last night at midnight, the nation of mexico sang happy birthday to the Virgin of Tepeyac, wishing her a happy saints day as the clock struck. how do you wish a deity a happy saints day? tough to figure. hope she enjoyed her 477th anniversary.
well-- We were there. not at the giant basilica in mexico city, but part of the crowd in the blocks surrounding the church of San Cristobal, which is her local home here. it was boisterous and fun. tired pilgrims who have ridden their bikes or taken turns running with a flaming torch, were now roaming the streets in little throngs with their matching t shirts, each one with a great pic of the virgin on the front with little sayings like "she is the mother of us all" or "queen of mexico, emperor of america" on the front, and on the back the names of their origin and destinations. they are really happy and they do little chants: give us an M! give us an A! give us an R! give us an I! give us an A! whaddaya got! Maria! Maria! Maria! There is a small fair with rides in the church plaza, there are vendors selling arroz-con-leche and food, and CDs of songs to the Virgin and T shirts and religious items and whatever, there are tired celebrants crashed in doorways wrapped in blankets getting a nap waiting for midnight. Nuns and priests are holding mass nonstop in the church, so crowds swell in and out, and someone is outdoors with a mike in a sideyard entertaining, and some mariachis are there getting ready to sing her in at midnight. in side streets, groups of folks get ready to parade in to the church, lots of small groups of girl-bands playing drums and bikers with blazing torches, each followed by friends and family carrying candles and flowers sometimes. Lots of times people erupt into a song about, "La Guadalupana, shes totally Mexicana" or something like that. it is very pretty. there were about 3 songs we heard A LOT.
actually we did NOT stay right up til midnight, as the crowd kept repeating the same motifs... we walked home and went to our room and watched mexican TV on 2 channels - one showing the glitzy broadcast from inside the basilica in mexico city, and one broadcasting the sounds from the church in merida. then at midnight, everyone sang the birthday song, Las Mananitas, and I got little tears in my eyes for whatever reason, and the fireworks went off for a while. and we were fast asleep soon.
Many vendors sell the local t shirt -- the I was there in Merida version of the virgin, two for 50 pesos -- and I have mine! I have actually been wearing it all day today, prompting smiles from everyone who has the same shirt and lots of smiles anyway since not that many tourists have these.
Tourists. we had thought we were a scarce commodity here in Yucatan state. not so! yesterday we saw the crowds build, at Chichen Itza, and we expected them there. did not expect that now, hearing foreign tongues especially american english would have become so common overnight. we are used to being nearly the only people in our fabulous little hotel, Luz En Yucatan, but the owners tell us that from next week until april, they are now booked solid.
Today, our last day, we had no agenda. we considered a ride of an hour each way to the closest beach town, progreso, but it is windy overcast and amazingly for merida, kinda cold. we considered the half hour trip to Dzibultichun or whatever it is, close by, but those ruins are kinda so so the books say. instead we had a great day and got new insight into merida.
To bring you up to date: day before yesterday, thursday the 11th, we took a combi taxi ride from Valladolid direct to chichen itza, cost 20 pesos each for about 30 miles; then we were among the first people in to chichen itza, which was great. but chichen, which is a world heritage site and got voted one of the 8 wonders of the modern world, is not like our other ruins. because of the crowds, it is meticulously groomed, and, cordoned off! you can´t climb a single step. you can t disappear into the woods to look at the ungroomed parts. so, you cant go in to any little rooms, or see any carvings not at ground level, and saddest, you cant get any views of the lovely buildings, above the treeline. neverthless it is pretty darn impressive. I guess I really like the way we ended up doing this trip: we saw about ten really nice small ruins and got to scramble and explore, first, then saw the Big City. we had fun there more or less, but only spent 2 hrs, as thats all it took to see all that you were allowed to see. although there are more parts to it... but you can no longer go.
we met two nice fellow travelers there from Ohio, Rick and Jim. basically the first americans we have intersected with. really nice men. well we met one other, in valladolid, a nice young guy from oregon who just finished his masters degree, we met him sharing a cab back to town from the cenotes. we have met some nice independent travlers from france especially Nicolas. some of these travelers did something we didn{t know to do, they went on to Campeche city, which is a very lovely city, a world heritage site, right on the gulf of mexico, a former pirate capital, and only 2.5 hrs from merida, no further than valladolid was, so we should have gone. it has never had much tourism and did not have the huge profitable era merida had, but its apparently very lovely, low key and close to some really neat groups of ruins and caves, in a different mayan style. so we hope we could get back one day to see this. its the town where the governors beautiful daughter, in the 1700s, was so devout she only left the house to go to mass, but somehow was seduced by a handsome stranger; she invited him back to her rooms, the governor burst in on them, he turned out to be a dread pirate chief, they fought a duel, he shot her father, and she died of grief and madness 3 months later. so they say.
thursday after chichen, we got a local bus from right at chichen ruins, cost about 60 pesos or $5 each, comfortable, but lots of small towns so took about 2 hrs to get back to merida. but very convenient and it{s always fun to travel with locals. however if you are ever taking the buses, the really best seats to get are 3 and 4, to be able to look straight ahead, otherwise visibility is not so good. seats 7 and 8 would also be good. anything on the right hand side.
when we arrived in merida we were SO happy to be back. the Luz en yucatan has been awesome, and merida once you get used to it is easy to get around. it has a big variety of eating choices and many are romantic and restful, like the Peregrino. at night, we went to the thursday night Santa Lucia Serenata which is a weekly tradition for more than 40 years, of having about an hour or 90 minutes of free entertainment, in a great setting, lots of seating, outdoors, and it includes romantica ballads, torch singers, and dancers. and mostly locals are there, the well dressed Merida folks who love their romantic tradition. we have discovered that the few romantic songs we know best by our local california group, Cascada de Flores, including Peregrina and similar songs, are written by songwriters born here in merida in the middle of the last century!
this morning, we followed up on this by going to the Museum of Yucatecan song. what a great place! trouble is we could only stay briefly as they were actually closed -- they were expecting a high muckety muck, so we were allowed in for free, on condition that we would leave instantly if the motorcade was heard. it was not, and we got to listen to some great music, trios and ballads and lots of photos of merida in its heydays in the 1910s and in the mid century.
speaking of this heyday we followed it up by going over to explore the Centennial Park and Zoo. The zoo and park are free. This is about 10 blocks out of the main center, so not too many tourists probably get here, but it was really-- fabulous! it{s a little park built in the french style in 1910, it has a great layout, lots of things to do including a pond with little boats and a little narrow gauge train that goes around it, costs a single peso to ride (8 cents) and is really fun. and, best of all, an extremely pleasant zoo. they had lots of space for the animals and they had: giraffes, zebras, ostriches, hippos, asian tigers, lots and lots of native american animals like coatimundis and all the monkeys and all the big cats -- jaguars and jaguar-like black panthers and california mountain lions. and so many of them had babies. the tigress had three happy midsize cubs that would pounce on her, and imitate everything she did. the hippos had a baby that stayed submerged for the longest time. the monkeys had babies. the llamas and guanacos had babies. there were lots of pink flamingos, not surprising as near merida are two or three major flamingo habitats on the coast you can visit. and there was a huge aviary you could wander around in.
also in the neighborhoods near there, are some great mansions. lots of hacienda owners kept their families in town, and they had lots of money in 1910. so there are lots of multistory rococo buildings with white icing details and columns and fancy porticos. The years since 1910 and the economy have not been that kind to merida and neither has the proliferation of the automobile. If lots of money arrived in this city, there would be a LOT of renovation and prettying up. it{s pretty cool. there are two styles of renovation to be done here, at least: classic spanish colonial in the center, and La Belle Epoque in the burbs. pretty nice place really. and Merida seems to have an obvious intellectual, musical core that most mexican cities its size dont display. there are lots of bookstores, lots of places for musicians to perform in concert halls, and lots of well traveled residents who come up and talk to us pretty often and have seen a lot of the world, and this includes taxi drivers, cafe owners, lots of folks. The bookstores actually have samples of books you can look at, whereas in most mexican bookstores everything is sealed shut with plastic and you really cant flip through anything. The nicest part of this higher level of intellectual culture, is the love of good music done by great composters with good lyrics. sure the young folks are listening to world young person music in general, along with mexican pop music, but lots and lots of folks know cuban, mexican and american classics and play and dance to them with gusto.
