Mailing Address In Argentina

I am very pleased to announce that I have managed to find an address at which I will be able to receive mail in the coming months. Thanks to the lovely Carolin Schmee and her generous family, those of you who have been asking where I can be reached may now send mail to:

Mr. Joseph Frigault
c/o Familia Schmee
Juncal 2449 - 8a
1425, Capital Federal
Buenos Aires
Argentina

As I am still quite a huge ways way from Argentina, it will likely be some time until I am able to pick up said mail, but this is the best I could manage! Present plans should have me there some time in the summer, I believe, (only a few months before I return to Canada) but better late than never, no? I understand, however, if some of you would rather wait until I return.

At any rate, if you do plan to use this address, kindly let me know, so that I'll have a heads-up on what to expect when I get there, and will know if something is missing etc.

Cheers from sunny Oaxaca! Miss you all!

Battlecries & Butterflies

Sometimes you hear people say things like: "Oh, I'm definitely a city person, I can't stand the country - nothing ever happens" or "You can have your concrete jungle, your cars and your smog, I'll take my scenic countryside." But I can never figure out which side of the fence I'm on, it seems. To be sure, I take great pleasure in the silence and solitude of the mountains and valleys, and often seek them out, but there's also something to be said for the steady industrial pulse and thrum of the big city, and I am almost always pleased to return there, even if simply to wander amidst the rush and flurry.

I arrived in Mexico city a week ago today, well after dark, in the rain of a Tuesday evening with no more than the name of a hostel and the neighbourhood in which I might find it. Thankfully, the monstrous Terminal del Norte opens out directly onto the metro line, and so after wobbling around mouth-agape for a time, I managed to find my place among the throbbing mass of people headed down the stairs thereto. I have always taken some private personal joy in subway systems; the great circulatory tracts of cities, pumping the lifeblood-populace from place to place, stopping here, re-directing there, all with incredible efficiency. Throughout the course of my few days in town, I've not waited longer than one minute for a train.

At this point, however, I had not even a rough idea as to the layout of the city - I was just gunning for a bed, really. So I asked directions, and found that I had only a single connection to make in order to get to Coyoacan, my desired part of town.

Like most metro systems, apart from the swarms of civilians making their way about town, Mexico city's trains are also home and office to a colourful cast of characters trying to earn their living. They include, but are surely not limited to, musicians, artists and performers of various kinds, whether young handsome guitar duos, blind banjo virtuosos, or shambling toothless harmonica players. There are also the numerous vendors, pedlers and salespeople attempting to disburden themselves of all manner of articles, from hand-pump rechargeable flashlights, to burned CDs (some with music, or films, and others with math-based study-guides for students, etc.) and collections of history books on Mexican presidents. Never a dull moment in transit, to be sure.

Anyway, once I arrived in Coyoacan, a quieter, more prosperous borough of town, I found a computer and searched for my hostel, finding to my great pleasure, that it was only a few blocks away. Stopping for some delicious rainy road-side tacos, I confirmed these directions, and set out. I found the place without trouble and was soon to bed.

So what do you do in Mexico city? My first day in town I headed for the heart of it - the Centro Historico, a UNESCO designated World Heritage Site, incidentally - and wandered about among the rain-battered residents hustling in all directions with collars up-turned, and briefcases in tow. It was a strange way to see the place, all grey and cloudy, taxis splashing through the old cobblestone streets. I made the rounds and lunched among busy people, gulping coffee and delicious tamales, and scoped out a few other sleeping options closer to the downtown. Prices were good, but they all seemed kind of glossy, and full of talky-talk party people, and I kind of liked the commute from Coyacan besides, and so decided to stay put.

I could say more, I suppose, about the various sights about town, and my pedestrian adventures, but that doesn't make for the most interesting reading, so I'll skip ahead some. I believe it was a Friday evening when I made my way down to the famed Arena Mexico, a.k.a. "The Cathedral of Lucha Libre."


I had purchased my ticket the day before, so as to get decent seats - I figured that if I was going to sit through three hours of professional wrestling, I was at least going to be close enough to see some sweat. I arrived a little early, and enjoyed watching the excitement mount as more and more folks arrived. And not just young folks either, I was pleased to find all manner of people lining up, singles of all ages, elderly people, even whole families, and many couples on dates (how romantic, no?). The streets were lined with little puestos selling luchador masks, T-shirts, magazines, and vendors wound their way through the crowd both inside and out of the place, selling snacks and drinks of all kinds. Tortas! Pizza! Cerveza! It was nuts.


In true Mexican fashion the speakers were maxed-out, and heart-pumping music echoed throughout the arena timed in unison with seizure-inducing lights. Around 8:30 or 9 the place was packed, and the show was ready to begin. After a little preamble from the young MC, the action begun. It was the whole schtick, I can tell you, just like on TV. Smoke, lights, and theme music filled the air, as combattant after combattant slowly made their way down too many stairs, through a gaggle of bikini-clad girls, slapping hands with eager fans, and eventually into the centre ring, where they fished for applause and otherwise wound up the crowd.

There were six bouts in all, and to my surprise, they were quite long, often lasting multiple rounds. There was two-on-two and three-on-three, and was even a round of female luchadores, (luchadoras?) great burly women of various ethnicities, slapping, pulling hair, and tossing each other about. Huge screens magnified the action, and featured slow-motion instant replays of all the juicier bits. It was fun to watch the crowd get more into things as the night went on, their cries and taunts gaining intensity: Pu-TA! Pu-TA! Chinga su madre!

Often one frenzied combattant or another would leap, or be thrown from the ring, and land - not softly, I can tell you, these were big men - in the laps of the first few rows of spectators. The latter were overjoyed about this, young and old alike, despite spilled drinks and squashed tacos - not to mention personal injury - and relished the chance to touch their wounded heroes, and encourage them to get back in the action. Undoubtedly they knew full well that this was coming, and had shelled out the extra pesos accordingly.

Eventually, it was time for the final bout, the much-talked-about match between two well-known and well-loved luchadores: Mystico VS Volador. There had been a fair amount of treatrics and showmanship in the bouts preceding, but these two chaps went at it for what must have been 40 minutes, and put on a veritable vaudeville act the whole time.

Mystico the obvious bad-guy repeatedly attempted to de-mask his competitor, and to divert the referees gaze while he undertook some dastardly deed, while Volador the fan-favorite weathered all this treachery with stoic endurance, and after a few near-pins, eventually came from behind for the win with a fantistic feat of gymnastic prowess in which he lept and flew all about his helpless opponent grabbing him now with his arms, now with his legs, and eventually flinging him to the ground by his head in a terrible tornado twist maneuver. It was almost as impressive as it was hilarious, and I must admit that despite my modest expectations, I actually had a great time! Highly recommended.

A day or so later, as I was getting ready to depart the city, I was leafing through a borrowed lonely planet looking for last minute things to do, when I noticed a little blurb about the annual Monarch migration. I had heard a bit about this while travelling in Michoacan state a few weeks prior, but my route had taken me northward before I made it into Monarch territory.

The story goes something like this: the Monarch is the only butterfly that migrates like birds do, heading southward in August, and northward again in the springtime. At any rate, every year the entire North American monarch population east of the Rocky Mountains makes the epic journey down to the same southern valleys of Mexico where they hang out and mate in a particular type of tree known as the Oyamel. Amazingly, no one individual butterfly ever makes the full round trip, since it actually takes the migration several generations to get that far, a fact which has long confounded biologists - how do they stay on course?

I was pleased to read that not only was the sanctuary only a few hours travel away, but that it was actually prime time to visit, and so, quite suddenly, I decided to pack up my things and hit the road - I would have to hurry if I wanted to find a suitable campground by nightfall. Two subways, two busses, and one taxi ride later, I found myself standing before some charming little government grounds as the sun slowly set over the hills.

I quickly set up my little Snoopy tent, stowed my belongings, and made my way over to a little nearby tienda where I supped on some delicious blue-corn quesadillas and coffee, and shared a few laughs with some local folks. The place was very safe, I was assured by one fellow who seemed to know what he was talking about, and I thanked him as I returned to my tent, only to find that some of my food had just been snatched by a few of the scruffy little dogs who hung around the place. I caught one of them in the act though, and sent him on his way. So, I was minus one avacado, and a few tortillas, but I still had plenty of grub for tomorrow's trek.

After a cold night of much rolling about, I was pleased to be woken up by the warmth of the sun, and having procured a few more of those tasty quesadillas, I made arrangements to leave my pack for the day while I took to the mountains. It took some doing to get away from there without a guide, I can tell you, and I actually felt a little badly about it afterward - they're only trying to make a living afterall - but despite their repeated warnings, I was quite confident I would be just fine on my own. It was only a short trip, and sure enough, there was ample signage the whole way, and hardly any danger of getting lost so long as you were paying even a little attention to where you were going.

About an hour or so in, I began to see them - little flickers or orange and black, lilting across my path, or resting on nearby branches. Less fond of the cool morning shade, the butterflies seemed to congregate in patches of sun, only by the dozen or so at first, but soon enough they were filling the air, and their tattered remains could be seen strewn about the trails like so many dead leaves. By the time I got to the sanctuary proper, I was already quite satisfied with my sightings so far - I had never seen so many butterflies in one place before.

Little did I know what lay ahead.


I wound down the final length of the trail, dutifully keeping silent and watching my step, as instructed by the hand-written signs, and before long was standing alongside a monstrous ravine full of rather droopy looking trees which seemed to be covered with some kind of thick foamy orange coating. It took me a moment to realize that these huge pine trees were in fact drooping from the weight of the millions of Monarch butterflies covering their every surface.

Adjusting to this fact, I began to see them everywhere, not just on the trees across the ravine, but all around, on the trees above and behind me as well, albeit not in so many numbers. Walking further along the trail, their presence continued to grow, until, at the trail's end, there was literally no place you could look and not see thousands of them. I did my best to capture the experience of the place in photographs, but as with so many of nature's wonders, much of the motion and magic of the whole scene eluded me. It had still been quite early in the day when I had first arrived, and the dozy mariposas had not yet been fully stirred by the heat of the sun, but I managed to find myself a cozy spot to sit, and over the course of the next hour or so, that place came alive.

Soon, you could not sit five minutes without being co-opted as a landing-strip for sun-bathing Monarchs. I lay back in the sun, and felt the air flit across my face at the pass of their velvet wings. Once, as I stood to take a photo, an over-amorous pair fell from above, and clung to me, still rapt in the throes of mating. What could I do? I patiently waited for them to finish, and snapped a few voyeuristic photos. Before long the air was a mess of orange, and the trees and paths were crawling, such that you could hardly walk for fear of stepping on the things.


More people had arrived too, for the afternoon rush, and so I decided to head back - I still had to make it to Mexico city that evening afterall. A pleasant walk down the mountain, and a lucky ride down into town with some other travelers saw me through to the bus depot, where I hopped on the next line out of town. I was home and in bed before 10.

Wasting no time, I left for Oaxaca the following day - yesterday - and arrived too late to do much other than meet with my generous couchsurfing hosts, and hit the sheets. Today, however, I am enjoying a leisurely afternoon about town; the weather is lovely and I have little to do but take my fill of wandering, and sit to write you all.

I will likely stay here another night or two before heading south to the beaches of this beautiful state about which I have heard so much. So hasta luego for now!

Oh, by the way, some of you may have heard about a sizable earthquake that struck this region at some point yesterday. While it was strong, and felt throughout the city - indeed my hosts told me they felt a sizable shake of their couch a few hours before my arrival! - there have been, to my knowledge, no reports of serious injury so far. I, incidentally, was on the bus into town at the time, and felt nothing out of the ordinary. Bye bye!

Reflections, Dissections, Carcasses & Circuses

Hard to believe, but it's already been two months on the road now. If present plans hold, this period will mark roughly one fifth of my trip! Sensitive as I am to such temporal increments, I have recently been given to reflection on the pace and character of my travels to date, and to the contemplation and dissection of my remaining days. Portions of the latter, for whomever is interested, can be found immediately below, but the rest of you are invited to skip ahead to the juicier stuff.

Reflections: Over the course of the past eight weeks or so, I have visited a number of strikingly beautiful and diverse cities varying in size and temperament. I have set booted foot in rain, snow, sand, and sleet, and marched across mud, marble, asphalt, cobblestones and pools of human excrement. I have swum in warm seas, crisp oceans, and wandered through air both freezing and arid. I have been healthy, have run and jumped, and have laid myself down to sleep wrapped in no more than my aches and pains. I have travelled alone, by two, and by three; have revelled in my freedom, and longed for the company of my friends and family.

I have shouted in anger, cursed my stupidity, smiled and laughed with strangers, wound myself tight and drunk myself loose again. Despite, or perhaps because of all this, I am inclined to think that I have been making satisfying use of my time so far, and am very excited for the coming months. I also wanted to write a little thank you to everyone who has actually been reading all this dross - it very encouraging to know that I have this resource at my fingertips whenever I need to feel listened to. Ok, so what next?

Dissections: I have decided, based on my present pace that I will likely need the month of February to make my way through the remainder of Mexico. (Exactly how that month will be doled out however remains to be seen, but that's what seems to be working: day-to-day openness set within a gently posited framework.) At that point, I should be ready to move into Central America. I have been thinking I would like to visit each of the countries therein, spending roughly a week on each. This may not sound like much, but timing it thus would have me approaching the doorway to South America at roughly the half-way point of my trip. This of course is not at all how I imagined things, but sits quite well with me at the moment, and represents what I am now calling "the plan".

So, South America is big, and in light of this bigness, my ambitious ideas of visiting every country therein have withered somewhat of late, making way for slightly more realistic ones. The biggest question on my mind recently was, when I enter South America, which way do I go? Shall I head South along the Western side, and skip out on northern Colombia, Venezuela and gigantic Brazil for the moment? Or head Northeast through those three countries, aimed at the Eastern coast of Brazil, and directly away from Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia? It looked like there was no way to avoid at least some back-tracking, and for a while I thought I might have to give in to considering flights around the continent.

However, I eventually devised a very rough, and very tortuous path zigging and zagging across the land, that I think would allow me to hit many of the spots I am interested in visiting, while minimizing the back-track factor. It's obviously still too early to write it down here, but I look forward to sharing it with you in the months to come, if I actually pull it off. Perhaps one of the biggest things about this new itinerary, is that it would have me finish my trip at the bottom of the continent, at which point I would likely have to fly back to Canada from one of the larger cities down there... assuming I have any money left at that point.

Anyway, enough of that talk for now. Thanks to those of you who had time to slog though it with me. Below are two stories from my recent travels.

Carcasses: After a week or so of touring around the beautiful state of Michoacan, I decided to zag North (gasp!) up to the neighboring state of Guanajuato, stopping first in the capital city of the same name - which, incidentally, comes from a phrase in the local indigenous language, meaning "Hill of Frogs", although I didn't see any about. I had heard many lovely stories of this place, and was not unimpressed by its history and beauty. Set in the base of a sizable valley, the smaller of Guanajuato's colourfully painted concrete structures clung to the surrounding ridges, while the center of the valley bloomed with all manner of larger buildings - churches, markets, museums, government offices, etc. many of which are well-known throughout the country - all exhibiting surprisingly ornate features. I observed this fact on my first day in the city - I stayed for four - when I managed to make my way up to the highest point I could find on the horizon, and sit for some time before a view spread out for miles before me - easily one of the best I have had so far, and I have had a few.

But as good as it was, it could not reveal all that the city had to offer. I had from that vantage point, for one thing, absolutely no appreciation for the vast network of tunnels that wound about beneath the city. Full of bus, taxi, and other local traffic, these roughhewn brick tunnels are also outfitted with wee little sidewalks for those willing to wander their depths. They are particularly beautiful in the evening, when traffic dies down a bit and their modest lights cast a yellow-orange glow, making you swear you were in a castle dungeon.

But if it's spooky you're after, the real place to go is Guanajuato's famed Museo de Momias, or Mummy Museum. A couple hundred years ago, most of the city's dead were stored in a sizable set of catacombs on the outskirts of town. Some time around the late 1800s, however, the city decided it ought to be charging for this service, and instituted a burial tax, and when many poor families were unable to pay this fee, their relatives were dug up to make room for the richer dead. To the surprise of all, roughly 1 in 100 of the bodies buried there had, by some unknown means, undergone a process of natural mummification, among them some of the best preserved human bodies in existence. They were immediately placed on display in a specially built museum where, for a small fee, they could be observed, and have laid there ever since, peasants mostly, contributing even in death, to the city's revenue.

Having never seen a real live mummy, I paid this museum a visit one sunny day, and spent some two hours or so wandering among the various specimens, camera in hand, without so much as blinking. The museum featured men and women of various ages, often offering brief accounts of their lives and how they passed on. Some were old and had simply died of natural causes, others were not so lucky. There were drowned mummies, stabbed mummies, mummies of people who had been buried alive, their faces drawn taut into horrific eternal screams, their fingers and toes twisted into brittle curlicues. Some were displayed in their burial clothes, frilly dresses, and old leather shoes tattered with age, others naked, revealing shrivelled genitals and mottled skin stretched like old canvas across an easel of bones.

Perhaps the most astounding however, were the "Little Angels" or infant mummies. To my surprise, I found that the museum had a sizable collection of them, to which they dedicated an entire section to the exhibit. I cannot describe what I felt as I gazed upon their tiny little fingers, skin thinner than that of an onion, and fragile as burned paper, their little feet, often still wrapped in booties, as they peeked out at me with hollow eyes from underneath delicate bedclothes. Some wore little hats, other tiny heads were bare but for a few wisps of ancient infant hair. Never before have I experienced such shocking dissonance as that created by the inescapable comingling of birth and death exhibited by these mummified babies. So tiny, so brand-new, but without any of the moisture and plumpness we expect from tiny, brand-new people. On the contrary, their bodies were old and broken like so many burned-out cinders.








The prize of the museum however, is what they claim to be the smallest mummy in the world, a fetus, in fact, removed, if you can believe it, from the mummified body of its mother, who died while with child. The latter stands leaning on a post, the lengthy scar fom her posthumous cesarean section stiched up with some rough yellow thread in full view on the left, her face locked in a fierce maternal scream. Her baby sits beside her on a pedestal, his underdeveloped legs coiled beneath him, gazing out at his adoring public. He is perhaps 6 or 8 inches tall, no more than a head really, perched upon a tiny s-shaped spine. If you look closely at the last of these photos, you will see my silhouette reflected in the glass.






Circuses: After having explored the beautiful city of Guanajuato to my satisfaction, I decided to pay a visit to the nearby and infamous San Miguel de Allende, the same city that had eluded Eden and I some weeks earlier in Michoacan. I had been building myself a couchsurfing profile for some time, and figured this was a fine time to try it out, and so I emailed ahead of myself to see if anyone in San Miguel would have me. To my great pleasure, I was taken in by a lovely young woman from Canada, who had been living and working in San Miguel for some time. Jaz and the rest of her housemates welcomed me warmly into their home, and I was not surprised when what I had planned to be a two night stay stretched into five.

It all began on day one, when, after depositing my backpack and sharing a rooftop glass of wine, I was offered a pair of tights, and invited to the evening's circus training. As it happens, some months ago, Jaz had joined a local circus troupe with whom she had been training ever since - they were, she assured me, quite accustomed to her habit of bringing along couchsurfers. Well, I was not about to turn such an opportunity down, although I did pass on the tights, and before I knew it I was doing warm-up stretch-dance with a bunch of circus folk in the back yard of their head trainer, the trapeze rigging dangling above us. The opportunity did come for me to try my hand at some of the equipment, which I did, but I was more content to sit and watch these incredible athletes swing and twist and tangle themselves up and down for the few hours we were there.

As it happened, that day was the group's final rehearsal in that space, and so I also got the chance to help them dismantle and stow all their rigging which was to be moved the following day. They had been practicing at this location for some nine years I was told, and had made and assembled the whole lot by themselves, so it was understandably an emotional time for them, and many laughs were had as we broke it all down. It was quite a priviledge, I thought, to be offered this unique chance to observe the kind of prep work that goes into even a small circus show - their troupe consists of only seven people or so - and I left with a new sense of appreciation for the athleticism, creativity and patience of folks in this field.

While this evening concluded my involvement in all things circus, my remaining days in San Miguel were no less exciting. Friday and Saturday nights were both lively, to say the least, the former involving a thorough round of bar-hopping, live music and dancing, and the latter a sizable party at the home of my generous hosts. Everyone in our house had friends in town that weekend, and it was a pleasure meeting so many folks from all over, and sharing the wonderful space with them. Unlike some other portions of my trip so far, my time in San Miguel was far less about seeing the city, and far more about interacting with all the incredible people who had taken me into their arms, despite only knowing me a short time. I don't think I shall ever forget that place, and look forward to the future crossing of paths with many that I met there.

It was therefore with some sadness that I left San Miguel yesterday afternoon, in the rain, on a bus to Mexico city, where I am presently, having arrived late last night. The rain has persited and continues even now, punishing me it seems, for leaving in the midst of such good times, and among such good people. I think, however, that I have made the right decision, and will likely remain here for a few days more at least, exploring the bustling streets, and catching up with myself a bit.

That ought to do for now, I hope. Talk to you all soon with more news and photos! (Posting photos while on the road can be a hassle sometimes, but I have recently added a few to prior posts if you care to take a look.)