house with a restaurant in it (closed at that point) that I visited on my trip in November. Then we took a quick detour to see the Templo Expiatorio. It was closed, unfortunately, but there was a market in the square with lots of people around. It’s an interesting church, very different than most of the other churches in Mexico, very Gothic. The church was lit up beautifully—this is the first time I’d visited after dark.

Templo Expiatorio at night

This was basically as far as I’d wandered in this direction in Guadalajara, so from here on it was somewhat unknown territory. The restaurant was in Santa Tere (Santa Teresita) which has a reputation as kind of a hip, up and coming neighborhood, with lots of sort of foodie places. I had visited once, during the day, and visited the market, but not on foot. We quickly found ourselves walking on pretty empty streets. I kind of thought we would see more restaurants and bars when we got there, but it mostly seemed kind of closed down and empty (it turns out that the restaurants and bars are mostly a couple blocks to the north). We actually walked past the restaurant once (it didn’t seem to have a sign) but we doubled back and found it. We were a little early for our reservation, so we told them we were there and they seated us within a few minutes. It was a really small restaurant—I could understand the need for a reservation and the hour and forty minute time limit on the meal—it could maybe fit 15-20 people at most? We were actually seated at the end of a table with another group of people.

D checks in at Xokol

They brought us fresh tortillas and a spicy pepper paste to eat while we perused the menus. The tortillas were amazing—a mix of yellow, red, and blue corn and incredibly fresh.

Me taking a picture of my tortilla, while D takes a picture of hers in the background

D had a local beer, and I ordered a tepache de tejocote. Tepache is a fermented drink, more commonly made with pineapples (the original Nauhatl drink was made with corn, and the original name, tepiātl, means “drink made with corn”, so I had a drink made with corn without the corn). I ordered the one made with tejocote because I’d seen tejocotes in markets several time but had never tried them . These small fruits are rosaceaeous (always a plus in my book) and come from Crataegus mexicanus, the Mexican hawthorn. They’re a bit like little pears or crabapples, and have a long history in indigenous foods, eaten fresh, cooked, or, most-commonly, in drinks. Their name also derives from Nauhatl, texocotl, which means “stone fruit”. It was sweet and sour and really delicious. It came in a bottle with a hand-written tag, and was almost certainly made locally, maybe by the restaurant itself. I actually ordered a second one, but they brought me a tepache de piña, which was also good (but maybe not as good).

My tepache de tejocote

We ordered three mains—two vegetarian (D is vegetarian) and one with meat. We had a quesadilla of sorts, a bowl with cauliflower and greens and corn hummus, and beef lips. All of it was amazing.

My shares of everything we had

After dinner, we called an Uber to take us back—one walk across Guadalajara was enough for the night. After getting back, I settled in to take my COVID test. I had brought a test with me that you can take online with a proctor that was acceptable for travel. I got out the test, sat down, and connected to the website. I had to make an account, which I did, and then I connected. A nice lady joined me online and checked my test, and then my ID. But she was concerned:

“This is maybe a very bad problem,” she said.

“What is?”

“You have a different name here on your ID. This is maybe a very bad problem.”

It turns out that apparently the presence of my middle name on my ID was the problem, because I didn’t have it on my account profile. The website had asked for First Name and Last Name and didn’t mention middle name, which is why I hadn’t entered a middle name. She recommended I log out and change it.

I logged out, but it turned out that the website wouldn’t allow me to modify my name. Eventually I downloaded the app and was able to change it there. So yay, another useless app. I reconnected and this time, instead of the nice Indian lady, I got someone having weird distortions. It sounded like he had been slowed way, way down…deep, slow, subhuman, hard to understand. He kept plowing ahead though, regardless of what I said. Finally I disconnected, and then reconnected. And then got the same guy. So I disconnected and waited ten minutes, and then tried again. This time I got Anita, who successfully shepherded me through the process. I was impressed how carefully they monitored all the steps of the testing process, and how little they did to the actual results, but I was happy to test negative, because I’d almost convinced myself I was going to be positive.

The next morning D and I headed out early to go to breakfast at the cafe at the Teatro Degollado. Which, despite claiming to be open at 7:30, was not in fact open. So we wandered around a little bit more and eventually wound up at La Chata, a relatively famous breakfast place, and ate there. It was really good, actually, though I was still a little bitter about the theatre.

After breakfast we wandered around the historic center, stopping at the Cathedral, and then to Arbol Adentro San Jose de Gracia, where we marveled at the tiny Inca Doves.

Arbol Adentro

Then we headed to Hospicio Cabañas which, surprise, was not open when it said it would be. However there were lots of heavily armed police and police vehicles there, which was a little unsettling. We set out to see San Juan de Dios Market, got a little turned around, stopped in a nearby church, and eventually found it. We wandered around a lot, looking for fruit, before eventually finding it. It’s a huge market, but more stuff-focused than food-focused.

San Juan de Dios Market

We decided to get some coffee, and went back to the cafe and Teatro Degollado. I thought we’d be able to look inside at 11am, but of course, like so many things, it didn’t open. But the coffee in the little French press was good and it was nice to relax a bit.

At last we went to Hospicio Cabañas. We didn’t have a lot of time left, so it was kind of quick, but I never get tired of visiting that place. D thought it reminded her of Dark Souls (I don’t know the game, but it sounds like it sort of fits). After enjoying the Orozco murals for a while, conscious of the time, we hurried back to our hotel, stopping for just a moment at Nuestra Señora de Aranzazu to marvel at its golden interior, before reclaiming our bags and hopping an Uber to the airport.

After a few complications with the Covid forms, we made it into the airport and onto the plane and headed home.

Mexico—Work Trip, November, 2021

 

Can I just begin this by saying how unspeakably awful the WordPress editor has become? It’s to the point where it virtually never seems worth it to battle through another post. I would literally rather write it all in raw HTML at this point if it gave me that option. Which of course it doesn’t. I just spent 20 minutes trying to figure out how to imbed this little flag here, and in the end I just wound up making a copy of an old post, so I still don’t know how to do that.

Anyway… I’m just back from four days in Mexico. Most of that was work, and there’s not really a coherent story to tell, but I figure this is a nice compact little thing I can actually post instead of running out of steam and never finishing like I do with the big trips. 

Started out by flying to Guadalajara. I flew Volaris, which I said I’d never do again since their incompetence resulted in me having to fly standby a couple years ago, but I keep failing to follow through on my threat because now in Pandemic World they seem to have the only non-stops from San Jose to Guadalajara, and I don’t hate them enough to kill more hours of my life in airports. Besides, they have cheery purple uniforms, which makes me like them way more than it should.

I arrived at the airport, and zipped through passport control (I was in the third row somehow, which helped) and then stood in line in Customs for ages—not sure where all the people came from, but there are always people who appear to be moving an entire household in their luggage. Finally made it through, booked a taxi at the hidden taxi stand, and headed to the bathroom. While inside an alarm went off, which sounded like a fire alarm. I came out and expected to see people rushing for the exits (and that it would be hard for me to find a taxi), but instead it pretty much seemed like I was the only one who noticed—no one was reacting in the slightest, even though it was a truly loud and obnoxious alarm. Whatever. I went out, found a taxi and headed to my hotel, the Ramada Encore in Tlajomulco (to the southwest of Guadalajara).

I was pretty tired but hungrier than I was tired, so I headed out for food. I’ve taken the same flight and found things closed in the past, so I wanted to move fast (in fact I considered eating at the airport, but the fire alarm and the lack of good options discouraged it). I got a solitary dinner at the Gourmeteria, a complex of restaurants (and a movie theater) behind the hotel. I really don’t mind eating alone—I’m always surprised to see how resistant people are to doing it. (I went to a sushi place alone in my hometown a couple weeks ago, and watched a guy decide not to eat there because they weren’t seating people at the bar (due to Covid) and only at tables. Apparently it’s not losery to sit alone at the sushi bar but it is to sit alone at a table?). I went to La Vaca Argentina, which I think had moved since I was last there, and had a really nice vacio steak (I think in English it’s a flank steak?) and a glass of Mexican wine and sat and relaxed for a bit reading the New York Times on my phone.

I was tired but struggled to sleep. Eventually I put a Netflix show on my iPad and connected it to the TV and fell asleep watching that. In the morning the sun was shining and a thin haze (fog? smog?) hung over the city. I went downstairs to enjoy my included breakfast. I’ve stayed here many times in the past, and they’ve always had a buffet, but thanks to Covid you have to instruct the guy behind the counter as to what you wanted, which requires more thought than I really wanted to exert first thing in the morning, but I managed. 

The morning view from my hotel.

My co-worker sent a car to retrieve me (he’d have had to go towards Guadalajara with the morning rush hour traffic, and then turn back around, so he often sends a taxi to take me to his place instead of coming to get me). The driver was a bit late—apparently traffic was exceptionally bad—but he successfully delivered me to my co-worker’s house on the outskirts of the city. I met his young daughter for the first time, and then we hit the road.

The view from my colleague’s driveway. I love the juxtapostion of the row of angular houses disappearing into the distance with the soft rows of clouds doing the same overhead.

We traveled to Michoacán and saw the two test plots there, in Purepero and Tangancicuaro. No need for the details of those here. We were fortunate that the protesting teachers who often block the road between the two weren’t out that day (people talk about them like they talk about the weather, like a force of nature that can’t be changed, only planned around). At the end of the day we went to Zamora, and checked in at Hotel Meson de Valle. This is a bit of a blast from the past—when I started visiting Mexico, this was where we stayed every time, but in recent years I’ve stayed at the Hotel Terrass, which is in downtown Zamora and has great views of the cathedral and other churches. I like being able to wander about downtown, but there’s no doubt that Meson de Valle is both nicer and more convenient. And there’s a great breakfast, too.

We checked in at around five, and I actually went and took a nap, which is something I almost never do. But I was tired from sleeping poorly and from my foot hurting, so I slept for about an hour and a half despite lots of noise from an event happening in the tower building. I emerged at 6:45 refreshed and ready for dinner, and with the ibuprofen kicking in on my foot.

Dinner was at an Argentine restaurant (second night in a row, but not a problem in my book). We arrived early so we just ordered some appetizers to eat before the rest of our group arrived—asparagus and Panela Jones, which sounds like somebody’s name but is in fact a soft cheese with chipotle and raspberry and is frankly kind of amazing. When the rest of the group arrived, we ordered some octopus and more vacio (again, not a problem—I’d happily eat good steak daily). Everybody tried to speak their non-native language, which made for amusing but rather stilted conversation, but it was a lot of fun, and I slept a lot better this night.

The next morning we had the amazing breakfast buffet at the Meson de Valle, accompanied by its trademark super lame coffee and much better orange juice, and then headed into Zamora for my COVID test so I could actually get home. I’ve had several of these at this point, and while none of them have been fun, I’d say I’d rate this the least unpleasant. It was a little odd, because it was conducted through a plexiglass screen with a six inch circle cut in the middle that I had to lean towards, though I can see where it makes sense, since my first impulse with these things is always to feel like sneezing and I’m sure the person administering the test gets sneezed on regularly. This was super quick and only one nostril with a smaller probe than I’ve seen used previously, and they turned the results around in less than an hour, so this wins my personal prize of Best COVID Test To Date. And I was negative, which was good because being trapped in Mexico would have been pretty inconvenient.

Anyway, then we headed to Tapalpa. I’ve made this trip many times, but this time it was a little faster thanks to a new highway which bypasses the slowest part of the trip. I always enjoy the part of the trip that traverses the seasonal lakes of Laguna de Sayula and Laguna San Marcos. Most of the time when I visit Mexico these have already dried up, since I tend to visit in the dry season, but this was the first trip of the year following a fairly wet fall, so there was actually some water, and lots of birds, especially black-necked stilts. There were also several statues of African animals—an elephant, hippo, and rhino—reminders of a failed wildlife park from many years ago, which always amuse me.

Laguna de San Marcos (this was actually on the return trip, but I’m putting it here)

After winding up the mountain to Tapalpa, we went to the test plot, and did our thing. Before heading out, we relaxed in the shed with the test plot manager and the new intern. She is from Uruapan, in Michoacán, and she had coffee she’d brought from home that she made for us, which was really good. I had no idea there was coffee grown in Uruapan (I’d have thought it was a little too cold in the winter, but apparently not—it’s in the transition zone between the higher elevation areas I usually frequent and the lower “Tierra Caliente” of southern Michoacán). She said it was only available there, so I’m going to have to live without it, but I made a mental note to try to buy some if I visit Uruapan.

Afterwards, we headed to a restaurant kind of in the middle of nowhere on the route into Tapalpa proper (I believe it was called “Los Encinos” but I don’t really remember for sure). We’ve eaten there once before. I was delighted to find rabbit on the menu—I always feel like I’ve eaten rabbit at some point in the past but I can never remember when it was, so I decided to definitively add it to the list of things I’ve eaten. It was pretty good, though predictably and disappointingly tasted almost exactly like chicken, while managing to be more work to eat.

Rabbit!

We wandered a bit on the square in Tapalpa—we were very early for the ride that had been arranged for me, so we had a little time to kill. I’ve got lots of pics of downtown Tapalpa over the years, but it’s still ridiculously picturesque so I snapped a few more, and we had the local flavor of ice cream—pecan! It was served by an old woman on the square, and was delicious.

A woman sweeping the steps of the old church on the square in Tapalpa.

The towers of the two churches

The requisite big letters now apparently required by every town in Mexico.

It turned out that my driver had arrived early and was there all along, so rather than wander any longer I set off for Guadalajara. I’d debated the possibility of staying in Tapalpa and seeing some local sights tomorrow before heading back to catch the plane, but the idea made me nervous due to the possibility of traffic tie-ups, and that worry was validated by what followed—due to multiple accidents, the 1.5 hour trip took more like 3 hours. I’d hoped to wander around the historic downtown after dark, but I was so exhausted I decided to just crash. But then I woke up in the middle of the night and took some pictures of the hotel.

I really like this hotel—Hotel Morales—it’s kind of become my favorite in Guadalajara. It’s not spectacularly luxurious or anything, but it’s right in the heart of the historic center and a beautiful historic building. It began life as a private house, Casa Varea, the home of a well-off lawyer, but began welcoming guests with the arrival of the railroad in the late 1800s. Over the years several floors were added and the hotel annexed a few neighboring buildings, resulting in a somewhat maze-like layout.

The atrium of Hotel Morales, from the second floor (the ribbons are decorations from Dia de Muertos hanging down over the lobby).

One of the other courtyards in the hotel

In the morning I went out to wander the historic center of Guadalajara. My foot was hurting and I decided not to get too ambitious. I went to the Teatro Degollado and had breakfast at the Cafe Degollado, the cafe in the theatre building, which I’d heard was pretty good. I was not disappointed. I had an omelette with with panela, pesto, and tomatoes, a salad and bread, and a little individual French press with coffee with canela and a glass of orange juice. It was really lovely and a great way to start the day.

I never remember to take a photo of food before I start eating it.

I stopped by the cathedral—this time there was actually a service going on, so I felt a little awkward. I’m not sure what the occasion was on a Friday in November, but there were services happening in several churches I stopped by, and a lot of people in the ones without one.

The dome of the Guadalajara cathedral

Near my hotel were two churches, known as Los Dos Templos. One of these, the larger one called Templo de San Francisco is, in my experience, never, ever open. I was excited to see a side door open, but when I approached it looked like some sort of bland office space. I really, really hope that they haven’t just put church administrative offices in there. They’ve done some work recently to recreate the courtyard that used to be next to that church, so I’m hoping they have plans to make it accessible again.

The other church is the Templo de Nuestra Señora de Aranzazu. It’s the smaller of the two and relatively unimpressive looking from the outside. But the inside is specactular. Gold covers everything. It’s somewhat dimly lit, so with all the gold there’s almost a faint glow to everything. There were people worshipping inside, so I didn’t go far in, and just took photos from the door (and then again from a side door, though I was close to people there an felt kind of bad about the sound of the camera shutter).

Templo de Nuestra Señora de Aranzazu

The two churches were actually once part of the much larger complex of the Convent of St. Francis of Assisi, along with a couple other churches (you can really never have too many) and a wall around the whole complex.

From here I headed to Tlaquepaque, once a small town but now a suburb of Guadalajara. It’s got a reputation as a great place to by handicrafts, but I’m not much of a shopper, so I mostly just went to look around. I called an Uber and without anywhere in particular in mind just chose the one thing I could remember the name of in the center—El Parian. El Parian is a huge complex of restaurants with a courtyard in the middle where mariachi groups peform. I’d been there before, so I wasn’t really that interested in going again, but it made for a convenient landmark.

The driver dropped me by the square, which is exactly where I wanted to be. The square is incredibly charming, with two churches and a delightful yellow gazebo, and lots of people selling things. I wandered around for a while, just enjoying the atmosphere. There were still some Dia de Muertos decorations up, banners of papel picado strung from the gazebo and the two churches along the square.

I’d visited one of these churches, the Parroque de San Pedro Apostol, I had visited on my previous times in Tlaquepaque, but the other, Santuario de Nuestra Señora de la Soledad had been closed on my previous visits, so I was pleased to see it open this time. It’s a very pretty church with interesting architecture—I can’t think of any clear parallels in Mexico, though there are elements of the San Pedro church across the square that are reminiscent. It has a pair of towers, apparently turned 45 degrees from the layout of the building, and a tall, flat, decorated crest between them with an embedded clock, and behind it a rather striking and somewhat unexpected dome. The whole compound is surrounded by a wall, itself decorated with swirls and bright yellow highlights. And, like the other church, the image is complemented by several palm trees, which make the whole scene feel more like Yucatán than the central highlands. Last time I visited I had sketched it in my sketchbook, from a bench on the square. My foot had been hurting that trip too, I think, recovering from the previous episode in 2019…it’s becoming something of a tradition I guess, though it was recovered enough by this trip that although I was keeping my walking limited, it wasn’t actively paining me in an intrusive way.

The church took over a century to complete, starting in 1741 and not completed until 1878. It doesn’t seem that urgent, since there was a perfectly good church right across the square, as well as a large convent a few blocks away, but it always seems like the cardinal rule in Mexico is that you can never have too many churches. The interior is substantially fancier than the much plainer and much older counterpart across the square, but to me it felt a little cramped, like they were trying to fit too much into a too small building.

I headed across the square towards the other church. It’s much older than the other church. The site was originally location of an indian hospital and chapel, built in 1580. After many years of neglect, this building partially collapsed and construction began on the current building in 1670. However, much like the other church, it was plagued by budget shortfalls and construction delays, so it actually wasn’t fully completed until 1813, several decades after the other church, and even after that there were maintenance problems that caused the church to be closed for a time in the 1800’s. It’s interesting to me that maintenance and funding were such a struggle—Tlaquepaque today seems prosperous, maybe even a bit wealthy compared to much of Guadalajara, but this isn’t a story I heard elsewhere, so I wonder if it was once a much poorer community, when it was a separate village from the city.

The church was once topped by a statue of San Pedro by the famous ceramic artist Pantaleon Panduro, the namesake of the local ceramic museum, but it was destroyed by a stray bullet during the Cristero War of 1926-29. The current statue, made of concrete, is a replacement made in 1941.

I sat on a bench in front of Our Lady of Solitude and sketched San Pedro. I don’t claim to be a great artist, and in this age of cell phone cameras it’s not at all necessary, but I like immortalizing bits of my trips this way, and the fact that it makes me just sit down and look at things, something I struggle with a bit, given my desire to see everything I can when I travel.

I decided to go see the Refugio Cultural Center. This is an enormous 1800’s hospital that has been converted to a cultural center, including the Pantaleon Panduro ceramics museum, which I’d visited before. But it looked like it was a very small part of the complex, so I thought I’d check out the rest. Unfortunately, when I went in, I found out that the rest wasn’t open to the public, and when I asked where the public entrance was, they directed me to what turned out to be the Pantaleon Panduro museum.

I figured since it was free and I was there I might as well go again. They made me leave my good camera with my backpack (they don’t want you to wear a big backpack around a ceramic museum, go figure). The guy at the door instructed me which direction to go, and I went around looking at the very impressive ceramic sculptures, though little seemed to have changed since my previous visit a couple years ago.

Shortly after taking the above picture of the lurid pink alcove, a woman stopped me in the hallway. “It’s not permitted to go this way. You are in danger if you go this way”. I wasn’t really ready for this—there was one side passage that was flagged off, but there was no indication at all that anything was wrong here. A couple that had approached from behind me asked what the problem was. Apparently there was structural damage in that part of the building? There really was no indication of a problem—maybe the building had fallen victim to the problem with chronic maintenance issues of the churches? And if there was a problem, why hadn’t the guy at the door not mentioned it? Had the structural problem just happened right then?

After this somewhat unsatisfying visit, I decided to head to the other ceramic museum. On my last trip I’d actually assumed they were in one in the same (there’s actually a third ceramic museum not that far away). This one is in a very old house complex from the 1700s, which once belong to Don Francisco Velarde, known as the Golden Donkey, because he supposedly traded his entire library for a donkey. He was a supporter of the Emperor Maximillian and was later executed for treason as a result (he had in fact been pardon, but the pardon was too slow in arriving and he was shot).

It’s a lovely building, and the museum was pleasant, though the ceramics were much less technically impressive and more rustic and traditional than the other museum. I wandered around and looked at things, though I’ll confess I was too tired and uninterested to bother reading most of the labels, which were in Spanish. (I don’t know if I’m getting old or my Spanish is getting rusty with less travel and less interaction with the Spanish speakers at work, but I find that speaking/reading Spanish is particularly exhausting lately). There was an entertaining collection of ceramic figurines of all the Mexican presidents (I successfully identified the three or four that I know by sight).

Time was running a little short and I still hadn’t eaten, so I went back to downtown Tlaquepaque and chose a restaurant called El Patio. It was big and very busy, but they seated me within minutes. The hostess asked me where I was from, and initially I thought she was just making conversation, but when I told her she selected a little American flag from a shelf behind the hostess station and placed it on my table once I was seated. I thought maybe this was a system to indicate language preference to waiters, but I noticed that there were both Mexican flags and Guadalajara flags (Guadalajara is one of the very few cities in Mexico with a flag—and Jalisco is actually one of only three states with flags). So who knows. I saw a few other American flags and a French flag out on tables, but there were a lot of European and South American flags on the shelf.

I ordered one of the house cocktails, which was something unusual that I’m forgetting now. It was good enough that I ordered a second one when my food arrived. The food was a leg of pork, cooked with orange, and it was really good, especially accompanied by fresh tortillas. As I was finishing, time was running short, so I called an Uber and went to the end of the pedestrian street to wait, then rode to the airport. After the usual confusion and obtuseness about the online health form and then with the Covid test, I made it through and headed home.

Southern Hemisphere, Part 3—Fiji, Fast

When I was booking my flights home, I noticed that one option was to fly Fiji Airlines, and change flights in, unsurprisingly, Fiji. It was only a little over an hour layover, so I wouldn’t have had time for much of anything besides the airport. However, it occurred to me that I could take the same flight the next day, and instead of 1 hour, I’d have 25 hours. That would be somewhat interesting. So I booked a one day trip to Fiji.

I flew from Launceston’s tiny airport to Melbourne, and in Melbourne’s airport I had a burger at Happy Jack’s, mostly because the name difference entertained me, and it was there (it’s the name used by Burger King in Australia). I actually wasn’t terribly hungry, but I wanted to eat while I had a chance. The waiting area for Fiji Airlines was absolutely packed with people, which was making me just a little anxious, as Covid-19 was just starting to take off (I hadn’t worried at all at the stop of the trip, but the empty airports we’d encountered and the relentless stream of news was starting to take its toll).

Once we finally boarded, the flight was just as crowded. I was in the midst of a large church group, which seemed heavy on old overweight people. One member of which was an obese old guy on the aisle seat across from me. He kept telling horrible jokes, and stopping the flight attendant to tell them. The take-off was a little bumpy, and something about the cattle-car conditions, the shaking bodies rubbing together, and the slightly dated seeming plane, combined with rough air, made me more a bit more nervous than I usually am on flights.

The flight, however, was perfectly fine, and as the sky grew dark, we touched down in Fiji. We arrived to temperature checks, which I passed, and health attestation forms. I made my way quickly through passport control, got some cash from an ATM, and headed to the rental car area. I’d decided to rent a car, given that I had so little time and didn’t want to deal with trying to figure out other means of transportation. All accounts I read suggested the main road was in good condition and traffic relatively light.

I had reserved a car with Europcar, but when I approached the Europcar desk, it appeared no one was there. I waited for about ten minutes, but no one showed up. I went to the desk next door, and asked if they knew what had happened with the Europcar staff. They said they’d been there earlier, but didn’t know where they’d gone or when they were coming back. I waited another fifteen minutes. The staff at the Avis desk called me over. They had cars available if I wanted one. I waited another five minutes, but eventually decided that Europcar had had its chance. I went ahead with the Avis rental. The process was completely manual, with lots of forms in carbon copy, and huge, overflowing stacks of papers on clipboards. It took forever.

As the process drew to a close, the guy from Europcar showed up. He asked if I was me, and I said I was, but he’d lost his chance. He looked frustrated. The Avis car turned out to be slightly cheaper than the one I’d reserved, anyway.

Finally finished, I went to my car, which was parked by the curb, and started the nerve-wracking drive to my hotel in Nadi. This wasn’t a terribly long drive, except for one thing—people in Fiji drive on the left. Adding to that was the complete darkness (there wasn’t a single street light from the airport until I reached town), the complete absence of lines on the road, the many speedbumps, and the endless stream of people and dogs in the road. Finally, I reached Nadi. My hotel, Nadi Downtown Hotel, was, unsurprisingly, located downtown.

Nadi was not an especially charming town, and main street was a slightly grim strip of run-down looking stores, bars, and restaurants. It was Saturday night, and the sidewalks were covered by young Fijians, moving between bars and clubs. I didn’t see anyone else who looked remotely like a tourist. I felt a little out of place. I very awkwardly parallel-parked by the very high curb and walked the couple blocks back to the hotel.

The Nadi Downtown Hotel was not especially impressive for what it cost. I saw no other guests. I checked in, a surprisingly long process (nothing in Fiji seemed very efficient), and eventually received my towel, key, and remotes. I took my stuff to my room then came back down and went with one of the women from the hotel to move my car. She rode with me as I drove around the block and guided me down a back alley to park behind the hotel.

It wasn’t especially late, but I’d eaten on the plane and felt a little intimidated by the crowds on the main street. So I asked if the hotel bar was open. The woman who had gone in the car with me went to the bar and unlocked the door and offered me a few beer options. I chose Fiji Bitter. She took one for herself as well, locked up the bar, and asked if I wanted to sit outside. I hadn’t really anticipated her joining me, but whatever. We sat in white plastic chairs behind the hotel, facing the alley, and drank our beers, and she lit up a cigarette.

We talked for a while. She’d never been outside of Fiji. She’d actually never been off of Viti Levu. She said she’d like to go to Australia sometime to work if she could, or maybe visit Samoa or Tonga. We talked a little bit about my job, and my trip so far.

After finishing my beer and letting her finish her cigarette, I went upstairs and went to bed. The room was a little dingy, but the bed was clean. There were lots of switches on the wall, and it took trying multiple configurations of them to turn on the air conditioning unit and the TV. It was uncomfortably stuffy. I watched Fijian news and political debate. I turned to the movie Maleficent on the TV, plugged in my myriad devices, and fell asleep to the drone of the air conditioner.

I got up at 6:30 am, and took a shower in the cold, grungy shower. I wrote a few emails and then went downstairs. It was too early for breakfast, apparently, so I headed outside. I went down to the end of the road, to the Sri Siva Subramaniya Swami Temple. The temple is the largest Hindu temple in the Pacific, but it’s not huge. I took off my shoes as instructed, and wandered around the wildly colorful open-air temple. It was quite early and there were only a few people here, but there was incense burning and someone shaking some jingling instrument. They didn’t allow photos, which was frustrating, but it was still rather interesting.

On my way back, as I waited to cross the road, I chatted with a tall local woman, with a magnificently huge afro. She was waiting for the bus to Sigatoka. I momentarily considered offering to drive her to Sigatoka, since I was headed that way anyway, but I wasn’t sure how a woman riding with a strange man would be seen in the conservative culture (or if she’d even feel safe doing so, though she was several inches taller than me and probably more of a threat than I was).

When I returned to the hotel, to my shock, there was another guest here, an older white guy. I said good morning and he nodded silently in acknowledgement. That was the extent of our interaction. I had some really great fruit juice (orange juice and then something else I didn’t identify), toast with marmalade and butter, and a bunch of fresh fruit. And then I hit the road.

I went to the gas station to top off my tank (which hadn’t come full), and to buy a giant bottle of water, a smaller bottle of water (for refilling) and some corn chips. Then I hit the road, heading south along the Queen’s Road toward Sigatoka. I was headed there because it was the site of the only major attraction I could find within easy driving distance of Nadi: Sigatoka Sand Dunes National Park. The park is home to a 650 ha complex of enormous sand dunes, piled up at the mouth of the Sigatoka River. The pictures looked really cool, and it was on the tentative UNESCO World Heritage site list, so I figured some day I might pick up a site on that, too. But I didn’t really have a clear idea what to expect.

Now that it was daylight and I’d had a chance to get used to it, the left hand driving wasn’t too big of a deal, though I occasionally hit the wipers instead of the turn signal. It helped that outside of town there wasn’t much traffic, and once on the Queen’s Road there really weren’t any turns, either. The road was in good shape, though with rare exceptions it was only one lane in each direction. There were periodic warnings about speed bumps (many), and signs warning that police were checking speeds (I never saw any, but maybe they were well hidden). The road followed near the coast for a while before turning inland, over rolling hills and through lush forests. Despite its reputation as an exotic island paradise in the West, the Fiji I saw from the road was very much a developing country (the glitzy resorts, it turns out, are mostly on offshore islands—other than the airport and the guy eating breakfast, I only saw other tourists twice that whole day).

Arriving at Sigatoka Sand Dunes, I pulled in and parked my car, making for a grand total of two in the parking lot. I went inside. Outside the air-conditioned car, it was already hot out, despite the early morning, and though the sky was clear and blue, there was a heavy dampness to the air. Inside, there were a few display cases of artifacts found there, and a relief map. I chatted with the guy at the counter for a while, signed the guest book, paid my admission, and headed for the trails.

The map at the beginning of the trail appears to be the only map in existence to show the trails in the park, and I was very glad to have taken a picture of it, though in the end I would have done well to pay more attention to it. The trail began by winding through some light forest, up a hill to a grassy ridge, affording a view of the dense jungle below, and the dunes in the distance. After following along this hilltop for a while, and glad for the breeze, I followed the path down the other side, into the very dense Driodrio Forest, which was dark and still. There was a constant hum of insects, and I found what appeared to be a huge cicada clinging to a tree trunk.

I came out of the forest and onto the shifting surface of an enormous dune. I trudged to the top, and looked out over the landscape. In one direction, I could see a village, far below, separated from the ocean by a low stretch of sand well below the dunes. Beyond that, I could see the mouth of the Sigatoka River, and behind that, mountains. To the south, I could see the beach, littered with driftwood, and the ocean. And behind me, row after row of dunes, running almost perpendicular to the beach.

After climbing around on the dunes for a while, checking out the plants growing on the sand, and looking out over the various views, I made my way down to the beach. The beach was broad, extending well away from the apparent high tide line, back to a row of vegetation along the base of the dunes. Massive amounts of driftwood dotted the beach, including what looked like whole large trees, piled in heaps. I walked near the surf for a while, casually driving flocks of seabirds (wandering tattlers, as far as I could tell) ahead of me as I walked along. After a while, the size of the waves started to worry me a bit as I walked along, realizing that with not a soul anywhere nearby, no help would be forthcoming if I got dragged out to see by a rogue wave. The sky had long since cleared, and it was very hot and muggy—near the waves there was a little bit of cool ocean spray and a breeze, but as I walked higher on the shore the heat and humidity became somewhat stifling. Feeling a bit desperate, I sighted a lean-to built of driftwood that someone had built and sheltered inside, drinking the last of the water in my small water bottle, which in hindsight looked woefully tiny now.

I checked the map in the photo on my camera, and looked around. The map showed trails, but these were basically invisible on the here, and I hadn’t seen a sign of any kind since I’d gone down to the beach. It looked like the remainder of the loop I was shooting for went up between the next two ridges of dunes, so I headed away from the shore. I followed that for a while, when I came to a fence that seemed to block one possible route for the path. I was standing there when an American couple (from Monterey, even!) approached from behind me. We discussed the lack of a clear path for a while, and other pleasantries, and they turned around and went back to the beach.

I almost went back too, but I was desperately hot and tired, low on water, and determined to get back into the shade of the forest. There was another possible route for the path that looked open, up the edge of a dune. From the look of the map, it seemed that on the other side of the dune one would be near another path, running back towards the visitor’s center. This definitely seemed appealing. I followed a gap in the vegetation that looked like a path up the dune, but to my dismay it ended near the top. The top of the path was surrounded by weeds and light brush (there were a flock of birds I tried to photograph but the lighting was bad and I was sweaty and sandy and just generally not functioning well.)

At this point I made a bad call. The brush was fairly light and easy enough to push through, though it was tall and hard to see very far. I figured the path I was looking for had to be somewhere below. I could double back down the way I came, go back to the beach, walk a while, and trudge back up the dune to follow the path, or…I could just cut down through this brush and go until I hit the path, then take it back, and save the massive detour.

The plan lasted a minute, tops. A few steps through the brush over the top of the ridge, and my climb down the back of the dune turned into a semi-controlled fall. Through the brush it had been impossible to see how steep it quickly became, and the loose sand made it next to impossible to slow my descent. I half-staggered, half-tumbled down the dune, getting scratched and covered in sand, desperately cradling my camera protectively against my chest.

Finally, with sand stuck all over my sweaty body, I came to a stop at the edge of the forest. Which was impossibly dense. I put my shirt back on (I’d taken it off to try to cool down), and began to painstakingly make my way through the impenetrable thicket I’d found myself by. It was very, very slow. I added dirt and leaves to the sand encrusting my body at this point, and then proceeded to add scratches and a mysterious rash on my forearm. And despite now being under shade, it was still unbelievably hot and muggy. Finally, almost unexpectedly, I found myself on the path, just in time to see the backs of the American couple disappearing into the distance as they passed.

I had lost my appetite for hiking and was ready to move on, so I made my way as quickly as I could manage back to the building. The man working there seemed both confused and bemused by my state, covered in dirt and leaves. I paid him for a bottle of water from his fridge (I had several liters in the car, but I knew it wouldn’t be very cold now, even though I’d tucked it out of the sun) and headed back to the car. I sat for a while with the door open, letting the hot air escape and looking at the map.

The next step in my plan was to have lunch in Sigatoka. This was not a great plan, because, being Sunday, virtually all restaurants were closed. Finally I passed a restaurant with people standing around outside, and a place to park (a rare commodity, somehow, on an island that nonetheless seems mostly empty of people. I pulled in, changed my shirt in the parking lot (which made them laugh at me, but the amount of sand and dirt in the other shirt would have too) and went over to the restaurant.

People were very friendly. They had lots of questions about where I was from, what my job was, what I was doing in Fiji, etc. At the end of the introductions, I asked if they were open, and they said yes, of course, come inside. So I went inside. They motioned for me to sit down in a chair (incidentally not at a table, with them standing nearby, which felt really awkward) and asked what I wanted. I asked if they had a menu and they brought me one. I ordered a drink, and someone went to get it. But when I was about to order food, they stopped me. There is no food today, they said. After all, it’s sunday. That seemed like an important point to have made earlier. Luckily a cold beverage seemed worthwhile, so I had my drink and asked if there was any place open. They suggested Chicken Express might be open, up the road, so I headed there.

Chicken Express, it turns out, was basically a fast food chicken restaurant. Not that different than a KFC, except much, much slower. Island time, I guess. But the food was good, and after my exhausting adventure on the dunes I was more than ready for food and a cold Coke.

From here I headed across the river to Kula Wild. I had expected a little more wildlife preserve and less zoo (and it wasn’t cheap), but it was an interesting place regardless, and probably the only chance I had to see a lot of endemic species with such a short trip. And following the winding paths through the park, I got to see quite a few wild birds passing through, which was fun too.

From there, my plan was to head to Tavuni Hillfort, and ancient structure on a high bluff overlooking the Sigatoka River. I usually try to get at least a little history in on a trip, so I was looking forward to this, even though it didn’t seem to be a particularly spectacular site. By the time I left Kula Wild it was starting to rain again, lightly, as I drove up the road along the river. Unfortunately, the fort was closed (my info didn’t say it was close on Sundays, but a lot of stuff was, so maybe it was?) Anyway, disappointed, I turned around and headed back towards town.

The sun came back out, and as I drove out of Sigatoka, I parked for a moment by a muddy flat at the side of the ocean, with a picturesque stretch of mangroves, with a small boat stranded by the low tide. I got out of the car and walked out on the mudflats. I hadn’t noticed from the car, but the mud was covered with hundreds or thousands of little fiddler crabs, digging holes and posturing and dueling with each other. I also saw a little mudskipper fish “walking” across the mud, something I hadn’t seen before. It was an enjoyable interlude before getting back on the road.

With the hill fort out, I was unsure of my next stop. Looking at the map, I settled on Momi Battery, a World War II era gun emplacement and bunker complex on Viti Levu’s extreme western point. Built to defend against a Japanese invasion that never came, the Allies manned it throughout much of the war, at various times with British, American, and Fijian forces.

While mostly I’d stuck to the Queen’s Road, the Momi Battery was off the main road. And the quality of the road declined rapidly. It alternated between short sections of nice, new, sealed road and long sections of rutted gravel. By this point it was raining pretty hard, and at several points flowing water crossed the road. Given my little rental, I was a little concerned about getting stuck somewhere. I wound my way back towards the coast, crossing by a wetland where a white-faced heron emerged from a stand of tall reeds and swooped in front of my car. As rain intensified, I wound my way back into the hills, passing by a simple, bare-bones mosque before finally ending up at a small building on a green hillside, in the middle of nowhere. I parked my car next to it, the only vehicle in sight. I pulled on my rain jacket and got out. I went to the building and tried the door. It was locked. I peered through the window but couldn’t see anyone inside.

Having driven this far, I decided to check out the bunkers anyway. I figured worst case someone would call me back and have me pay. So I hiked up the hill in the rain. There were two big guns, in a pair of near identical bunkers, the King’s Gun and the Queen’s Gun. Eager to get out of the rain, I ducked into the Queen’s Gun bunker. Both bunker and gun were in remarkably good shape, both with fairly fresh-looking coats of paint. However, there was standing water from the rain in many parts, and a few steady streams ran from the ceiling. I imagined it hadn’t necessarily been any different for the British and American troops stationed here on this tropical island (nor for the Fijian troops, though they were at least used to it).

I made my way around taking photos. Some tried to capture the overall sense of the place, and the history—the view from the bunker, or the massive six-inch guns poking from the slits in the green hillside. But there was also sort of an interesting sort of artistic, industrial feel of painted metal and concrete and water, and I got some of those pictures as well.

From there I moved on to the King’s Gun, which was very similar, and a few other concrete bunkers and an assortment of rusting military ‘things’ scattered about the hillside before making it back to my car. This time I saw there was another car parked at the building, so I tried the door again, and it opened. Inside was a young Fijian man at the front desk, who greeted me enthusiastically, saying he’d wondered where I’d gone (there really were that many places to go, but I didn’t blame him for not wanting to trudge up the muddy hill in the rain after me). I paid the modest admission fee, even though at that point I probably could have just left instead.

The visitors’ center had a series of panels outlining the history of the site, with old photos and letters. It was actually quite well-done and added to my understanding of the place—the situation with the war in the Pacific, the development of the site, and the progression of military units there. After perusing the displays, I bought an orange soda from the small cooler behind the guy at the desk and enjoyed it indoors before making my way back out in the rain to my car (despite the rain, it was still warm and trudging around the hill had me worn out and thirsty).

I drove back to Nadi, through the continuing rain and mildly flooded roads. By the time I made it back to town it had stopped raining. I parked along the main street and walked a bit, hoping to find a place for dinner. It was Sunday, and a lot of stuff was closed. Drawn by the sounds of music, I made my way down a side street and peeked into the open door of a building. A church service was going on, a full-blown Pentecostal experience with singing and clapping and swaying, and a fiery preacher shouting and jumping around on the stage. I watched for quite a while, before a person motioned me inside, but I demurred, suddenly a little intimidated and aware of how little time I had, especially since I hadn’t eaten yet. Ultimately I found an Indo-Fijian restaurant, the Curry House, on the first floor of a multi-level complex of shops and offices. The food was excellent and plentiful, and I left a large tip (being slightly overburdened with Fijian currency) and headed out.

I stopped for gasoline (and as always with a rental vehicle, pulled up on the wrong side and had to correct) and then headed to the airport. Turning in the rental car was even faster than I’d imagined, and in fact everything except the flight itself was faster and simpler than it might have been elsewhere. Once through security, I got a cup of coffee, found a plug to charge my various devices, and read a little of The Colour of Magic, by Terry Pratchett, which I read long ago but had decided on an impulse to read again. Eventually the flight boarded and I headed home. In two weeks we would be in the thick of Covid-19 and travel would be a thing of the past for some time.

Jalisco and Michoacán—Days 3–5, Morelia

 

The next morning was spent visiting fields. It was muddy and rainy and surprisingly cold. It was my first time visiting fields in the region, so it was interesting to see how things were and weren’t working there. Mostly things seemed pretty encouraging.

We stopped for lunch in a local restaurant, buffet style. It was pretty tasty, especially a breakfast drink I’d never had before, called atole: a mix of corn hominy, cane sugar, cinnamon, vanilla, and chocolate, served in a little ceramic pot. It tasted amazing, and because the restaurant was freezing, I was glad for the warm little cup to clutch as we met with some of the local production staff.

After lunch, we hit a few more fields, and debated who would take me to Morelia. There were some employees who lived in that direction, so the hope was that someone could take me there so O. and M. could head back west. However, after finding few volunteers, and concluding that they didn’t want to run the the teacher gauntlet again, a decision was made to go back via the highway, which would take them near Morelia anyway.

They dropped me along the main square, in front of my hotel, Hotel Mision Catedral. I’ve picked a few duds over the years when it comes to finding hotels online, but the location here couldn’t have been better, being directly across from the main square, diagonal from the cathedral. On top of that, it was in a beautiful 400 year old building. My room was a little spare, but it had a tiny balcony—with a view of the cathedral and square.

The view from my hotel room of the cathedral and plaza

I settled in and texted F., who I had met on Instagram. He’d commented on one of my photos of Guadalajara, and I’d been impressed with his pictures of colonial architecture around central Mexico. He’d said I should look him up if I was ever in Morelia, and here I was. He was busy until later, so we said we’d meet up after dinner.

I don’t actually recall where I went to dinner (though in general I ate pretty well in Morelia). I did walk across to the cathedral and the square. In a country full of beautiful churches, Morelia’s cathedral still manages to stand out. It’s a baroque masterpiece in pink cantera stone (which glows a peachy orange in the late sun), with a pair of towers visible from all over the city. The inside is ornate without being garish, with an incredible silver altarpiece and a well-venerated corn cane paste icon from the 1500s.

After dinner, I met F. in front of my hotel and we walked around the historic center for a bit. He was an interesting guy, an architect in training, with lots of interest in the colonial buildings. We found a rooftop bar and chatted for a while, about Morelia and Mexico, then walked around a bit.

After dinner I returned to my hotel and was struck by how beautiful the cathedral looked lit up at night. Remembering that my hotel had a rooftop bar of its own, I took the elevator to the top. It was remarkably busy, and it took forever for someone to take my order, and they weren’t serving food anymore, so I just had a Negra Modelo. After getting my beer, I moved to the edge to enjoy the view.

The rooftop bar closed earlier than I expected—the came and told me it was last call a minute after getting my beer. I spent ten minutes sipping my drink and looking over the city then went back downstairs and crashed hard.

The next morning I woke up and found breakfast downstairs, in a restaurant basically underneath my hotel (yet part of a different hotel), called LU. It was several notches classier than my typical breakfast choice, but it had traditional Michoacana food and was really good. (Good enough that I ate breakfast there the next morning too). I had the chilaquiles enchorizados.

From there I set out to enjoy the city. It quickly became apparent to me that while a UNESCO World Heritage Site and not terribly far from the U.S., nor the biggest cities of Mexico, Morelia is not exactly overrun with tourists. In many cases I would have an entire museum to myself. It’s rather sad—Morelia has some of the best colonial architecture I have seen and is much more manageable than many other sites famous for theirs. But being in a Mexican state the US State department warns against probably doesn’t help, and even in Guadalajara Mexicans were surprised I’d traveled to Morelia. But I never felt unsafe.

My first stop was another wander through the cathedral (still amazing) and then I visited a few colonial buildings that were part of the Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolas de Hidalgo, a university that claims to be the oldest institution of higher learning in the Americas (there are a few other claimants, depending on where you draw the line in the merging and moving over various institutions) founded in 1540. There isn’t a campus, per se, but rather old buildings scattered around the historic center of town. One of the most spectacular was the library, a former Jesuit church called the Iglesia de la Companía, built in 1681:

From the looks of it the books here are mostly antiques, and it’s not actually that big for a university library, so I suspect it’s not the only library, but it was in active use with students studying and librarians sorting books, unlike some of the other showpiece libraries I’ve visited (like the Klementinum in Prague). I liked the fact that the shelves used the old school library catalog system of giving the shelf a number. Many of the walls had murals—in fact Morelia had lots of murals, something I’ve grown to love about Mexico. At first I struggled a little with the idea of murals, mostly from the last hundred years, on the walls of colonial buildings that clearly were not meant for that purpose, but the more I experienced, the more I came to like the way they tie together the pieces of Mexican history—colonial buildings, with murals from the era when Mexico was emerging into the modern era, but often celebrating indigenous or colonial themes, surrounded by today’s modern life.

I visited some other buildings of the university as well. One thing that struck me was that at least in one building I visited, the classrooms weren’t numbered, they were named after historical figures, from Aristotle to Karl Marx. That building, too, had a lovely mural, overlooking a courtyard with a statue of Hidalgo (who always looks a little crazy).

From there I visited several museums, starting with the Museum of Michoacan. The museum was in yet another incredible colonial building that probably would have been worth the visit itself, with yet more murals. It had a rather scattered collection of historical artifacts and exhibits, but I enjoyed it, as I worked on correcting my woeful lack of knowledge of about Mexican history. There was little English, so I kind of moved slowly, reading signs and trying to put fit what I was learning into the historical context as I knew it. There were some pre-Hispanic artifacts, which are generally my favorites, but a lot of it focused on José María Morelos, an important figure in the Mexican War of Independence who was born in Morelia (it was renamed in his honor—originally it was called Valladolid). I later tried to visit the house he was born in, but it seemed to be closed.

I also visited the Government Palace (more murals and a few small historical exhibits) and the Palace of Justice, which was surprisingly interesting. There was a museum focused on crime and punishment, which featured lots of old law enforcement-related items, including crime-scene and evidence drawings (something that it had never occurred to me was a thing, but of course they were, in the pre-photography era). Lots of interesting early photos of central Mexico. It too was in an incredible colonial building with (surprise!) murals.

I also visited more churches than I can recall at this point (two years later). There seemed to be a beautiful church ever few blocks—it wasn’t uncommon to stumble on a lovely church while walking to a different one a few blocks away. But one church in particular, rather far from the center and most of the other attractions, stood out from the others.

The Santuario de Guadalupe isn’t especially impressive from the outside, and honestly if I’d ran into it after ten other churches and hadn’t known what was inside I’m not sure I would have even looked inside. But I’m glad I knew and I’m glad I did, because the inside is mind-blowing. It’s total sensory overload, a sort of Baroque explosion. Decoration covers everything. I’ve heard it compared to Hindu temples in India (I haven’t visited those, so I can’t really say). It’s pretty intense. It also features a series of paintings that seem to follow a theme of conversion of the natives, which are a little too over the top to be entirely comfortable.

I was the only person there—not even any kind of caretaker, just me. After spending entirely too long snapping photos I headed back out and came around the corner to a rather shocking sight of a person covered in fake blood with a person with a fake gun standing over them. There was a brief moment of panic (I take back what I said about never feeling unsafe—there was definitely a moment) before I realized what it was—it was some sort of protest about the fact that university employees hadn’t been paid (I saw signs all over town about this). A crowd was gathering, and I slipped away. I generally try to avoid protests when I travel…just seems smart.

Another Morelia landmark proved less photogenic, too my frustration. There is a huge aqueduct that runs through town, but I could never seem to get a good angle on it. It was either too close, or there was a bunch of cars in front of it or something unattractive in the background. It was a recurring frustration to me. But it was still pretty cool.

I also visited the candy “museum”, Museo de Dulce. It’s a stretch to call this place a museum, although they do have some historical displays and the workers dress in period costume (I read about candy-making demos but I didn’t see any sign of them). It’s basically a candy store, but it’s still pretty fun. I bought some ate a traditional Michoacana candy, which was a little like a block of fruit roll-up, available in a huge range of flavors. (You could also buy it elsewhere in town, for cheaper, but it wasn’t incredibly pricey). The candy store has been in existence since the 1840s, which is pretty impressive itself.

I also visited the “Tarascan Fountain”, which features a group of bare-chested native women holding aloft a basket full of fruit. It’s a fine fountain, though the online descriptions made it seem a little more spectacular than it was. It does have an interesting bit of history attached to it, however, namely that it was stolen. How someone steals a fountain (much less without someone noticing), I don’t know, but apparently sometime around 1960 the original (built in the late 1930s) disappeared. Supposedly some rich lady had it moved to France? Anyway, the people of Morelia missed their fountain and in 1968 a replica was put in place.

(This photo also features probably my best shot of the aqueduct).

I’d done lots of walking and my feet hurt, so as the sun got low I headed back to the city center and found a restaurant near the Jardin de las Rosas where I ate and then lingered and people-watched for a long time. I walked around a little more and then headed to bed.

In the morning, I went to check out and found the lobby was a complete mob-scene. Apparently an enormous tour had arrived, and rather than some sort of organized check-in procedure, every individual was jostling to be the next to check in. The quantity of people and a associated luggage actually made it hard to walk—it kind of amazed me there was room in the hotel for them all. Eventually I managed to squeeze my way to the front and hand in my key and television remote (in Mexico they give them to you when you check in) and go outside.

I had breakfast again at LU (this time I had uchepos, which are a traditional Michoacana food and super delicious) and caught a cab to the airport. The airport is actually a really long way from town, and the first driver didn’t want to go there, and then I had trouble getting people to stop for a while. I walked to the opposite side of the plaza where the street and the people and traffic made people go slow and finally caught one there.

We made the long drive to the airport. Morelia’s airport is a small regional affair and easy to navigate and there were only a couple people ahead of me in security. I went to pull my iPad from my bag and couldn’t find it. I dug even more in the bag, and still couldn’t find it. I was sure I had it, but I figured security would find it if they cared. It went through without a problem. On the other side I searched my bag more thoroughly, and it wasn’t there. I remembered watching Netflix briefly while waiting for my phone to charge completely and realized I must have left it then…

So I called the hotel. My Spanish is functional at best and these were not the best of conditions—in a loud airport, about to board a flight. No one at the hotel understood English (which surprises me a bit at a mid-tier hotel, but I suppose it’s Mexico so I can’t criticize) so I explained what I thought had happened, and they sent someone to look. The iPad was there. There was no time to go back, so I asked if they could send it. He didn’t know. With my flight about to leave, I got him to give me an email address to write to, and it took me forever to get it right, because it turns out I don’t know the Spanish for “@” (turns out it’s “arroba”). But I wrote it down and got on my flight.

When I arrived in Phoenix I wrote to the hotel, and the next day they responded saying they were happy to send it but that I would need to pay postage, which I said I was. The provided information in order to pay this via bank transfer (they weren’t willing to use credit card). I tried various means to pay this, and eventually went to my bank and asked them how to do it. They referred me to someone who specializes in transfers with Mexican banks (my town is 85% Mexican, so this isn’t a new problem) and she said as far as she could tell the information didn’t make any sense and she wasn’t sure how to pay. So I wrote back and said I couldn’t figure it out, and suddenly credit card was fine. So I paid (I discovered later that they added about $8 to the agreed on price, but it was hard to complain) and after two weeks finally got my iPad back.

 

 

Jalisco and Michoacán—Day 2, Tzintzuntzan and Pátzcuaro

We got up quite early in the morning, and headed out to the field, meeting up with another colleague, M., and we caught up on the breeding program and made evaluations of the selections.

From there we headed eastward. My co-worker, O., suggested that because it was raining, we might not have to worry about the teachers. This might seem like a strange statement, but the teachers in the area have been on strike intermittently for a long time (to be fair, they also seem to go long stretches of time without being paid) and often block the road at a major intersection we needed to pass through. Sure enough, when we got to the intersection, people were milling around in the road. O. said “I’m going to try to make it through!” just as I realized they were rolling a large panel truck across the road. He weaved around several people and just in front of the truck as we made it past. We all breathed a sigh of relief. Luckily we weren’t returning that night.

We stopped in Purepero to visit the test plot there, and then continued east. Soon after we stopped for lunch in a small town. At a restaurant on the village square consisting of little more than a grill and a few plastic tables and chairs, we had some excellent chicken, accompanied by several hopeful dogs who stood and watched us eat.

One of our newfound “friends” at lunch.

From there we continued eastward. I’d never been further east in Michoacán than Purepero, so this was uncharted territory for me. We wound through the mountains until we sighted Lago de Pátzcuaro.

Making our way around the lake, we finally stopped at Tzintzuntzan. I’ve wanted to go there for a long time, not only because I’m a sucker for archaeological sites, but also because it has pretty much the best name ever. The site was the capital of the Purépecha empire, the second largest empire in Central Mexico, and the only major empire never conquered by the Aztecs, despite several intense attempts to do so. Ultimately, the Purépecha agreed to Spanish rule without a fight.

Although Tzintzuntzan is often referred to as “pyramids”, in reality the structures at the site, called yácata, are a long bank of raised platforms with sloping or stepped sides, perhaps more reminiscent of a fortress than a pyramid, though they were used much the same way as other Mexican pyramids and in fact are believed to have been built over more traditional pyramids. The stonework, made of stacked layers of thin stone, struck me as unique among ancient structures I have seen, though I have seen similar modern structures (in fact the onsite museum used a similar technique).

The site itself was impressive, on a flat area with a commanding view of the lake. Behind the yácatas, there is an enormous plaza, with a few small structures and a couple of scattered trees. Alongside the plaza, is the site museum, which was modest but well-done. Looking at the displays, I realized that there is another major Purépecha site nearby, called Ihuatzio. We actually passed its driveway a bit later in the day.

I was particularly struck by the jewelry crafted from volcanic glass. The amount of time required even to shape a simple bracelet must have been enormous.

From Tzintzuntzan, we headed a short distance to Pátzcuaro. Like Tapalpa, Tequila, and Mazamitla, which I’d visited on other trips, Pátzcuaro is a “Pueblo Magico”, one of the towns the Mexican government has protected as examples of the quintessential rural Mexican towns. This turned out to be my favorite so far.

As we came into town, we found they were repairing the brick streets that led to the square, so we wound up parking some distance away and walking in to our hotel, which was right on the main square.

We checked into our hotel, a boutique hotel several notches above my usual accommodations in Mexico. O. and M. opted for a nap before dinner, but I decided to go for a walk instead.

I’d had trouble finding a decent map of Pátzcuaro, so all I had was one I found online that looked like the product of early 90’s MS Paint. I hit each of the points of interest depicted: several churches, a pair of plazas, and an old school.

Templo de la Compania

There is a legend about the clock in the Templo de la Compania. Supposedly, the clock was originally in church in Spain, where the Duke of Avila had been imprisoned by the Spanish government. He was sentenced to die at the stroke of midnight, but when the time came, the clock struck only eleven, so the Duke was returned to his cell. The same thing played out the next two nights. Finally the king came to investigate, and when the clock once again failed to strike twelve, he took it as a sign and commuted the Duke’s sentence, banishing him, and the clock, to Mexico. The clock made it to Pátzcuaro, but the poor Duke was robbed, fell in a river, and drowned.

Templo del Sagrario

My favorite place was the library. Built in the former convent of St. Augustine, it was an enormous, cavernous place, looking very much like the former church it was. There weren’t a ton of books, but the highlight was the mural by well-known Mexican painter Juan O’Gorman, which took up the entire rear wall, floor to ceiling, showing the history of the region.

Biblioteca de Gertrudis Bocanegra

The Juan O’Gorman mural in the library

As the sun went down, I headed back to the plaza to meet O. and M. for dinner. As the streetlights came on, I came across a group of kids playing soccer in the street.

Jalisco and Michoacán—Day 1, Guadalajara and Zamora

 

The trip began, as all my work trips to Mexico do, with a flight to Guadalajara. Instead of my usual afternoon arrival, I’d taken a red-eye, so that I’d have the morning to hang out in the city. After many years of doing no more than fly in and out of Guadalajara, I’ve started spending more time, there, and the city has really grown on me, and I’m starting to get comfortable navigating it, though I’ve mostly stayed around the historic center.

The red-eye flight got in incredibly early, at 5-something in the morning, so I had a quick coffee at the airport (I didn’t want to get into town before light) before taking a taxi to the historic center. I had breakfast at La Chata (which is apparently kind of famous), but my stomach was feeling a little off so I didn’t eat much (as much as I like chile verde in general, I think it’s a bit much at 7am).

I spent a little while just hanging out in the Plaza Guadalajara, by the fountain, and watched the lights switch off on the cathedral as the sky lightened. My first stop was the cathedral itself, which opened shortly thereafter. I’ve been inside it several times before, but I love cathedrals and not much else was open that early anyway.

The cathedral in the morning, just before the lights switched off.

I skipped past the creepy dead girl in the coffin near the back. I’d seen plenty of her my last two trips (I had an Uber driver who was really excited about her, too). My previous visits had happened when things were going on in the church, so I’d never been up at the front. A guidebook had mentioned a “secret” room beneath the altar, so I thought I’d go check that out. The chamber wasn’t especially secret (it was easily visible once I got up there), and I walked down the steps inside. A pair of coffins containing the bodies of bishops were perched awkwardly on ledges at the edge of the room. There was also an extra-secret room, with an iron gate across the door. Behind that, there was a well-lit white room with an altar and candlesticks.

I emerged, and had a stilted conversation in Spanish with a woman who was wondering what was down there (I said something to the effect of “On the sides there are boxes with two dead priests, and a door with an altar”…maybe not the slickest but close I guess). From the cathedral I went next door to the Regional Museum of Guadalajara. It’s the kind of museum that seems pretty commonplace in Mexico, and I’d encounter a few more on this trip: a beautiful colonial building, a mural or two, and some religious art. The fact that I can’t remember many specifics probably says as much as anything, though I do remember it being rather pleasant. I also remember an absolutely enormous painting of Christ on the cross, surrounded by lush green, countryside, teeming with birds and domesticated animals, and a group of nuns who look strangely like a tour group come to see the crucifixion.

Jesus and the tourist nuns.

From the Regional Museum, I headed southeast. There were two museums I’d seen on the map—a paleontology museum (which I’d had recommended to me by a local I’d spoken with on an earlier trip) and an archaeology museum. Both were some distance from the historic center, in Parque Agua Azul, but I had a little time and decided to walk it.

On the map near the park was marked “Las Columnas”, but there didn’t seem to be any explanation that I could find (though they were marked with the “museum” marker on Google Maps). It turned out that they were, well, some columns. They had the look of columns that might have been the remains of some historic building (though probably not on that site, from the looks of it). I found them rather charming, as did the couple who was seated among them (and who I worked hard to block in all my photos).

Las Columnas.

Nearby, supposedly, was the archaeology museum. But there turned out to be a reason I couldn’t find any reviews of it—it was closed for renovation. A very thorough renovation from the looks of it, since the interior seemed to just be a vast open space from what I saw through the doorway. A dusty workman emerged and I asked him if the museum was closed (really more to explain why I was standing there—I’d kind of figured out it that it was closed by then) and he laughed at me.

I tried to head across the park to the paleontology museum, but it proved somewhat complicated. Apparently Parque Agua Azul is somewhat limited access, with a fence around it on most sides. Some of it appeared to be some sort of zoo, with colorful birds in enclosures. It was shady and pleasant, but a little frustrating—at times I could see the museum but couldn’t get to it. Finally I backtracked a bit and found my way there.

The museum was relatively interesting but fairly modest, and probably not worth all the effort it took to get there, though I enjoyed it anyway. The highlight was a mammoth skeleton (the second I’d seen in Guadalajara, incidentally, though this one had what struck me as rather oddly straight tusks), and an adorable class of students were gathered around it, listening to a museum staffer talk about it.

After the museum, I made my way back, taking sort of a meandering route, with idea of perhaps discovering some lesser known churches or colonial buildings. I did find one such church, though when I went inside to photograph it I found a priest dispensing holy water on a coffin just inside the entrance and felt incredibly awkward and backed out. Mostly it was block upon block of modest houses and small businesses.

It was getting to be about lunch time, so I decided to look for a place to eat. Amazingly, though for most of the past half hour there’d been a taqueria every block or two, there was nothing for ages as soon as I started looking. I started making my way to a restaurant that showed on Google Maps: La Mitotera.

It proved to be a fascinating building with great food (though perhaps a bit pricy). Known as La Casa del Relojero, it was built in 1920 as home of a watchmaker and jeweler. But the most notable aspect was all the swastikas incorporated in the decoration, which led to its other name, La Casa Svásticas. At the time the symbol was not associated with Nazi Germany, but with Egyptian and Indian signs of good luck and prosperity.

La Casa del Relojero, aka La Casa Svásticas

I made my way back to the historic center (I did a lot of walking that I really didn’t need to, but the exercise is good for me and I enjoyed seeing the city) where I hailed a cab and headed to meet my co-worker, O., in Tlajomulco. I probably didn’t need to walk all the way downtown to hail a cab, but I have a very low success rate hailing cabs in Guadalajara, and I figured it’d be easier downtown (it was really easy).

After showering and eating we headed for Zamora. Much of the road is the excellent toll road, built by the Japanese and too expensive for many Mexicans. When we got to the toll booth, we realized that protesters had taken over the toll booth. The spoke to my friend for a moment, and gave him a flyer, then asked for a donation, which he gave them, then let us pass without a toll. Reading the flyer, it seems their argument is that the Mexican constitution guarantees all Mexicans free access to the roads. This seems like a pretty sound argument to me.

We got in just as darkness was falling and I checked into my hotel downtown. I’ve broken from tradition on these trips and instead of staying at the somewhat nicer Real de Chapala, which is located midway between Zamora and Jacona, I’ve been staying at the Hotel Terrass, mainly because it’s location in the heart of the city makes for more entertaining wandering, and because the view is spectacular, with views of the cathedral and several old churches. After checking in and tossing my stuff on the bed, we went back out to enjoy tacos on the street, hitting two different taco stands and then an ice cream shop (Michoacán likes its ice cream!). While we were walking around, we encountered a Michael Jackson impersonator. This struck me as pretty odd, but the guy was good at it.

Europe & Morocco, Part 4—Spain & London

We crossed the Straits of Gibraltar on the ferry and made our way back to Spain. All of us were a little exhausted and we spent a good part of the ride in somewhat stunned silence. I was the only one with a substantial quantity of Euros with me, so I bought every one drinks, and myself a warmed up mystery meat sandwich of some kind (which actually was’t as terrible as I was determined to believe it was).

We arrived in Spain, picked up our colleague’s car, and headed towards the strawberry region. We spent the night at the Parador in Mazagón, where virtually every trip I’ve made to Spain for work has wound up. After getting settled in, we headed to dinner, only to find the intended restaurant closed. So we tried the place we could see up the street, and wound up having a wonderful and very Spanish seafood dinner in what was clear a locals-oriented little place.

The next day we spent the morning in the test plot, then had lunch in a sunny restaurant in town, followed by a visit to several growers’ ranches. One in particular was fascinating, as he was part of a large grower cooperative, and the many blocks around his had a huge range of competitive varieties.

From there, we drove to Sevilla, where we caught a late flight back to the U.K. When we arrived in London it was raining and bitterly cold—I was glad for my traveling friend the blue rain jacket, which I pulled out of my bag, but I could have used a warmer layer. We drove to the hotel in Maidstone, checked in, and paid an outrageous sum for wifi access.

In the morning we had breakfast at the restaurant in the hotel, the highlight of which was Scottish black currant preserves which I had on an English muffin and which were excellent. The rest of the day was spent visiting the test plot (not a lot to see in the spring, and I’d been hesitant to take the time, but it seemed important to K, and in the end I think it was valuable for P to see it).

That night, the official part of the visit over, PN and I headed into London. It was PN’s first time in London, so I was hoping she’d like it, but we didn’t have much time. First on the agenda was the British Museum. Although it was already dark, Friday nights the museum stays open late. I’d been to the British Museum many times at this point, but I’d never been at night.

It turned out to be a surprisingly different experience. For starters, the tourist hordes were much reduced, and we were often the only people in a gallery. Plus, I hadn’t really appreciated how much of the museum’s feel was the skylights. At night, it had a much more sombre feel, though some displays were downright shadowy. PN humored me by heading first to the Egyptian section, my go-to.

Middle Kingdom coffin with examples of the Coffin Texts, in the shadowy, night time, museum.

I’ve been particularly interested in palettes lately, so I was excited to see a couple of the greatest masterpieces among predynastic palettes.

The Hunters Palette

and

The Battlefield Palette

We also spent some time in the Near-Eastern section, where I’ve spent less time.

The Cyrus Cylinder

Even with the late night, the museum didn’t stay open all that long. With the museum closing, we headed over to find PN’s one other London wish: Harry Potter’s Platform 6 3/4 at King’s Cross Station.

Before you feel smug about catching my typo, yes, I know it’s 9 3/4. Unfortunately, neither of us did then. We spent a while looking around Platform 6, and then Platform 7, certain there would be some kind of marker. And there is. Over on Platform 9.

After that, we found a pub, so PN could have her first authentic fish and chips. We found a place near Trafalgar Square where we got a table in the cramped second floor (where Charlie Chaplin once rehearsed, apparently). We both had the same thing: The fish was excellent, the beer was excellent, even the mushy peas were pretty good (I mean, for mushy peas).

My fish and chips, with PN’s first ever in the background.

Outside, we wandered Trafalgar Square, and walked from there to Parliament and Westminster Abbey.

After our wanderings, we made our way back to The Academy, my favorite London hotel, and then in the morning, flew back home.

Europe & Morocco, Part 3—Morocco

We didn’t actually have anything scheduled for today aside from a late ferry back to Spain, so that gave us most of the day as a bit of a working vacation (or maybe vacationing work?). The group of us set off to wander the medina. This was all ground I’d covered before, but it was gratifying to do it again with new people, particularly Penny and Ale, who hadn’t been there before. We paused for them to take frequent photos, and I found myself taking pictures again of things I already had, because some things in the medina are so photogenic and magical that it seems hard to walk past them without taking a picture.

As seems to happen naturally, we made our way up the hill, through winding passages, sometimes dead ends, backtracking frequently and getting thoroughly and delightfully lost. We picked up a “guide”, who mostly just followed us along and occasionally pointed at things and made obvious statements. We tried desperately to shake him, but one of our group, Luke, encouraged them by talking to him and eventually giving him money, which was intended to entice him to leave, but had the opposite effect.

Eventually, the uphill path led us to the kasbah, the old fortress. Unfortunately, the Kasbah Museum was closed for repairs (I think it had been the previous visit, too—at very least I’m pretty sure I’ve never found it open).

On the way back down, I saw Rue Ibn Khaldoun. Ibn Khaldoun was an important historian and considered by some to be the father of modern economics, but I was particularly interested because I remembered that Rue Ibn Khaldoun intersected Rue Ibn Batuta, a tiny street which was home to the tomb of the great Tangerine traveler, Ibn Batuta. I’d stopped there before, and no one else in the group had any idea who he was (though you’d think they’d at least recognize it—the airport is named for him), but people seemed game to stop by. It had been closed on my previous visit, so I was hoping to find it open.

Ale attempts to peer inside the closed tomb

Unfortunately, it was not to be. The tomb, which looks more or less like a small, unassuming house with a small ceramic plaque, is situated on a narrow stairway. It was locked up, though there was a phone number on the door (none of us felt up to calling it, however).

When we arrived, a pair of women were already there, reading the plaque and looking in through the crack on the door. Based on their clothing, which included headscarves, I had assumed them to be locals, or at least Moroccan, but they turned out to be Tunisian tourists.  We chatted with them for a few minutes—unlike the rest of our group, they knew who Ibn Batuta was, though they were a little fuzzy on exactly where he’d traveled. (Ibn Batuta was definitely born in Tangiers, but the location of his tomb is contested. One research suggested it lies beneath the parking lot of a big box store near Casablanca).

An Arab tourist reading the plaque on the tomb of Ibn Batuta

We made our way to the Petite Socco. Unlike the Grand Socco, which is an enormous traffic circle, the Petite Socco is merely a widening of some of the narrow roads of the medina, surrounded by restaurants and shops. It feels just like something named “Petite Socco” should feel. We got lunch at a small restaurant and sat on the small porch and watched the foot traffic pass while discussing new strawberry diseases. I had another of the ubiquitous orange sodas.

From there, we made our way back to the hotel, checked out and picked up our bags. And then we wound our way back down through the medina again, this time towards the port. We passed by the Grand Mosque, which would probably be more impressive if we were allowed inside it (we weren’t) or able to get back far enough to see it from anywhere but right next to it (we couldn’t). We also stopped to see the battery of old guns before finding ourself at the bottom of the hill.

I had a moment of nostalgia as I realized we were standing near the restaurant where my then-girlfriend (now wife) and I had dinner on our brief stop in Morocco back in 1999. It actually looked a bit nicer than I remembered, but that visit was really my first encounter with the developing world, so I was perhaps a bit in shock, and years of perspective may have dulled the impact a bit.

We headed to the dock and caught our boat back to Spain.

Europe & Morocco, Part 2—Morocco

I was still damp with sweat from my mad dash when we boarded the plane, though by then much calmer. I changed my shirt (yay for not checking bags!) spent the short hop catching my breath. Before we knew it, we were touching down in Tangier.

We breezed through customs, had our passports stamped, and met three members of our group on the other side. After a quick bite to eat at a nearby restaurant (the same one as several times before), complete with the orange soda I seem to always wind up drinking in Arab countries, we headed out of town towards Moulay Bousselham and the test plot.

After a while in the test plot and a stop by a grower’s ranch, we head back to Tangier. Somehow this drive always seems much longer than the drive there. By the time we got back into the city it was dark, and the traffic ground to a crawl, taking a painfully long time to creep through the streets to our hotel, El Minzah. We checked in and arranged to meet in the bar.

I was first to the bar and sat down with a Flag beer and plate of snacks. I was joined by a few co-workers and once people had gathered and we had finished our drinks, we moved to the hotel restaurant in the room next door.

I ordered the “lamb with Moroccan vegetables”. I’m still not entirely sure what the vegetables were—at least some were carrots. It was a tremendous amount of food, and very good. While we ate, the entertainment arrived. In the past there’d been two different belly dancers, in succession, but this time there was a belly dancer (one of the same ones as the previous trip—I recognized her) followed by a small man who danced with a tray of lit candles on his head.

Guy dancing with candles on his head. He was pretty good.

We had a plate of mixed desserts (Moroccan-French pastry type things) and then headed to bed. Back in my room, despite the long day, I struggled to sleep. I entertained myself by cruising through the interesting cable offerings, eventually settling on watching Chadian television for a while. Turns out that Chadian television is heavy on weather reports (hot and dry, mostly) and meetings with men in military uniforms. And then more weather reports. Seriously, there are lots of weather reports. And clips with some big African bird. I got kind of reflective, thinking about the fact that I would never have imagined that I would one day watch Chadian television (despite the fact that I had briefly toyed with an opportunity to visit Chad back in the 90s). And then I decided to hit the mini-bar, since I’d already gone through my bottle of water. Unfortunately, the drink options were limited, and included a bottle of gin with a broken seal that might have been older than me, two thirds of which was already empty (someone may have drunk it, but given the age I’m not  entirely convinced it didn’t just evaporate.

Somehow I managed to sleep, but I awoke early in the morning, long before my alarm. The view from my room overlooked the harbor, and the sun was just coming up. I showered and headed out for a little wandering before breakfast.

I headed down the hill, reaching the Grand Socco, in front of the entrance to the medina. I’d initially thought I’d go to the medina, but I remembered that A) everything was going to be closed, and more importantly, B) I didn’t want to chance getting lost and not finding my way back in time to meet people for breakfast. Instead I walked up the hill, past the century-old Sidi Bou Abib Mosque.

Past the mosque, the graveyard of St. Andrew’s Anglican church stretched through woods and weeds up the hill. Broken down and strewn with garbage, the graves were nonetheless shady and quiet, with only me and several stray cats wandering among them.

Beyond the cemetery I turned into Mendoubia Gardens, a large park. Worn and scattered with garbage, and usually devoid of people when I visit, it can feel a bit grim at times, but it’s still a pleasant park, with beautiful trees (including an 800 year old banyan), a bunch of old cannons, and some nice views. I headed back down the hill and back towards the hotel.

Satellite dishes, near El Minzah Hotel

I met my colleagues at the enormous breakfast buffet at the El Minzah. Morocco knows how to do orange juice!

We didn’t actually have any work activities scheduled for that day, so instead we went for a walk in the medina, which by the time we’d finished breakfast was bustling with activity.

Europe & Morocco, Part 1: Madrid

The work part of the trip actually started in Tangier, Morocco. However, it’s never simple to fly to Tangier, and one inevitably winds up flying through a number of places. Instead of a long layover, I decided to just spend a day in Madrid. Despite many trips to Spain, I’d never actually been to the capital. I didn’t have particularly long, but at least I’d get to hit the highlights.

I got in to Madrid early in the morning. It was really cold. I shouldn’t have been surprised, I guess, since it was February, but I’d imagined Madrid as a little warmer than back home in California. It most definitely was not. Even with two light fleeces and a hooded rain jacket, the wind was biting.

I found my way to my hotel, Eurostars Plaza Mayor, walking past it twice—it was on a narrow street and had no sign sticking out. I was a little disappointed to realize that despite having “Plaza Mayor” in the name, it wasn’t even that close to the Plaza Mayor (yes, I could have figured this out in advance, but I just didn’t care that much). I went inside, discovered that of course it was too early to check in. But the very friendly woman working the desk gladly took my backpack, and I headed back out.

It was pretty early still, and Spain doesn’t exactly get moving early, so rather than head off to see the sights, I got breakfast, which turned out to be something suspiciously similar to the traditional British breakfast. Then I headed to the Royal Palace.

Cathedral de Santa María la Real de la Almudena, Madrid

It was a little early when I get there, and it wasn’t open yet, so I strolled around outside the cathedral next door. I didn’t go inside (I don’t think it was open that early). Maybe it’s wonderful on the inside, but it’s a drab grey and kind of depressing looking, like an early communist take on cathedrals or something. Granted it’s impressive in its way (it’s certainly big) and I’m sure the cold, grey weather didn’t help, but I kind of expected a grand European capital like Madrid to have some sort of big, old cathedral like in London and Paris. This one dates to the late 1800s.

Anyway, once the palace had opened, I headed over there and got in the rapidly growing line. Once inside, though, it was relatively uncrowded (one of the advantages of showing up early). I got a few photos before realizing that I wasn’t supposed to be taking any:

The ceiling of the entryway to the palace. The rest was a lot like this.

The palace is the still the official residence of the Spanish royal family, though they spend relatively little time there, staying there only for official functions. It was huge and opulent. Access was through a controlled path through many, many rooms, and as impressive as it was, by the end I was pretty ready to be done with it. I went back out to the  massive courtyard. It was easy to picture the pomp and ceremony accompanying royal functions in this huge space, but it was very empty (and cold), with just me and one or two other people.

Looking out onto the palace courtyard from the galleries along the side

From the palace, I got lunch in a small restaurant in a narrow street nearby. I forget the Spanish for what I ordered, but it was tiny clams in a buttery liquid, and it was wonderful, if a lot of work.

Lunch

Having finished lunch, I headed back to the hotel to actually check in. It was kind of a weird, narrow room, down a weird, narrow hall with odd purple lights, but it was nice enough, and I was glad to finally get in. I showered and changed my clothes (I was still wearing what I’d flown in), plugged all my various devices in to charge, reviewed my map for a bit, and headed out to my next destination.

First, I swung through the Plaza Mayor. This is a major square, surrounded by picturesque buildings, with arched gates leading out and a statue in the middle. After the initial impact there wasn’t really that much more to do there, but it was impressive.

Plaza Mayor

I headed onwards to my next destination: the Prado Museum. I waited for a long time in a line outdoors which crawled very, very slowly along. I stood behind two British men, engaged in a lively discussion of their days as contractors in Afghanistan. The livelier of the two was almost caricature-ish. He wore a long, forest green wool coat, over a ratty red sweater, and had an enormous push-brush mustache over crooked, yellow teeth. And on his head was a huge Russian-style fur hat. His friend was less distinctive, looking pretty much like a stereotypical working class British guy in his 50s. The two compared stories from Afghanistan (it wasn’t clear how they knew each other—the odds of two random strangers in a line in Madrid turning out to both be not only British, but contractors from Afghanistan seems pretty small, but it didn’t seem like they knew each other very well. After talking about their foreign service, they switched to all the gangs in their neighborhood, and the fellow with the big hat talked about how he likes to videotape them and send reports to the police.

The Prado

Unfortunately for all of you, the Prado was yet another camera-unfriendly destination. So you’ll just have to trust me when I tell you it was awesome. It was awesome.

It was one of the most amazing collections I’ve encountered. Although relatively limited in scope, for the eras and styles included it’s maybe the most impressive collection I’ve seen. I think I was most struck by all the Hieronymous Bosch—the highlight being the triptych, The Garden of Earthly Delights. I spent a long while in front of it (actually slightly off to the side), appreciating both the incredible detail and the brightness and clarity of the colors on the roughly 500-year old painting. There were a number of other Bosch paintings (four or five, I think) as well, which is especially impressive, considering there are only 25 paintings confidently attributed to him. I’m also a fan of The Haywain.

In addition to Hieronymous Bosch, I was also struck by the El Greco paintings, which were more vivid and striking than I had expected, almost luminous. There were a lot of El Greco.

After hours in the museum, I headed back to the hotel. I resisted the urge to just pass out, and instead went back out for a walk, though it had already gotten dark. I found a nice restaurant and had an awkward-feeling dinner sitting alone—even the wait-staff seemed to feel it was odd, but I tried to ignore the sense that everyone else there was on either romantic dates or there with their well-off parents. The red wine was amazing (I had more than I intended, but luckily I only had a few blocks to walk) as was the bread the brought while I waited for my order. In fact, the bread was so good I don’t remember what my actual order was, but that bread was seriously amazing.

With the added encouragement of several glasses of wine, I headed back to the hotel and fell into bed. My flight the next morning was at 9:30am, so I needed to get up early to get to the airport on time. Luckily, jet lag took care of that for me, as I woke up at 4:15 AM. After showering and reading in bed for a while, I headed out onto the street, to discover that basically nobody is awake in Madrid at 6:30am. I wandered futilely for a while, searching for somewhere, anywhere, I could have breakfast. At last I found a bar that was open (!), with a greasy laminated menu that suggested they might have eggs and toast, but I couldn’t quite do it. At last I found a churro restaurant, and while I wasn’t very able to describe which types I wanted (in the end I wound up with way too many) it was delicious if a bit too dessert-like for my breakfast tastes.

Now fed, I hopped the train to the airport. I expected this to be easy. I had plenty of time, and no luggage. I was meeting P., my new employee, who was flying in from California, as well as a co-worker from the UK (who had never met P.), but they were connecting from elsewhere, so they’d be waiting for me at the gate.

I arrived at the airport and had the immediate feeling something was wrong. There were too many people, and they looked tense and annoyed. I made my way through the massive crowd to the check-in kiosks for Iberia, which were surprisingly unoccupied, given the size of the crowd. The kiosk didn’t seem to work. So I tried another. It didn’t work either.

It soon became apparent what was going on. Iberia’s self-check-in system was not working. Everyone was in lines. Very, very long lines. It was clear just by looking that I was not likely to make this flight, but I got in line. (In the end it turned out that their whole computer system was malfunctioning, not just the kiosks). I waited for a while, texting occasionally with a rather worried P. who was now waiting at the gate and about to unexpectedly fly alone to Morocco.

It was pretty clear I wasn’t going to make it. After a while, I decided that there was no point in waiting to check in, so I bailed and went to the customer service desk, in hopes that I could get a jump on another flight. Even that line seemed impossibly long (and, frankly, an unruly mess). I was waiting there, texting with P., when I caught a snippet of Spanish I actually understood. A woman behind the counter was shouting something ending in “sin equipage”—without baggage.

That was me, and while it wasn’t entirely clear what she was asking, I pushed my way to the front of the line, and explained (in lousy Spanish) my situation. She said I could still make my flight, which seemed dubious, but I figured it was worth a try. She attempted to print me a boarding pass. The computer would not cooperate. After a few attempts, she told me to wait, and disappeared. For a long while. I began to text P. to tell her I wasn’t going to make it after all.

Suddenly, the woman reappeared, with a largely handwritten boarding pass. It looked incredibly sketchy. She said “You need to run now”. So I ran. I made it to security quickly, tossed my bag on the belt, and walked through. And was immediately flagged for additional screening. They went through my bag, and swabbed me for explosives. I’m sure I looked like a potential terrorist, considering how agitated I was, but I put up with it (not that I had a choice). Finally cleared, I ran to the train that led to the terminal, and discovered that my terminal was the furthest away of all. While I rode, one of my fellow passengers helpfully told me it would take at least half an hour to get there.

The second the door opened, I was running at breakneck speed. Based on the time, my flight should already be boarding (I’d texted P. to tell her I was on the train, but I hadn’t had time to look for a response). I was soaked in sweat, since I was still wearing a fleece and jacket because of how cold it had been outside. As I ran, I watched the numbers on the gates as they flew past…and suddenly I was past the one I was looking for. I pivoted and ran back…only to find that I’d missed it again. And then I realized there were only even numbered gates. And no sign of where the others were. I ran back to the start of the terminal, and realized that they were on the other side. Drenched in sweat, lungs aching, I sprinted up to the gate, where P. and A. (the co-worker from the U.K.) were sitting and chatting. There was no one in line at the gate. The flight was delayed.