Día de los Muertos

We are now in Compeche, a small port city on the Gulf of Mexico. We didn´t stick around to meet with Dan the other day or try camping at the ruins. Instead we shot across the Yucatan in search of better weather, which we found here.










Today is Día de los Muertos, Day of the Dead, so in observation of it here are a few photos I´ve taken on the trip that are to me, in one way or another, in the spirit.

The first is of the waiting room for a funeral parlor. It is right on the sidewalk and cannot be closed off because it has no doors.


The rest have each their own mystery except for the photo from the miscellenia store (variety store) of the skulls on the artificial Christmas tree. That one is simply and delightfully absurd.





Happy Día de los Muertos and Merry Christmas!

Beta news and guaqueque blues

Looks like Hurricane Beta has blown out over Nicaragua. It rained here in Chetumal today but we even missed that being out of the immediate area visiting 3 different Mayan ruins. Unfortunately, I forgot my flash drive at the hotel so no new pictures tonight. I took a lot more today but the most moving thing was coming upon a poor guaqueque (waa-kay-kay) being killed by a small fox. I butted in, scared the fox who tried unsuccessfully to drag the crying guaqueque away with her, and made a mess of the whole thing. Then, while photographing the event, started the guaqueque crying again. Bad scene. The fact is I am on both sides of the struggle. The fox needed the food, maybe even for her family, and the guaqueque want to live. I don´t know how it turned out. We went back later to check up on things but there nothing. Not even one drop of blood. Life is hard. Everyone is food for someone but I want to feed everybody soy and tofu and call it good ...sigh

Tomorrow, depending on the weather, we will either visit more Mayan sites or hang around town. If we stay in Chetumal we´ll meet our new friend Dan at the internet cafe in the afternoon then go hang out on the beach with him. Dan is one of those bigger than life people you sometimes meet on the road. He´s got great stories. He said when he was a young man he was going to play for the Chicago Cubs but then got drafted and fought in Vietnam. Later, among other things, he became a journalist and sailed across the Atlantic solo. He also claimed to have golfed with President Gerald Ford, interviewed Subcomandante Marcos several times. He lost his voice to cancer about five years ago and can´t talk above a whisper. We had lunch with him yesterday. Even without a voice he whispered, gestured and scribbled stories for several hours, waving one or another of his various knives from time to time for emphasis. One of the great things about Mexico is that you can have these kind of animated converstations and nobody objects. The waiters just went about their business. The only thing they worried about was that Dan had left the windows down in his vehicle and there was some expensive looking equipment in the front seat. They ended up guarding it for him because he wasn´t concerned about it being stolen. All this would be impossilbe in the paranoid US.
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Bruce Hodder of SUFFOLK PUNCH wrote a nice review of this current series on our travels in Mexico. I´m always grateful for a good word. Thanks Bruce!

Chetumal, any port in the storm

I´ve still got a lot of photos to post from this trip to catch up with myself but am fast forwarding to today. Hurricane Beta is in the region and at the moment has my full attention. This is a map of Beta´s five day forcast. We are currently in the town of Chetumal which is located at about 3 minutes after 12 on the map´s outer circle. This puts us in the outer range of the hurricane´s projected path so once again our plans have changed. We were hoping to camp at Calakmul for a few days so we could explore it to our greedy heart´s content but looks like instead we´ll stay in town for now. Chetuaml is a funky Carribean town on the Belize border, not a bad place to hang your cap in a storm ... I hope.

Monkey games

The photos are running behind the trip. Currently we are back in the town of Paleneque after spending a couple of days on the Guatemalan border visiting Mayan sites. However, I got a big kick out of this sequence from the wild life refuge in Tuxtla Gutierrez so am posting them tonight. They are of a young monkey chasing the vultures out of tops of the trees. There are lots of vultures at the reserve. They are fed like everyone else and have lots of places to roost, but seem to enjoy annoying the monkeys by perching in the tops of the trees in their area. This little fellow made quick work of them. Look closely at photos 7 through 10. You will see glimpses of one of the vultures flying off.









Since this we've seen monkeys and crocodiles in the wild. That was wonderful and just this evening I saw a huge green free parrot sitting casually at the lunch counter of a taco stand but didn't have my camera for that one.

Monkeys in Mexico

Until this trip, I didn´t realize that monkeys are native to North America. But they are, in Mexico. As usual, I don´t have much time but here are a few photos from our visit to the wild life refuge in Tuxtla Gutiérrez, the capital city of Chiapas.

The monkeys at the refuge seemed to enjoy chasing the vultures off who were hanging out in their trees. Next time I have a chance I´ll post some photos I got of them doing that.





Since then we´ve seen wild monkeys around the Mayan ruins of Palenque but, although they stayed right above our heads, I couldn´t get a decent shot of them. Too dark. Monkeys are cool. Their tails are powerful as giant snakes. It was nothing for them to hang upside down, munch a meal and watch us flat-footed, tailless humans far below.

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.