MAYA-HO DOS!
_{To Central America, 2005}

DIA OCHENTA CINCO:
Jueves, 12 May 2005 - Santas Nereo, Aquilea y Pancracio
Taxco, Guerrero - Thursday evening, waiting for rain.

I'm reading THE HEDGEHOG, THE FOX, AND THE MAGISTER'S POX by Stephen Jay Gould (Harmony Books, 2003) which (among other things) discusses the early Scientific Revolution and thus taxonomy, the classification of stuff by characteristics so as to discern relationships. Gould notes that early taxonomists even classified proverbs. I wonder: what stuff could *I* taxonomize? Why, travel, of course! In fact, I shall include taxonomy as part of a general treatise on travel, TRAVEL AS A SCIENCE (click here). And beware.

Up late again, stomped into town looking for cheap breakfast. No luck at first, so we settled on a grander meal in a grand locale with grand views. Good food, too. I should note that what I criticise as 'pricey' here would be considered dirt-cheap in the States. It's just not as cheap as we had in San Cristobal or Panajachel. Picky picky picky.

We poked into another tiny fraction of the platerias here. The better ones, of course. We looked at many many bits of silver. The better ones, of course. We are educated about a revolution in silver design in the last century. Maureen wonders which of her Native American jewelry to sell off, to pay for some new Taxco stuff. I sit quietly and wait.

We stomped around the usual winding streets, into the usual old churches (good places to sit and rest), down the usual obscure alleys and stairways, etc. Like Amalfi, but the stonework is better there. At one low point is a city parking lot, dug multi-layered into the hillside, with an elevator rising most of the way to the zocalo. This now our favorite method of getting back uphill. And in the commercial mall above the parking, a cheap place for breakfasts and lunches, FINALLY.

Earlier, after some intensive silver-shopping, we'd sat on a shady bench in the zocalo, until spiders and bees and birds attacked Maureen. She's so luscious. So on our return we eschewed the benches and went into more silver shops. But now she's seen the best and is spoiled to the rest. Will our explorations be curtailed?

Our final goal today: replenishing the food supply. After much fruitless questing, we found a tienda with sandwich makings and granola and milk, and then scaled the slopes to our rooms bearing our prizes. We are now set for dinner, lunch and two breakfasts. Tomorrow evening we might venture outside the hotel to a nearby pizza parlor; otherwise there's no need to leave these hard-won precincts for nearly two days. Time to rest, reflect, write, writhe, whatever. Damn, my legs and feet are sore. Can I cut'em off and get new ones?

DIA OCHENTA SEIS:
Viernes, 13 May 2005 - Nuestra Señora de Fatima
Taxco, Guerrero - Friday morning, contemplating.

EARLY EARLY: I sit on our little stony terrace overlooking the lit city under misty skies. The Casa Blanca disco is hopping below, young folks on its glowing covered rooftop are laughing and shouting. The breeze is lightly cool, the taxis are few, the night muffled.

Beside me on the wide railing are the little Sony Vaio laptops, now put away, and two tall green heavy worn glass soday-type bottles, daily gifts of the mangement. AGUA YULI, purificada y pasteurizada, sin gas. And the contents taste just like... water.

A BIT LATER: Every morning we hear nearby explosions. This morning I look up from our terrace and see puffs of smoke in the air just 100 meters to the west. Some neighbor is launching skyrockets! A little later I see smoke trails of the launches, apparently from the flat roof of the Hotel Santa Prisca. I wish I had some too.

I walk around this wing of the mouldering hotel, its jutting terraces and jagged courts and jittery miradors. Tiny passageways angle steeply in dark dank corners of its innards. Dark swifts jet around the ramparts; dragonflies (the Devil's horses) hover in the pocket gardens bursting in reds and blues. Long steep red-tiled walkways lead down to the street, but the wrought-iron gates are locked. Across the notch in the north wing, figures move behind glass in the reception-dining-lobby area. Our only escape is along the long sheltered drive past the entrance. But not today. Today, we lurk sloth-like in our room, languidly recovering from yesterday's exertions.

LATE EVENING: Despite its ancient core, Taxco (like most Mexican cities) seems to have mostly been slapped together from concrete over the past few decades. Many other cities are surrounded by new cookie-cutter cementblock housing-development burbs, depressing in their sameness but infinitely better than the box-and-tarpaper shantytowns they replace. I didn't notice such burbs as we approached Taxco. Is this area too vertical, too rich, or what?

After the brief rain, we stomped around a couple plazeulas for a pricey burger dinner and bare supplies. I schlepped a 20-liter water jug on my shoulder, a kilometer east, 100 meters up, through the usual heavy traffic. I'm still sore from yesterday. When we shop tomorrow, we're taking a damn cab back. I'm exercised enough for now, thanks.

I'm finishing the Gould book and starting on the essays of Francis Bacon. Am I philosophical yet? No, I'm bitching and dreaming about cameras (click here).

SONGS:

Maria Says

Blows In Like Breathing

Made It Thru The Day

DIA OCHENTA SIETE:
Sabado, 14 May 2005 - San Matias
Taxco, Guerrero - Saturday sometime.

MORNING: We delve into town (sin carta, without a map) and the Saturday morning silver marketplace, hundreds of tarped stalls along roads and down walkways and into old basements and courts. The ware are mostly small bits of silverwork in bulk. The big fine stuff doesn't seem to work its way through these precincts.

Well, SOME good stuff is here. Maureen may go into the silver bracelet business on eBay. Everything except the plated trinkets is sold by the gram. 303 grams for 1365 pesos is 4.5 pesos/gram or US$4.34 per ounce, which we're told is a good price -- bulk silver going for 3.8 pesos/gram, or US$260 per kilo. Every dealer has a little digital scale.

We ran into a youngish gringo enthused by the low prices of gold and silver and platinum around here, mentioned something like US$250 per kilo of the latter. He says gold is cheap in the neighboring town of Iguala, that he got a 330 gram necklace for US$110 which is US$9.50 per ounce! There can't be much gold in that amalagam, eh? How many karats?

AFTERNOON: A tasty comida corrida (daily special) down on the main road, a roast chicken to haul home for dinner, a stroll up through the (always crowded) street markets, and somehow we've walked back to the hotel, alive. ALIVE!

And just in time for a long chat with Autumn and Logan (and son Sean) about life and business here. Besides dealing silver and stones, they're trying to buy half the hotel. The plan: turn it into a refuge for visiting silver buyers worldwide, a Posada Plateria, with affordable comfort and security and internet. We learn that this is the oldest big hotel in town, unfortunately not maintained well for a decade. Can they turn it around?

We are directed to visit a friend of theirs who just opened a cheap comedor and who collects (and publishes) local tales of UFOs and the supernatural. Ah, more grist for my mill! Maybe tomorrow, eh?

They generously offer us kitchen and iNet use, and to guide us through the marketplace and some local attractions. We hope they find reason to visit us in the Sierras in the future. They plan to visit Guatemala soon; we'll share our operational ignorance. And now that we're getting acclimated, we may stay another week or two.

EVENING: No rains yet, but yesterday they came late and twice, so there's yet hope. The sky is misty, the westward mountains a pale but darker blue. Earlier, a mob of orange-shirted gringos descended on the hotel, but they're nowhere in evidence now. Whew.

I'm slowly working my way through Bacon's ESSAYS and I feel inspired to write my own set of Essay Civil And Moral. In keeping with my established style, they will bear titles such as THE ABSOLUTE TOTAL MORON'S GUIDE TO TRUTH, JUSTICE AND THE ALBIGENSIAN WAY and IF WISDOM IS A GAME, HERE ARE THE RULES (click here) and HOW TO MASTER YOUR LOWER NATURE WITHOUT HARDLY BREAKING A SWEAT (click here). I'm setting ambitious goals for myself, eh? You can find my previous writings right here.

I'm reminded of another piece I plan to write. COSMIC HITCHHIKING FOR DUMMIES: The COMPLETE IDIOT'S GUIDE To CROSSING CONTINENTS, PLANETS, SOLAR SYSTEMS, GALAXIES And UNIVERSES At Little Or No Expense. If I churn that out fast, it might work as a movie tie-in, eh?

DIA OCHENTA OCHO:
Domingo, 15 May 2005 - Pentecostes
Taxco, Guerrero - Sunday sometime.

A late start after a late night, out past the Sunday street vendors, down to the main drag (Avenida Presidente John F Kennedy) for another cheap comida corrida. Three shirtless guys lean out from windows above a corner, one greeting us in English, asking how we like Taxco, welcoming us to Mexico.

In the marketplace, an elegantly dressed and coiffed old woman looks up at Maureen, smiles broadly, pats her arm. Of course many others stare at us, some little kids still break out crying, etc. And of course we're swarmed by vendors, everybody trying to make a living. We buy a couple trinkets of woven or carved vegetable matter, then retire to our room.

Did I mention that there are silver shops everywhere? Some specialize in gouging tourists, some in selling bulk items for export, some in buying from whomever walks in, and some just do whatever. There are silver shops, and silver-and-handcrafts shops, shops selling silver and fancy clothes, or silver and books, or silver and photo supplies, or silver and food, or silver and barbering, or silver and laundry, etc. And some are busy and most aren't.

DIA OCHENTA OCHO:
Domingo, 15 May 2005 - Pentecostes
Taxco, Guerrero - Sunday afternoon
Further observations by Maureen.

THE LAST OF CHIAPAS
The Maya Medicine Museum was excellent! We skipped the Na Baloom house...too expensive. We did see the garden and gift shop ( also too expensive.). We also skipped the Casa Mexicano buffet after asking other expats who told us the food was ok and lots of it. We are more interested in moderate amounts of excellent food.

GUATEMALA
What a treat to return to Guatemala and see it rid of all the roadside basura (trash) and the people looking more prosperous. Ric wrote enough on that part of the adventure. The most surprising new part of the journey was the maginificient mountains between La Mesilla (THE MESS border town) and Lake Atitlan. I highly recommend the route for the scenery and for the Mayan people in traditional costumes. BEAUTIFUL!

HONDURAS
I went with no preconceived notions beyond a poor country of very mellow people... see... reference.

The bigest surprise was the sign at the waterpark outside Copan Ruinas to 'Check Firearms at the Gate'. In retrospect I suppose that sign probably contributed to my fright at what sounded like gun shots in the night outside the hotel at Nuevo Ocotepeque. It could have been rockets, but with all the noise of men yelling at each other, the slamming of car doors, and the bright lights flashing through the transom of our door to the street side balcony it seemed perfectly logical at the time that the sounds were gun shots.. Ric slept through it until I shook him from my position on the floor. I had hit the deck to get myself out of the streetside window. That was truly a yucky night. With an air conditioner sounding like an old Volkswagon taking on Lombard Street (San Francisco) in low gear, the stink of old plumbing, the sandpaper bumps of cheap acrylic sheets, and the rumbling of my tummy after a hotel dinner that only a truly hungry person could eat... I felt like I had fallen into the twilight zone. Good steady Ric with his obvious assessment of the situation told me to rest up, we couldn't leave in the night, and fell right back to sleep. When the morning finally came we gagged down our 'free' breakfast and lammed it outta town. That is we tried to lam it outta town. The first gas station had no power until 9:30. So we waited, a while, then drove around a bit, returned at the appointed time to be told that they didn't know when to power would be on. What the Hell! Driving on through town we found a station with power. Imagine my relief!!! .

I loved the country there and will return in the winter when hopefully the air will be clear and I can better see all the beautiful mountains and the tidy farms. The people were all kind, and I expect we will have a fine time as long as we can avoid overnighting in a border town.

ON TO TAXCO
We arrived in Taxco after running from the heat at the coast and getting Ric over a terrible case of dysentary. The first night he was sick we spent in another Twilight Zone hotel which had a dirty loud ineffective air conditioner and stinky bathroom. I got Ric into it just in the nick of time... four minutes more and he would have been miserably sick in the street. That was a hard night, watching him suffer so. A loud band across the street played until 5am. Fortunately the music helped me maintain sanity because it was, for the most part, excellent latin music. Early the next morning Ric stabilized and I went out hunting for American-quality accommodations. I found a very nice hotel only two blocks away. I made the clerk demonstrate the air conditioner for 10 minutes. to be sure it actually worked witout making too much noise. The room was heaven... comfy beds, soft sheets, big fluffy towels, a quiet herculean air conditioner, big beautiful bathroom... and all the goodies. It was our haven for three days and two nights. Those Bahias de Huatulco are hiddeously hot and humid, fetid even this time of year... 92 degrees and 99% humidity at 8:30 am. The Mexican people who come for vacation in this weather are NUTS!.

The guide books did not prepare us for Taxco. From the highway which is a twisting two lane street at the perimeter of town high in the mountains it is almost impossible to find the road into town. None of the guide books told us to turn in at the statue of the miner. Poor Ric had driven that day for the first time in a week. On our first try at heading into town he drove up a narrow steep cobbled street through throngs of people shopping the stalls of produce on either side only to reach a dead end and then turn around in about 15 feet while more people boiled around the car. Back down at the highway we tried another street, this one with a white cobble strip down the middle suggesting a two way street though wide enough for only two bicycles not two cars. At a tight bend we were waved off by a pedestrian telling us we were the wrong way on a one way street. Another tight turnaround. There were no one way signs. On the third try we found a two way street but at such steep ascent that the Explorer just stopped with the accelerator fully depressed. Well, backing down the winding street was a scary option, so Ric thought a bit, put the car into low 4 wheel drive, and took us on up up up into town. Way to go Ric! We had almost despaired of finding a place to stay when I spotted Logan walking up the street. What luck!!! He guided us to the hotel where he and his wife Autumn and son Sean are leasing space, and he introduced us to the manager, who cut us a very good rate for a week's stay. Thanks Logan!

We are finding that the usual guide books don't work very well for traveling by car. They don't give good enough directions for getting into towns, they don't give parking information, they don't tell where to buy groceries, and we will add more to the list of things we had to ferret out for ourselves.....

I LIKE TAXCO
I like Taxco. After reading about the cool mountain location, the silver industry, the great cathedral, the vibrant folk arts of pottery, carving, and textiles, and seeing the beautiful photographs, I really wanted to be here a while.

It is not really as beautiful as the photographs, but it definately has some great sites, a magnificant mountain location with cooler temperatures and afternoon rain, and plenty of lovely commercial offerings for your shopping days. Even the messy public market is vibrant. Hiking the winding corriders of it brought to mind old black-and-white movies of the souks in Morocco. The goods are of course different but a riot of colors and smells, and the cruch of shoppers and vendors the up and down and through of the narrow steps and corridors snaking across mountain side, are all just as I imagined from those movies. .

Sunday is my favorite day here. Less traffic noise and exhaust, more varied offerings in the colorful stalls of handcrafts, many clouds of bright balloons floating through the park in front of the cathedral, everywhere street vendors bulked up with bright baskets in fantastic shapes, crowds of Mexicans strolling about with their families, sweethearts of all ages holding hands in the zocalo park, happy music amplified by the stone buildings, everywhere aromas of cob corn on a stick, frying meat for tortas or tacos, and the slurping of afternoon ice cream.

Saturday is my next favorite day, for the silver market down off the highway and behind the bus station. A pulsing labyrinth of rickety booths and too short tarps overhead, jammed with people; some shopping the silver, some cooking chickens and tortillas in concrete nooks at the perimeter, some hawking small cheese and pinapple and coconut pies from large wicker baskets. Lots of people selling jewelery of bits of silver and beads, a few selling truly fine substantial pieces, some with semi-precious stone inlays and some with fine overlay work. I truly can not imagine how all the vendors competing at the lower value of the market make a living. They are legion.

IMPROVING
We are getting stronger each day. For the last two days we have managed to walk all the way down to the highway and back up again to our hotel on one of the highest streets. It hurt like hell the first few days we were here. Only large doses of Ibuprofen and a taxi ride back up to the hotel saved us. We laughed at each other limping around our room. We truly looked beat.

But today is another day, and we did the trip just fine. You may wonder why we would do it on days when there is no silver market. Well, the good cheap food is down on the highway, and the grocery stores are on the way there or back. Having no refrigerator, and trying to stay on budget by eating cheaply requires the trek at least every other day.

DIA OCHENTA NUEVE:
Lunes, 16 May 2005 - San Juan Nepomuceno
Taxco, Guerrero - late Monday afternoon.

Another late start, so we're not hiking up to Templo Guadelupe on the hilltop above us for the great views, not today. I think we'll take a cab sometime. Meanwhile it's down through the commerical zonas again, acquire some ceramics and more silver (from Jesus de la Cucaracha) and carvings. This must stop soon. After Thursday, anyway. Did I mention that some of the 'shops' here are veritable silver malls, dozens of dealers with small spaces under one expansive roof? Well, they are.

We found the new good comedor behind a trinket shop under La Arca, recommended by Logan and Autumn [Dora's Cafe, Calle del Arco #13], run by their good friends David and Dora. A long chat. David's a young-looking Cuernavacian who worked for 20+ years in the states, a tech rep for Xerox. He retired young, blew his retirement wad, inherited a building in Taxco, fell in love (introduced by Logan), and now takes it easy (Dora's the fine cook). He sez life is much better here. He's a very lucky guy. He collects rents from the silver merchants next door, runs the shop, and promotes the comedor. Their tenant Socorro is a spry lady, a mixer. Dora's Cafe and environs feel very homey. We'll be back, often.

Back to the hotel, we sign up for another week in this fine old decayed hacienda. Now we'll have time to explore beyond our accustomed, limited range. We've already gotten the raw-survival basics down, and done the local mercados. What we miss here is an English-language bookstore where we can trade in our old stuff for new. Like, I probably wouldn't be reading Bacon's ESSAYS if there was ANYTHING else to consume, eh?

NOTE: My directions were all screwed up. Forget everything I've said about orientation in Taxco, I was wrong. Those mountains across the way, they're EAST, not WEST. The air is clearing and we can see them well. I have an excuse. Mornings and evenings, it's been cloudy, so I couldn't really see where the sun was. That's my story and I'll stick to it.

PS: I've been referring to Logan and Autumn, but Autumn (like Maureen) is a hard name for Spanish-speakers to pronounce, so here she's Jill, voiced as HEEL. So from now on when I mention Logan and Jill, remember that he hasn't traded her in. See their website at www.dlair.com (click here)

PPS: I just made some minor updates to the DESERT RAT SCRAP BOOK website (click here). Take a look and see if you can spot the changes. If you care.

EMAIL REPLIES:

I've been emailed some relevant feedback on recent journal reports. Here they are, and my responses.

>> LATE NIGHT: Tight voices singing modal acapella gospel (??)
>> songs drift in the window, not unpleasantly.  In a dream,
>> our hostess tells a nosy Austrian investigator that they're
>> Jehovah's Witnesses.  Do JW's sing?  I'm not sure.
>
> You mentioned JWs and music so thought you'd find this fun:
> Famous JWs.  http://www.adherents.com/largecom/fam_jw.html
> Oh, yeah, they "do" music. :-)
> Glad you're feeling better.

I'm glad too. Now, how to make JW's STOP singing? And quickly!

>> A: Just what the world needs -- another cult.
>> THE CULT OF RIC!  Yeah, that sounds good.
>
> Um... I've been paying DUES to what I THOUGHT was The Cult
> Of Ric for years.  If that wasn't true, what did you do with
> the money all this time?  Is that how you funded this trip? 
> DAMN YOU!  ... another illusion crushed...

I didn't get a cent, I swear it. I'd better check with my agent.
Wait, I don't HAVE an agent. Just send money to me via PayPal.

> Glad to hear your are feeling better, Ric. One of the worst
> aspects of being sick away from home is that you do not have
> your own bed. 

But on the other hand, I can be sick in someone else's bed, and
not have to clean up afterwards. The ONLY benefit of hotel life!

DIA NOVENTA:
Martes, 17 May 2005 - San Pascual Bailon
Taxco, Guerrero - Malaria Tuesday morning.

PROBLEM: Yesterday afternoon we enjoyed street-theatre just under our terrace. At a narrow elbow where the steep road levels out towards the plazuela, a telephone junction box extrudes from a high wall onto the thin sidewalk. Small crews have been working on it for days now, wires probing, headsets fitted, the adjacent tiny manhole occasionally open to reveal the town's nervous system within. Rolling and walking traffic passes by heedless.

So, in the late afternoon, as we perform our usual indolent layabout, we hear horns, many horns. We look out and see that traffic is stopped in both directions below. I peer further and see that a combi (VW bus) running downhill has hit a taxi (VW bug) coming uphill, and knocked it right into that phone box. Vehicles are stalled as far as vision allows, and phones are out for the neighborhood.

Well hell, phones are often out here, but the traffic situation is serious. Passengers are abandoning backed-up combis and cabs, fares presumably left unpaid because destinations have not been reached. The VW bug seems unable to move. Nobody is hurt, but the streets are much too narrow to even think of getting a tow truck in.

SOLUTION: A couple of transit cops walk onto the scene and start waving back the traffic, urging everyone to back up a few meters or decimeters or centimeters. A group of the biggest guys around assembles at the bug. They catch their breaths, bend over, grab the bug, pick it up, and carry it a few feet to the nearest almost-wide spot. A lane is cleared. Traffic slowly one-ways around the obstruction.

And thus another Mexican standoff is resolved, by community action. There may be a moral here. But I don't know when the phones will be back on.

NOTE: The preceding may or may not be totally true. Only an omnicient deity knows for sure. And my writing arm is now badly bruised. Hmmm...

CINEMA: Longtime readers of these journals may recall my enthusiasm for TEN-SECOND MOVIES (click here), an annual project devoted to creating cinematic vignettes. The above story seems like an ideal subject for such treatment, but I think it'll take twenty seconds. So, a story in two parts. Title: THE COLLISION: We Can Do It.

Episode I: Brief establishing shots of the narrow steep road, the crawling traffic, the phone duo at work. Then, the slow crash! The phone crew leaps away! Confusion! Frantic passengers bolting from their conveyances! The honking! And a frowning sun looks down on the scene, with a subtitle: WHAT TO DO?

Episode II: Cops appear, wave traffic back. A gap forms on the road. Husky short guys gather, squat, lift, carry. The jam breaks up, normal circulation is restored. A smiling sun looks down on the scene, with a subtitle: WE CAN DO IT! But angry people are pounding on their phones as credits roll and image fades.

Martes, 17 May 2005 - San Pascual Bailon
Taxco, Guerrero - Malaria Tuesday evening.

Another lesson learnt: When you purchase some goodie, and the seller wraps and bags it for you, pay attention. Make sure that the item bagged is the item desired. Maureen bought a pot yesterday, but came home with a different one, still nice, but not quite the right color. The substitution was probably accidental, probably. So, back to the mercado to exchange it, but that particular vendor wasn't there today. He'll hopefully be back this weekend, hopefully.

NOONISH: Another tasty meal at Dora's Cafe but late breakfast was a better deal than lunch. A long chat with an Old Gringo, one of their ex-pat regulars. Bill, sculptor of small things, has been out of the states for almost 40 years, in Taxco for exactly 10. He says life is much freer here than stateside. We've heard that from a few ex-pats already.

We stop at our favorite heladoria near the plazeula for more great cheap REAL ice cream, stroll along chatting with Logan, then head downhill to resupply. I schlep another big honking water jug on my shoulder, back up to the hotel. Ugh. Ah well, it's exercise.

Online, we checked world prices for precious metals. The figures that youngish gringo quoted the other day were just absurd. Today, silver is about US$7 per ounce (2.7 pesos per gram), gold is about US$420 (162 pesos), platinum is US$860 (332 pesos). Logan suggests that some sales clerks tell unsuspecting gringos whatever they want to hear.

AGENDA: We're working out an amended route for when we leave here in a week, something like: Taxco via Toluca to Zitacuaro; via Celaya and San Miguel Allende (with maybe a side trip to Mineral de Pozas) to Guanajuato, where we may stay awhile. Thense via Leon and Aguascalientes to Zacatecas, where we may also stay awhile. Thense to Durango; to (Hidalgo de) Parral; to Nuevo Casas Grandes; and via Naco to Bisbee. (Every 'to' city is an overnight stop.)

Hey Jim, remind us again please, why should we go to Mineral de Pozas?

We're also scheming about setting up trade routes, if we can find US markets for products. Take cheap flights to Taxco and San Cristobal and Antigua for specific goodies. And see what's available in (or can be shipped to) Nogales. A Sacramento dealer says she'll buy whatever we bring back, maybe. And we can flog Taxco silver on eBay, maybe. So we can become international traders to pay for our further travels, right? We'll see.

BUDGET: I've mentioned our budget. We actually have two. The trip budget is US$49 per day, and we don't have many of those days left, especialy not on driving days, especially when a full gas tank costs US$40. And there's the stay-indefinitely budget of US$33 per day. That's what we live with when we're hanging out.

In Taxco, our room costs US$19.50 per day, leaving US$13.50 (150 pesos) for food etc. We've about got that wired. One day might include cereal in the room for breakfast, a cheap lunch out, a couple great ice-cream bars, and a carry-out roast chicken for dinner. Or it might be a nice breakfast out, sandwiches for lunch and dinner, ice cream at mid-afternoon. Something like that. Not super exciting, but we can keep at it almost forever, or until we tire of the place. We'll try this next in Guanajuato and Zacatecas.

If the business stuff works, future trips can have larger budgets. Delayed gratification, yup. And there'll an new set of journal entries, ADVENTURES OF THE PENNY-ANTE INTERNATIONAL TRADERS. Stay tuned.

DIA NOVENTA UNO:
Miercoles, 18 May 2005 - San Juan I
Taxco, Guerrero - Wednesday sometime.

Previously, I spoke of a scientific taxonomy or classification of travel. Now I would like to propose an intellectual contest. See The TRAVEL TAXONOMY Contest (click here).

Seen early: More skyrockets and explosions. I roughly timed the flash-bang duration and figure that they're going off 150 meters away, not 100 as I previously estimated. Whew.

Seen in the morning: A woman waters potted plants on her nearby terrace while a spaniel watches from a tiled ledge above. A pickup truck loaded with screaming girls hurtles down the steep narrow lane. A young guy slowly wanders up the road, aimlessly ringing a big brass handbell. Crowds of students walk the hill, dodging traffic. A few guys still work on replacing red roof tiles on a house a block away. Fewer skyrockets. More motorbikes.

Seen on the streets: Girls with great (or otherwise) bodies and spray-on clothes, some carrying parrots. A Taxco jewelery nook playing fast Israeli music and showing great Spratling-Aguilar-Castillo-etc silver designs. A Kama Sutra t-shirt, with skeletons. A woman in a smart dark conservative business suit wearing a BARBIE backpack. And a guy so outfitted, too.

Clusters of tourists, dressed to furnish an entire season of WHAT NOT TO WEAR. Basket vendors set up in odd stairways and patches of shade. Juan de Magic prepping a batch of silver bracelets for QVC, complaining about his dealings with greedheads at Tiffany's. Restaurant and plateria touts ('pirates') infesting the plazuelas. A few shoeshine men in the zocalo. Crowds of vagrant schoolkids. Very few sleeping dogs. A blind guitarist singing folk coplas (yes, I threw some pesos into his jug).

And at the hotel, birds nests in lighting fixtures. And no hot water until evening.

Today's goal was to hit the overpriced SILVER MASTERS grotto off the zocalo and record some book titles; acquisition of same will greatly further our education. Note: these are almost unobtainable in Mexico. Should we import some?

Otherwise we poked into yet more platerias, before and after munching tortas and guacamole. Then ice cream for the soul, stocking up on tuna and mayo for the next couple meals (damn! I'm slimming down!) and then back to the hotel for invigorating showers (note what I said above about the water). An easy day. A tiring day. International traders should stay in hotels closer to the action, not up steep hills.