Carnival, a Zapotec village, Weavers, a BIG Tree and an easy way home

March 5, 2019

Today we called to see if we could change our return airline tickets as we have a very tight timeline to change planes and go through customs in Dallas on Thursday. The schedule change was cost prohibitive so we will take our chances. If we miss our connection, there is a late flight at 10:30 pm arriving around 12:30 a.m. Anything would be better than spending the night in Texas.

We went to a museum today that had Mexican antiques and a big display of indigenous dress. There was lots of antique jewelry. It was small and right on our way to another restaurant. Hierba Dulce is a vegetarian/vegan restaurant and was delicious. I could only eat half of my enchiladas, however. We split a fruit salad of jicama, mango with a nest of fabulous orange slices and shredded beets. We made a stop for cash and came home to cool our jets until time to leave at 3:00 for carnival…think Mardi Gras… in a small village outside of Oaxaca.

Tonio picked us up and then we stopped to pick up two women from PA who are here on a tour Tonio led. We were joined by Antonio’s wife, Paulina and their charming four-year-old daughter, Inez. What a treat to witness this part of a culture. The band was playing loudly when we arrived and still going strong after almost two hours. The brass section was blaring the entire time and it was totally impossible to be heard when speaking to someone. 

The crowd of partygoers increased over time, many dressed elaborately in various costumes. A number of the men were bare-chested and in shorts and had oiled their bodies with oil and pigments; some green, some black, and others brown. Ron did his best to capture as many as possible but all were gyrating madly to the music most of the time or just as Ron snapped the photo, someone walked right in between him and the subject. 

I had to step back from the crowd and the noise after a while and take a break on a nearby park bench. Tonio and his wife met up with a friend there who was with her daughter. They joined our group and came back to Oaxaca when we returned.

After two hours of carnival, Tonio recommended we all go find

a restaurant. I was ready and hungry. He took us to a local place back in Oaxaca. It was a one-dish restaurant with variations on a theme. It consisted of a large tortilla that was cooked over a wood fire made in a concrete structure that was covered with a sheet of steel. The tortillas were cooked until crispy and then had various fillings. Most of us ordered the string cheese and refried bean version. It was huge so Ron and I ordered one to split and I still couldn’t finish it. Tonio insisted on paying for all of us. The meal was a great ending to a terrific day.

March 6

Today was another visit to a village day. Tonio picked us up at 9:00 and we went to Mitla, about an hour away. Here there are the remains of a Zapotec religious center that existed two or three centuries before the Spanish conquest. The geometric stone mosaics ‘have no peers in Mexico’. Fourteen different designs are thought to symbolize the earth and sky, a feathered serpent, and other important beings. There are individually cut blocks of stone that are then fitted together like a three-dimensional puzzle to make the designs. I have never seen anything like them and was truly awestruck by the technique and how elaborate it was. 

There was evidence of paint and painted images of an eagle and faces in various places, amazing that it still exists when subjected to the weather. One of the techniques used to protect the surfaces was the walls were slanted out from the top so when it rained the water would run off the roof and away from the walls. We walked through the three standing structures and marveled at the ruins. We were glad we took the time to visit this site as it was different and much smaller than Monte Alban.

Next, we drove to Teotitlan del Valle, the famous Zapotec weaving village, the tradition of weaving here goes back to pre-Hispanic times. Teotitlan had to pay tributes of cloth to the Aztecs. There was an amazing number of home-based studios. Our first stop was to a large shop owned by Nelson Perez at the entry of the village. The showroom was impressive. We were looking for a two-meter-long runner and they showed us three once we clarified the colors we were interested in. We stopped here because their brochure highlighted the use of natural dyes. We found one that would work well in the master bath but said we would be leaving for an hour to visit another place. The woman who was helping us immediately dropped the price by $50. I told her I would let her know later.

Next, we visited the Gutierrez family studio/home. Tonio is a friend of the family and wanted us to meet them. We were introduced to Juana who is responsible for all the dying of the wool. I was blown away by her. She dropped out of school at eight years old and by 12 she was interested in the family business. She spent 45 minutes going through the process of natural dyes, showing us large baskets of plant materials such as pecan leaves, moss, chunks of anil (indigo), cochineal, and dry pomegranate peels. Most fascinating was learning about cochineal. They use domesticated cochineal bugs that burrow into flat cactus leaves and extract carminic acid. They then dry the bugs and when dried they crush them on a grinding stone to produce the red dye. It is even more involved. When the female bug lays her eggs, they separate the eggs from the female and plant them on different cactus leaves. It takes three months for the bugs to get large enough to produce the red dye. 

There were racks of cacti leaves with the bugs on the leaves. These bugs were the size of a ballpoint pen tip! Think about separating the eggs from something that small. She told us how indigo is obtained. Anil is obtained from a bush so they collect the leaves and branches from the bush and chop it up and put them is water to ferment. Once the fermentation is completed they take the sludge from the vat and dry it. It is then in small chunks that look like coal or charcoal in brilliant blue color. From there she grinds it using a flat grinding stone and tubular stone to grind the anil.

Juana talked about how she created various colors   

using the primary colors to form secondary colors such as cochineal (red) and indigo (blue) to obtain purple. She took us over to her vats where she makes the dyes from the powders and showed us how different dyes require different vats so some vats were galvanized steel, some stainless steel, and some copper.

Recently she has taught herself how to dye new fibers they are introducing into the weavings such as agave fibers and jute. Juana made eye contact with me the entire time which many people do not do. They usually speak to the translator, in this case, Tonio. But she rarely looked at him. She made us all laugh when we started the tour by asking us did we want her to speak to us in Zapotec or Spanish? We asked for Spanish so Tonio could understand what she was saying.

This woman has a primary education yet she knows her chemistry and how different materials react with different substances. I told her she should be given a degree in chemistry. She liked that.

We went upstairs to the weaving room where Antonio, the weaver, not to be confused with Tonio the guide, was teaching a student from Kansas City how to weave, She had just completed a three-day workshop with Juana on dying. Her piece she was working on was with yarn she had dyed during her workshop with Juana. Antonio showed us two pieces he was working on. He is introducing new fibers to his work. The new fibers are much finer, and thinner than wool so it takes much more work and time to complete a piece. The second piece was much smaller but much more detailed. It was a wall hanging of an ocean scene with feathers, copper wire, agave fibers, and some wool. He said he works on it for a short period then takes a break due to how intense the project is. It reminded me of the bandhani process used in India for their intricate tie-dying. Women work on tying the knots for 30 minutes then take a break and come back and repeat the process for 30 minutes.

Antonio was an exacting teacher as he measured the students work and said ’You are two centimeters off. Do it again.’ Afterward our time with Antonio, we went to the small showroom. Although they didn’t have a runner that worked for our color scheme, we bought a couple of small pieces. Juana was in the showroom and she came over to me and said ‘You take a piece of me with you’ as she pointed to my purchases. I got tears in my eyes as she truly struck a chord with me. I touched my heart and gave her a big hug which she reciprocated in return. It is moments like this when you know there is hope for humanity and it helps me to move forward in hopes that as a species we will continue to make connections and learn to love one another.

Back to Nelson Perez to purchase our runner which is based on a Zapotec design with symbols of the life cycle, water, light, etc. 

From here we went to El Tule, a small village known for El Arbol del Tule which is the largest tree in the world. Some say the General Sherman tree in CA is bigger but El Tule is 11 meters in diameter so it is, at least, the worlds widest tree.

We had Tonio drop us off at a restaurant since it was almost 3:00 and we have reservations for dinner at 6:00. So we split a small salad and an order of pork tacos We rested at our apartment until dinner time then enjoyed a fancy meal at one of our favorite restaurants that had great ambiance. Both of us are ready to return home. I miss my bed, my bathtub, and good coffee.

March 7

We are all packed and we take off for breakfast. Within blocks, we find a local place that already has customers, all local. We decided to give it a try. We each order an omelet and enjoyed our breakfast. The coffee was weak and worse, it was tepid. Why does anyone drink tepid coffee when they can have it scald all the way down? Can you tell I like it hot?

Our prearranged taxi arrives and off we go to the airport. Check-in is quick and easy since we are early. We decided to eat lunch at the restaurant before security since the immigration rep told us inside the terminal the food choices were limited.

Our trip to Dallas is uneventful and we arrived early which is to our advantage since we had an hour on paper to go through customs and change terminals in order to make our flight. We flew through the terminal to get to customs. Fortunately, the Global Entry line was short with no wait, security didn’t take any time either so we raced to the sky train to get to our terminal. Ron ran to the restroom while I found an eatery right across from our gate and picked up two ready-made salads so we could eat on the plane. Hooray, we made it! We got home around 10:00 p.m. and unpacked…Yes we always unpack before going to bed after a trip. I took a bath and by midnight we were in bed which was 2:00 a.m. body time.

March 9

It was another wonderful adventure for us. We met some great people, saw some grand sights and ate wonderful food with no problems, digestive or otherwise. We weighed ourselves the next morning and were pleasantly surprised. Ron is BELOW his high school weight and I am only eight pounds over my high school weight! Who knew walking all over SMA and Oaxaca could help us lose pounds while eating all that great Mexican food?