Wow. No, really - wow.

I know this is something of break with the overall theme I've tried to establish here, but I wanted to take a quick moment (as I am wont to do) and let you all know that I feel like the luckiest man alive. This is not, like my blog, about my rapidly filling passport or really any one thing in particular, but I feel that I am finally beginning to lead a life of purpose, a life worth living. I'm terrified of the options I have and I couldn’t be happier.

Life is a beach - for today at least.

You know, as glamorous as all this gallivanting about may seem to the outside observer, it's actually pretty exhausting. Okay, not really, but still - it's nice to have a break from time to time. Today's break was brought to you (that is, me) by the seaside town of Tecolutla. Let's make no bones about it: I went to Tecolutla for the beach. In fact, as the city's population barely exceeds 4,000 people, I can't imagine I could have gone for another reason. Still, the city knows how to play its strength and its beaches are magnificent.
Erwin and I checked into a pretty nice hotel directly on the beach for less than it cost me in the Monterrey hostels two months ago. No, really. The air conditioning and three pools compliment the view (below) nicely, and I can happily report we've barely moved 250 meters past the hotel's front doors in the last 24 hours. [Well, except for an extended walk along the beach, but that's an understandable exception, no?]
Life is made for days, for places, like this. We go back to [Mexican] reality via tonight's bus and tomorrow's class but for the time being I can almost feel time slow...

We have arrived! (At El Tajin, that is)

Today was all about El Tajin - the very reason I set out on the odisea veracruzana. Once the capital of a Mesoamerican civilization which reached its apex centuries before the arrival of Columbus, it is now an UNESCO world heritage site and home of sprawling complex of temples, palaces, and other ruins. Again we were off the more off the "gringo trail" usual and again it was almost eerie: although we spent most of the day at El Tajin, we scarcely saw another person. Perhaps after trips to Cristo Redentor and Versailles I've come to associate crowds with "things worth seeing" but Mexico is certainly rewriting the rulebook. [As a result, most of my favorite places are all but deserted.] For this reason too, in additional to all of the obvious historical ones, El Tajin has quickly catapulted to the forefront of my favorite places ever. As if the ruins themselves were not enough - and if the pictures below and elsewhere don't do it justice, I can personally vouch for their "sufficiency" - the site's position deep in the heart of the Veracruz jungle made it possible hike within minutes from some of El Tajin's expansive ruins to deep jungle and back. Glorious.


THE Pyramid of the Niches, above.






You have no idea how hard it was to pick only five pictures. More at: http://www.picasaweb.google.com/littlefrankel

The Heart of... Veracruz.

Buses in Mexico are a bit of a mixed bag, it seems. The bus ride from Monterrey to Poza Rica was wonderfully uneventful - it gives me great hope for future night travels, actually - but at six hours the bus from Poza Rica to Veracruz was almost as long. This, then, is difference between primero and directo. Ah well, at least the ride back north to Papantla will give me a change to take stock of the trip thus far.
We arrived in Veracruz around 5pm on Thursday, which gave us just enough time to see the best of downtown Veracruz before nightfall. It is a pleasant city with a vibrant central square and a beautiful boardwalk, but it possesses little in the way of physical history. I guess I was expecting a lot from the first Spanish city in what is now Mexico - seriously, Hernan Cortes founded it as he first landed in the country - but the cities numerous invaders seem to have taken even its history. [One assumes my disapointment is a bit inconsequential where compared to the then-residents of the city, but still.] All this having been said, the ocean air was lovely and the seafood was fantastic! It's just so hard to describe how my Floridian pulse races as soon as I see the water. Say what you will, after so much yellow a little green and blue was just what the doctor ordered.
Despite the mariscos, though, Erwin and I thought it best to hit the road Friday morning. A short trip north brought us to the small Jose Cardel way-station for buses to tiny town of Zempoala. In fact, I think Zempoala has the rare distinction of being smaller now than it was when the Spanished arrived. For us, though, the specifics of its written history were second to its physical history: the city ruins of a distinct prehispanic civilization known as the Totonacs. As the pictures can attest, it was something almost unwordly. We were at the site for a few hours, and most of the time had the whole place to ourselves. In fact, when Erwin wanted to go to the onsite museum they had to open it just for us! Sometimes it pays to be off the "gringo trail."

PS Did I mention everything was green, oh so green? After so long in the desert that alone is simply spectacular.






As always, more pictures at: http://www.picasaweb.google.com/littlefrankel

Veracruz bound?

I realized today that I've been in Mexico for almost half of my ¨alloted¨ three months and yet I had still seen very little. Okay, to be honest, I have seen quite a lot but, for example, I still hadn't seen prehispanic ruins or even a beach. Which is frankly tragedic. So I did a little research, found the northernmost examples of each in Mexico, and decided to go there. Just like that, because I can. [AMAZING, that.] All signs point to Veracruz state but that, like much of Mexico, is a bit far from Monterrey. So the plan is as simple as it is ridiculous: I leave by bus at 11pm Wednesday night (immediately after class) and return the same way immediately before my next class, Monday at 10am. To explain the other half of the above image (namely the French part), my companion for all of this will be Erwin, a francesa whose English is fortunately as good as his sense of adventure. Wish us luck!

Classes, or a lack thereof

I know that no one wants to here about my coursework, but there´s something you should know: I have less and less of it all of the time. One of the three courses I started the last week of April is already over, meaning that I only have classes 10-6 on Mondays and 6-9 on Wednesday. Hello five day weekends! Well, four, but buses at odd hours will make them five when necessary, trust me. :)
May the hijinx ensue - news at eleven!

PS Oh, and about that class that I just finished... 100%.

Stranger in a Stranger Land pt. II: Campus (wild)life

Monterrey’s outlying territories may a haven for the ecotourist, but most of the rest is decidedly urban sprawl. There city government is finally beginning to set aside some green spaces but this is the desert, so those spaces are not only few and far between but well protected. Do not walk signs are more common than the grass itself. The ITESM campus is an exception, though. Over the years it has designed itself to be a place apart from Monterrey, and generally speaking it has succeeded. Among the things you’ll wandering around on campus, in order of strangeness:

i) Ducks
ii) Geese
iii) Peacocks.
iv) Deer.

No, really. Deer. I was sitting in the library yesterday and I totally saw a deer walking around out the window. One assumes this is common place because I was the only one in the library excitedly asking his neighbors if they saw it, too. Judging by the responses I got, one also assumes that this line of questions is a bit unusual. Still – deer!

Sometimes I really do feel like a stranger in a strange land.

So I’m settled in here, more or less, but there are still certain things that surprise me. Take, for example, wine:



At the beginning of the semester I did a brief study for one of my classes on beverage consumption in Mexico. Unsurprisingly, water comes in a distant third behind beer and soda (which is consumed, on average, more than any of the other six categories combined). But do you know what doesn’t even chart? You guessed it – wine.* Which is a shame, really, because, well, I like wine. Do you know what I also like? Buying bottles of wine as small thank you gifts, like I did for my roommates in honor of our first month together. They were, I think, touched, except they (we) don’t own a corkscrew. Nor do our neighbors, or anyone else in the building. They don’t even sell them at the grocery store.

I can’t tell if this is funny or tragic, but on the bright side, the apartment has a lovely new decorative piece!

* The actual statistic, I kid you not, is 300ml per capita per year and is no doubt mostly from Catholic Mass. [I conferred with Britton and he agrees.]

New Kicks on Kerry and Indecision '08

How strange it is to be looking at all of this from the outside in. Here I am in Mexico - in the ITESM library preparing some group work on Brazilian imports to be exact - but Le Tigre's "New Kicks" just came on my playlist and instantly I was transported back. Not just to the United States but also to 2004, to the Bush-Kerry debacle and the feeling is indescribable. As you can hear, the song is not exactly a slice of Americana* and I wouldn't necessarily call this nostalgia - I may miss the States but I certainly don't miss the year - but the feeling I got was unshakable. Its sad and strange mix of hope and despair because today, for the first time in weeks, I feel that American politics are more than just an abstraction. Did you know that the rest of the world - my Latin American colleagues and the European ones alike - are just as eagerly waiting for a resolution not just to the Presidential Election in general but even the Democratic Primaries as I am? Perhaps more so. I was walking with a French extranjero friend of mine the other day near Cerro de la Silla and discovered he knew more about the current state of the race than I did. The reason is clear: I'm burnt out. "New Kicks" really got my pulse going, though, and I think now I know why: I was excited about the prospect of change. After this interminable race for the nomination I'm more overwhelmed than optimistic and no speech on either side can change that. Say what you want about Kerry, but at least with a tidy nomination it was possible to get excited about him (even if he couldn't). Maybe, from the outside looking in, I can re-sensitize, re-energize myself. At any rate I hope so, because if I can't there are plenty of people at EGADE willing to do it for me.

* I have Tennessee Ernie Ford's "Sixteen Tons" for that.

Cerro de la Silla

As anyone who knows me can easily attest, when I travel I look for two things: bodies of water and big, tall things to climb. I’m kind of simple like that, but it’s the kind of simplicity that has kept exceptionally happy on the road. In Monterrey, though, a good half of the equation – namely the water – is missing. This desert city does have its share of mountains, however, and as part of my wanderings I decided yesterday to try and climb the most famous of these: Cerro de la Silla. I learned my lesson from my aforementioned Chipinque misadventure – actually, now that I think about it, it actually rains a lot here – and checked the weather report carefully before setting out. I even brought a map, of sorts, and a couple of friends.
Unfortunately, even if my Spanish is improving, my ability to use the metric system remains questionable. Actually, that’s not a hundred percent true. I use it with accuracy and ease – I don’t really have a choice do I? – but I also use it to lie to myself. So yes, I knew when I checked the weather report that 40 Centigrade is the same as 104 Fahrenheit. But it seems so much lower in Celsius, right?! Completely bearable and everything. [By the way, the same thing works in reverse with distances: the ten kilometers to the top and back seemed impossibly further than the six or so miles it actually was.]

So, to make a short story long (as per usual), it did not rain. Much the contrary, actually, and although we started with six people at 7:30am the heat stopped half of them dead in their tracks before we even made it halfway to the aptly named Antenna Peak. I persevered with two francesa - Julie and Ervyn, who, I kid you not, sang La Marseillaise intermittently the entire way up [adorable!] – and together we finally made it to the 1820 m (5970 ft) summit and back after about seven hours. The view was stunning, and the few pictures I have of trek don’t do it justice. As you face south atop the mountain, to your right is civilization in the form of Monterrey’s urban sprawl.

To the left, though, are the Sierra Madres in their full glory. The mountain’s four peak usually hide this backdrop so well that I had no idea this ecosystem even existed. Beautiful, serene, and replete with bids of all kinds this was a side of Monterrey I had never seen before and it was breathtaking.

I’m beginning to think I could just about live here.





As always, more pictures at: http://www.picasaweb.google.com/littlefrankel

Go deep!

So I’m back from what has to be the most amazing weekend I’ve had in Mexico yet. Actually, no, I think it’s pretty much in the top ten of all time. No summation or recap is possible, but here are a few of the reasons why:

+ Rental cars mean freedom and spontaneity (and Mexican gas is cheap)
+ Mexican house music is amazing, as are the bars.
+ So is the combination Spanish/English/French we spoke all weekend.*
+ Guanajuanto is beautiful.
+ Despite all of the Americans, so is San Miguel de Allende.
+ For a history major, though, Querétaro beats them both [barely].**

A couple of picture are below, but for a more complete picture (of the pictures) go to the source: http://www.picasaweb.google.com/littlefrankel

* My companions for this trip were two Frenchmen [Alan and Remi] and a Mexican [Humberto] and, well, sometimes you can’t say what you want with just one language!
** Where else in the Western Hemisphere can you see the location of an Imperial assassination?! [Emperor Maximilian I (and only)]