=========================================================================== Photos From Mexico Updated 30MAY07 Videos Updated 30MAY07
July 24th Just got back from Grey Fox and am looking forward to Falcon Ridge and a new festival for Ethel and me: Podunk.
So I have booked a flight to Buenos Aires. I leave on September 5th and return October 17th. Stay tuned for more updates............luego
30 de mayo So, I have been back in Oaxaca for some time and only have another month left here before coming home, which makes me a little sad. I like living in this town and am having a good time here, and my Spanish is really getting better. I am looking forward to seeing my friends again and spending time with them. I will save my best stories till I see you. Be well.
7 de mayo Tomorrow I will be returning to Oaxaca for the final 2 months of my time in Mexico and Central America. I am looking forward to staying in one place for a while. Right now I am in San Cristobal in the Mexican state of Chiapas. This is what Guatemala could look like with a little bit of effert. First they would need to but big mufflers on all the buses and trucks and reinstall all the polution controls. Then they would need to get a giant broom and sweep up all the dirt and trash that is just about everywhere, then come in with a giant pressure washer and hose the whole place down, then come in with some paint and paint all the buildings some nice bright colors..............then Guatemala would start to look like Mexico. Well there is another difference too. Guatemala seems to be much more densely populated too. So many of the hills are beign farmed for instance, while here they are mostly just filled with trees. That partly explains the garbage, but is just seems to be an attitude problem to me. I do really love Xela, but I also seem to have a constant sore throat while I am there.
Yesterday I went on a tour to 2 different private indigenous parks with waterfalls and the ruins of pelenque, all in Chiapas. The cascades were really beautiful and refreshing, but the first one expecially was a bit of a tourist trap. For instance, can you believe that they wanted 50 cents just to use the bathroom!!!! I needed a place to change so just changed on the beach with a towel around me, like they do at the NYSC Wall Street branch!!!!
So I will do some traveling in the state of Oaxaca, but I think mostly will just stay in town and continue my studies of Spanish and myself. The beach areas are supposed to be nice there, and there is supposed to be a nude beach there that I will have to check out. So I pretty much have thru Labor Day planned and am now working on the fall. As of now I am alomost certain to go to Argentina for most of September and all of October. Does this sound interesting to anyone..........?????
27 de abril So I am back in Xela..........the air is really dirty in Guatemala. Lots of buses, trucks and some cars spewing black smoke don{t make for a good environment. So I was in Costa Rica for almost a month, and I am glad I went. San Jose is the capital and unlike Guatemala City, the air is clean, but it is just as pedestrian unfriendly. Overall, the city is full of lots of ugly buildings and not the very attractive place. They really need to rename Costa Rica to something like TourCentral or Land of the $40 Tour. Almost everywhere that I went there was a tour to take. Want to go on an ATV thru the forest, with an English speaking guide of course, they got that......like vehicles with 2 wheels, well they have a motorcross tour, don{t like motors, then go for a mountain bike tour........how about white water rafting or snorkling, or snailing or scubadiving. How about a zip line tour above the trees? Nightime insect tour......Butterfly house......Coffee Plantation.......birding.....Just want to visit some parks?????, no problem they have plenty of parks with lots of special prices just for you. Plenty of overpriced hotels too. Looking for some indiginous culture or food that you can{t get in the US.........well sorry , they don{t have that. I actually did find plenty of places to stay that I liked, but the restaurants were mostly very just plain boring......and prices higher than the US. like Pizza??...well there were plenty of Pizza Palors........like really good Pizza???? then Costa Rica isn{t the place for you. Like good beer??.......sorry only the imported kind was worth drinking. Looking for charming little towns??........sorry the towns that arene{t over run with tourists, for the most part, just left you feeling like you were in the Bronx. Friendly people??........as long as you were interested in taking a $40 tour, there were plenty of friendly people willing to help with a smile.
Now I did find one town that was rather nice in the Orosi Valley, not that far from San Jose. It was pleasant with some good hiking nearby, but I had my first significant experience there with.........Americans who have moved to Costa Rica. Well what can i say, but that they were the most boring bunch of people that I have met in a long time. .....NO I don{t really care that you are retired and are getting a dental crown tomorrow for only $150. What I find really bad is that you speak almost no Spanish, but are living in a Spanish speaking country, if that{s what you want to call living in Costa Rica but only hanging around other boring Americans.........and they don{t live in town, they seem to all want to buy a piece of property out of town and then just VEG.
oh here is another one. I went to an ATM in Liberia, another very unattractive town and the ATM actually asked me if I wanted Costa Rican Collones or US dollors!!!!!!
Well i could go on.........Now if did take a zip line tour and did go smorkling and had fun doing both. A Zip Line is a cable that you ride on while in a harness way above and/or thru the trees. I went on this one Called Extremo.......and it was. It was about 3 hours of zipping across this valley, thru trees, and a couple of other adventures. There was also a nice gay beach at Manuel Antonio that I went to. I can tell anybody who wants to hear them, many funny stories of my travels, but in the end I am glad to have spent time in Costa Rica, but can{t see every going back. Oh if you do go, beware of the pickpockets and other anoying thieves......they are everywhere!!!!
3 de abril Took a trip to a neighboring town today and am dealing with a slight cold. If anyone wants to know of a great cruising place in San Jose{ just let me know. I just happended across it the other day.
So I think I will be staying in Costa Rica until i leave here on the 25th. I have a couple of beach towns that i want to visit and some mountain resorts/nature preserves. Should be able to get to both the Pacific and Caribean Coasts, visit some volcanoes and do some more jngle hiking and zipping..........what is zipping: its whre they strap you in and then you zip along like a mini gondola thru nature. There are apparently a lot of them here. Well that�s about it for now. May be out of touch till sometime next week.
2 de abril so I walked around a lot yesterday in San Jose' and I was convinced that I was in some kind of alternate reality, or other form of the Bronx, sort of like another Fordham Road!!!! So today I tried an experiment. I took a bus to one of the national parks to see what would really happen. If I ended up in lets say White Plains, then my theory would be correct, but if I ended up in the park, then I would know that I really was in Costa Rica. Well I ended up in this really nice park, not White Plains, but something was still odd. There was this highway that cuts right thru the park, the highway my bus took, and I spent a few hours there, and almost the whole time, I was in ear shot of the road. It was as if I was in another alternate reality of the Bronx River Bike Path, but with no bikes. Oh who knows, I guess I should just accept this place for what it is. Now ten years ago , I was hiking the AT in North Carolina and doing a lot of hitching. So today after my hike, I needed to take the bus back to San Jose. The ranger told me to just stand on the side of the road and flag the bus down. Well the buses run every 40 minutes or so, so i figured why not hitch and see what happens. Well I didn't get a ride, but one thing that was really neet was the traffic. Except that there was a little more trucks than you would expect on this type of road (2 lane undivided highway), the traffic was just the kind of traffic that one would expect in......well North Carolina, or anywhere else in the US. It was really incredible. In Guatemala and even Mexico, just watching the traffic is all you need to see, to tell you that you are not in the US, but I was totally blown away by what I saw. Or.........was I really back another 10 years in another reality!!!!!!!!
San Jose is really not a very beautiful place, but it is not the city with buses spewing black smoke that at least one other traveler told me about. There is a gay side to this town, but it doesn't seem to be a big gay destination, but more on that later. Manuel Antonio, on the coast, is supposed to be, and I will be making a stay there later in my time here.
The hostel has changed from a frat boy hangout to a young international hangout, which means I am just about the only person here who doesn't smoke. I just made a reservation at another place about and hour and half away in what i hope is a really neat little rural village. I plan to stay there for the rest of semana santa and just relax and enjoy the outdoor stuff that is nearby. The website says there is another national park nearby, hot springs, swimming holes, lots of places to hike.........sounds like a neat place.
31 de marzo Estoy en Costa Rica....I am in Costa Rica. Well it is quite different here, for a person who just spent a month in Guatemala. I have never been to Puerto Rico, but am wondering if there are similarities. There are lots of large breasted women with bare shoulders and tight jeans walking the streets. Many of them have died their black hair blonde, or even red. I haven�t seen so much jiggle, since I left the US. People in general here look like Puerto Ricans to me. There doesn�t seem to be any idigenous persons here at all. I took the bus from the airport. It only cost about 60 cents for the half hour ride and was even nicer than the buses in Mexico. The tap water, I am told, is safe to drink, at least at the hostel!!!! The turist scene is very different too. Very few of the tourists seem to speak any Spanish, unlike Guate where many of the tourists came specifically to study Spanish. The hostel where I am staying in San Jose is populated with frat boys and the girls who love them. I just spent over an hour watching one of the final four basketball games with a group of them!!!!! The channel we were watching was a CBS station from the US, with commercials in english. I did get some good travel ideas though. The hostel has a pool and a nice garden and only costs $10 a night, which is a much better deal than anything I found in Mexico or Guatemala. Most people here are on spring break. So overall the place seems rather comfortable. One thing that is strange is that the local currency, the colon, is valued at 520 colon to the dollar. So a meal in a local restaurant, or Soda as they are called, costs 1300-2000 colon, or under $4, which is not that much more than I paid for the same meal in Guate. I am planning on doing day trips during the upcoming week, because it is Semana Santa, or Holy Week, and the transportation system seems to shut down for the latter part of the week. After the holiday, I�ll head up north to MonteVerde and a little town called Santa Teresa and then into Nicaragua. I hope to upload some new photos soon.
10 de marzo So finished two weeks of school and have 2 more to go. I fell like I am making great progress, but it is still so slow. So this town is actually OK, not for a place to live, but for a place to be right now. I finally got my room that I was living in for 3 months last year. I had been in a room with one window out onto the street. It was unbelievable how dirty my desk got everyday. Now i am in a fairly peaceful setting. My live is very low key. I study, shop for food, do some walking in the country and have started going to some of the local venues to listen to music. The music is really good and I just like to go there alone and just listen for an hour or 2. Lots of these guys and groups would be a hit at FalconRidge.
So I booked my flight to Costa Rica for March 31 and will be coming back on April 25th, spending a few days here in Xela, maybe, and then settling in Oaxaca for May and June. That would be a great time for anyone who chooses to come and visit.
So school is really intense. The teachers at Sakribal are great and i am studying with the best of the best. Olga, the director, has really made a fine school. I work very hard in class and spend a lot of time at home going over my notes and coming up wiht questions for my teachers. Last year, I think i just spent too much time here and it showed in my attitude. The teacher that I am working with right now, Edna, told me that last year she didn�t like working with me sometimes, because at times I was a bit too challenging...........as in I challenged her explanations. I think my personality leads me to do that and it is more prevalent when I am tired or stressed or feeling like �I�ve been here too long� Oh well, this year we are getting along well. I am in the process of producing a big �cheat sheet�or a note book with lots of little info that i want to remember that isn�t found in any books. There is a surprising amount of grammer that does not appear in any book, even the advanced ones, and a good native speaker is an extremely valuable resource.
Well that�s about it for now. Feeling well, hope you are too.
23 de febrero I am back in Xela, Guatemala. I forgot how DIRTY it is here. i have been telling people in Oaxaca, that Mexico is more like the United States than it is like Guatemala, and I wasn�t kidding. I went for a walk in the hill above this town, one of my favorite walks. Well, I was attacked by a bull. Good thing he was on a rope!!!!!! Then a little while later a dog came after me, until he was attached by two other dogs. I will try that walk again, but may have to give up on it. There are a couple of other walks on another hill that I will fo to again while I am here. I�ll be here for 5 weeks, 4 of which i will be spending with 2 different teachers at my school, Skribal. Then a short trip to Nicaragua and then Costa Rica, then back to Oaxaca in mid to late April until June 29th, when I will fly back to Florida!!!
To get to Guatemala I went thru San Cristobal, Chiapas, Mexico. I could tell that I was near the border with Guatemala, from the women in traditional clothing walking the streets selling stuff, some in bare feet. In fact a lot of the people looked indiginous, much more so than in Oaxaca. One thing that i thought of was how when I was in the uppermost town in New York State, near the Quebec border, there was absolutely no sense that we were anywhere near Quebec!!!!!! I wonder why that is? I also saw what might have been my future, or at least in the past a direction i might have been headed toward. It involves and older man bouncing around Latin America, studying Spanish and just kind of roaming.......alone. I don�t think that is where I am heading, but it is a place that a lot of men, and women from the US seem to have fallen into. This trip has shown me that I don�t want to be alone, and finding a partner at some point in the future, is something that i want and need to do.
I am using a guide book called Lets Go, that I got from Mark Black. Using it , I have actually stayed at a lot of hostels. The thing that amazes me, is the number of young people who smoke. In Guadalajara, it was a real problem. When i went to San Cristobal, i actually found a hostel that didn�t allow smoking!!!!!! I saw one listed that said there where plent of hamocks in the garden and nooks in the hallways that were perfect for doing nothing; but, what it should say, is those places are perfect for smoking!!!!!!! If you ever see in a guide book that a place is a hang out for young internations................beware, your lungs may not forgive you. Well that�s it for now. Hope you are all well, let me know how you are doing.
19 de febrero Came back to Oaxaca for a few days after my trip up north. It was a great trip. I liked Cuernavaca and Guanajuato a lot. El Distrito, felt in a lot of ways like NYC and even though it is very different than the other towns and very huge, I felt comfortable there and quickly learned my way around. It has a lot of charm, which I did not find in Guadalajara. Last Saturday I went to this event which was a celebration of the Queen of the Istmus. Apparently this is a contest that both men (drag queens) and women compete for. I am told that last year a man won, but this year a woman one, and the party was, in celebration of the queen. The istmus, I am told, has a lot of gay guys, and it seems many of them dress up in drag very often. I havent made it there yet, but hope to before I come back to the US.........Stay tuned Right now I am in San Cristobal, having taken the overnight bus here. This morning I went to the local caves and now I am just relaxing a bit before my trip tomorrow to Xela Guatemala. I wonder what it will be like going back there for the third time in three years. I was really learning a lot in Oaxaca, but I am feeling that some time back at Sakribal will be worth it.
11 de febrero San Miguel was nice and I had a great time at La Gruta, and actually met a few girls that I hung out with the rest of my stary. I also went to Guanajuato.......really nice town, very livable. So now I am in Guadalajara.....or as it should be called Whatahorror. I heard this was a great town, but not from what I have seen. First of all the bus blew a tire on the way here from San Miguel. I got ripped off from the cab driver from the bus station. This was the first time that I took a cab on this trip, and probably the last. The hostel is a bit dreary. The people here are rude. The Metro goes no where interesting, the one gay bar I went to was full of sleazeballs.................................Any way , so last night i met my first room mate, at first I thought it was Angela Davis, but we hit it off and spent most of today walking around and exploring this town. This is the least interesting town that i have been to on this trip and I am looking forward to going tomorrow to Patzcuaro, and getting back to Oaxaca.
6 de febrero So after spending time in this city, I kind of like it. Have done a lot of walking and Metro riding, even took a light rail line to the way outskirts of the city......caused quit a stir in the market at the end of the line. Visited an archeological site today which was very impressive. Should be traveling another week before heading back to Oaxaca for a few days. Should be able to fit in 4 weeks of class in Xela before heading to Central America. This time has been good for me. Being alone her has its ups and downs. Very tired right now. Be well.
4 de febrero So i got to visit this totally awesome church yesterday in Puebla. I'll put some photos up when I get back to Oaxaca. The church, Nuestra Senora de Lourdes, is make of rocks, not of rock, but of rocks....never saw anyting like it in my life. I took me all day to find it. I had seen it on a bus tour as the bus drove by. So I wanted to go back and get a closer view. I described it to more than a dozen people, all but the last 2 insisting no such thing existed. Much of this occurred within a few minutes walk of the place.
Right now I am in DF, Mexico City, or that's what they tell me. At first I thought my bus must have gone thru a fisure in the space time continuum, it seemed like I was in Philadelphia cerca 1974. I just got back from a very long walk/Metro rides thru some parts of the city. Too tired too write more. Send me any questions. I will spend a few days here before moving on. Be well.
2 de febrero Right now I am in Puebla. The central part of town, where I am staying, is very European with many 3 and 4 story buildings. I like it a lot. This seems like a very livable city, at least the central area. What I saw of the outskirts from the bus was...........a pit at best. I found 2 bars in the online Damron guide, but with errors in their addresses. The first one, I was able to figure out, but the second one didn't make any sense. TodayI took one of those open air double decker buses for an hour and a half tour of the city and about 10 minutes into the tour I saw a building with a gay flag on it.................turns out it was the second bar. Before the tour ended we went by the first bar too. I'll be heading to the capital on Sunday.
21 de enero So wow, its been over a month since I have updated this site. There isn�t that much that I need to report on. My ability to speak is continuing to improve, I have made some friends, I am enjoying my time here and I think using my time wisely. I will be here in Oaxaca till the end of January and then will be traveling up to Puebla, Distrito Federal, San Miguel, Gudalajara and a few other places north of here. I will probably come back to Oaxaca in mid February and then may stay awhile before heading to the istmus and then Guatemala. I am doing well with the language, but feel the need to spend some more time studying at Sakribal. I will be in Costa Rica for the last 2 weeks of April. That would be a great place for anyone who wants to visit. We could all have a great time exploring Costa Rica together. I hear it�s a very beautiful place and would love to spend some time there with some good friends. I can be flexible with timing if need be. Just let me know. My plans for May and June are still up in the air.......Any ideas????
16 de Diciembre Well I have a nice routine that I am following here which includes studying hiking yoga.........The buildings in this town are being repainted at an amazing pace and at they rate they are working, will be totally repainted in a matter of weeks. There are only a handful of Federal Police in the Zocalo, and the political problems seem to have passed, or at least all the fighting. It usually goes into the high 70�s during the day and maybe into the high 50�s at night and is sunny everyday. I am feeling like I will be able to master this language. I don�t have much else to say, but that things are well here in Oaxaca. Write when you can.
09 de Diciembre Things seem to be returning to normal here in Oaxaca. The biggest sign of that is many buildings are being repainted, so there must be some security that the marches and troubles are waining. I am still doing a lot of studying and quite a bit of hiking too. Within the next couple of weeks, I am planning to do a 2 day hike in a nearby wilderness, with my neighbor Hank, who did a thruhike of the AT in 99. So , I spend a lot of time on my roof deck studying and am now doing evening yoga up there too. I got my Visa extension till May, but am planning to only stay till the end of January and then am heading to Guate till April, then Costa Rica for a few weeks (probably the second half of April) then back to Guate for some more studying and then to GreyFox and FalconRidge.............major change. Actually, my long made plans didn�t make it out of the Oaxaca airport!!!!! I am probably not making any sense, and I guess i could write for the next hour or two with all the things going on in my head.........but will save it for now, till it all becomes more clearer. I am in a good spot physicaly and mentally. I hope that all is well with you.
30 de Noviembre Well things seem real quiet now. I am getting a lot of studying done and the weather is great. The intersection that I took a video of, has been cleaned up and is now open to traffic. For the moment, things are back to normal!!?? The forest nearby is still closed, I am told for reforestation, but I have a couple of other day trips around the area planned that will take me to some other archeological sites and a supposedly special waterfall.....the last thing taking three buses to get to. The buses here....I can actually stand up inside them and when I took one the other day, I saw people opting for �the next bus� because they one I was on, had to empty seats......unheard of in Guate...... So all is well, hope you are all well. Drop me an email when you get a chance. I don�t have a phone, but do have skype now.
28 de Noviembre OK enough with the politics. This is a nice town and I am glad that I am here. The situation seems calmer now. The culture here is not awesomely different, but I feel comfortable. I am going to now focus more on my studying. I have a great roof deck to do lots of studying , have set up some language exchanges with some English students and the weather is warm and sunny every day. So things are going well, but I do realize to really learn a lot I think it is best to go back to Xela for a few months before heading to Costa Rica in April. I had some really great teachers there, that I want to work with some more. This past weekend I went to Yagul, and archeological site about an hour away. It dates back to 3000 BC. (see photos) It was interesting to walk around the place, but it was the hiking in the area that i liked the best.
One thing Oaxaca does have over Xela is the size of the gay community. So there are 2 banos here. One is right around the corner, but they are only open during the day and the guy at the desk was not very friendly. So I went to the other one on a Sunday afternoon, about a 10 minute walk away. The women at the front desk were very friendly. The place had a decent steam room, but was definitely a straight scene. There was an employee of the place giving rub downs on a very hard table, but he was using soap!! Most people were walking around naked, which I found surprising. So I figured, that since they stayed open to 11 on the weekends, that this would be a more suitable time for me to go........I was right...............
27 de Noviembre Things continue to change here in Oaxaca, and unfortunately for the worse. Saturday, November 25th, there was a march into town from 4 directions. I watched one of the 4 marches go by a block and half from my apartment. I saw tens of thousands of people go by, many chanting slogans and some with clubs and sticks with cut off nails. Some were painting graffiti on buildings on their way toward the Zocalo. There goal, I was told was to come into Oaxaca from many surrounding communities and encirle the Zocalo for 48 hours in peaceful protest against the current PRI Governor. Later on I saw some kids with shopping carts filled with rocks and 2 liter coke bottles filled with what I would say was gasoline. Many people had their faces covered. Later that night a battle erupted between APPO (the protestors) and the PFP (Federal Police) who have occupied the Zocalo since early November. I took some videos, but from way back, as I am only crazy enough to be in this town, but not crazy enough to have any thing to do with this battle. The battle raged on for hours. I talked with one of my neighbors, an American 84 year old woman who has been living here for 15 years, while the battle raged just a few blocks away. We could hear the blasts from the battle as we talked. Some of the sounds heard were really fierce and many were homemade rockets being fired, tear gas and maybe even bullets flying, as we sat and talked about the political situation here in Oaxaca. Lots of cars were torched in the battle as were quite a few buildings near the Zocalo. There are reports of 3 deaths and many injured and of many people being taken in to custody.
Today I walked around the area. The police have expanded their �turf�and have now also occupied the area around Santa Domingo church, an area just a few blocks north of the Zocalo and an area that seemed to be a leftist hangout. I also went over on the south side of town and took a video of the blockade of a major road, that was set up many months ago by the demonstrators. This blockade has added to Oaxacas traffic problems. I felt very sad and uneasy while I was there. I took a video of the scene. My apartment is between the Zocalo and the blockade area. It is a very complicated political situation, and I only understand a little bit of it, and there are lots of opinions of what is happening, and lots of opinions of what the �real� story is. I have no better information than can be found online. Google news is a great place to get info on the situation. So the city has a different feel for me now. While I still feel safe here, I am feeling a bit uneasy about being here. Lots of businesses around the center of town were closed today, but the area immediately around where I live was operating normally, completely normally. December 1st, when the new President of Mexico is inaugurated, could be another bloody day, not just here, but in other parts of Mexico.
22 de Noviembre Well things have changed here a bit. There was a skirmish at the Zocalo (Central Square) with lots of tear gas, vandalism of a hotel and the burning of a bus, and lots of people running for cover. The fight was between the FPF (federal police) and the APO (the local leftist group). It lasted a few hours. The next day, it was as if nothing happened. There are reports of more trouble on the 25th and especially on the first of December when the new President is inaugurated. The one that lost the election had his own inauguration the other day in the Capital. These problems will not end soon, but it remains in the Zocalo area. I live far enough away to not be affected at all. I did want to do a hike today, but the park is closed because of the problems, I was told. My plans are to stay here until January and then head to Guatemala, where I will spend the bulk of my time. So I feel safe here and am looking forward to studying more here, but I think I can be more productive in Xela. One thing surprising is the bad internet access in this town....slow connections, and headsets are almost unheard of. The new photos show pictures of some of the scenes of Oaxaca and of an old aqueduct in the northern part of the central district. Any one want to visit? I will have a bigger place for the month of January, so that would be the time.
18 de Noviembre.....So I moved into my own apartment in a very nice little complex. I spent a day and a half looking at lots of places, and got to see a lot of the city. With all my time in Guatemala, it was relatively easy to get accustombed to Oaxaca. So what do I think so far.....Well, to one way to sum it up is to say, if Mexico is California, then Guatemala is................Alabama, at best! This doesn�t have the feel of what I know as a third world country. For example, the cars have all their lights working and very few (even the buses) emit any kind of visible pollution. The cars all look to be in mostly decent shape. I went to what I was told was an 'open market' to buy some vegetables and fruit and I get there and it was a building with a roof and very organized stalls. There didn�t seem to be any bargaining for prices and the place was pretty clean. The prices here are generally much higher than in Guatemala. I haven�t seen any women in the traditional indian dress, and everybody seems to have all their teeth!!!!!There is a lot more traffic here too, and it was hard to find quiet place to live. I have only seen one stray dog. Anyway, so what is the situation with the protestors?? Well it seems very quiet. The central plaza, known as the Zocalo is still occupied by the Federal Police and they are blocking all the entrances to it and an adjacent park, about 12 streets in all, to vehicular traffic. When I got here Wednesday each street entrance was blocked with 3 lines of soldiers in riot gear, ready for action. Now it is down to one line at each entrance. They seem to work in shifts, so there are still thousands of soldiers here, but there numbers seem to be decreasing. All the restaurants around the park are open. At the same time, city workers are in the park, cleaning up the place and seem to be in the process of getting ready to plant new flowers and grass and what ever in the natural areas. The soldiers tents are confined to an adjacent park and when they are off duty, they spend time just sitting around, talking on cell phones, writing journals, listening to walkmans or ipods, or in one of the arcades nearby. They are all in their twenties and for the most part just seem like regular nice guys. I saw one vendor giving some haircuts inside their tent area. They have a bunch of port o johns set up in the streets, that only soldiers seem to useThe side streets are full of troop carriers and these always seem to be full of the soldiers (police), just hanging around and laughing and joking, like any group of 20 year old guys would do. The graffiti that is on most buildings is being painted over as I write, and no new graffite seems to be appearing. Now, other than the graffiti, once you get away from the park, there is absolutely no sense of any problems. Streets and sidewalks are being relaid in various places and some service pipes are being installed in the process. Lots of buildings are being gutted and reconstructed. There are still very few tourists, but honestly, I can�t see any reason for tourists to stay away. I read online before I came here, that a University is still being held by the protestors, but I haven�t checked on that since i got here. It is way on the outskirts. I think the new president is installed on December 1, and again, I read before I got here, that many protests are expected. It was a disputed election, with the more conservative person (Calderon) declared the winner ove the leftist........ So, I do have to admit that I came here with expectations, and of course they were not met. The real uniqueness, I guess I would call it, of Guatemala, seems to be lacking. I really seems to be like a place that sits between Guatemala and the US....it is a mixture of the two. I just felt more in awe of the culture in Guatemala. This city is nice, but a bit dissapointing. The architecture is not as impressive as that in Xela or Antigua. I am happy to be here, but will not be staying to whole year like I had planned, but will spend more time in some other places, including Xela, Guatemala. I am right in the middle of making plans, which will be in my next update. I will get some videos and pictures up soon.
November 15th...Estoy en Oaxaca. I am in Oaxaca. I have already started looking for a place to live longer term. I could not get a 180 day visa, only a 30 day because of the troubles they have been having here, but I can extend it. I am already having opinions about this town, which I will wait to share till I have been here a bit longer. The Federal Police have occupied the Central Square (Park) and are literally camping there.......looks like Trail Days (a major hiker event in Damascus Virginia on the Appalachian Trail) The park is over flowing with tents, it is really quite interesting to see this encampment. From what I see all entrances to the square are blocked by police with very large shields just standing there......all day in pretty hot weather, in full riot gear. Pedestrians are passing freely on the sidewalks, past the soldiers and into and around the park. It does not seem tense at all. I said hello to some of the soldiers......some very cute. I have not seen any protestors. There is a lot of graffiti on buildings throughout the city, but I saw some people painting over it in some places today. I have a sense that this town has recently been through some major upheavel. People seem to now be going about their daily activities. There are very few tourists here, but I feel totally fine about being here. I am glad that I made the decision to come here. I have some more exploring and looking around to do the next few days before I will decide how long I will stay and what my ultimate travel plans will be. I will update this site over the weekend, but for now all is fine and I am safe and sound.
