Dia de los Muertos

Posted on November 2, 2012 by Elizabeth

When I first met Henry, I was a little taken aback by all the skull-themed objets scattered about his house and his skeleton-print shirt. I soon got used to them and then grew to appreciate them, and now I’m the one with the reproduction skull on my bookshelf. The little people on our wedding cake were a Day of the Dead skeleton bride and groom. Joe (inspired by the tv show Bones) learned all 206 bones in the human body within the space of a couple of weeks. So being here in Mexico for El Dia de los Muertos is right up our creepy dark alley.

Dia de los Muertos, as you may know, is the meaningful Mexican corollary to our commercial Halloween; it’s the day when people remember and honor their loved ones who are deceased, and recognize the continuity of life. People visit cemeteries, where they clean and decorate the graves of their relatives and friends, and enjoy a picnic in the ethereal presence of those they loved.

Here in the Yucatan, the holiday is known by its Mayan name, Hanal Pixán. The sumptuousness of the picnics are raised to Lucullan heights, featuring meats and tamales and candied fruit and all manner of fresh fruits and vegetables and flowers, and an egg bread known, not surprisingly, as pan de muerto. Each village in the state has its own traditional ways of celebrating, and we were lucky enough to be here on October 31, when the Grand Plaza in front of the ancient cathedral was alive with exhibitions displaying each village’s tradition.

The day before the exhibition, participants started building palapas (huts made of wood and brush and palm leaves) in the square. Most of them were constructed by tying the poles together, so we got some good ideas for next year’s sukkah.

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We arrived early the following morning and things were already hopping. Palapa after palapa was filled with shrines bedecked with flowers and food and objects of desire such as bottles of Coca Cola and tequila. Some had little hearths and wells, and featured ladies making fresh tortillas. Many of the men were dressed traditionally in Mérida white trousers and guayaberas (Cuban-style shirts), and while it’s a snappy look, it pales next to the women’s huipils, the colorful, densely embroidered Mayan dresses with lace underskirts. Beautiful.

Some people were dressed in costumes like this deliciously freaky corn demon. There were many faces with skeleton make-up. And there were a lot of locals snapping pictures of it all, so I didn’t feel like a nosy tourist with a camera.
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Posted in Culture, Mexico | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments

The Van

Posted on October 31, 2012 by Henry

One of those early things that just fell into place was a van to take us all over. The original plan had been to acquire such a vehicle in the States and drive it all the way. The problems in Northern Mexico facing both residents and visitors (heckuva job, DEA) made that approach inadvisable, so we adopted plan B. Potentially more trouble than plan A, it suddenly became much simpler when Elizabeth found a van for sale on Craigslist Mérida: a 2000 GMC Safari LE, loaded with extras and kitted out for camping. It has fewer than 50,000 miles on it, has been garaged forever, and is going for a reasonable price.

The van is owned by a Canadian gentleman residing in Mérida. It’s registered in Vancouver BC, which makes it difficult (read expensive) to sell to a Mexican citizen, but still easy to sell to an American or Canadian. Go figure. We seemed like a perfect match. A brief exchange of emails and phone calls confirmed this fact, and we spent the next couple of months waiting for yesterday, when we finally met the seller, saw the van, and decided for sure to buy it.

The van is in pristine condition. You could server dinner in the engine compartment. Everything is spotless, and twelve years have taken only a minimal toll on its workings. The additions include a reasonably-sized bed with a comfy custom mattress, both 12-volt DC and 110-volt AC power sockets, and the cutest little microwave oven(!) you’ve ever seen.

The one sticking point was that some of these extras required the removal of the back seat, leaving only the front captain’s seats and no place for Joe to sit secured with a seat belt. [The roof-rack was discussed as a possibility, but quickly discarded.] But with a few hand tools, the seller and I were able to remove the few extras that blocked re-installation of the bench back seat. Now there’s room for all of us. And when we decide to set up camp somewhere and stay a while, we can easily pull the seat out again, enjoy a comfortable bench outside, and use the freed-up space in the van for all those van-space things.

Now we’re just waiting for the banks to transfer funds from our account in Ann Arbor to the seller’s in Mérida, and we’ll be on the road.

Posted in Gear, Preparation | 12 Comments

Here We Are

Posted on October 30, 2012 by Elizabeth

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Here’s the view from where I sit. I think I deserve it.

In the early stages, this trip required no planning; everything fell together like a wish from a fairy godmother. As we got closer and closer to departure, however, it morphed into something like preparing for a 19th century Arctic expedition. It wasn’t the packing and assembling gear that was complicated. Partly, it was the extra-bargain Spirit Airline tickets–less than $450 for all three of us to fly to Mexico!–which seemed like less of a bargain once I applied my math skills to the baggage limits and fees, and then spent hours running around with a tape measure and a little luggage scale, trying to maximize our configuration of gear x bags x fees. And then there was the actual packing of things in bags.

Also complicated was preparing our house for other people to live in while we’re gone. I like to leave the house in good shape whenever we go away, but what’s good enough for us is a little wonkier than other people want to experience. I wanted Karen and Jessica and Jacob to feel comfortable and at home while they’re there, so that meant clearing out great swathes of crap. It turns out there are way more places in the house to tuck away bags of socks than I thought. In the end the house seemed happy with itself.

I forgot, at the time of planning, that October is generally taken up with getting the house and yard ready for winter; clearing the gardens, wrapping the delicate plants, planting bulbs, closing storm windows, retaping gaping holes in the walls, and tasks of that sort. It’s not easy to plan for a Michigan winter and a tropical jungle at the same time. I managed to get most of it done, but I did forget to insulate the two fig trees; if someone feels like piling leaves up around them and wrapping them in burlap, I’d be grateful, as would the fig gods.

Finally everything was ready: house shipshape and Bristol-fashion; bags packed within acceptable airline parameters; immunization, insurance, identification records all tidy in a binder–and plenty of time to get a good hour and a half of sleep before leaving for the airport at 4:15! Yes, that 4:15.

The trip itself was fine, though long. Spirit Air was not so bad, really, and the teeny Fiat we drove from Cancun was perfectly adequate. And now here we are, in our favorite hotel in Merida, the Dolores Alba, relaxing by the courtyard pool while we wait for the kinks to work out of our lower backs.

The van we arranged to buy looks great and as soon as the wire transfer comes through it’ll be ours. But now, it’s nap time.

Posted in Mexico, Preparation | Tagged , | 14 Comments

Why not?

Posted on October 24, 2012 by Elizabeth

A few years ago, Henry, Joe (who was about nine at the time), and I visited the Yucatan. We rented a car and visited Mayan sites and cenotes, ate a lot of great food, met a lot of nice people, and generally had a fantastic time. “We could do this for months!” we said. “We could even drive all the way to Panama!”

Fast forward to a couple years later. One day, apropos of nothing, Joe said, “I was really sad when I realized you were just joking about taking that big trip.”

“Oh, honey,” I said, “we weren’t actually joking; we were just daydreaming. Sometimes adults talk about fabulous things they’d like to do, but couldn’t, really, because—” I broke off. Why couldn’t we do such a thing? What I heard coming from my mouth was solid parental guidance toward a tepid and banal existence. “Well, son, first there’s middle school, which is hell on earth, then a lot more school, and then you get to look for a demeaning, boring, and low-paying entry-level job which will enable you to work your way up to a boring mid-level job, and up from there to management until you retire. Then, if you’re not too decrepit, and if you have been clever with your financial resources, you can do one of those fabulous things!”

That’s not what we want him to know about life. We want him to know he has the ability and the power to control his own destiny, and sometimes that requires taking a big fancy risk. We want him to know that the whole world is open to him. And come to think of it, we want that world to be open to us, too. We started saying to each other, “Why couldn’t we do this, really?” We started thinking about what such an endeavor would require: money; care for our house; school for Joe; missing the dogs—in short, freeze-framing our life.

It turned out that the hardest part was making the decision to do it. That’s why we are flying to the Yucatan on October 28. Yes, next Sunday. We’ll be back at the end of February. I hope you’ll follow along with us here as we wend our way south. Adios!

Posted in Preparation, Uncategorized | 10 Comments