Dancing My Journey Through

Further south, we ended up in Tuxtla Gutierrez, which is the capital of Chiapas. Chiapas, is the state with the most natural resources but also has the most poverty!

We went first to visit my aunt who lives down there and then we went to Cañon del Sumidero:

We were both relieved to finally see something in nature, as most of our adventure had been tourist shops and markets, and even malls.

About twenty minutes away from Tuxla there is another town called San Cristobal. It is very quaint and there is lots of things that you can walk to from the center of town. We walked to the Jade Museum and watched the jade workers. There is also a neat jade tour you can walk through and see how Mesoamericans used jade.

We also ate the traditional hamburgers at a stand. If you look closely you can see how big those things are. They get cut up into four pieces and I only ate half. The burgers have hamburger, mayo, mustard, ketchup, lettuce, tomato, jam, American cheese, and bacon on them. I have to admit they are very tasty!

We spent the night in San Cristobal for 10$ a night and then got picked up in the morning for the first part of our three day tour. We drove northeast on a small windy road towards Palanque. First we stopped at Aguas Azules. The funny thing is that the waters were not that blue, but the guide said it was because the rain had started to make everything muddy. I went to Aguas Azules when I was 6 years old and I remember it being very blue and cold, cold water.

Later, we went to Misol Ha, which is a tall waterfall. I braved the waters and tried to get as close to the fall as possible. The water had a very strong current, so shortly after I got in, I got back out.


The center human dot is me!

After a short time at Misol Ha we went to Palenque. This Mayan city is breathtaking, although I was sad that we did not get to go into Pakal’s tomb. (When I was little I remember going down into the tomb.) The larger green mountain in the back of this picture is another pyramid. There are many of these scattered around, covered by years of jungle growth. Unfortunately there is not enough funds to excavate these mysteries.

Christiaan took this picture trying to also get the tree into the shot because the Maya believed these ceiba trees had mythological origins. According to the Maya these trees had their top leaves in heaven, their trunk on earth, and their roots in the underworld.

We slept the night in Palanque. It started to rain a lot that day. I love the smell of the ground after it’s started pouring down rain.

The next morning we started out for Yaxchitlan. This site was deep in dense jungle and getting there was an adventure in itself because the only way to get there is by boat and the boats we were on were rickety and scary.

The site was not as big as Palenque, but there were howler monkeys near by which was the highlight of the site. These incredible monkeys sound like dinosaurs! Their howl is so loud and gut wrenching.

Later, we traveled to a site called Bonampak.

That evening six of us were dropped off at a camp. We got quaint little rooms inside a large, wide house for the night. A family who still spoke Mayan ran it.

We met a Spanish couple, and a Dutch couple. The cabins had a small bed, a net and light. The camping area was very nice. There was a small river, a small lake and a dinning area.

Christiaan and I enjoyed reading and relaxing by the river.

The next morning a jungle guide picked us up. He was no older than 19 and was wearing plastic, clear sandals. He had a machete. The hike lasted five hours, one of which we spent swimming at a waterfall.


We had to take our shoes off to cross some parts of the hike.

We saw three waterfalls and two Mayan sites that belong to the people who own the camp.

On the way back, we ran into the father of the family who owns the camp and his son, trying to fix a broken bridge.

We saw a mantis and another strange bug that was bright, blue color and made a crazy, loud sound around our ears.

Our tour guide was funny. He tried to be serious, but like I said, he was only 19 or 20. Maybe even younger. At one point, when everyone was swimming in the waterfall, he took Christiaan and I across the river to a bat cave. He was so innocent and full of adventure when he started to throw pieces of wood into the cave to make the bats fly out. When we came back across the river I asked if I could take a picture with him. You can see the machete in this picture.

The jungle walk was truly wonderful. Other than all the mosquitoes bites we got, Chiapas was alive with culture and natural wonders

The heat of getting closer to the equator was intensified with the new people and new customs. Well, actually not “new” customs, as many Oaxacan people live in the traditional ways of the Olmecs. But new to me and to Christiaan. Once you get to Oaxaca from Mexico city you start to feel the difference of the Mexican country. There is really a different ethnic and linguistic entity in Oaxaca. In fact there are many languages and ethnicities.

It was neat to get there and see tents set up in the streets. The entire historic center of Oaxaca, the city, was blocked off by tents.

We found out later that day that teachers who were on strike put the tents there. They were reading from literature and enjoying food all day and part of the night. They were also preparing for a rally and a march, by making signs and funny pictures out of the governor of Oaxaca. The teachers wanted school lunches for the students and uniform money. They also wanted to have more money to buy books. They wanted better pay and they also wanted a rezoning of Oaxaca. Because, the teachers who teach in the rural towns do not get paid nearly enough to drive out there and work the day long. When we got there on June 6th, the teachers had already been strike for almost 3 weeks. At one point we found ourselves in the middle of a political rally. It was exciting but also scary, when we heard two days later, after we had left Oaxaca that the Mexican government used tear gas on the teachers who were holding another rally. (Tear gas on civilians!!)

In Oaxaca we tried different kinds of mole and chile rellenos. We also, went on a tour of the neighboring towns and sights. We saw the Tule of Guadalupe, which is a tree with the widest tree trunk in the world:

We also went to a town where they work the traditional Oaxacan textiles and to Mitla. Mitla is a Zapotec ruins site. It was found above ground by the Spanish and was still being used for religious purposes by the natives. The Spanish tore down the main temple and used the limestone and the exact location to build their cathedral.

The day after we went to Monte Alban, which is the largest site in Oaxaca. It is positioned on the top of mountain and looks out, in all directions on the Oaxacan valley.

There, we saw a ball court were Mesoamericans played a popular ball game.

I strongly recommend Oaxaca to the adventurer. There was something slightly more genuine and less touristy about the environment. I’ll never forget going into the typical market that Mexico is peppered with in every city and seeing small native American women trying to sell me grasshoppers (chapulines). These crunchy, protein filled bugs come in two sizes!

On May 31rst, Christiaan and I began our journey to Mexico city. I was very nervous, as I had heard a lot of horror stories about the city. Luckly, we were very well received by my Aunt Patty and her lovely family. They made us feel so at home, that we often didn’t even want to leave, we wanted to stay and talk with the family and get to know them.

(From left to right: Augusto, Sebastian, Patty, Claudia, Carlos, and Diego)

The very same night we got there, my aunt dropped us off at the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe. This is a sacred church to Mexican Catholics, because it was built to celebrate the appearance of the virgin Mary to a boy named Diego. The story is: 16th century. Juan Diego was poor Indian living in a small town next to Mexico city. One day, while he was walking to mass he saw, in a cloud, a beautiful young maiden dressed like an Aztec princess. She told Diego that she was the Virgin Mary, the mother of God. Speaking to Diego in his own tounge, she told him to construct a church exactly where he had seen her. Diego went to the bishop of Mexico, a Franciscan named Juan de Zumarraga. This bishop told Diego that he needed a sing from the Virgin, just to be sure. Diego told this to the apparition and she instructed him to go up into the mountains and pick roses. But it was in the middle of December, so this is the first miracle. Once Diego picked the roses and put them in his cloak, he hurried back to the Bishop. When he dropped his cloak and the roses there was an image of Mary of Guadalupe on the cloak. This image is displayed inside the Basilica.

The next day, Carlos, my cousin showed us how to use the metro system. And, although you don’t get to see the city, you do get the feeling of how immense the city is, from how many routes cover so much space. We went to an area called Chapultepec. This area has the Anthropology Museum, The Mexico City Zoo, and the Castillo de Chapultepec.

Later in the afternoon we went to a historical district called “Presidente Masarik.” We found a neat pizza place and watched the friendly game between Mexico and the Netherlands. It was fun to watch businessmen and women laugh and get upset at the game, while my Dutch boyfriend was rooting his team on. (Netherlands won, of-course).

(NOTE: This was an amazing time to be in Mexico. The World Cup was used as extravagant advertising everywhere you went. Anyone who met us and asked if we were Americans changed their tone when Christiaan told them he was also Dutch. Perfect strangers would start asking him questions about the team and the different teams from years past. Of-course those strangers were not wrong in assuming that almost all Dutch people keep up on their team and the amazing sport that is futbol. Mexicans call the Dutch team: The Mechanical Orange.)

On June 2nd we went to Teotihucan. It was the first ruin site we visited in Mexico. It was great to see the amazing structures and climb up them too.

This picture was taken from the top of the sun pyramid. You can see the moon pyramid in the background.

This is a picture of me bowing down to the moon pyramid. The location where I am kneeling is a spot in the main courtyard of this city where you can clap and hear the echo travel around the space. It is masterful how aligned these places are not just with each other but, of-course, with the cosmos as well.

On Saturday we took a tour on the turibus, which takes you around the main parts of the historical centre. It’s one of those double-decker red buses.

This picture of the Zocalo, nicely taken by my partner, shows the turibus and the Mexican flag waving in the crappy weather. With our traveling luck, we should have known not to ride a double-decker bus with no roof covering. It rained so hard everyone had to hide out inside the bus and miss a lot of the buildings. We did go back to the Zocalo a few days later and saw some of the things we missed.

Mexico city was an amazing place to use public transportation. It was so much fun to take small buses, that you hail like a cab, and then get on the metro for about ten minutes and end up in distant districts that all had their charming styles. One such district is called Coyoacan. I went into Frida Kahlo’s house, which is a museum as well. It was inspiring to see her artistic workspace that was decorated and overflowing with interesting knickknacks, scraps of magazines, acrylics and many other adornments that make a room look colorful and alive.

This is about 50 minutes away from my dad’s house. It is in the mountains and it’s nice and cool. Of-course I was struck by the amount of forested areas there are up in the Jalisco mountains. The cabin is lovely:

My uncle came later that night, and we all enjoyed Mexican style BBQ hamburgers. Interesting thing about the cabin, was that there was a small room built separate from the house to be used as a chapel. The first night we arrived, my father had all of us come to the chapel and he asked God to watch over us. My younger sister Maggie started crying and I was very moved; I remember when I was her age I was a die hard Catholic. Her passion runs as deep as mine.

This was one of the most memorable moments because I started to get to know Maggie on a personal level. The next day, Ana and Maggie got into a fight and I had another opportunity to actually be a part of their lives. I got to mediate and also encourage both of them to be good to each other. I was able to be a shoulder for them to cry on and I also got to know their psychologies more. This is what I wanted all along, to get to know my siblings and be a part of their life.

Two days later, my father left Christiaan and I there to spend some time reading and relaxing in the wonderful wilderness. Our only access to the world was a small truck that was manual drive. Christiaan and I both learned how to drive stick shift, fast. It was a fun time to learn how to use stick. We were both very proud of ourselves...lol.

The town of Tapalpa is very quaint. On Sunday nights a lot of people gather in the “Zocalo,” which is the name for the center of each city in Mexico. The Zocalo always has the main cathedral as part of the square. In Tapalpa, there were other little stores and stands were we enjoyed atole, a creamy drink made out of corn.

When my dad came back to get us, we put up a lovely Mexican flag:

I love this picture of my dad getting Christiaan's help. Nothing like a Dutch born, American showing some Mexican pride.

Just outside of Tapalpa there is a place called “Piedrotas,” which means Large Rocks. These rocks are noticeably out of place. There are no rocks anywhere near this spot and many people believe these rocks have a supernatural origin. From the picture, it’s hard to tell how out of place these rocks seem. When we started walking there from the parking lot, we got a strange feeling. In every direction that you look there is no other large rocks and these happen to be collected here like God's forgotten marbles. No one has been able to come up with a good explanation as how they got here. Most people go out there to take pictures, graffiti the rocks, leave their loves name on them, or meditate. My father, his girlfriend, Christiaan and I got into a conversation about reincarnation. Not, only fitting for the environment but also very enlightening.

I really love this picture of Christiaan and I next to one of the rocks, which has a large question mark on it.

Later we traveled to Teocuitatlan, which is very small town next to Tapalpa. This is the town were my father has his agave plants. The plots are sprinkled over the country side and they make it look like a blue sea.

This picture of my father in one of his plots gives an idea of how much agave is needed to make tequila.

I travel with a man named Christiaan. He is a wonderful travel partner. We love to dance to good music and try different kinds of beer or alcohol. More than anything we try to look at each new travel destination as a chance to put on our social scientist thinking caps and reflect on the customs of that place.

When we left from LA three months ago to travel to Mexico, I was overwhelmed with ideas and emotions about seeing my family and really getting to know them. I had seen my father a total of 8 times in my whole life, and this was to be a three month adventure. I was also going to get to know my siblings. Christiaan was nervous because, although he had met my father, he had not met the kids and was also hoping he would not have too much trouble with the Spanish and with the cultural differences including the food.

Our flight from LA was cancelled and we ended up staying in a hotel just outside of LAX. We were exhausted from staying up all night talking to Sean and Clay about life and the adventure we were about to embark on.

At last we made it to Guadalajara which is the capital of the state Jalisco. Guadalajara is my birth city and is also the birth place of the mariachi. We were greeted by my whole family. My father’s house is outside the main metropolitan area in a lovely gated community called "El Palomar".

Driving around you notice immidate differences in the road. I am still not sure who has the right of way in many instances. Nonetheless, my sister, Ana is an expert driver, so as soon as Christiaan and I got settled in, she took us to a place to try micheladas, which are beer with Tabasco, salsa, and lime. They were not a hit with Christiaan and I, but still a fun thing to try right when you get to Mexico. My other siblings came as well:

Ana is next to me on the left. She is nineteen and she is a joy. She’s always cheery and she loves to make people feel comfortable and at home. She plays the oldest sister role to my other two siblings and she is therefore, very responsible and very compassionate.

Next to me on the right is Maggie. She is thirteen and she is in love with gothic and punk notions. She loves Marilyn Manson and she also loves Greenday. Her sense of humor is very intertwined with her girly-ness and, if you’ve ever experienced one of my episodes where I get so giddy that I can’t stop laughing and I make silly faces, you’d understand the kind of moments that come over her. She’ll laugh and laugh and no one knows why she’s laughing.

Next to her is Sergio. He is also very funny. And he’s also a musical prodigy. He doesn’t like to admit it, but he’s also a philosopher. His soft side is accented by the fact that he’s passionately romantic about practicing the piano and the electric guitar. The only thing that would give away his darker persona is the metal that he plays on that guitar.