Sitios Arqueologicos Y Fuegos Pirotecnicos

Well, I'll tell you, it's a hot day here in Mazunte, a quiet little puebla on the Pacific coast of Oaxaca state, and I don't feel much like writing - I'd much rather keep on with the gentle hammock-swinging and dozy reading that's been occupying pretty much all my time of late - but I have a few things I feel compelled to tell you about, and if they don't come out now they may never do, so here goes.

So I wound up spending three nights in Oaxaca city. The plan had been two, but my hosts were very lovely indeed, and kind enough to invite me to stay a third in order to attend a rather special event which I will tell about in a moment. The first day was easily burned away lolling about in the city's beautiful old Zocalo; after my late night arrival, I woke, breakfasted, and set about poking around all the huge ornate churches, listening to all kinds of street music and reclining with a book under cover of shade, munching on tamales and coffee - rare now is the tamale lady who passes me by un-patronized.

That second evening, my hosts and I discussed some of the to-sees and to-dos of Oaxaca city, during which was raised the posibility of paying a visit to some nearby Zapotec ruins. I realized that I had yet to visit any sizable ruins, and that I should probably not leave Mexico without so doing, and so made plans to go the following morning. Only a half-hour or so out of the city, Monte Alban, I learned, apart from being one of the earliest cities of Mesoamerica, was in fact the central hub (socially, politically, economically) of all things Zapotec for close to 1000 years! Most agree that it was founded some time around 500 BC, and was pretty much in full swing around 100 BC-200 AD, expanding and dominating throughout the Oaxacan highlands. Come 500-750 AD however, things had calmed down, and the place was essentially abandoned after that, apart for a few small-scale reoccupations, or the occasional re-use of various structures or tombs, etc.

Apart from all the historical acclaim, the place is also quite beautifully located, set upon a vast levelled plateau, some 6400 feet above sea-level, and about 1300 feet above the surrounding valley floor. The center of the site is a kind of rectangular courtyard, bordered on all sides by strings of pyramid-like structures, the two largest of which flank it on each end. Sheer steps almost twice as tall as they are deep make climbing these pyramid faces a little risky if you're not paying attention, but the view from the top is well worth it, nearly 360 degrees, gazing down into the main yard - in the center of which sits the astronomical observatory so central to the daily and ritual life of this star-gazing culture - and also out across the valley and onto the outskirts of Oaxaca city below.



Outside this main area there sit several other beautiful pyramid structures affording similarly beautiful views, as well as a number of smaller sets of ruins more on the edge of the site - mostly tombs, we learned. It was not dificult to kill a few hours wandering about the site, gawking, snapping photos and talking idly with the various traveler people who invariably find themselves in such places, but there's only so much you can write about it.

One detail in particular, however, does merit mention, I thought. Rather awesomely, among virtually all the pre-Colombian peoples of Mesoamerica, there was played for some 3000 years a ritually significant game, now referred to as the ball game. The exact rules are not known, of course, but based on the available information, it looks to have been something like volleyball, in which participants would strike a sizable rubber ball (weighing up to 4 kilograms!) usually only with their hips, but occasionally with forearms or elbows as well, with the objective of keeping it in play.

Some 1300 ballgame courts have been found througout mesoamerica, and although they vary considerably in size, they all feature the same long narrow alley, bordered by sloping walls for the ball to bounce off of. While the ballgame seems to have been widely played recreationally, major formal matches were also held, and there is plenty of evidence suggesting its frequent correlation with ritual, and even with human sacrifice. I was pretty stoked about all of this.

So anyway, upon returning to town and supping with some fellow travelers, I returned home, where I was to meet with one half of my hosts - Willem - to help organize a smallish surprise party for the other - Hilary. As it happens, Hilary was turning 10000 days old on this day (about 27 and a half years, incidentally), and so guacamole and crepes, and beer and friends, and a sizable piñata in her likeness were all arranged to celebrate. It was a lovely night with much laughter and conversation, and I was very pleased to be there, and to have met so many more fun and interesting people. I left the following morning (after tamales of course) quite content and quite ready for the beach.

My first stop was in a spot called Puerto Escondido, widely-known, apparently, for its good surf, and low-stress lifestyle. I was pleased to find that while it was undoubtedly touristy, it was still quiet enough to find a private corner of beach if you wanted. My first few nights there I kept to myself mostly, enjoying the weather, and spending slow days meandering around the beaches. Soon enough however, I fell in with a gaggle of Aussies staying at my hostel, and drank far too much beer playing all kinds of crazy card games. Folks would see how much fun we were having, and invite us out on the town, but we were content to stay in, and the party often came to us. There is a great late-night burger scene in Puerto Escondido, and we ate our fair share I can tell you.

So one night, about 7:30, as I'm coming home from a Valentine's day SKYPE with my mom in New Brunswick, I see my Aussies all geared up to head out somewhere. Oh yes, there's a little fiesta happening a little ways out of town, and aren't you coming? Just what that means I have no idea - I figure it's a bar or something - but I've got nothing important planned, so I decide to go for it. They all leave in a cab, and I make my way out there a little while later with some other hostel people in a cab of our own. I ask around about what this place is all about but no one can tell me anything, but it takes us some fifteen or twenty minutes to drive out there, on a silent vacant road, under the light of the Mexican stars, and I begin to realize I am likely not going to a bar, anyway.

I am quite hugry at this point, and so am pleased when we drive into what appears to me to be a sizable night-market - they always have good food. We are let off at the mouth of a great long stip of little puestos selling everything from baby-shoes and fruity-sweets to hand-made leather machete-holsters, and begin to make our way into the fray. It soon becomes evident that far more than just a market, we have arrived at a full-on Mexican carnival, complete with games and spinning, twisting rides of all sizes, and shiny brown youth running around shoulder to shoulder beneath the blazing neon lights. There are doughnuts and milkshakes and pizza and tacos everywhere, and the music is too loud and babies are screaming and I don't know where to begin.

Now, everyone's been to a carnival, they're all kind of nuts, right, so I don't have to spend ten paragraphs describing it, but it ought to be noted that in Mexico, things are just a little - how can I put it - looser. There is no ticket booth, indeed there are no tickets anywhere, if you want to take part in some game or ride you just step up and pay cash money, or rather, you force your way to the front and pay cash money - there are no lines either. When the gates open, folks of all ages simply dash up the stairs to their favorite rotating contraption and have a seat. Indeed, many rides have no gates at all, but swing or twist quite openly, and it is up to the responsible carnival-goer to not walk too close lest he get kicked in the pants by a circling elephant, as one of my travel mates learned the hard way.

Having indulged myself in a good many tacos, I was not tempted to hop on any of these rides, but took some pleasure in watching my companions flail about on one particularly unforgiving ride. This torture machine would likely run for a minute or two anywhere else in the world, but I watched it spin for what must have been six or eight, and thanked my better judgment for sitting out. This had all been good fun for me, and I was glad to have come and enjoyed the welcome break in my otherwise slow beachlife very much, but the highlight of the whole evening was still to come.

Making my way around a few bends and kind of following the crowd, I eventually came to a large-ish open square within and around which were seated or milling about some many hundreds of people. At one end of the square was a small stage upon which some traditional folklore type song and dance were being performed, which the crowd seemed to be enjoying very much. Now, the square would normally have been wide open to the street along one side, but on this occasion was hemmed in by some very unusual structures the likes of which I had never seen before.

They looked like great communication towers, some three or four stories tall, all constructed of thin wood beams and strips crossing all over in supporting Xs, or at least they would have looked so, were it not for all the other ornate circular crisscross objects fastened to their surface, or dangling from crossbeams. Some of these structures looked like great flowers or palm trees or birds, and the whole lot were covered in what looked to me like little white plastic birthday candles that ran across every line of the things, usually spaced an inch or two apart.

Well, they were very elaborate and beautiful, I thought, but it was quite dark, and I couldn't quite figure out what to make of them. Besides, people didn't seem to be paying them much attention, anyway, so I took a seat among the crowd and enjoyed the show - I had heard there were going to be fireworks. Now again, everyone has been to a fireworks show, but I'll tell you a Mexican fireworks show is another thing altogether, or at least this Mexican fireworks show was, as I will do my best to describe here.

Once the dance performance had finished, a male voice came over the loudspeaker and shouted some indistinguishable but deafening words, at which point the band began once more, although with a much jauntier tune, and a figure emerged in the center of the square wearing atop his head a kind of piñata-like effigy of a bull wrapped in light scaffolding and adorned with all manner of those little birthday-candle looking things, like the big towers behind him had. He began to dance about, and the square began to fill with people, also dancing, young men mostly, I noticed.

Suddenly, someone came up behind the dancing bull and struck a match, and the next thing you knew, that sucker was sending out a splay of sparks that must have been twelve feet long. The crowd cheered, and as the sparks grew the structure all about the bull effigy began to twirl and pop and crackle, and the young men in the center square began to taunt the bull. He responded to this by chasing them about a little when they got too close, shooting sparks after them as he went. I began to get the idea - like the running of the bulls, only a little safer.

It wasn't long however, before one of the boys grew bold enough to make a grab at the crazy exploding bull, and yanked it apart, taking one flaming piece, and running after his mates, while others fought violently over the remaining pieces, tossing aside those that had finished exploding, and running about with those that did. It was a bit like a riot, really, and for a moment I thought that something had gone wrong, but as more flaming-sparking-firework-bull-effigies emerged, sometimes two by two, and each was torn apart and fought over by raucous young men, and paraded about the square, I realised that this was just how it went.

It was nearly pitch black, and the fireworks put out a great deal of smoke, which, when lit up by the sparks made for quite a scene. More than once the action came a little too close for comfort, as some drunken fellow would come sprinting toward our end of the square, flailing some crazy sparkling piece of bull effigy above his head like mad, and it would come apart, sending flaming bits into the crowd which often had to be kicked away or stamped out before they exploded in our faces. One girl I was with had a sizable hole burned in the bum of her dress when she fell back and accidentally sat on one such piece of debris. Like I say, these things tend to be a little looser.

Anyway, this went on for quite some time, and it was only about half-way through that I realised that if the little birthday-candles on the bulls looked an awful lot like the ones on those huge ornate towers... What are they going to do just blow them up right in the middle of the square? Well sure enough, after the bull-fighting had ceased - as it happened the police had to be called in, and a few of the more problematic folks were carted away, so it actually was kind of like a riot - that's just what they did.



Folks were shooed away from the base of the towers, and someone walked up underneath them and lit them up, and they full-on exploded, in about ten distinct phases, over the course of about a half-hour. The great big circular bits rotated burning now green now white, and the parts built into things like birds and trees blew-up and crackled and spun around. Sometimes fireworks would explode into words, other times they would detach from the towers, and spin off into the sky to blow up. I couldn't belive it. I sat there with my mouth wide open laughing through the whole thing, that is, until it began to fill up with smithereens, and I had to close it. There were also conventional fireworks going off at times, bursting loudly and filling the sky above with pink and gold light, and trickling down onto the crowd.

It was well past midnight by the time they were finished, and I got home much later, a little tired, but well-fed and pleased overall with how the night had turned out.

I left Puerto Escondido the following day, yesterday, and made the short trip down the coast to tiny Mazunte. It's still touristy, to be sure, and although I'm crashing in my tent, I'm hardly roughing it, but it's a bit quieter anyway, and I will likely spend another night or two here before shuffling further along the coast toward Chiapas.

Talk to you soon!