Other stuff . . .

In Friday’s blog post, I mentioned that I would be uploading some video for those who want to download it.  Downloads do take some time, so be sure, if you decide to do it, that you have the time.

Here is the link:

http://www.box.net/shared/f1ifsa3dhj

The files are as follows:

328 – Hotel beach

333 – Kate in the pool

335 – View from rooftop pool

337 – View of seven bays

340 – Karaoke performance at “cowboy” restaurant, part 1

341 – ditto, part 2

342 – cart ride from lobby to room (yer not gonna believe this!!)

343 – entertainment at Don Porfirio

346 – local school

352 – waves at deserted beach

Something else I forgot to mention is that you can’t swim in the ocean near the hotels near the full moon.  The tidal effects of the moon create a very dangerous undertow.  Many of the other more sheltered bays are fine though, and there are plenty of pools.

Horrible life, but somebody's gotta do it . . .

Ditto, eh?

Looking from Hotel lobby towards boulevard

Sea turtles

Small shrine at tiny country roadside sundries store

Another cutie pie

Boneyard 3

"Knob" hill

Better idea of balcony

Can you see the Mayan bird? I think he's called a jay of some type

Side door of La Crucecita church

Great open air restaurant, unfortunately closed until supper time

Small shopping area in either Huatulco or Sta Cruz

Roofing the palapa

Can't remember what these are. Mel?? In brujo's garden

Indi the guide is grinding the corn the old way

Local style cradle

Saturday

Having taken my eldest granddaughter Kate to Huatulco Mexico for a bit of a winter break, I decided to try something new – organised tours.

I’d never done those before, except once over 20 years ago, and in fact hadn’t travelled with anyone for that length of time either.  Lots of new experiences on this trip.  But what’s life without new experiences, eh?

Kate’s off to Uni next year, and I won’t see much of her for a few years after that, so I wanted to have a bit of face time with her before she left.  And since neither of us had been to Mexico before, I decided that the organised tours might be the best way to see lots in the short week we had.

Oh, boy, did we see lots . . . !!

We arrived about noon on Friday and took Saturday to settle in to our little nest.  I’d gotten a small suite, since I thought Kate would have to do school work, and wanted to have a table for her to work at.  This was the view from our balcony.

And this was our balcony.  It was really very large and a lovely place to sit.

Balcony from sliding doors

Huatulco is very mountainous, so the hotels are built up the sides of the mountains.  All have fleets of vehicles like 8 person golf carts that whiz you around the grounds, as walking can get tiring when everything is uphill – both ways <(^o^)>

Our hotel was across the boulevard from the beach, so was built up the mountainside even more so than those on the beach side.  Our room was on the 8th level, and after we got off the cart we still had to walk down one flight of stairs, along a path and then up 4 flights of stairs to get to our room.  I think ours was the most difficult set of rooms to get to, but the beauty of the view made it worth while.

The rooms were clean and quite nice.  There was a bedroom with two double beds, a sitting room with a couch and table and chairs, a full bathroom and a small kitchenette – really just a sink, bar fridge and coffeemaker.

View from roof pool

There were three pools, one on the 7th level, called the roof pool, one on the main level and one across at the beach club.

The carts took you across to the beach club for meals and beach activities.  There were also two other a la carte restaurants at the hotel where you could make reservations to eat, but we didn’t get the energy to try those.

The carts were circulating fairly regularly, and if you had to get somewhere “right now”, you could always call the front desk and have one sent up to get you, so that aspect didn’t seem to be much of a problem.

After we got settled in, we went off to the small nearby town of La Crucecita.  The week was going to be busy, so we wanted to get the souvenir buying out of the way.  Kate wanted something for her mom, and I wanted something for my house-sitters – my house had been flooded just before I left and I had to leave a relative in charge of the insurance, clean-up and so on, so figured a token of appreciation wouldn’t go amiss, especially since there was more water damage while I was gone. *sigh*

La Crucecita is a really pretty town, with a typical town square at its heart.

Zocalo (Town Square) de La Crucecita

I had really wanted to see the inside of the local church, which has a hand-painted ceiling which has been deemed a ‘national treasure’, but both times I went to town the church was closed.  I did manage to get a couple peeks through the wrought iron airways at the top of the walls, and it sure looked worth seeing.

A glimpse of the church ceiling

In order to find what Kate wanted for her mom, we investigated 3 or 4 jewellery stores in the area, but couldn’t find what she had in mind.  We saw a couple other things that might do as a substitute, but decided to go and have lunch and think about it.  Kate ordered a shrimp pasta, and I swear those shrimp hadn’t been out of the water more than 10 minutes.  I ordered the Mexican version of a Club House sandwich, and it came smothered in avocado!  We were both really happy with our lunches!!

Then came the purchasing part.  Now I’ve gotta tell you, I am NOT good with this bargaining stuff.  Though it is, I’m sure a well choreographed dance among those who do it regularly, I just get mad, frustrated, grumpy and tired.  Some jewellery stores in the area have started weighing jewellery and basing the price on the weight, but haven’t figured out that you can price by weight for metals, but you can’t do that for things that are combined metals and stones or wood or ceramic.  And of course, when we went back the second time, the prices had mysteriously gone up.  I was fit to be tied!!

Anyway, we did get a couple things, saw a bit of a Mexican town that had no Micky D’s or Wal-Marts, had a very pleasant lunch and then off we went back to the hotel to get ready for dinner.

Sunday

Sunday was our first tour.  I have to say that the tours here are very long.  They seem to always combine several sightseeing destinations into one tour, with the result that you’d be gone for most of the day.  I’d have preferred to see some trips of shorter duration and have suggested it, so we’ll see what happens.

Today we went to see the old lighthouse which had been very important to that coast at one time.  We also saw a huge iguana sunning himself on the cliff nearby.

Old lighthouse

Then it was off to a beach for a couple hours of snorkelling.  Neither Kate or I snorkelled.  I had thought she’d want to since she’s an avid swimmer, but that didn’t fly.

After that we went to an organic papaya plantation and saw how they grow.  I had no idea that the papayas grow right on the main trunk of the tree, not out on a branch like other fruits.

Papayas - YUM!

Our host served us beans and tortillas with toasted crickets (Yes, I did eat the crickets – they were kind of shredded so no biggie), fruit salad and of course, papaya.  It was lovely.

Papaya plantation lunch room

Next, off we went to a local river to do some white-water rafting.  With it being the dry season and that particular location, it was only level one rafting which is the slowest/easiest – but that was just fine with me.  I was disappointed since they put all our cameras in dry-bags, and when we could have taken them out to get some great pics of families camped and women doing wash in the river, it turned out that my camera was in the other raft!

A-rafting we will go . . .

When we got to where the river ended and the ocean began, we hiked over some dunes to get to the truck and stopped to get coated in clay by some local women.  It was fun, and getting it off took days!

Kate the Mudblood (She's a Potter fan, she'll get it)

After trying to rinse off, our guide took us to a local eatery for a “cowboy lunch).  Lunch in Mexico seems to be at 3 p.m., so of course we were starving!  But boy, that lunch was superb.  Probably the best meal I had during our stay.  This bean soup that was the best I’ve ever tasted, flank steak done over an open fire, but marinated in something so that you could cut it with a fork, a lovely fresh salad, warm tortillas, and a shot of mezcal for dessert.  And as an added treat, the  owner (?) and his wife did a karaoke of Mexican songs while we ate.  It was a wonderful experience.

Cowboy lunch

Restaurant mascots

Our hostess sings

After lunch, it was a trip back to the hotel, a swim, shower, supper, and fall into bed after the supper show.

I just hope I don’t snore . . .

Monday

Monday was our lazing around day, though not much slothfulness was in evidence.

I had booked a facial and pedicure at the beachside spa, and after that went into town again to get stamps and mail our postcards.

Katie was in the throes of a creative spasm and wrote most of the day, as well as each evening.

La Crucecita church door

Lunch in the palapa by the beach club pool

That night we put on some better duds and went down the street to Don Porfirio’s for supper.  I had heard lots of good things about this place.  He grills out front and the waiters put on a short musical show.

I’d ordered the grilled prawns, and Katie ordered the  steak.  Hers was really tasty, she said.  Unfortunately, my prawns tasted like beef liver.  I’ve never heard of such a thing!  And being the Canadian that I am, I just shut up and ate them, and was mad at myself again!  They sure looked good though.

Lovely looking liver flavoured prawns

Katie and her steak at Don Porfirio

Don Porfirio has the grill in high gear

The entertainment is all on my video, some of which I may post on BoxNet for those of you who want to see it.

So, that was our Monday – off we went to bed to get ready for a big day Tuesday.

Tuesday

Tuesday we took the Paradise Bays excursion.

That is a pontoon boat trip around the many bays of Tangolunda.

Which reminds me that I wanted to comment on the name.  All the guide books, maps and old signs have the spelling and name as above.  Some new signs are springing up showing it as “Tangalinda” instead.  Now those of you who are more conversant in Spanish, correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t ‘Tangalinda’ translate roughly as ‘Beautiful Butt-floss”??  Why are they doing this?

Anyway, the trip was breathtakingly beautiful.  We cruised around a couple lovely bays and then were ferried ashore at one whose name I forget to have some swimming  and beach time.

Pelicans waiting to be taken to lunch

One of the beautiful bay beaches

After the swimming, we were taken to San Augustin beach where we would be having lunch in a restaurant with a large beach palapa.  The snorkellers went out to the reef and had their fun for about an hour while the rest of us lazed on the beach, then lunch was ordered.

Casa del Abuelo (Grandpa's House) at San Augustin beach

A woman came around with a large iguana and was asking a fee to have your picture taken with it.  I had taken a picture of her with the big guy when she first arrived, but neither Katie or I felt an overwhelming urge to snuggle up to him for more photo ops.

Guess who's coming to dinner?

Tangolunda is inside an eco-preserve and development will be allowed on only about half (at last news release) of the bays there.  There is some extremely beautiful real estate, and I expect the developers will try to push for more of the beachfront especially to be opened to development.  I hope the government and the people who currently live there will hold the line and not spoil the situation.  It’s a hard decision, as Huatulco is one of the poorer areas of Mexico, so job creation is important.  I just hope that there is some long-term thinking put into this.

One of the Bahias de Tangolunda

Well, that was Tuesday.  Back to the hotel for a swim, get ready for dinner and watch the after-dinner theatre show, and back to read, write, sleep.  I’m not a huge partier any more, and Kate seemed to have no inclination to go disco-ing in the evenings, so we just hung out and did our individual things and then tried to get a good sleep to be ready for the next day.

Wednesday

Well, Wednesday was definitely the hardest day for me.  We were doing the ‘Crocs and Turtles’ tour, mainly because I wanted to see the lagoon and also the local business initiative started by Anita Roddick of the Body Shop.  She had started some families there collecting the local ingredients to make organic sustainable cosmetics.  They have a small factory set up where they mix, package and sell their product.  I think the enterprise supports 19 families in all.  Their products were quite nice, and they had some great loofah too.  My favourite though was the Calendula moisture and after-sun cream.  Very light fragrance, and a very small bit went a really long way.  And we didn’t peel at all.

Anyway, the day started with being brought to the croc preserve where we paid our fee, and then we had to walk about 10 minutes (15 minutes for Speedy here!) down the beach in the blazing sun to get to the point where the canoes were so we could get into the lagoon.

Sometimes there is too much beach!

The lagoon was exquisite!  I really wished I was floating down it all by myself in peace and quiet – but those are things you surely give up on group tours.  However, the presence of a guide to help you see things you would have missed otherwise, and to give names to unfamiliar plants and creatures is really nice.

Heading out into the lagoon

I think this guy is called a King bird

Peaceful and beautiful

Well, at the end of the lagoon was the croc farm, which type of thing I had seen before, but I did learn one interesting thing – crocs don’t have tongues.  I never knew that before!

Croc sunning himself in the lagoon

Then it was back up the beach to the bus and off to the turtle museum.  One poor turtle there had swallowed a camera a tourist had dropped into one of the tanks and had had to be operated on to remove the camera.  The operation destroyed the part of her respiratory system that allowed her to get herself underwater to get food, so she could just swim on the surface and had to be hand fed.

There was an aquarium associated with the turtle museum, and Kate said it was really good, but by this time I was too tired to trot round it, and just sat on the front steps wishing I had some of the home made ice cream that Kate had gotten from and elderly guy who was selling at the gate to the park.  She said *that* was really good too.

After the turtle museum we went to lunch in, I think, Puerto Angel.  Another open air beach restaurant and Kate and I tried the hot and cold versions of  the Oaxacan chocolate drink.  It seems to be solid chocolate ground up and put into milk with lots of sugar added.  Interesting and a bit different and more tasty than our version.  The most traditional use for chocolate in that area is “mole”, which is chocolate mixed with very hot peppers.  We’re starting to see a few things with that combination here now, but as I don’t like food that bites back, I’ll pass, thanks.

Beach at Puerto Angel (I think)

Pensive Kate at Wednesday lunch

There was a dive shop a couple doors down the beach, and another palapa serving food and drink in front of that.  More fresh fish for lunch for me.  I could eat that every day.

One of the most interesting things about this town was that, since the area is all rock, the graves are all concrete crypts built above ground and decorated to a Mexican fare-thee-well (No pun intended, honestly!)  The graveyard is in this town and I could have spent a long time there, but as is the trouble with group tours, I was in the great minority, so had to rush past quickly.

Boneyard 1

Boneyard 2

Again, since each tour ends with lunch, and lunch is always about 3 p.m., it was off home for a swim, shower and supper.

Thursday

Well, we’ll try this again.  I wrote this once, tried to insert a photo, and the whole thing disappeared into the ether somewhere.  BAH!!

Thursday was a great day.  We went off into the countryside to visit “typical” Oaxacans.  First we visited a herbal medicine man or brujo and toured his garden.  Very interesting.  He also had one of those little spectacled or white-masked amazons that are so popular as pets with folks in the area.

Senor Brujo

They were building a new palapa.  A palapa is the structure which is open on the sides and roofed with banana or other large leaves.  The construction technique is fairly complicated and I found it very interesting.

They had he usual fire and grill for cooking, but also had a large brick bake-oven that was made from locally made brick.  I’m not sure what they used it for, but will find out on my next trip there <G>  I can imagine it would make superb pizza, but I’m not sure that pizza is high on the average brujo’s dietary list.  And they don’t seem to eat risen bread, just flatbreads.  but likely one of my readers will be able to tell me.

Next we went to visit a woman called Maria, who showed us how tortillas were made years ago, grinding the corn with grinding stones.  Then she showed us how the next evolution was a small mechanical hand grinder much the same as my mother used to make ground meat.  Now there is a big electric grinding machine that everyone in the village uses.

At Maria's

Maria had the dough ready to go and showed us the pressing machines they use now to flatten the ball of dough into a perfect tortilla and she let each person make their own tortilla and had some bean mixture (hot, HOT!) wrapped in corn leaves that was used as a filling for the tortillas.  Since the beans were too hot for me, I found a friend outside who was more than happy to eat them.

I wanted to take her home

Next to Maria’s was a typical country church.  The same form and design was to be seen throughout the countryside in all the small villages.

Country church

The inside of the church was very spartan.  These are not rich folks here and I’m glad that we, as conscious travellers, can do something to help keep some children in school and give some employment to the workers and especially to help keep some of the traditional crafts alive.

Church interior

When we were in La Crucecita we went into a small craft store and museum.  They had the local black pottery which is seen everywhere there, the brightly painted animal carvings and many types of woven goods.  They had a weaver working a hand loom weaving traditional designs and using the traditional natural dyes.

The most interesting dye is the cochineal.  Cochineal is an insect which lives on one type of cactus and it is actively grown in order to produce the scarlet dye used in the weaving.

After Maria’s place, we went to a country school to see how things were run there, and of course to contribute to the latest fund-raising for school equipment.  This school, because of the tourists who were brought here, had some very good equipment and was well above the usual local standards.

One little girl there seemed to take a shine to me and just followed me around, smiling shyly.  All of the kids around the different places we went were so cute and most were pretty shy.

My new friend

After the school, we saw some more of the countryside then went for lunch again at La Casa del Abuelo, where Kate sampled a Pina del Pina.

Kate and *her* new friend

After lunch we went out to a quite deserted and wild part of the beach.  It was marvellous!  The waves were just crashing in – and that’s a sound I could listen to all day.

We’d had a leaking valve stem in a tire earlier in the day when we were going to stop at a local fruit market and have a snack, so were behind schedule and it was time to get back to the hotel.  But what a great day!

Wonderful coastline

Friday

Well, that’s it.  Time to go home.  I’d love to be able to stay for a while longer.  The weather is so perfect – about 30 at the top of the day and 20 or less at night.  Sun all the time.  How can it get any better?

View across hills

Mexico is a hugely varied country in terms of its population.  Someone told me that in Oaxaca state alone, there are 17 different indigenous ethnic groups.  You could see distinct differences in skin tone and facial bone structure, but I expect that as with other countries, now that transportation is opening up so much more and people aren’t staying in their native villages forever, that those distinctions will quickly vanish.

Son of papaya plantation owner

Child in hammock at croc farm

While travelling to the fruit market, we passed a farm which had several peafowl.  I’m not sure why, or where they came from, but it was a giggle to see them there.

Peacock

Fruit market

Huatulco town square with cafe in bandstand

Marina and some condos and shops at Santa Cruz

Well, there are some of the highlights of our trip, though there are doubtless things here I’ve passed over.

I’m going to try and upload some of the video to BoxNet, and if I get to that I’ll post the URL here for anyone that is interested in downloading some of that.