Tours of Tours and a WHAT?!?

 

As we close in on the end of our time in Mexico, I want to share some of the incredible experiences we've had along the way. At the beginning of our trip, we spent two weeks in Oaxaca City. Two of the staple things to learn about in that area are their tradition of Alebrije carvings and Mezcal. You also need to learn about Mole, obviously, which we did by eating our weight in the rich sauces, the other two mysteries required a tour. 

Alebrijes are figurines of real or fantastical beasts that are carved by hand from a single piece of wood and painted intricately. My sister-in-law, being from Mexico herself, alerted us to the allure of the tradition and gratefully we fell down the rabbit hole of these, often tiny, magical delights. The markets as well as the high end galleries are filled with them, crowding tables and shelves, flooding the eyes with bright colors and dizzying arrays of dots creating patterns that swirl and weave a creature to life. How do you pick one from the millions before you is the clear question, and the answer is... complicated. The obvious idea, you'd think, would be to simply pick the one that is the prettiest or will go with your home decor, and you would quickly learn that that is completely overwhelming. Clearly we needed to learn more. We took a short excursion to spend the afternoon at one of the most famous Alebrije "factories", Jacabo & Maria Angeles, which is also a famous art school attracting artists from all over the world to master their craft. There, at the workshop, artists check into work and check out paintbrushes, brushes made in Japan and worth more than most Oaxacans make in a month. The pieces of wood are selected and that determines the animal that will emerge, this one bends to form a monkey, that one arches to form a jaguar, and that one twists from a frog to an eagle to a coyote all in one! OK wait, back-up, you say, yes that last one doesn't make any sense and without seeing it, it is difficult to imagine, but the gentle slope of the frogs back managed to sweep elegantly up into eagle wings and the feet that you expect to be webbed anchored the form with  coyote paws and a joyful tail. We learned how the tree they use, the copal, is either male or female and that the male wood is permeable and natural pigments are made to stain the creature into color, the female wood is painted with acrylic paint, both take a steady hand and great skill, but the stains are a truly magnificent artistic gift. Those magnificent gifts are also magnificently priced so those did not find a home with us. The most common way to select an Alebrije is based on your birth date. You are aligned with a protector animal and a spiritual animal and these have meanings that reflect your personality. I found out that my spiritual animal is a snake, I am horrifically terrified of snakes and do not find the irony of this humorous, however my daughter found it hilarious. Since a snake was also not finding a home with us, we opted for yet another way to select your beast and that was to have it choose you. I know, this is a little too woowoo for us to, but it oddly makes sense when faced with so many fantastic works of art. Turns out Jesse and I NEEDED a large, ornate octopus... because traveling for 3 months with an incredibly delicate, expensive piece of art definitely makes sense. It's like that game from when we were growing up where you had to take care of an egg, like it was a baby, for a week. For some reason that was a task from a class in school, but I can't remember why. Needless to say, the private tour was informative, fascinating and really wonderful, and we will now have strange figurines all over the house.

Next up was a Mezcal tour that walked us through various agave plants, the process of cooking the hearts, then distilling and of course the best part, the tasting. We learned how the same plant grown in different places has a significantly different flavor, something you can imagine wine geeks would flip over. I don't think the kid giving the tour had ever had people so into the details of 'how, when, where, why' and his eyes started to widen as the questions daunted him. If you are also fans of our show "A Fern Between Us: Emotional Sanitizer Wine Show" then you saw one of our episodes was dedicated to Mezcal... and you saw the look I make when I taste it. This drink is not for the faint of heart, it is smokey, rough with flavor and reminds me of gasoline. It has also taken me some time to acclimate to the idea that some are distilled with meat. I know, super gross. But as it turns out, the meat adds a texture to the finished product that actually softens the harsh flavors and is now one of my favorite. We also had the luck of becoming friends with some boutique Mezcal producers during our stay at the beach who joined us for a socially distanced tasting and taught us a wealth of information about the art behind the booze. It is absolutely nothing like the shots of the weird stuff with the worm you've had at the bar, in fact that is a specific style of Mezcal that uses the worm to give a unique (and not great) flavor, true aficionados are not fans. I learned a lot including how serving it cold actually makes it more harsh (we'd thought it should be served like vodka) and to smell with your mouth open to get the complex aromas not just the pungent hit of alcohol. I also learned how to not make a face when I drink it, maybe.

Our time in Puerto Escandido included a crap "tour" of the bioluminescence that I already wrote a full post about, and our tour of the ruins at Palenque was unremarkable, well that isn't totally true. The day was hot and humid and the incredible ruins were stunning, I mentioned our experience in my post about our time in the jungle, but what I didn't share was what has stuck with us over the rest of the trip, the tour guide's repeated reference to incest. The depictions of the various people that had lived there occasionally had 6 fingers on each hand or 6 toes on each foot or a predominantly shorter leg to which the guide would draw our attention and say "incest!". It seemed to be an subject of great delight for the man focusing much of the tour on this element, an element that became the theme as we stood sweating, panting in our masks, squinting up at a stone, him counting aloud the number of fingers and then pointing to us to say in chorus "incest". We exchanged bewildered glances at first, but by the end we were openly laughing with the guide. Now lets clarify that we do not find incest funny, nor do we think laughing at ancient cultures or archaeological sites is in any way OK, what was funny was to pay a man $100 to sweat profusely and only learn that there was a great deal of incest happening at this site. 

Moving on, we returned to San Cristobal de Las Casas knowing we wanted activities. Generally I would not put a cooking class in the "tour" category, but in this case I'm gonna. Our private classes started with a tour of the local market where we learned why you would use each of the 5 different bananas at one stand in different dishes, learned the names of dozens of chiles that filled bin after bin after bin and discovered strange new fruits. Actually I take that back, I did not learn the names of the chiles and don't want to be quizzed on them, I was daunted by the colors, sounds and smells of the market and couldn't take it all in. My daughter seemed to be dizzy with the chaos of it all as well and she became my focus while Jesse and I guided her through the maze and shielded her from the attention of a man walking around with his finger up the butt of a stuffed squirrel. I kid you not, a man with his FINGER UP THE BUTT of a stuffed squirrel. After that we returned to the tranquil gardens and spacious kitchen of our chef teacher. Ingredients were laid out beautifully and she described steps in each process as Jesse chopped, diced, stirred and assisted, even my daughter got in on the action, but I sat back and took pictures. Hey someone has to document this stuff! The end meals were absolutely sensational, freshly made tortillas, al pastor tacos topped with complex salsas, moles and unusual juices all Instagram worthy, I just wish I'd gotten a picture of the man with the squirrel. 

Our time in Mexico has gone surprisingly fast. Our photos show the progression of stress slowly leaving our faces, replaced with genuine smiles. Trials and tribulations such as our car breaking down, someone kicking a dent into the door or Jesse losing his iPhone have amazingly not soured us. Instead we head into the holidays deeply grateful of every single day we get to be here, with each other. The emotional pain we came here with has eased as our daughter returns to laughter and I now cry tears of relief that she is going to be OK. I can't say I am excited to return home, the covid situation continues to be alarming and I have chemo to start. I worry that my daughter will slip back into a black pit of despair and my world will unravel once again, so I focus on this moment, this sip of wine, and let go of trying to control the future. It has been a tour of its own to discover how to be in the world differently.

Happy Holidays everyone and remember, before you do even one more thing today, you need to Wine First.