Visit to a Doctor in Mexico

I had a very interesting experience today. I went to the doctor.

I wasn't sick, but I had a prescription that I wanted to refill. Most prescriptions can be refilled at any Mexican pharmacy, but not mine, as it was for the generic version of Valium, and that requires a doctor's prescription. Sometimes I get freaked out by a lot of wild traffic, and I had discovered last year that a little tranquilizer helped. I don't use it when I'm driving, just when Kelly is driving our motorhome in heavy traffic or winding mountain roads.

So when I was told that I'd need to go to a doctor, I thought, fine. It seemed like a worthwhile adventure, and better when not sick than if actually feeling bad. A Mexican friend of mine here in Guanajuato recommended a doctor and showed me last Sunday where the doctora's office was. (Doctora means she's a woman doctor.) We went to a shop that seemed to sell bootlegged CDs and a few other things, on the main street near a major bus stop beyond the market. We walked through the shop, which was a kind of hallway, veered left, went up a few stairs, and were in another hallway with some office doors opening off one side. These were the offices of two doctors. On the other side of the hall were some 15 or 20 attached chairs. My friend told me that the thing to do was to ask who was last when I arrived. I noted that the doctora my friend knew worked Monday through Saturday from 3PM to 9PM. The other doctor worked mornings, and they took turns working Sunday mornings.

So this afternoon I arrived at the hallway around 3:30 and asked who was last. A friendly woman said she was, and waved at a seat next to her. So I sat down. There were over a dozen people sitting, but soon I realized that I was probably only about 6th in line. And the line moved fast... a mother and her daughter took 7 minutes, an elderly couple took about 15 minutes, another mother-daughter combo took 8 minutes, and so on.

I began chatting with the woman next to me, who was holding a sleeping seven-year-old boy. He had come home from school not feeling well. I asked if the doctora was a pediatrician and the woman said yes, but she sees patients of all ages. I explained that normally in the U.S., you had to call up and make an appointment, and the woman said that for specialists in Mexico you do that. She added that both this doctora and the man who worked mornings were very good.

Soon it was her turn, and then my turn. As I walked in, I saw a white-clad woman of perhaps 35 or 40, sitting at a desk in a small office which had an examining table, a scale, some cabinets, and a few other things. It did not contain a telephone.

If the doctora spoke any English, she did not try it out on me. She asked my name, and neatly wrote it down on a notepad where each patient got one line for their name and any notes she made. I pulled out my old prescription from the U.S. and explained in a slightly embarrassed manner that I was sometimes afraid of traffic. We exchanged a few words about the situation, and she wrote me a prescription for one box of 5mg Valium. She added that she was only allowed to prescribe one box at a time. I thanked her, paid her my fee in cash, and left. I had noticed a sign in the hallway asking people to pay with exact change.

My fee? 50 pesos, just over $4.50 U.S.

I went to the Farmacia Similares next door, but they didn't have it and pointed me to the Farmacia San Francis de Asis we could see across the street. They didn't have it either, and phoned their other store, which was also out. I tried another pharmacy next door to the Saint Francis and the man said they had it only in 10 mg, but not in 5mg. There were a lot of pharmacies in the area because it's close to the Red Cross hospital. There are also several funeral homes in the area, presumbly for the same reason.

Just beyond the hospital there is a big chain grocery store, the Comercial Mexicana. I went to their pharmacy, and the woman who helped me there was a treasure. When she didn't have my prescription in 5mg, she looked it up and said it was no longer available in that size in Mexico. She suggested that I go back to the doctora and get a prescription for 10mg, which is widely available. I explained that I was really only taking 2 or 2.5 mg, and cutting 10mg 4 ways might not be very accurate. She grasped that before I had finished stumbling around in Spanish to say it, and pulled out a much newer version of a book the doctora had looked something up in -- probably a Mexican equivalent to our PDR -- and found that there was another brand which came in 5mg and was the same thing. She was out of stock, but expected to get more tomorrow after 11.

I asked her advice on a matter of etiquette. Did I need to wait in line all over again in the hallway, or could I ask the next person in line if I could pop in for a minute? She said I could. I was glad, because when I got back there, the line was a good bit longer. The next person in line did say it was okay, so I popped in and the doctora exchanged my useless prescription for a new one. She commented that it would actually be better because there were twice as many pills in the box for the other brand.

So I have my prescription. And one of these days, I'm sure it will get filled.

[Update: I went back to the pharmacy, encountered a woman as curt as the other had been helpful, and had my prescription in hand in three minutes for a price of about $16 US.]

I must say I am impressed with how efficiently this system provides basic and affordable health care. My price for the visit was 50 pesos, but there was a sign in the hall that the cost of a consultation was 20 pesos. I think that the doctora said that I was paying more because it was required for a controlled substance prescription -- this was one of those times when I would have had to question her more to be sure that I had understood her Spanish, and it didn't matter enough to me to do so. If Mexico has many more simple doctor's offices with inexpensive visits, we could sure learn something! If I had had anything more complicated to explain, I would have sought out a doctor who spoke English.

Couple of Spanish Tidbits

Just found out yesterday why Mexicans say "Bueno" when they answer the phone rather than a version of "hello" -- when phones were getting started here many decades ago, people would say "Bueno" (which means "good") to indicate that the connection was good. And it stuck!


The Nova car never did well here... "No va" [does not go] did not inspire confidence.

Quiet Friday Night

Last night when I went to bed around 11, I was still pretty awake, so I started paying deliberate attention to the sounds. Someone must have been walking along our street about two blocks down the hill, because the barking from rooftop dogs in that direction reached a frenzy.

A motorcycle roared up the hill past us, and I followed the sound as it faded off into the distance, going around the curves of the Panoramic highway. Not an unpleasant sound.

The dog-frenzy had diminished by now, so I could hear three or four other clusters of dog sounds from the hill across the arroyo from us. (This photo is a night view from our home.)

A few cars went by, then a truck. A car with a bad muffler stopped very close to us on the road, and it stayed there quite a while... well, maybe a minute or two. Then it turned and came down into our campground. A number of local people park their cars in here.

A different dog choir was carrying on now. I think it included the rooftop Rottweiler up the hill from us, with his deep voice. I was glad I had seen his owner, a woman my age, speaking lovingly to him one day when she left the house.

I heard the soft sound of a woman in conversation in the street a few yards from our camper. I couldn't tell if it was one talkative woman with a quiet man, or two women.

I heard the dear sounds of my husband sleeping next to me. Then there was a soft snore. It woke me, and I realized it had been my own snore! I smiled, turned over, and settled into the deepening quiet, as sleep took me away from the barking and the engines.

This was an easy weekend night. In the two weekends that we've already spent here, I've noticed more traffic, more loud music, the occasional loud voice. But last night there was none of that. I did wake a couple of times when the local cats had one of their usual fights.

Our first night or two here, right on the edge of the city, neither of us slept well due to these sounds. Kelly commented that it was around 4 AM each morning that the dogs finally slept (for the most part) and that the roosters took over.

The sounds tell us that we are in a different place, a different culture. I love the musicality of Spanish. It's pleasant that airplanes don't seem to fly over this particular spot. And sometimes, when I've had one of those rare days where Mexico is all a bit too much, the sounds push me further into that feeling.

But last night was pleasant. This morning I woke to the familiar sounds of Kelly making tea. When I went outside to do my stretches, just before sunrise, I savored the many-rooster chorus coming from all around us. Now that's a Mexican city sound I love.

New Guanajuato pages up on the site

I've just put up several new pages on this website about Guanajuato. Clicking on the title of this blog entry will take you to the general one, and from there, you can find your way to a photoessay page I did, and another one I'm still working one, along with a page about travel to Guanajuato, and one about real estate here, both rentals and things for sale.

It seems very quiet here in the campground this evening. For the past week or more, there have been a steady stream of Canadians (4 different couples, 3 in VW vans) and Germans (2 different couples, each in small motorhomes). It's been a lively and friendly scene here. What next?

Mineral de Pozos, or Just Pozos: Old Mining Town

Perhaps my favorite website on Mexico is Mexico Connect, a membership site that is well worth the reasonable fees. Along with a lot of terrific articles about many places in Mexico, it has a very active forum. (When I referred to my recent post here in the blog about Kelly using a mirror with our digital camera, it led to a very interesting and heated thread on where different people draw the line about taking pictures.)

Anyway, a day or two ago there was a short discussion of Mineral de Pozos (which evidently is usually called Pozos), and I got intrigued. It's an old mining town that in its heyday had 50,000 or more residents, but now there are something between 800 and 4,000, depending on what you read. Some of those residents are artists and craftspeople, supposedly drawn there by the low rents (always a phrase to make my ears perk up), and there are foreigners living there. The town has a bit of a ghost town feel, with many old houses of stone in varying stages of falling apart. Kelly says it sounds like his kind of place -- his father worked for years on restoring an old stone public building. (Not that Kelly hankers to follow his father's footsteps; his passions are more in sustainable architecture.)

When we tear ourselves away from Guanajuato in a couple of weeks to continue our quest for Mexican towns and cities we might want to live in part-time or full-time, we will be heading first to Pozos. It's not far from here or from San Miguel de Allende. The place could be a sister city (make that sister small town) to where we live in Colorado, in the old mining town of Crestone, which at its height around a hundred years ago had several thousand people and now has under 1,000, many of whom are artists and craftspeople. Since the construction during the mining era there was mainly of wood, there is little left, so in that way the towns are different.

I'm sure Kelly and I will do a photo-essay on Pozos after we've been there, and I'll blog about it. In the meantime, here is the website on Pozos, created by photographer Bill Leiberman, who lives there. His personal website also has more photos of Pozos.

An incredible mayor!

This isn't about Mexico, but the use of creativity and out-of-the-box thinking could sure apply, here in Mexico and anywhere. This article had me laughing and in tears at the same time. Click on the title of this blog entry for a wonderful article about Antanas Mockus, who was the mayor of Bogota, Columbia, for 2 terms. He did quite a variety of wacky and fun things to greatly improve the quality of life in that city. (Mimes for traffic control, women's nights out, much more!)

Conversations with Other Travelers

We are meeting more Canadians than Americans on this trip. I asked one of the Canadians who has been all over Mexico for the past couple of months if he had noticed this trend too. He said yes. I wondered why, and he said bluntly, "Because Americans are scared ****less." I was thinking that the weather was the main reason. It's likely a mix of many reasons, but there is a trend in Mexico that the proportion of Canadians in expat areas like Lake Chapala has risen quite a lot compared to people from the U.S.

A German couple commented on how friendly Americans are. They said that they were questioned closely when they flew into an Eastern U.S. city from Europe, "but it was done in a friendly way. They were just doing their job. German officials are much more brusque." They had traveled through the United States and encountered only friendliness everywhere. Nice to hear.

Taking Photographs of Local People

Kelly has been a professional photographer and he is quite comfortable taking pictures in many situations where I would be way too embarrassed. But the other day, he snapped a picture of some women in a marketplace and noticed that one of them cringed a bit.

That got his creativity going. Since our digital camera allows you to hold it away from your body and view the image through a small screen on the back of the camera, he tried sitting on a bench and doing that. Nobody noticed but the framing on the pictures was sloppy. So his next step was to buy a small rectangular mirror in a case, the kind a woman would use to check her lipstick. He went out with it and the camera yesterday, and sat on a bench on a busy street near the mercado (marketplace) here in Guanajuato. He used the mirror at a 45-degree angle to reflect the image, which was upside down, but at least he could see the image and tell whether it was more or less framed properly. He took some 75 images this way, and came home to play with the results.

Fifteen of the pictures ended up in this Guanajuato street animation. Choose the slide show, and you can set how quickly you watch it. There's a lot to notice! I didn't see the woman mopping the sidewalk until about the third time I watched it.

This animation is up at a very interesting website called flickr.com, where a lot of photographers have put up photos and photoessays of many kinds. I was particularly delighted by many closeup portraits taken by a man who has traveled widely. (If any of the links in this paragraph don't work, just try them later. Flickr seems to be fixing some technical problems.)

They got me thinking that I could take more pictures of people if I just asked them. So off I went with the camera, and the two photos in this blog entry are my first results. The man works at a little coffeeshop that has become a favorite of ours (on Pocitos, right by the Tunel Santa Fe) and the woman works at a bakery we frequent. She was a bit self-conscious, but I think she will like the results. I played with the images using Photoshop Elements. I've got copies printed out to give them both... and a new approach to photography while a tourist!

Mexican tourist visas if you're thinking of working or living in Mexico

Yesterday I put up a new page on this website with tips for entering Mexico on a tourist visa if you're exploring whether you might want to live or work in Mexico. Clicking on the title of this blog entry will take you to it.

Death of a Beloved Pet at Home, While We are in Mexico

Yesterday our dog Sunbeam died. A Basenji we'd had since her wild puppyhood, she had just turned 10. Our vet discovered a large inoperable cancer the day before, and because we are set up with our own internet connection, our housesitter (a good friend) was able to be in touch with us here in Mexico. Based on the veterinarian's assessment and our own feelings, Kelly and I chose what we believe Sunbeam wanted, euthanasia.

Over the thirty plus years of our marriage, there have been other deaths of family dogs. But we were there with Martha, Cider, and Teddy Bear, as each in turn went into the great beyond. Not to be with Sunbeam was incredibly hard.

I'm blogging about this because one of the themes of this journey and this blog is the exploration of living part of the year (or maybe sometime all of the year) in another country. For people who live with beloved animals, this raises big questions. Finding and paying for good pet-sitters. Whether to take animals with you on trips or if you move. The quality of your connections with your animals if you are gone from home for many months a year. And, as we just experienced, the possibility of a death with no goodbyes in person. I've been homesick for our other dog and our two cats.

Beyond pets, a decision to travel or live abroad means that you may not be available as you would wish for family and friends: elderly parents, grown children and maybe grandchildren, dear friends, and so on. You may have to make some hard choices about when to go back home and when not to. And what if you have health or other problems yourself, in another country?

At least with the internet and telephones, you can be in touch from anywhere in the world. A woman we know at home died unexpectedly last month, and we were sorry to miss the memorial services for her but glad to feel part of the community mourning, albeit at a distance. Twenty-five years ago we roamed Mexico and Guatemala in a van for several months, and communication with home was problematic.

I can't advise you on how to evaluate these kinds of questions as you think about whether to live in Mexico or some other country away from your home. But I can say: do give them a lot of thought.

Last night, Kelly suggested we walk into downtown Guanajuato for dinner. I wasn't sure I was up for it, feeling very drained (and not particularly wanting to walk through the streets of the city with tears streaming down my face). But I agreed to give it a try. We started down the very steep, narrow street that we're living on. It winds around and takes some concentration, as the best walking is on the flat paving stones in the middle of the street and you have to move aside whenever a vehicle comes up or down.

We had gone about a block down when a large truck was grinding its way up the hill. We moved over to the rougher cobblestones on the side of the street and stood waiting for it to pass. There were a couple of cars behind it too, we could see.

When the driver saw us, obviously a couple of Americans, he immediately stopped the truck's progress up the hill and called out in English, "Hello! How are you, my friend? You like my city?" We answered briefly and continued down the hill, our hearts lighter.

We had a nice dinner, and I only began crying once, when a poignant Andrew Lloyd Webber song came on in the restaurant. Nobody noticed. As we walked back home through the busy streets, we ran into an American friend and it felt good to be able to tell her about Sunbeam. We noticed quite a few people with puppies. As Kelly walked past a dog sitting on the sidewalk, it reached over and put its jaws around his leg, not breaking the fabric of his pants.

One small dog is dead. And dogdom and life, in all their variety, go on.

**************

(We sent out an email today to family members and to some of Sunbeam's many friends. If you are a friend of Sunbeam who wants to know the story of her passing or be notified when we have a ceremony at home and bury her ashes, email me.)

Mexican Architecture

My husband Kelly just did an interesting blog entry on Mexican architecture, with several photos. It's on a new blog he started at his site, greenhomebuilding.com

He has put more images relating to Mexican architecture at: http://flickr.com/photos/kellyhart/sets/

Kelly devotes much of his time to exploring ways that architecture can provide better insulation and use of solar energy... and be more sustainable in all ways. If you're interested in those topics, do visit greenhomebuilding.com. He's also got another site, dreamgreenhomes.com, that offers ecological house plans. He's working now on one house concept that grew out of what we've seen on this trip.

In Guanajuato, and loving it

Guanajuato is a very interesting small city in the Bajio, central highlands of Mexico. At some 6700 feet in altitude, it's got a nice climate all year. It's certainly pleasant now, mid-January. We sleep under a quilt at night, use our motorhome heater for a little while in the morning, and wear tee-shirts, jeans, and sandals during the middle of the day. Walking back up the hill to the Morrill Trailer Park after a downtown outing in the afternoon, we get very warm! That's partly due to the steepness of the hill we are on. Guanajuato is a city on hills, very San Francisco-like though much smaller.

I will write some informative pages about Guanajuato soon, and get some photos up, but now I'll just ramble a little. We are really loving it here... so much that we will be here for a month or more--we just paid for a month's campsite. This little trailer park (we are the only people here at present) is right in the city, within walking distance of downtown. We've set up Cando so that we won't be driving it at all while we're here.

With one laptop (connected to the internet via our satellite dish) and two people, we take turns. Right now, Kelly has gone out for a long exploration of Guanajuato's architecture which will no doubt take him past the place that has lattes that I discovered on one of my solitary outings. It's near the health food store I also found. I've got the computer to myself for several hours, tra la. After over a month of a lot of togetherness, the ease of each of us wandering around alone is very nice. Yesterday we went off together for a nice meal.

And this is a lovely setting, with hummingbirds coming by and a view over the city. Our basic practical needs can mostly be met within a couple of blocks of here -- bottled water, fruits, vegetables, meat, fresh bread, and other groceries. There's a guy who comes around in the mornings, calling out something in a musical tone. I went out and asked him what he was selling, and he said "gas." That's propane (or butane in many parts of Mexico, not sure which it is here), and we showed him our tanks. When one runs out, he'll take it off to refill it. Great, that was the last of the practical items I was wondering about. We have electricity, water, and sewer here at the trailer park.

There are a lot of barking dogs at night, their barks echoing across the canyon from the hill opposite us. Both Kelly and I have been kept awake by them at times, but we are adjusting. By around 4AM, the dogs' chorus gives way to the roosters. We hear roosters at any time but they are most marked before dawn and in the early morning, before city traffic picks up. And people's radios. Generally, it all blends into a sweet Mexican background.

This is our third time here. In 1979, we took a Ford van all over Mexico and Guatemala, and Guanajuato was one of our favorite stops. In 1991, we came on a business trip. We flew to Guadalajara and then took buses here. Our purpose in coming was to make a video, Student Life in Mexico. While we were in Guanajuato, we met some Mexican university students and ended up shooting Mexican Pizza, an intermediate-level Spanish language program. (I tell the story of how it came to be on that page.)

Our first day here this week, we wandered around downtown and enjoyed spotting some of the places that are in the video. Guanajuato is much the same... actually even nicer than it was before. They already had a tunnel system that keeps a lot of traffic out of the streets, and they have added to that. With the sophistication of a university town with some 20,000 students, there are countless coffee shops and economical little restaurants to explore.

I couldn't be happier to be in Guanajuato!

Learning Spanish in Mexico -- or Not!

This will probably be the first of several blog entries on learning Spanish in Mexico, as it's an interesting and far-ranging topic. Today I want to recommend a Spanish school I've never been to but know I would love, and talk about a couple we've met who do fine in Mexico without speaking Spanish.

While websurfing one day recently I came across a site for Amiga's Spanish Lesssons in Paradise, located in the charming little beach town of Barras de Navidad, in Jalisco, Mexico, right near another beach town called Melaque. Immediately I wanted to go there (and we may yet, this trip) and take lessons from a place that teaches through excursions with some classroom instruction. I also was intrigued by the comment that there are 5 magic verbs that can provide very useful short cuts.

Reading about their approach took me back a few years to the time I had been a volunteer teacher of ESL (English as a second language) to a small group of Vietnamese refuge ladies in Olympia, Washington. They were of my generation, having been young women during the Vietnam war, and English was quite a struggle for them. Of all the things we did together, the one they liked the best was our field trip to a grocery store, where they could learn the names of many foods they cooked with.

Field trips? Yes. Relevance to your life? You bet. See you at Amiga's! (Their website also has a link to a page about their town, so you can see whether you'd like to go there.)

But maybe you wonder about going to Mexico if you don't know any Spanish. I've just been chatting with the only other Americans who are camped where we are, El Banito near Ciudad Valles. Joe and Pat Lee are a retired couple who know almost no Spanish, but they been coming to Mexico for years. They've made Mexican friends whom they come back and see, year after year. I asked them how they did it without having studied Spanish at all, and Pat said listening carefully has been important. Bit by bit, they have picked up some. They've also taught English phrases to some of the children, who can then translate a little! They travel with a dictionary and look up words for things that they want to buy, ahead of time.

But most of all, they have a spirit of adventure about it all. Joe told me that one time something was going on -- he didn't remember the exact details -- and he thought he had it all figured out pretty well. Then a friend of his turned up, an American who spoke more Spanish, and he told Joe that he had it completely wrong. Joe's reaction, then and as he told me this story, was to roar with laughter. An easy-going attitude will take you a long way!

I asked for any difficulties they'd had, and Pat said she'd had a hard time getting anyone to understand when she wanted to buy some chicken livers. She also once asked where she could have her hair shampooed and got taken to the grocery store's display of bottles of shampoo! But she gets by, well enough to have taught quilting to a group of Mexican women. As they both say, friendship with Mexicans is not dependent on speaking Spanish.

Aquismon, a Huastec town near Ciudad Valles

Today we went to the tianguis, or weekly open-air market, in Aquismon, a town of several thousand people, largely Huastecan. The Huastecs are little known compared to the Mayans or Aztecs, but they are one of the most ancient peoples of Mexico and there are still many of them. In Ciudad Valles, a city of over 100,000, we had seen very little traditional clothing though people told us that many Huastecans did live there. As in most places around the world, jeans and modern clothing are taking over.

We had lunch in a little restaurant in Ciudad Valles a couple of days ago, and our waitress was a bored-looking teenager, standing in the open doorway, watching the street. I said to her, "You can see the whole world go by." She turned and began talking with us, her boredom falling away. It only took a couple of questions to learn that she is from Aquismon and lives there now, taking the bus in to work at the restaurant in Valles (probably a half hour ride or so) and going home to her quiet town at night. She wished she could continue her education, but there were twelve children in the family, and "we older ones have to work to help feed the young ones." The children range from 22 years to 3 months. "My mother was only 18 when she got married," she said, "and she has suffered much." She explained something about her father, but by now she was speaking very softly and rapidly, leaning toward us as she spoke, and and we missed that part.

"How many children do you want when you get married?" I asked.

"Only two! Or maybe three. That's much better. But now, in our town, eight children is still a small family!"

She also had dreams of going to the United States to work. As we drove out to Aquismon this morning, Kelly and I talked about how much more prosperous Mexico is than when we took a long trip around many parts of Mexico twenty-five years ago. We wondered how much of that prosperity came from the dollars sent home by the many Mexicans who work in the U.S. "That's a topic worthy of a Ph.D thesis," I reflected. Kelly commented on the tremendous industriousness of Mexicans everywhere.

Aquismon turned out to be a pretty little town. We parked several blocks away from the central plaza and followed other people walking to the tianguis. It had rained in the night, and people had strung up large tarps over the plaza and surrounding streets. Some of the streets had a very slick clayey mud, so we chose our route with some care.

At first, we were disappointed. Most of the items offered for sale were the usual fresh produce, plastic shoes, and cheap electronic or household goods. Most people were dressed like other Mexicans anywhere. But then, here and there, we started noticing older women wearing the typical blouses, headgear, and simple black skirts of the Huastecan people. I saw a couple of these women selling something wrapped in plant fibers. It was pilon, which is minimally refined sugar, like an extremely dark brown sugar in a solid block. I bought a package from one of the women, and she crossed herself with the ten-peso note (worth just under a dollar). Kelly asked permission to take their photo, and they shyly agreed. That's the picture above.


The pilon was surprisingly heavy. Here are pictures of it on the table in our RV, with the computer showing the size.

A man was selling plastic bags of a white vegetable. I asked him what it was and he said "yuca." He pulled a cooked piece out of a basket, and I ate it. It was kind of like a very starchy and dry potato. He explained that it was often eaten with hot chili peppers. He also had some bags of yuca that had been boiled with pilon. I bought one of those bags, and it was tasty. Kelly and I had had yuca deep-fried in Cuban-Puerto Rican restaurant in San Francisco once, and it was exquisite. Here's a little more information about it, from a food distributor's site: "Yuca (YOO-kah) is a prime crop of tropical and subtropical countries. Also known as manioc or cassava... When yuca is dried and ground, it becomes tapioca. Fresh yuca is available year-round."

We encountered another American couple, the only other foreigners we'd seen there, and fell into conversation. John and Shirley Ladd have lived in Aquismon for many years. He is a doctor at a clinic there, and confirmed Kelly's and my feeling of the greater prosperity over the past 25 years, even though there is a larger population now. Potable water is still an issue, he said. They live next door to their church, a Baptist one, and invited us to stop by. As it turned out, we didn't feel like we had the time, but maybe we will some other time. We were impressed by their deep involvement in the community... Both of them said hello to several people who walked by as we stood and chatted, and they introduced us to one or two. (I realized later that the Ladds were living many aspects of a dream of mine, to live in Mexican community long enough to be involved in it in a meaningful way -- perhaps teaching English or internet marketing in my case -- and to speak good enough Spanish to not feel like an idiot every time I open my mouth.)

I asked Shirley for any advice she might have for Americans thinking of living in Mexico. She recommended that you visit the place you are thinking about at several times of the year. It was a very pleasant temperature as we stood chatting on a January morning, maybe in the mid-70s, but she said it got very hot in Aquismon in the summer... they had seen 109 degrees in their living room! By visiting at different times, not only would you see the climate variations but you would have more chances to really get to know the place better.

Kelly and I had already decided this region would be too hot for us in the summer, or we'd have wanted to explore Aquismon further for ourselves. Mexico is sure full of fascinating towns. In any event, the smiles of the Huastecan ladies of Aquismon will stay with us!

Las Pozas, Surreal Architecture of Edward James at Xilitla in the Mexican Jungle

Las Pozas is a place in our minds as much as it is a surreal unfinished architectural fantasy created by Edward James in the jungle of Mexico near the town of Xilitla, San Luis Potosi.

As we wandered around Las Pozas a few days ago, I was more fascinated than delighted, giving myself over to the total weirdness rather than trying to make sense of it. It doesn't make sense. It is not supposed to, not on any rational level. Surrealism is enigmatic by its very nature, and Las Pozas could not be more enigmatic.

The place calls out for photography, and Kelly and I kept passing our digital camera back and forth. Here's a link to my photo page about Las Pozas of Edward James, and here's a photocollage where I played with a few of the images:



Who was Edward James?

Born in 1907 to an aristocratic and extremely wealthy British family, James grew up in a time when the world was falling apart. The First World War killed the men of the generation before his. His adolescence was described as being spent in a continous state of distress. He became closely allied with surrealists, and helped Salvador Dali and others to create by helping them financially. He married a ballerina but they were soon divorced, with no children, and he never remarried. He left Europe in 1940, going to the United States and then to Cuernavaca, Mexico, in 1944. There he met Plutarco Gastelum Esquer, who worked with him for many years. Plutarco married in 1956... he, his wife, and their four children were like family to James. Edward James lived until 1984.

I would love to read a good biography of James and Las Pozas... the best I found was this article on James.

The Creation of Las Pozas

In 1945, Edward James first came to Xilitla, and two years later he bought land there and began building. He cultivated thousands of orchids but after an unusual severe freeze, he put his attention on the architectural fantasies. He often left Xilitla to gad about the world.

Construction went on for decades, supporting as many as 65 families at a time and ultimately costing something around five million dollars. Things didn't get finished before others were begun. Edward James lived in one of the buildings at times, and at other times, lived in nearby Xilitla, at El Castillo, built by Plutarco. (You can stay at El Castillo as a guest now, as it is a bed and breakfast.) See my blog entry on Xilitla, just before this one.

We bought a very nicely done magazine/book in English and Spanish, called Las Pozas de Edward James, Xilitla, San Luis Potosi (only 40 pesos, about $3.70 at present, with color photos... contact information for the publishers is revistahuasteca@hotmail.com, I don't know if they read English.) From it, we learned many more details. One interesting one is that in 1952 in Xilitla, Edward James met Carmelo Munoz Camacho, a local builder, who became his architect and creator of many of the forms and methods used at Las Pozas. I got the impression that he was essential to the creation of this place, which might otherwise have been little more than a surreal fantasy in the notebooks of James.

Our Explorations at Las Pozas

After paying a small entrance fee, we followed what seemed to be the only way to go, though I did notice a small walkway going uphill that I remembered later. We walked along past a small river, more of a creek on this January day, and came to one of the many pools for which Las Pozas ("the pools") is named.

Then began my own encounter with surrealism. For as long as I can remember, I have had dreams of having to climb strange and impossible flights of stairs, never with railings, always dangerous. In some dreams I have succeeded, in many others I have not and have awakened in a sweat. Now, wide awake at Las Pozas and wearing my comfortable sandals instead of my better-gripping walking shoes, I had to climb a series of steps that were straight out of my dreams, like some form of Jungian initiation.

I did it.

Later, I was relieved to discover I would not have to go back down that way. There were several other ways to enter the maze that is Las Pozas, ways that were much easier walking. But my having done it turned out to be a kind of Jungian ritual that put me into a deeper connection with the mystery of the place. The steps in my photo-collage above are not the ones I climbed... but they are a striking part of Las Pozas, and they capture my dream feeling.

There are maps of the layout of Las Pozas, and much as I adore maps, I was glad we didn't discover that fact until we had been there a couple of hours. Not having a map put me more into a surreal frame of mind!

I loved being in the jungle, where many plants we know as houseplants were running wild. I loved hearing a Mexican woman singing from atop one of the multi-storied structures that I wouldn't climb. (Jungian initiation or no, I still made a lot of choices about where I would go.) I enjoyed sitting with Kelly in the restaurant there, eating a meal and talking about houses we could design inspired by Edward James. Kelly is working on one now, which will eventually find its way onto his site of ecological house plans.

I thought how much fun it would be to have a flying dream over Las Pozas. On a more realistic level, there are cabins you can stay in at Las Pozas itself, and that would be great fun too, I'm sure. Maybe at full moon! For practicalities of getting there, see my blog entry on Xilitla.

Xilitla, the Mexican Town near Las Pozas of Edward James

Xilitla is a Mexican mountain town in the lush Huasteca region of the state of San Luis Potosi, best known for the surreal architectural fantasy of Edward James, Las Pozas, (I'll blog about it next) just outside of town. We went there yesterday, to see Las Pozas, but we also took a walk into town. I'd noticed that the tourism literature often uses the phrase "Shangri La" about Xilitla, which is stretching things a bit. But the setting, naturally jungle with coffee trees and orange trees replacing parts of the jungle, is gorgeous. There is an old church, a lively plaza, and some of the steepest walking streets I've seen in Mexico. It population was listed as being around seven thousand people in one of my guidebooks.


Steep streets

Our walk into town was on a quiet dirt road uphill all the way from Las Pozas. I had seen it described as a 20 or 25 minute walk, but it took us longer uphill. We came out on a street which went past El Castillo, a mansion which Edward James' friend Plutarco Gastelum Esquer had built. It's run now as a bed and breakfast, and if I were to spend a night in Xilitla, that would be my first choice, even if it were a splurge! I think you may often need reservations. There are plenty of other hotels in Xilitla too.



We climbed a walking street past El Castillo to the town plaza and 16th century church. We stopped at a bakery where an extremely friendly man told us of his years working in the U.S., and how he liked it better there -- something we have often heard from Mexicans. He said the bread would be ready in "un ratito," (a little while) and when I joked that could mean anything from five minutes to two weeks, he laughed and admitted it would be a couple of hours. We were ready to leave, so we went on back down to Las Pozas, did a little more touring there, said goodbye to the spirit of Edward James, and drove back to El Banito, our home base for the past two weeks. The hot spring was just what we needed after all that walking and climbing!

Getting to Xilitla and las Pozas

We were camped just south of Ciudad Valles on Highway 85, and we drove our little Toyota Dolphin to Xilitla. We'd been told it was about an hour's drive and it took us about an hour and a half. (That's typical... we pass the overloaded sugarcane trucks but not a whole lot else.) We went roughly south on Highway 85 for most of the trip, then turned right at a well-marked intersection onto Highway 120, which 14 kilometers later goes through the town of Xilitla, then continues on across the mountains toward Queretaro. Just as we were coming into the general Xilitla area, there was a sign pointing to Las Pozas. It also said Edward James, or maybe just James, on it, and mentioned the restaurant. If you turn right there, you will also see a billboard labeled Mapa Touristica, and showing a variety of things to do in the area.

At first, we didn't make that right turn. We wanted to get a sense of Xilitla a little, so we stayed on Highway 120, which crossed a bridge, went up a long hill, and went through the edge of town. Any rig could do this, assuming the driver was up for narrow and winding mountain roads -- the bus lines go this way, as do trucks. We could tell when we were near the center of town, as vehicles were parked everywhere. Once we were on the far side of town, we turned around and went back to that dirt road, and went on it something around a mile to Las Pozas. There we parked, and when we left, we turned around and came back out the same way.

Our Dolphin is about 22 feet long. Anyone hauling a tow car would be advised to park at the sign just off Highway 120 and then take their tow car. For longer rigs, the tricky part would be turning around near Las Pozas. Kelly, who can drive anything (we used to have a 40 foot bus conversion) says it would have been awkward to try turning something that long around, and I'd add it could be impossible depending on where other visitors had parked their vehicles. But rigs under 30 feet with capable and slightly adventuresome drivers would be fine on the dirt road.

This dirt road does continue past Las Pozas on into the town of Xilitla, and we walked it. You wouldn't want to try it with an RV, as there are some tight curves and when you reach the town, the streets are narrow, steep, and confusing.

Okay, enough about motorhomes -- most people will be coming by car or by bus, and that should be fine. There are plenty of buses, good second class ones (likely without bathrooms) and maybe first class ones, from other cities in the region. Some bus tours are offered in English, from south Texas and no doubt other places, combining visits to Xilitla and Las Pozas with stops at other places in the region.

The Mexican Summer Project around Xilitla

When I was websurfing, I found a page from the American Friends Service Committee describing a summer project that has gone on around Xilitla every year for several decades. Americans, Europeans, and Mexicans between the ages of 18 and 26 spend about six weeks in rural villages in the area, building ecological stoves that require less wood for fuel and doing a variety of other things. It's all done in Spanish, so the applicants have to speak pretty good Spanish to start with.

This project reminded me of the summer I was 19, when I went to Sierra Leone (before its civil war) on a program called Operation Crossroads Africa. I was in a group of Americans, Canadians, and educated Sierra Leoneans who helped build a school in a town. It was exhausting, challenging, and life-changing for me, and I'm sure this project is for the young adults who take part in it.

The American Friends Service Committee is an organization I'm familiar with, as I became a Quaker during the Vietnam war. The AFSC, begun by Quakers in 1917 but open to everyone, has long been one of the finest service organizations around.

Xilitla is off the beaten track, but we are extremely glad we went there. And my blog entry on Las Pozas is coming in the next few days, with lots of photos.

Trespassing seen differently in Mexico: Mexican pros and cons continue

Continuing my series on the pros and cons of living, traveling and retiring in Mexico: here's a PRO for Mexico that most people would never think about. Back home, trespassing on private property is frowned upon, to put it mildly. Here in Mexico, it is only rarely an issue. For two weeks, we have been camping in our motorhome at an old hot springs resort / trailer park, El Bañito, several miles outside Ciudad Valles, San Luis Potosi.

Across the street there is a huge piece of property that is posted as belonging to the federal government. It includes a hotel gone to ruins and an active golf course. (The story behind that, in a nutshell, is that the govenrment was planning at one point to flood the area for a dam and bought the land but allowed the owners to keep running the golf course.) I noticed that the big signs saying the land was federal property did not say the Spanish version of "Keep Out."

Kelly started taking morning walks over there, while I have my main turn at the computer. The several groundspeople and the occasional golfer always politely said good morning, and nobody ever questioned him on being there. I've gone with him a time or two and it's been the same. Yesterday, there happpened to be several official-looking men with a truck with a federal Mexican insignia on it, near the entrance gate when Kelly went in. He said good morning to the men, and one of them said, in effect, "Ah, you're here for your walk."

One anecdote doesn't make a pattern, but we've experienced this many places in Mexico. People will tell us about paths through the fields. Of course, you're expected to not damage the crops, but otherwise, "trespassers" seem to be expected. We took a long walk on New Year's Day and got to a pasture of cattle where some of the bulls weren't so sure about trespassers, so we departed fast.

Many things in Mexico are much looser than in the U.S., and this is an example. Others include the number of people they can fit into a vehicle and the time for appointments. Better or worse? No, all in the mind of the beholder. And how you'd take this difference is definitely something to learn about yourself if you are thinking of living or retiring in Mexico.

A Tourist with the Turistas

Continuing to explore the pros and cons of living, traveling, and retiring in Mexico...

The turistas, as travelers' diarrhea is often called, is a definite minus in the equation. I can't count how many times I have had it over the years (even with following the guidelines of being very careful about water, raw food, and food prepared on the street or in market stalls), but in our previous two trips to Mexico I didn't get it at all. I do think that public health in Mexico is better now than in the past -- for example, bottled water is widely available -- but I don't know if that was part of my good luck.

Anyway, several days ago I felt quesy and soon developed a mild case of diarrhea, with a delicate stomach, fatigue, headache... hard to tell if it was a flu or the turistas. I took it easy, ate more yogurt than usual, and yesterday morning I woke up thinking I was about over it.

Wrong. The diarrhea kicked into high gear. So I pulled out my trusty People's Guide to Mexico and scanned through a long list of things that Carl Franz had tried. Best of all, he said, was Pepto-Bismol. So I got some at the pharmacy in a Soriana grocery store and tried it. And it worked great! I was way better by late afternoon and continue to be better today. I also got a bottle of electrolite (that's the Spanish spelling)there too, so it may have helped with my feeling better fast.

Naturally, if I had any clues that I might be dealing with something serious, I would have gone to a doctor -- or asked for one to make a house call to our RV, seriously, they do that for less cost than you could imagine -- but in this case it wasn't.

I think that eating the extra yogurt may have been a mistake, as it turned out not to be live cultured, so it wasn't helping my digestion any and the sugar in it was probably feeding the bad bugs. However, in Mexican grocery stores you can find yogurt that advertises it has live cultures. There's also something called Yakult that is a kind of probiotic, I think -- that is, it helps your digestive tract. I've seen it in Mexican grocery stores, the supermarket kind, near the yogurts.

Hope I didn't gross anyone out too much with these details. But the turistas can be a very real part of traveling away from home, a matter of adjustment for your digestive tract to the bacteria it finds. Once Kelly got it when we returned to the US after several months in Mexico.

Enough of this.