El Zocalo, last day in Mexico

The Zocalo is the City's main square and the largest in Latin America. I did not include a shot of it because I can only do 5 pix at a time on this blog and I want to go to bed.

This is one of the many Diego Rivera murals at the government's palace. It covers all of Mexican history from the conquistadors' invasion and enslavement of the indigenous people all the way to the 1910 revolution. It takes a lot of wall to tell that story.




Yes, that's a real organ grinder. We could hear him during the mass in the cathedral behind him. We could hear him from the roof when we were looking at the bells. We could hear him from down at the metro entrance 75 yards away.








Lots of spiral stairs to get to the roof. Lots of spiral stairs on the roof.











The cathedral. Very old. Very big. Very popular.







The results of the 1985 earthquake. Still not fixed or resolved. The whole city is built on a silty lake bed and parts are sinking. The earthquake ran its shocks peculiar patterns around the city. Some areas were harder hit than others.

We went to Chapultepec Park today. My pix from the anthropological museum and other park attractions refused to download. Sorry.

These guys came through just fine. Crazy stuff, huh? My mom saw some indigenous people learning how to do this farther south in Latin America. She was so excited to see them doing this here.

This is Storrs and me, Mom, at Teotihuacan, in front of the Temple of the Sun. Storrs climbed all the way up to the top with the other sun worshipers. I walked all the way around the base, and actually saw him up there, the size of an ant. Later we walked to the north end of the Street of the Dead, the main 4 km axis of the ancient city, to see the Temple of the Moon. This is a smaller pyramid, and not climbable to the top, but the view is WOW of the whole site.
Since today was a national holiday thousands of Mexicans, with a sprinkling of tourists like ourselves, were out in force. I do like to see "home" populations out and about enjoying their own cultural resources. We had a good time photographing the local population at play against the background of a World Heritage site.

Night on the Jardin

Our favorite model.







Teenagers know all the traditional mariachi songs.







Mexicans love their skeletons – they even greet you at restaurants.

This is the main sanctuary of the Paroquia. There's not much else to see in the church – the bell towers are off limits and the steeples on the front really just a facade. The rest of the structure is rather bland. The church sits at the east end of the main square of town, the Jardin (hardeen). I'll take some pix of the night life on Jardin tonight. It's an amazing social scene with mariachi bands everywhere and teenagers making out and families enjoying time together.

I tipped for his music, then took the picture. The other way around would mean I paid to take his picture. A smile and a genuine thank you go a long way...





Who lives in a pineapple in San Miguel de Allende...?











I saw this guy at seven A.M. Wednesday morning, and yesterday at 4 P.M., and other classmates have seen him at night. He shuffles around the Jardin, singing/chanting something. My mom can't make out what he's saying, and doubts even the mexicans can understand him. His song has sweet lyrical sound to it.

I wish I has audio equipment down here. even some of the sounds are different. ie. They ring bells for every mass (6am,7am,8am, 3pm, etc...) They ring them half an hour before the mass; ten minutes before (last call); and on the hour. Then there are the clock towers – think a smaller version of Big Ben.

Yep, that's a guy picking up a coin on the Jardin.

Today we visited the ruins of a 300 year old mining town called Pozos. We travelled in a large luxury tour bus and brought along our own pre-Spanish dancers to photograph in the setting. A both entertaining and non-sequitur experience.

Went to Guanajuato today. You can only access the mountain city by the sewer tunnels. Very elaborate. Think of a metro system with cars instead of trains. My mom and I met a family that let us into their apartment to shoot from the balcony and the roof. I'll post the pix of the tunnels and the roof top later. The lady holding the terracota roof shingle with the photo of Frida on it was the lady of the house. I bought a large clay scorpion mask from her doorway store front.

After a review of yesterday's pix we went to a hacienda outside of San Miguel that once hosted Pancho Villa. It was built in about 1570 and had rifle slits along the roof for defense.

Mi nueva amigas waiting for mass at the church across the dirt plaza.







We had some local girls come in to model for us. Not really travel or photojournalism; more like fashion photography. My mom hated it so she went out to shoot some burros. I had fun.





Tomorrow night will be a full moon.







A rifle slit.











My favorite amiga.

We started the day with slide shows from all three of our instructors: Jim Richardson, Raul and Sarah Meghan Lee. Check out their web sites. Cool stuff. Jim is on the cover of this month's national Geographic.
We're working toward getting comfortable with asking strangers if we can take their pix. I have a surprising amount of angst over this. It's a good exercise; easy to say – hard to do. Most of the residents of this city either ignore you, like they do all the other touristas with cameras and gringos who live here, or they want to sell you chicklet packets. (A few even beg. I saw a woman begging in her new apron. Ten minutes later she was around the corner working one of the stands in the vegetable market.) The service staff at the hotel and restaurants is nice, and most of them speak english rather well. I feel very self concious. I hope tomorrow goes better on our field trip to... well, I forget. I'll post it tomorrow.

Found this gal hangin' out in the garden.











It's hard being a statue.







Wires everywhere. No alley system like Livingston.







The roof lines are intoxicating.







My goal for the week is to hang with the bell ringer.

These three mariachis live and work in one of several enclosed atriums in the La Posada hotel where we are staying. While they play 24/7 they haven't bothered my sleep at all.







This is the outside of the wall you see in the inside of my room in yesterday's post.







And here is our plaza. Classes are held in the wing to the right.

Horseback pilgrims to San Martin.

I like the tile in the bathroom.

Day 1 - Leon to San Miguel

Reasonably uneventful flight from Houston. Hour and a half drive to San Miguel. Lots of families eating picnics along the road. Lots of feral or semi-feral burros and goats. Pockets of traffic. Turns out today was St. Martin day and there is a three day festival in a town along the way (St. Martin, perhaps?). Twice we came upon small parades of 50 or so people, led by a religious banner, marching down the road. Some of the people had walked all day to get to the village 45 minutes from Leon to get their animals, children, etc. blessed. The roads are narrow but no one seems to mind. The horseback parades stayed in the brush and carried a banner too.

Day 1 - Bozeman to Houston

Dateline: Comfort Inn & Suites, Houston. The room has 12 foot ceilings and chipped paint around the shower. Our flights were smooth and mostly boring, with the dramatic exception of an acrylic sunset somewhere over southeastern Colorado. The sun's fading light gave off one last gasp and layered itself tightly on the horizon for the night. The intensity of the colors - deep rich salmon on the bottom transitioning quickly through all the colors, including light blue, to darkest night with bright stars high above - cannot be adequately described, painted or photographed with any degree of credibility. Any rendering would seem contrived and exaggerated, or worse, amateur.