Tuesday, June 27, 2006
this seems like a very oaxaca color so lets go with it.... visited Monte Alban, the Zapotec archaeologcial site purched on the top of one of the hills surounding Oaxaca city. we looked quite like your typical american tourists...it is quite a style unto itself and can be instantly spotted anywhere. Nalgene water bottle, chaco sandals, basball caps, and oversized cargo shorts. i kept getting looks ascants from women on our way to get the bus....the site was really realitivaly quite, which can be a rarity at popular sites. it was not as divinely relxaing as Machu Pichu and not as interesting in my eye as a Mayan site, but it affords fantastic view in all dirctions. the large squat temples looked grand against the monsoon sky. flowers and the ramdom agave growing out of there side.
there is always a tingle of pleasure for me still when i visit archaeological sites. Maya would wonder off while i would stand in one place eye on the gound picking up sherds, shells, pieces of obsidian blades. once all the surounding hill tops would have been cleared and built upon, all the hill sides under cultivation, and every building brightly painted. the entire place bustling and alive. such a stark contrast to the dozen or so people poking about the ruins, speaking in hused tones. only one little boy ran exhuberantly through the great plaza.
we walked back into town, deciding not to take the bus. things always seem so much shorter traveling by car, but it was a fantastic walk...well worth it. we traveled from the peace and quiet of the hill top with its rich plant smells, past fields of agave. we wound our way down through the little neighborhood of San Juanito, the rich smells of late afternoon cooking fires taking over. every little house, even thouse made of coragated iron, had a profusion of interesing plants. i saw a million shades of bougainvilia alone.
we stopped in at a little cemetary, my origional idea for walking back. it smelled of decaying flowers, and fresh dug earth, one newly dug grave had yet to be filled. some graves were quite simple, cement slabs votive candels upturned or filled with water. others were were immacuatly tended and decorated with flowers, and papel picados, statues of agels and various saints garding them. a few had little churches erected over them.
finnaly we were back into the noise and bustle of the city. a cat fight between me and maya, entirely my fault, later we were in the centro. the strking teachers who have been occupying the centro for the bast month were getting ready for a march the next day. people were silk screening t-shirts, and sings were being made everywhere. everyone seemed in high spirits. and the street vendors added to the almost carnival atmosphere.
in the plaza of a church they were projecting footage of the police attack on them a couple weeks earlier. it was quite horrible...not having a tv i had not seen it before. it is impossible to immagine anyone in their right mind would order such an attack on school teachers! think of your dotty algebra teacher, your sophisticated english teacher, that's who those people were! this is getting into stuff for another blog, and i am off for tacos! lets just say it was a long and pleasant day!
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