Oaxaca mannequins and other street scenes

For those very few people who visit this tiny outpost, I´ve added a few more photos, mostly from Oaxaca. I´m behind. We´re in Palenque today. It´s breezy and cool, I suppose side effects from Hurricane Wilma which passed over the not so distant Yucatan. I hope all goes well for everyone as it moves northward. I´m doing this on the fly. I hope it´s not full of typos and bad grammer. As usual, I´m short on time. Hope you enjoy them. More later. Tomorrow we go to Palenque, a small but perhaps finest of the Mayan ruins. a.

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We stayed at a hostel in Oaxaca rumored to be the former home of Oaxacan painter Rufino Tamayo. I don´t know if it´s true. We stayed in a roof top room, third floor; terrible but cheap. There was an ungodly smell coming from the bathroom. Drinking water was on the second floor but the view was wonderful. We could even see Monte Alban from the roof.



You get used to the presence of machine gun toting soldiers at the pay roads and armed guards walking the streets of every city. They certainly doesn´t make me feel any safer but I can´t resist an occasional sneak shot of them.








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The mannequins are wonderful in Mexico. Contrary to popular opinion and the Bush administratioin, image is NOT everything. A good foundation is!






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In Mexico it often takes one man days to do what a machine can do in a few hours. On the other hand, in the US the jails are full of guys who would be working if they weren´t behind bars, sometimes for life, on minor charges or because of the insane Three Strike laws.



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This girl, her family and two bunnies lived in a tiny hut in the parking lot where we parked the Jeep for the time. The plants are the famous mescal plants. The man and oxen and the poor cows on the way to the slaughter house are familiar roadside scenes.