Fiestas

Well then, here we are, 3 weeks into our Mexico experience. It’s funny how it doesn’t seem like its been that long and at the same time it seems like a lifetime. I find myself becoming more and more content and familiar with my surroundings. The fact that I don’t speak good Spanish doesn’t really hinder me up here at the farm, but my passive comprehension is getting better. But unfortunately the combined facts that Philip is such a good speaker and my perfectionist bent make that I haven’t much improved my speaking abilities. Ahhhh well. I can brag about becoming more bug resistant. The sight of a spider running over the ground next to my foot doesn’t induce heart palpitations, and the cold shower experience is…well…ok I’m not getting better with that. But I am proud of the bugs. The weather has been just lovely. My favorite time of day is after lunch when I have time to go down to the casita and take over the hammock that lies in the shade of two huge mango trees. The ipod provides the perfect soundtrack and I just sway in the breeze. The temperatures remind me a lot of swiss summers, warm sunshine and cool breezes are the norm.
We have had a run-in with the powerful pepper known as the Habanero. Amaranth had us seed them and dehydrate them so she could roast them and make this excellent pepper mix we use in the kitchen a lot. We had gloves and everything, but little did we know how much pain we were in for. Over the next 24 hours the strangest spots on our faces and arms, even Philips toe would start to tingle and then burn like heck for over an hour. In my desperation I tried everything, dowsing the spot with water or aloe or milk, but I finally found the cure….butter! Yep, I shamelessly slathered butter on my face in the middle of the night and boom! I was cured. That was an exciting find, and now we know. Butter cures all that ails ya. We've been making some consistently yummy meals: fresh made salsa, chicken fried steak, dry-rub grilled chicken, and so much more. A highlight is the meat, all fresh and local and cut by our favorite butcheress, Andrea, and the fresh, hommade cheeses by Ruth. I am incuding a picture of my personal favorite, panela....yum!
Speaking of butter and other yummy things, I think the biggest thing that has changed about me in my time here so far is my view of food. It’s quite different to have a lot of the food you eat come from right outside your door. The eggs that go into your omelet were laid that day. I have to say I feel so much better without access to all the processed foods and frozen things that were a part of daily life back at home. The meat here has also been exceptional; all that we’ve had here has been just recently slaughtered and not grown in industrial cattle yards but just from right there on the hill. The chicken probably saw the light of day, and not only that, it ate what it wanted. I think that despite the fact that those kinds of foods are so much more expensive back home, we will be changing how we eat. But time will tell, I have to admit to missing Aunt Jemima’s pancake mix and Cheez-its.
Right now we are sitting in our newest find, a hotel on the beach where you can come and hawk the wifi for free if you buy a drink. It has an incredible view of the beach and plenty of shade and a little swimming pool as well. I am sure we will come swimming here sometime soon.
With our time at the farm coming to its last half, we are looking forward to post-farm life and what we might do. Our current plan is to visit the huge city of Guadalajara (pop 6 million!) and the beautiful city of Guanajuato. From there we hope to find another farm to stay at for 2 to three weeks and then head our southernmost destination of Oaxaca. We will probably end up flying there as it’s pretty cheap to fly here domestically and the 4 days of bus trips it would take doesn’t sound really appealing. We have heard back from some farms, but nothing is set yet.
We shall be updating again soon I am sure, probably on Saturday or Sunday. Tonight apparently there is going to be a celebration in Aticama! Something having to do with the Virgin of Guadalupe. Tell you how that goes later!
Cheers till then.
~Julia

Later that week...

Well, as it turns out, the guidebooks were right, Mexicans will take any opportunity to party. It was quite the fiesta. It was neat to see all the families come out in droves, the pakcs of roving teens and the women all clustered together laughing and showing off their babies. The small zocalo was packed with people from all around, and it was refreshing to see familiar faces from around town and eat all the goodies. I finally got to have my first churros! This old woman and a man who may have been her son just set up this huge vat of boiling oil on the side of the road with this inredible dough-extracting contraption that they used to pipe them into the oil, then it was all coated in a sugar-cinnamon mix and wrapped in a paper sac....heaven.

The hub of the activity centered around this huge bamboo contraption called the "castillo" or castle. It was about 35 foot high and basically had these huge wheels attached to it that were peppered with fireworks and, when lit, would whirl around, spraying anyone who was near with a shower of sparks. There were 4 wheels, each with a sea-creature in the middle that would light up as it spun. Then the outline of the virgin of Guadalupe with the words "Vive la Virgen de la Guadalupe" burst into flame, andto crown it all, a whirling 3d Pegasus. Then the "corona" lifted off the top of the thing and went way high in the sky and burst into fireworks. It was all quite neat, dispite the fact that we were so tired and the fireworks started 45 minutes late. Thats Mexican timing for ya.

As for work on the farm, weve been focusing on building the Playboy Mansion of chicken houses, and uprooting and restarting a garden for greens. Most of the garden work atcually came from building a path through the raised bed. Its amazing how much time digging and placing rocks takes. Its shocking really. We also made a burn pile for all the random piles of palm fronds and sticks laying about. Now I know how a rotisserie chicken feels.

Today (valentines) we spent some time in San Blas on the beach getting blasted by sand, searching the tianguis (flea market) for some shirts and getting side tracked by the awfulness that was the baby chicks. There were these boxes of DYED baby chickens in every color imaginable, and not like...pastel colors either, bright blue, purple, pink, you name it. And to top it all off, they had these digusting little plastic baseball caps glued to their heads. It was rather ghastly, and it seemed like every single little kid had one or two. Ahh well, we also went to a place where our hosts told us might be able to help us get into a group to go whale-watching. We could go just the two of us, but it costs well over 1000 pesos, and the boats fit up to 6 people and it costs the same wether you have two people or 6. So hopefully something comes of that. We also found a mini-super with a few imported goods like extra-virgin olive oil and nutella!!Exciting!

We also just booked a taxi to and from a trail-head of the Kora waterfalls here. Apparently its a pretty easy hike there yourself, but getting the taxi to the trail-head and back there and back is tricky and a guy here at Casa Manana helped us book it. So tommorow its off to the falls!Love all of you!!!And happy valentines day!

~Julia