A Joyous Cross from Oaxaca

This cheery cross caught my eye, on a table full of unique crosses and other folk art at an art show. "It's so happy!" I said in Spanish, with some surprise, to the young woman sitting behind the table.

"That is what my people believe," she said to me.

She was from Oaxaca, a part of Mexico much in the news lately for the struggles of the teachers and others there. She radiated a similar joy to the cross, though.

Soon it was mine, and I am greatly enjoying it. Its colors are even more vibrant in real life. A friend of mine chatted with the people at the booth after I was there, and she had the symbolism of some other crosses explained to her. I didn't think to ask about that, but I like the fact that air, earth, water, and fire are all represented in various ways.

Retiring in Mexico

A reader wrote to me:

I am interested in finding out how you like/dislike being retired to Mexico?? how did you decide where to retire to? what do you like most/least? and how you came to be in Mexico??

I like being in Mexico but I also do miss the United States at times, things like easy access to bookstores in English, my friends and family, and the ability to speak to anyone in my native tongue. I'm not exactly retired, but as a writer I can live anywhere I want! As for dislikes, each person is different. I guess the noisiness at times and my struggles with the language are issues, and sometimes I get overwhelmed by the hectic traffic. That happens to me in the US too, but more here. Oh yeah, the smell of plastic household trash being burned is on that dislikes list.

We decided to semi-retire to the Lake Chapala area because we appreciate the climate and stumbled upon our sweet little house for sale. There are a lot of Americans and Canadians here, and we find that is pleasant at times and a bit much at times. The longer we live here, the more we make friends with a lot of wonderful people, both Mexican and foreign.

That's the short answer. The longer one would include many other trips to Mexico and explorations of places to live. Look back through the old blog archives and through my online book Mexico with Heart for a lot more. And that would answer your last question as well!

Some Smells of Mexico

• The incredibly exotic smell of night-blooming jasmine wafting in our window
• Bad drains, though happily much less than I remember from earlier years
• Delicious aromas from sidewalk stands where people are deep-frying pork parts in oil that probably hasn't been changed in a very long time
• The fresh salt air at the beaches
• Diesel fumes from long-distance buses
  
• Tropical flowers
• Spices in the soup I had for lunch in a sweet little cafe
  

Visit to a Pottery Factory

Recently I was part of a group of women who went to visit a pottery factory not far from Lake Chapala (directions are end of the end of this post). The huge kiln was impressive! You don't see its top in this picture but it went up a good bit further; the steps on the left give the scale. It was totally wood-fired, and you can see the pile of wood on the right, a bit brighter because the sun was shining in on it. I asked how long the firings were for and was told about half an hour. I also asked if they burned tires in the kiln, as many of the brickyards do, but they said no, they used just wood.

They only do earthenware here, and leave it unfinished or paint it. You can also put an acrylic sealant on it (Sellacril is one brand name), though I didn't.



Much of their output is imported into the US, but we were most welcome to roam around the huge shed; what you see below is less than a fourth of the space. I asked what we could choose from to buy, and the answer was "All of it!" Prices were low... I got seven small to medium pots for just under $25 US.



Here's a turtle I bought there, now quite at home in our yard, sprouting one of the many spider plants that grow outside in this climate. He's just above our swimming pool, and when I showed him to Rosa, my cleaning lady and friend, she said (in Spanish) "Maybe one day you'll find him swimming in the pool!"


On our way home, we stopped at a brickyard. I was instantly fascinated by this small dog and asked the men there what kind it was. They were surprised by the question and basically said that it was just a dog. My theory is that it is all or mostly Xoloitzcuintli, an indigenous Mexican breed (aka Mexican hairless) that I got intrigued by in November,in Colima. I did a couple of blog entries about the Colima dogs then.

Another great outing!

If you want to go to the factory, they are very friendly and speak some English. They are there from 8 to 6 Monday till Friday and 8 to 12 on Saturdays. Depending on whether they have recently shipped out a big order or not, the amount available for sale evidently varies a lot.

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NEW! Someone else's directions: Susy gave me permission to post hers, maybe they are better than mine!

Here are my directions to the pot factory. I call it the "route of the blue buildings." :
Take highway towards Guadalajara. Pass entrance and pedestrian overpass to Ixtlahuacan. As soon as you pass under the next pedestrian overpass look for robin's egg blue Jehovah's Witnesses church on right. Be in left lane and take the retorno right after the Jehovah's Witnesses blue church and head back towards Ixtlahuacan. Get in right lane right away. Turn left onto road right before the pedestrian overpass you just passed under before retorno. You will see sign that points down road to Las Aguilillas. Continue on this road to Las Aguilillas. You will pass school on left, then preschool on right. Continue straight into "downtown" Las Aguilillas Watch for robin's egg blue building on left on corner. Turn left at this corner. Pot factory is in blue building on right almost immediately beyond corner where you turned.
To leave, continue on street to corner, turn left, continue on this street to blue building on right hand corner. Turn left. This will take you back out to main street, turn right, follow road back out to highway.

My directions reflect the fact that I was sitting in the back seat but they should get you there: If you are coming from the Lake Chapala area, take the highway from Chapala towards Guadalajara. Once we got to the Ixlahuacan area (the first town after coming over the mountains), we went under three overpasses (I think) -- one vehicular, like an on or off ramp sort of thing, and two pedestrian, so we were beyond Ixlahuacan (which I may not have spelled right) by the time we got in the left lane and made a U-turn at a retorno, that is, simply a place where we could do a U-turn. I don't know if there was a sign saying Retorno or not. I did notice that on our right at this spot was the entrance to a gated community with a painted gateway. Once we had made our U-turns (there were quite a few of us, in vans, with lots of space for bringing home our treasures!) we drove a very short way on the highway back towards Chapala and took what I believe was the first right turn, downhill from the highway. There was a sign visible from the highway, announcing the name of the little town, which was Las Aguilillas.

We stayed on that street into the town and turned left onto a street which had a small grocery store (tienda de abarrotes) with Coca Cola painted on the wall on the near right corner and a blue house on the far left corner. We drove down less than a block and the factory was on the right. I don't think it had any sign over it, but if you peered in you could see some pottery; it had a metal gate. We walked in and hollered and after a few minutes someone turned up.

UPDATE: Its name is Barro Oxidado, its street address is Zanzontle 22 in Las Aguilillas, and the phone there is 01-376-762-0439. I've been back twice. One time it was mid-afternoon after picking my sister-in-law up at the airport, and while it was open, the people who could give us prices weren't there and we had to wait for someone to negotiate with them by phone. The last time I went from Lake Chapala, we overshot the U-turn spot and I didn't realize it. We turned around near where traffic from La Barca joins the highway, so if you go that far, you have missed it!

If you aren't sure where it is once you get into the town, ask where the fabrica de macetas is. I intend to go back with Kelly and get more pots!

Tools stolen and what happened next

Shortly after we moved into our house almost a year ago, some tools were stolen from our patio de servicio, which is a locked, roofed small space with closely-spaced metal grillwork for two walls and the other two of brick. It's where we keep our washing machine, lawn mower, tools, and so on.

It's happened again.

Kelly's toolbox was taken one afternoon this week while the patio de servicio was unlocked and we and our dog were home in the house. Also, a person who must have been small got in a tiny window of our motorhome, made quite a mess looking for things worth stealing, and ended up just taking a few more hand tools and the speakers for our music system.

We had fenced our property but there is one area where someone could get in and evidently did. The deed was done by a group of boys or teenagers.

Yesterday when our gardener arrived, we sat down and told him what had happened. Roberto is very civic minded and is himself the father of nine, ranging in age from early 20s down to about eight. We asked his advice about what to do, and he said that there have been a lot of thefts recently in the town, but that often they are not reported to the police. He said it would really be best if we would report it, and that he would help us if we wished.

I said I had heard that small town police were often not that good, but he assured me that he knows them and that this would be the best action. We have a lot of respect for Roberto and quite easily decided we would take his advice. I had other plans for the afternoon but that didn't seem to matter -- Kelly alone would be fine. I still don't know if that is because they were his tools or because he is the man of the family, or what.

Anyway, the police came and asked what had happened and so on. They didn't write anything down except Kelly's name, but they strongly urged him to go to the nearby town of Jocotepec, the capital of the municipalidad (like a county) to file a written report. So Kelly and Roberto decided to do that after I got home so I could go too. In the meantime, they had a talk with the caretakers of the house next door, as things had been taken from it too. Kelly said Roberto and the other man had a long conversation, in quite rapid Spanish, about the causes of the problems with kids and so on.

It was about dusk when Kelly, Roberto, and I drove over to Jocotepec. I had heard that there was a Chinese restaurant, the China Inn, on the main road into town, but I had never noticed just where it was. When our business took us two doors away from the restaurant, that solved the question of dinner. I ordered takeouts, and they were delicious when we eventually got home.

We went into government offices which consisted of a waiting room and two small offices. First Roberto explained the situation to the young man in one office. This guy asked for Kelly's ID and sent Roberto across the street to a commercial photocopying place to make copies of Kelly's passport and FM3 visa.

Next, we sat by one of the two desks in the other room. Two young women worked there. They each had a desk and computer, and there were some file cabinets. A picture of Jesus hung over one desk. The woman who helped us had a document on her computer and she asked Kelly questions about his age, where he was born, and what happened. This took about an hour.

It was actually pretty interesting. I was grateful that we weren't there with anything more serious. Roberto and I had a chance to continue the conversation that we had had going earlier in the day, about what is going on with these kids. This is not going to sound any different from the US: bored kids, not a lot to do, parents who either don't care or have little time for the kids, drugs, alcohol. But hearing it here, from someone who is actually involved in improving conditions as Roberto is, made me feel more a part of the community that Kelly and I, and quite a few other foreigners, live in. Drugs and alcohol are definitely here, as they are in practically every small town on this entire continent.

It was getting late (Mexican offices, like stores, are open into the early evening) and I was quite tired. I just let Roberto's Spanish flow into my ears, in an almost hypnotic way. While I was following less of the details of what he was saying than I normally do, I was also taking in the Spanish in a more right-brain way. I liked that. Kelly and I were both really glad we had Roberto along as there was a lot we didn't understand in what the other people said.

I mentioned to Roberto that one of the women I had seen that afternoon was selling tickets for an event in a couple of weeks, a kind of tour of the town for foreigners on February 5, ending up with refreshments at the cultural center on the plaza. The cost is 100 pesos, as a fund raiser for soccer uniforms for kids. He knew about that.

So Kelly and I are still dealing with the repercussions of the event -- it's yucky to know that someone was stealing from us while we were right here. We are talking about changing the fencing, maybe keeping the dog outside somewhat more. Through Roberto, or some other way, we may get more involved in the town.

Meanwhile, the weather has been gorgeous, high 70s every afternoon, while our friends in Colorado end their emails hoping that we are staying warm and cozy. Every place has its challenges.

Ian and Carolyn's Move to Mexico

When we lived in Bernal, Queretaro, for several months in 2005, there weren't very many foreigners there. We did get to spend some time with a couple named Ian and Carolyn, who bought a house in Bernal. In fact, Carolyn was the one who rescued our cat Misty, then a tiny kitten. She couldn't keep a cat then, as she and Ian weren't done with life in the US. They had a lot to do before they could move to Mexico.

But they finally got it all done and they are in Bernal. Ian emailed us with the link to his blog, which is one of the prettiest I've ever seen. (No surprise -- he has taught Photoshop! )

Clicking on the title of this entry takes you to their Bernal site and blog. I even spotted a photo of Kelly somewhere there.

Upper La Floresta, Ajijic

One Saturday afternoon recently, we went to Ajijic to go to a nursery, Flora Exotica on the corner of the carretera and the libramiento, or bypass road for going to Guadalajara without going through the town of Chapala.. After my outing a while ago to the strawberry and raspberry farms, we're trying to find some berry plants for our own garden. We haven't succeeded yet but we did get some other nice plants. It's a huge nursery, and we enjoyed looking at all sorts of things.

Then we decided to go for a walk before returning home. We parked just off the main carretera, or highway, on the eastern side of Ajijic, by a neighborhood called La Floresta. It's a peaceful, suburban sort of community, with its own garbage collection and police, and popular with foreigners as a place to live. We had often walked last year through the part of La Floresta which is between the carretera and Lake Chapala, but we had never walked in this area.

Upper La Floresta is gated, though the lower one isn't. We liked these flowers cascading over the gate:

Here, the plants on the wall are metalwork:



Mexican tile work is often quite lively! These are from two different houses in the neighborhood:

Learning More About Our Town

Today I was chatting with our gardener, who was cutting back some juniper trees that run along our fence line. I mentioned that I'd seen a woman from the neighborhood taking some of the trimmings from where they had been put in the public area beside the street. She had told me that she cooks with wood, which didn't surprise me considering that she's somewhat gray-haired.

But I was surprised when Roberto guesstimated that about half the people in San Juan Cosala cook with firewood, small twigs to small branches. I asked if his family did, and he said only when they ran out of gas. The propane trucks cruise the streets daily, but few Mexicans have two tanks like we do. He added that when he was growing up, about 95% of the people cooked with wood and only 5% used gas.

Later this afternoon Kelly and I went walking a ways up into the mountains behind us. We were enjoying being on a trail in the woods, out of town. When we came upon a man sitting by the trail, a machete by his side, we stopped to chat. It turned out that he owned the land he was sitting on and that he was clearing the brush for a fence. He added that he was a building contractor and was interested in knowing about us. We soon established that we are neighbors; he lives about two blocks from us, not too far the highway. He commented on how the air where we were visiting was cleaner than by his house.

He invited us to come take a look at the view from his land, which has been in his family for over 100 years. We walked a little ways on the trail and he undid a simple pole-and-barbed-wire gate. We scrambled up the steep hill and sure enough, there we had a glorious view way up and down the lake, with soft pink overtones of the approaching sunset. He commented that some Americans had bought land just a little to west of where we were standing, and were planning to build several houses there. Kelly asked him if he would ever build on his land, and he said no, he didn't have the money. In fact, he has received some offers to sell the land.

"Would you rather have land or money?" I asked. "Land," he said. "Money just goes and then you don't have it."

He told us that when he was growing up here, over half a century ago, there were just 20 families in town. Vasquez, Cortes, and others. Homes were spread far apart.

As we strolled back down the hill, we came upon two of his sons, who work with him in the family construction business. One of them speaks quite good English, which he has learned mainly from doing construction for North Americans.

They were interested when I told them that Kelly also had been involved in construction, specializing in ecological approaches. Kelly knows lots of construction terms and the guys talked about all that for a good while. We ended up inviting them to stop by sometime.

Kelly's walk in San Juan Cosala

The other day, Kelly went out for a walk around our town, San Juan Cosala, near Lake Chapala. He captured a moment in one of the many soccer games that are always going on:


Here's a Virgin of Guadalupe. I like how the wheelbarrow and flowers seem to fit into the artwork, and you can see the black water tank on the roof.
But here the walk took an unusual turn. People were butchering a calf in the street:

One guy said to Kelly in English, "Why are you taking pictures?" Kelly said in Spanish, "Es muy interesante." The fellow nodded and agreed.

It didn't break my heart that I had missed this event.

A Blog by some newbies to Mexico

I enjoy some of the tales at http://www.mexico501.com where they both write and post pictures about about their experiences. They are in Durango.