Long Weekend Adventure

I guess that good intentions to write often don't translate into blog posts if I don't actually write. Quite a basic revelation. I didn't realize almost two whole months have passed since I posted last!

Here's the most recent weekend adventure...

Paquime, Casas Grandes, Mata Ortiz (oh, and food poisoning)

This past Sunday Mexico celebrated its Revolution, which began in 1910. You know, Pancho Villa and other assorted controversial characters. J We actually have a few portraits of Pancho hanging in the hallway in our house, courtesy of Ivone’s collection. But this little story isn’t about him or the Revolution.

Within the last couple of years, Mexico changed its laws in order to designate Monday as a national holiday (no work) when the actual date of the holiday falls on a weekend. On Friday of last week (yes, only three days before the vacation day), I asked Ivone what she wanted to do on Monday, on our day off. We started brainstorming, and decided on a trip to Chihuahua City and the nearby city of Cuauhtémoc, where Ivone was born and grew up. However after figuring the budget for four people (car rental, steep road toll costs, lodging, etc) and then being left with just the two of us because a couple of my friends backed out, the trip was just too expensive. So Sunday afternoon at around 5:00, when Ivone got home from work, we reconsidered our options and decided to do a day trip to Casas Grandes and historic sites in the area; the round-trip bus ticket of $32 was pretty reasonable. By 6:30, a friend of mine had picked us up to drop us off at the bus station, and we were on the road by 7:00pm. Ivone was downright giddy; she hadn’t done something this spontaneous and adventurous in quite some time. How fun!

The sky was clear and the half moon was brilliant as we made our way along the two-lane highway through the darkness. A few stops and four hours later, we pulled into Casa Grandes just before 11:00pm, and we started asking passengers for hotel recommendations. One middle-aged woman suggested a couple of hotels that sounded familiar to Ivone, and feeling confident that we understood the directions that she gave, we started off walking. And we walked, and walked, and walked. And between confusing directions and poorly lit signs, we simply could not find the hotel we were looking for. Finally we wound up in front of the Presidencia Municipal (basically City Hall), across the street from which stood an emergency call station for the police. With streets deserted, we didn’t really see another option for getting where we needed to go, and so Ivone pressed the button asking for help, and within 5 minutes we found ourselves in the back of a squad car, amid three male police officers, who politely drove us past the hotel we were originally looking for, gave us a recommendation for a better one, and dropped us off at Hotel Paquimé. Hey, the squad car was cheaper than a taxi!

We settled into our hotel, slept on hard beds, and had a lazy morning before setting out to breakfast and planning the day. By the time we finished breakfast, we had identified a few of the sites we wanted to visit, but we still had no way to get there. No problem, right?! At a clothing store next to the restaurant where we ate breakfast, the sister of one of the waitresses tried calling a man who is the personal chauffeur of the director of the museum at Paquimé, to see if he’d be available to ferry us around for the day. Finding him unavailable, she mentioned that a taxi on the corner is trustworthy, so we went for it.

Arturo was the name of the weathered, white-haired man who operated the taxi on the corner of the central plaza. I talked him down a couple dollars, and he agreed to take Ivone and me to Paquimé for about 5 dollars. During the short 10 minute ride, he told us that a lot of his coworkers rag on him for lowering the prices; but Arturo has had too many days in which no one has needed a taxi, and its better to work for something than nothing, he said. By the time we arrived at the ruins of Paquimé, we had made a deal with Arturo to take us all the way to Mata Ortiz, 30 km away, and wait for us while we toured around that small village, for $30. What a deal!

Paquimé is the site of a pre-Columbian civilization whose height was reached between 900 and 1350ad. All of the structures were adobe (earthen), which proved to be excellent in regulating temperature—essential in a desert setting. The Paquimé people were known for successfully raising guacamaya birds (picture parrots), brought from the south and prized for their colorful plumage. In fact, the feathers were traded for shells from groups living on the Western coast; Paquimé group members were skilled craftsmen/craftswomen in jewelry-making from shells. The ruins are located in a valley, fully surrounded by mountains, which provided an infinite number of lookout points to protect the community from invaders and predators. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to see a whole lot of the ruins, as the few men attending them were adamant that the place was closed and prohibited us from walking among the ruins. For decades, Monday has been the day of rest for museums, theatres, etc. Hoping that Paquimé would have adjusted to the new holiday schedule by opening its doors to people wanting to take advantage of a free day to learn about and experience one of the most fascinating historical sites of northern Mexico, we were more than disappointed that we were not welcome there. However, we stood our ground, and they allowed us to walk to a certain point and take some photos. Ivone is a stubborn woman, and she knows how to negotiate! What a great travel partner!

After a little while, the men monitoring us were distracted by a great number of people who snuck around the gate to the ruins property (just as Ivone and I had entered about 20 minutes earlier), and so we decided to make our way to the museum entrance to try our luck there. Luckily, a door was open, and Ivone started working her magic on the guy attending the front desk—we came from Juárez, me all the way from Minnesota; she flashed her Juárez historical society membership card… less than three minutes later, he granted us five minutes in the museum. YES!

The museum is excellent, from its content to its design. Various large windows allow visitors to understand and visualize the importance of Paquimé location in the valley, surrounded by various lookout points in the surrounding mountains of the Sierra Madre Occidental. Inside we saw an excellent scale model of how Paquimé must have looked in its apex; collections of startlingly beautiful necklaces and other jewelry crafted out of shells, copper, obsidian, wood, as well as tools made from bones. It was probably the least amount of time I’ve ever spent in a museum, but it was well worth the visit!

Making our way back to the parking lot, where Arturo was waiting faithfully, we came across an elementary school teacher, also visiting from Juárez, who had driven with her family to Paquimé expressly to see the ruins on this day off. We grumbled about how ridiculous it is that this museum and site was closed today, and then Ivone and I mentioned to her that we were headed to Mata Ortiz next, the pueblo where the internationally-renowned ceramicist, Juan Quezada made his home. Soon our caravan of two vehicles was headed in that direction, winding our way through desert foothills, scattered plots of nut trees, and a few pastures, until we pulled into the rusty and dusty town of Mata Ortiz.

Just outside of town, the state highway ends, and crossing over the now-defunct railroad tracks, the road turns to gravel; it’s like crossing a threshold back in time. A man helped direct us to Juan Quezada’s gallery, and a couple of women standing outside invited us in. The works of art are amazing! In this gallery, we found works by Quezada and a number of his family—daughters, nephews, etc, along with those of a number of other community members. Since Quezada began his work of reviving the tradition of pottery of the Paquimé civilization, he has dedicated himself to sharing his art not only with the world but with those of his community; now, as his works are displayed in galleries throughout the world, more than 300 people of Mata Ortiz (some 290 families are estimated to live there, according to one young woman we met on the street) practice the art.

And they’re not the least bit bashful of displaying and selling it. As we stepped out of the Quezada family house and gallery, a car pulled up, and a couple of women stepped out and started unwrapping small pots from towels to display them on the hood of the car. Soon there was a gathering of some 8 people around us—four different families showing us their pieces. It was a wonderful, spontaneous street market experience, and I had a great teacher of negotiation in Ivone.

After purchasing another couple of pieces and convincing our artist vendors that we really couldn’t spend more money, we climbed back into the car with Arturo and headed toward the church. We didn’t get more than 100 meters away when a young woman leaned out from her Ford Explorer and invited us into the gallery in her home. Sure enough, the living room was transformed into a gallery, and we were once again enchanted by the fine craftsmanship of the various pots. She was a fine salesperson, Ivone and I were fine negotiators, and we walked out with another few pieces. When we got home and put our pieces on display, our kitchen table looked like a Mata Ortiz museum!

Waiting for the bus to take us back to Juarez, my stomach started to feel a bit weird. The bus was incredibly hot, as the air had been turned off, and I started to feel a lot worse. Pretty soon I was in the bathroom, unloading the contents of my breakfast. It was not a pleasant trip home; let’s just say it was a good thing that we were on a bus with a bathroom. Pulling into Juárez, I was pretty weak and thoroughly dehydrated, but I didn’t feel like I needed to go to the hospital. We stopped at a store to pick up some Gatorade and a special electrolyte drink, and I started chugging. Next morning went to the doc to make sure things were okay, and he handed me a prescription for a couple meds for food poisoning. A day later, I’m feeling nearly 100%. Oh, what a difference a day makes.