Now that I live in Mexico, gratitude is my new Attitude. I’m amazed at how Americans can complain about the most insignificant things when, in fact, they live very cushy lives. I live in a city where some people don’t have running water; where access to adequate restrooms isn’t guaranteed; where food isn’t something that everyone can take for granted. I’ve had to deal with an occasional lack of water myself and I’m grateful for the tank on my roof. I’ve had to budget to buy razors on a pesos income and I’m grateful that my roof doesn’t leak. I’ve seen other people have to work from 8 am to 9 pm Monday through Friday and 9 to 3 on Saturday. I’m so grateful for my leisure time and for my college education. I could go on with this list, but I think I’ve made my point.

Q: In Mexico, what do many taxi stations look like?

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A: A line of taxis parked along a curb (and their drivers hanging around).

Today the municipal water service people came and dug a hole at the end of the street. They removed and replaced the giant valve that is used to turn the water on and off to our street. Tonight, the cement patch that they put over it was still drying, so the area had to be blocked off to cars. What had been placed in the street to keep people from driving over the wet cement? A stack of bricks and a plant potted in a white five gallon bucket. Actually, the plant was the perfect thing because it was tall enough to see. I get a kick out of my neighborhood.

Q: In Mexico, what does it mean when there is an orange emergency triangle on the roof of a parked car or truck?

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A: The vehicle is for sale.

Cuernavacan skies were crystal clear for tonight’s spectacular lunar eclipse. There was even a stiff breeze to keep the mosquitoes away. We sat in our patio furniture, binoculars trained on the dusty golden orb, watching the light recede and return. Words really can’t describe how lovely it was, but it hung there as if strung from two bright stars.

I found it interesting to imagine how I might feel about the eclipse if I didn’t see it as a relatively simple, but gargantuan mechanical phenomenon. Don’t get me wrong, I’m duly humbled by this reminder of my teeny tiny place in a vast and wondrous Universe. For me, though, this evidence of the motion of the Earth and Moon is a safe reflection of a higher power’s unfailing harmony. What if I were seeing it as a sign from the gods or an omen? Would it feel like watching a loving parent’s face turn from a smile to a frown?

My husband says that traditional Mexicans put red flags in their fields and crops so that strong energy from a lunar eclipse doesn’t cause loss of flowers or fruits. Some people still fear the energy of a lunar eclipse and tonight’s event makes me want to know more about the views and feelings of Mexico’s various traditional groups toward eclipses.

When you retire in Mexico, make special note of lunar and star events because they are often visible. You can live it up in Mexico by doing things such as setting your alarm to get up in the wee hours of the morning to see meteor showers or planning trips out of town to see the milky way.

This weekend we took three days and drove to a small town “near” Zitacuaro. I put near in quotes because Michoacan is a little like Montana in that places one or two hours from a larger city are considered “near” that city. This trip reminded me how darn hard it is to get around in Mexico and I decided that my readers might benefit from this information. When you retire in Mexico if you choose to live in a place that is a little out of the way you have to consider the increased difficulty involved in traveling.

We took family members from the U.S. with us on the trip and one of them was joking that Starbucks on every corner would be a bad thing for drivers in Mexico. You can’t afford to loose your edge for one second.

My husband was the family driving hero for this trip, as he is for all of them. He claims that it’s all just in a day’s drive, but here is what he dealt with between Cuernavaca and Zitacuaro, Mexico:

-narrow, curvy roads that climb and climb and climb, then drop and drop and drop, changing thousands of feet in elevation

-only one lane going each direction, or, if there are two lanes, dead-locked traffic (in Toluca)

-about 1000 meters of shoulder on the entire trip

-approximately 400 topes (speed bumps)

-huge trucks grinding up and down the steep grades and not a single passing lane

-bathrooms with no soap and sometimes no toilette paper (oh, whoops, that’s me that that bugs.)

-corrupt police officers that pull you over and invent reasons to take your car away to try to force you to pay them a bribe

-restaurants in which you aren’t completely sure that you or your family you won’t get sick

-sales people who give you less than they say they are. (They fix their scales or don’t put all of the fruit displayed into your bag, etc.)

-free range animals next to the road

-patched, rough roads that go on for kilometers

-inadequate sign-age for navigation

-no place to pull out in case you need to stop for some reason

-unmarked speed bumps

-unrelenting sun that burns your skin and wears on your eyes

Still, it’s worth it to travel.

In Zitacuaro we ate the delicious local bread that you just have to try to believe. My favorite is called mestizo, which is a woven combination of white, salty dough and brown, sweet dough. We ate mole with family that went down as quickly as parfait. And the tortillas! Hand made, soft, and flavorful.

On the way we saw countryside that makes you want to stop and snap photos–but you can’t because there are no shoulders and no pull outs, so we just tried to to burn each perfect view into our memories. We admired wooded mountains with patchwork fields covering their flanks. We were captivated by small towns snuggled into valleys bordered by towering mountains. We took in landscapes with backgrounds made up of layer after layer of peaks, each successively more blue, as if they were cut from paper in a shadow box. We saw children cantering on horse back, old men herding sheep, women in large brimmed hats leading uniformed children home from school.

We were reminded just how lucky we are when we drove past groups of women knee deep in a creek, dirty laundry piled nearby, clean laundry spread in the bordering pasture to soak up the sun. We saw men lumbering behind wooden plows pulled by teams of horses and wanted to linger to see how it’s done. I grew up with my head full of “Little House on the Prairie” but I’ve never seen how “Pa” did it.

When you live in Mexico or are just enjoying extensive travel it’s a little rough, but if you plan extra rests and breaks for yourself you’ll be able to keep up with the demands. Pack as if you were camping–bring your own soap and T.P.– drink lots of water and don’t be a whiner. Other people have it worse than you.

In most cities in Mexico the municipal water supply is intermittent. People have tanks on their roofs that gravity feed water to the faucets in the house. Some people also have a cistern under their house with an electric pump that can be used to refill the roof tank as needed. We don’t have a cistern, so must be careful not to empty our tank when there is no municipal water to refill it. When you retire in Mexico I highly recommend that you don’t try to live without a cistern.

For years I have tried to observe the water supply and only wash clothes while I have water coming to the house, but it’s tiring to have to plan around the water and frustrating when I run out despite my efforts to be vigilant.

I’ve taken to calling the water people to ask them when we will get water to our neighborhood (colonia). At first this started when I had accidentally run out of water and was desperate for more. I’ve had to call a lot in the last couple of months. Once when a rude lady answered the phone, she told me something about the water being every other day (cada tercer día), speaking to me as if I should somehow have already known about it. She was rude, so I didn’t ask her more about what she had said, but I was confused. I know that I often get water to my house on consecutive days so why did she say that it’s every other day?

On my most recent desperate call to the water department the nice man answered and told me that the water would be coming later in the day, after 1:00 p.m. I took advantage of having him on the phone and asked him about the every other day thing.

He explained that our water is every other day, but that on some days, when the people “upstream” from us don’t use all of the water on their day, it “overflows” into our part of the neighborhood. That little explanation cleared up so much confusion for me. That’s why the pressure is sometimes low (it’s on overflow days) and why sometimes the water comes really late (again, on overflow days).

I hung up the phone dazed by having such useful information. Then I decided to call him back. Why not have all the information I needed to plan laundry and other water-intensive activities? He helped me to figure out how my water supply would be over the next two weeks. Since the water comes every other day, one week it comes on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and the next week it comes Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. The following week the cycle repeats. This also explains why I could never observe the pattern on my own. With this rotating schedule and the overflow water coming to confuse me, I had spent years of frustration.

I am still just astounded that I finally have this information. When you live in Mexico you have to figure out the key questions to ask people and sometimes it literally takes years for those questions to occur to you. When they finally do, it’s like the sun comes out and birds start singing.

Rosana Hart of www.mexico-with-heart.com read Mexico: The Trick is Living Here and she liked it! Read her honest response to the book on her blog, by clicking the link above. You’ll also love her web site since it is full of wonderful information about Mexico.

First Published
on Mexico Connect January 1, 2008

It’s Hot in Zacatepec, Morelos

By Julia Taylor © Julia Taylor 2008

Zacatepec Morelos has three claims to fame – the sugar mill, the Instituto Technológico de Zacatepec and its soccer stadium.

There are two reasons you might want to go to Zacatepec, Morelos. The first is to warm up your frozen bones after a few months of northern winter – it’s hot in Zacatepec, really hot. The second is to be in a place off of the beaten tourist track, seeing the “real Mexico” as many call it.

It was October and still sweaty in Zacatepec. I was finally visiting this town because I had been invited to give an English as a Foreign Language presentation. After the presentation, a colleague generously took a few hours to give me a whirlwind tour of the zócalo of Zacatepec and to visit a church in nearby Tetelpa. My colleague is from Cuernavaca, and has recently become director of a branch language school in Zacatepec – in “the hot lands” as the southern part of Morelos is commonly called by morelenses. Apparently, he’s had some time to think about the hot lands. “It’s as hot as Acapulco, but the problem is that it’s without the beach,” he told me, sweat gathering on his forehead as we left a small store where we’d purchased ice-cold pop and bottled water. Later, as he guided a borrowed car toward Tetelpa, he explained the main reason for the differences in the temperatures, “Cuernavaca has an altitude of 1500 meters and Zacatapec only 910.”

Zacatepec has three claims to fame. One is the sugar mill itself. President Lazaro Cardenas inaugurated the mill on February 5, 1938 inside the burned-out walls of an older hacienda built in the late 1800s and destroyed in 1910 during the revolution. The president wanted to improve the economic conditions of the people of the region. Interestingly, the mill is right in the middle of town because on December 25th of 1938, the state governor created the municipality of Zacatepec as the head of Tetelpa, Galeana (the site of another ex-hacienda), and the former Zacatepec hacienda.

The second of Zacatepec’s claims to fame is the well-known engineering university, Instituto Technologico de Zacatepec (ITZ - Technological Institute of Zacatepec) where students can major in civil, chemical, biochemical, and electromechanical engineering among other careers. The university is part of the federal education system (SEP) and is almost free for students. The university is the outgrowth of a community effort throughout the 1950s to create an institution of higher learning. Until November 28, 1961, students who wished to continue on to secondary school after completing primary school had to travel to nearby Jojutla for their daily classes. The first classes offered were for secondary school students with higher and levels of education being offered as students needed them.

There are close ties between the sugar factory and the school, as some of the first community members who organized and petitioned the federal education system for the creation of the school were members of the factory advisory board. The factory donated the 7.5 hectares of land that are now the university campus and the workers of the factory each donated three days worth of their salaries toward the initial construction costs in 1955. (There had been an agreement between the factory advisory board and the federal school system that the factory was to provide 50% of the construction and ongoing maintenance costs of the school.)

The third claim to fame is a large soccer stadium adjoining the zócalo. During the ’50s the team won two titles in the First Division League Championship. The Cañeros (sugar cane growers) of Zacatepec are now Third Division, but it’s still fun to watch a game in the stadium. If you are in town, check for signs indicating upcoming games.

The polluted Apatlaco River supports Zacatepec, allowing for the irrigation of rice, corn, peanut, watermelon, melon, and especially sugarcane fields. Surrounded by sugarcane fields, Zacatepec is accessed by a wide highway leading from the toll Acapulco-Mexico City highway or from nearby Jojutla. All along the highway there are motorcycle-taxis pulling little passenger wagons behind them.

Zacatepec isn’t usually a tourist destination, but my colleague knew of a recently opened museum in Tetelpa that he’d wanted to see since he had missed the opening ceremony due to work obligations. We made the 15 minute drive to the San Esteban church in Tetelpa and parked in the shade on the street. We were greeted by a uniformed police officer and young local man, casually guarding the church and museum. The church and museum were closed, they informed us, but the young man would take us to the home of the curator, who lived nearby, to see if he would come and open the museum just for us. A few blocks away, we stood in front of a long driveway and the young man shouted for Edgar. Eventually a young woman came out and told us that Edgar wasn’t home, but that she could send someone for him if we really wanted to see the museum. We told her that we’d better come back some other time and thanked her very much.

Our young companion, Jorge Maldonado Hernandez, who gave me permission to include his name in my article, gave us a personal tour of the church grounds, ending with a spectacular visit to the rooftop where we saw the bells and enjoyed the view of the land surrounding Tetelpa, Zacatepec, and Jojutla.

The view from the churchyard is inviting, since the church is built on top of a small hill. Pedestrian streets lead up to the gated entrances from the four cardinal directions. In addition to our voices, the only sounds in the churchyard were birds chirping in the trees and music from a house adjoining the yard on the other side of the whitewashed wall.

Jorge told us that the church had recently been the victim of vandals (probably the reason for the uniformed guard we had encountered). The wooden door had been broken and this allowed us to peek inside. Jorge knew a bit about the history of the church and told us where priests had been buried in the yard; he also pointed out the stained glass windows on all sides of the lovely little church.

We climbed a stairway built onto one wing of the church and stepped out onto the rooftop, painted brick red, and sloped with the curving lines of the church roof. Jorge showed us the four church bells and encouraged us to climb into the small bell tower. Once he had us all safely stationed on the roughly warn stones of the tower, he extracted a small nail clipper from his pocket. He wouldn’t ring the bells for real, he told us, but he would show us the different sounds of the bells. He tapped lightly on each bell so that we could hear the difference in the sounds. His favorite is the bell called la campana reina (the queen bell), made of bronze, gold, and silver. Another bell, the largest of the four, had a gaping crack in one side. This one had fallen from its mount about six years before, and luckily nothing had happened to the man who was ringing the bell at the time.

From the church roof we could see the lush, irrigated fields surrounding Zacatepec and Tetelpa. There was a lot of sugarcane, of course, but there was also, rice, corn, and sorghum (Jorge confirmed or corrected our guesses on each field). We saw one field of familiar blue-green plants. Someone has planted a field of agave and plans to produce tequila, though the agave hasn’t quite matured yet. To the southeast we could see the aqua colors of the pools at the Iguazu aquatic park and, much further in the distance, the church in the center of Jojutla and, to the north, the swimming pool of a club for rich people who come from Mexico City and other places to spend time relaxing.

Beneath our feet in one wing of the church, the community museum waited silently for Thursday to roll around when its doors would be open from 10:00 to 2:00 and 4:00 to 6:00, daily through Sunday. The cost of the museum is $10 pesos (about 1 dollar) and is a guided visit. For information about the museum write to museosanestebantetelpa at hotmail.com (Replace the word “at” with the @ symbol and remove the spaces when you enter the address). A brochure about the museum that Jorge removed from the locked ticket office outside the entrance to the museum says that the museum consists of five rooms - a traditional kitchen used by the formerly resident vicars, archeological pieces and models of the original inhabitants of Tetelpa, information about four centuries of Catholic presence in Tetelpa, historic archives including regional records of births, marriages, censuses, deaths, and even mass deaths caused by cholera, and finally a multiuse room for art and cultural exhibits that are changed monthly.

If you want to visit Zacatepec and Tetelpa, stay in a hotel in nearby Jojutla, about 10 minutes away. Consider including a visit to the aquatic park Iguazu, right on the main road from Zacatepec to Tetelpa, to refresh yourself from the intense “hot lands” heat.

Plan your visit during one of Tetelpa’s local festivals so that you can enjoy the awe-inspiring hospitality of Morelos’s traditional townspeople. Jorge carefully reviewed with us the important festival dates which are as follows.

September 16th is the date of los tamalazos. This is when the women make small tamales de ceniza (tamales with a tiny bit of ash in them for flavoring. Don’t worry. They aren’t gritty.) Anyone in Tetelpa on the 16th will be fed this delicious homemade treat.

December 8th is la natividad de la Virgin Conchita and is celebrated with castillos (fireworks on a temporary tower, a wonderful Mexican invention that you’ve got to see to believe). Comidas (traditional foods, such as mole are prepared in copious amounts and all who come to a family’s house are fed), and danzas (dances - each town will have its own traditional dances) are a part of the festivities.

December 26th is the day San Esteban is celebrated with another castillo. There is regular bus service to Zacatepec provided by Pullman de Morelos (from the downtown Cuernavaca station, the trip takes 40 minutes and buses depart every 30 minutes for 24 pesos and from the Tasqueña Station in Mexico City for 85 pesos). Once in the “hot lands” the peseros or local buses connect Jojutla, Zacatepec and Tetelpa into a convenient network. Taxis and motorcycle taxis are also available to take you from place to place.

Sources:

Zacatepec municipal web page

Instituto Tecnólogico de Zacatapec web page

Wikipedia: http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zacatepec
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zacatepec_de_Hidalgo
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuernavaca

For further reading:
GPS bicycling tour Mexico City to Jojutla (near Zacatepec) with an interactive topographic map

In a recent trip to Tenancingo we almost ended up staying the night with flower producers who had come to the regional flower market to sell their bright, aromatic products. We were driving through town for other reasons and decided that since we were there we should stop and see the flower market which is the hub of a huge flower production region.

“A flower market. How nice!” we thought. So we asked directions on how to get there and drove until we knew we were close. We saw a bunch of trucks loaded with carefully stacked flowers stopped in the road and we decided to just park right on that road and walk the rest of the way to the market.

So we moseyed down the street marveling at the way the flowers were so carefully stacked. Some people were offloading flowers onto huge hand carts and we figured that the producers obviously sold flowers from the street rather than going all of the way to the market. There were producers relaxing alongside their trucks and chatting, but not this nor
the long line of stationary trucks blocking the road worried us. We enjoyed the market and bought ice creams from an ambulatory ice cream sales guy. On the way back my husband noticed that the trucks were still there in exactly the same place and started to think that it might be a bit hard to get out. I was still completely oblivious and happily snapping photos like a crazed (and rude) tourist.

Well, much to our surprise when we got back to the truck we saw that not only were the trucks parked in exactly the same place, the line had grown behind our truck for as far as we could see. We were no longer parked at the end of the line, we were parked near the beginning of the line.

“I think these guys stay here all night….” my husband said, but just as I was starting to wonder how I could get back to Cuernavaca to give my EFL class by 7:00 p.m. he popped into action.

Starting with the producer whose truck was nearest ours, he politely explained our situation. That producer indicated that he agreed to help us get out by saying that my husband would have to convince the drivers of the 3 trucks between us and the nearest cross street behind us to move too. So without hesitating he moved on and sweet-talked them all into moving for him. Thank goodness there was an open cement patio-like area along one side of the road, so what the men did was jockey their vehicles around so that my husband could angle his truck into the open area, then squeeze in reverse between the last truck and the wall of a building by driving on the sidewalk. There was about 2 inches of clearance on either side of the truck, but he’s become used to driving in tight spots after 6 years of living in Mexico.

Well, suddenly there we were, out on an open side street! I told him, “Only you could have gotten us out of there.” My husband’s country boy tact and super driving skills surely did get us out of a jam and a half that day.

I am including some of the photos that I took that day. Please remember that they are mine and don’t copy and paste them for your own use without my written permission. Copyright Julia Taylor 2008. I ignored a lot of serious looks on the part of the producers to get these photos. The right thing to do may have been to ask each and every one permission to take photos, but I was too shy to play the cute little woman. What I did instead was to try to only take pictures of people from far away and to focus on the flowers and trucks. Besides, the stares could have been because they were trying to figure out what the relationship was between myself and my obviously Mexican husband who was cruising along about 50 meters ahead of me. With a change of clothes he could have fit right in with them and it would have taken a lot more than a change of clothes to get me to meld in with their wives!