México – Day 13 – Travels with Hayley

I am shocked but happy to report that I had both an excellent night’s sleep on on the bus and the toilet was very clean. The seats were nice and wide, reclined really quite a long way and had both leg and foot rests. Between all of that, noise cancelling headphones and my trusty travel pillow I slept from 10pm through to 8am with only a brief wake in the early hours for a pee and to put on another layer as I’d got a bit chilly – so basically like any other night of my life really! I’d thought the whole thing would be a bit of a nightmare but it was very easy and verging on luxurious…

Arrived at the hotel at 9.30am and while the rest headed off for breakfast, it was a bit soon after my epic sleep for Mexican food so I sat on the pretty covered terrace at the hotel, eating Oreo cookies instead and catching up on some writing.

There’s a possibility I hadn’t been listening much to the itinerary for today as when we regathered at 11am I thought we were off for a brief walk around town but instead we all got hearded into a mini bus. So all of the next activities came as a lovely surprise!

We headed about 40 minutes up the road to a town called San Juan de Chamula which is an absolutely fascinating place. Almost all of the approx 75,000 inhabitants are indigenous and speak an indigenous language instead of Spanish. They see themselves as entirely independent from Mexico and have their own style of dress, customs, etc.

Let’s start with the clothes! Each village wears slightly different outfits, but the main thing is that men wear these enormous, shaggy black fur coats/tunics (although those of a higher status, church officials and the more noted members of society wear white fur instead) and women wear the same material as a skirt. It was 34 degrees here yesterday, I cannot imagine why they would choose fur as the go to material! Women don a tight, high necked blouse with a wide strip of material around the waist (incongruously, a lot had very untraditional looking cardies thrown over the top) and their hair is really long and normally in two plaits snaking down their back. There were absolutley loads of babies and small children around and they were all strapped to their mothers backs/sides using traditional coloured shawls.

Can you imagine wearing exactly the same clothes as your neighbours with so little autonomy that people can tell the very village you’re from just from what you have on? They even look different facially, very Native American looking with darker skin than a lot of the other Mexicans we’ve met so far.

We found out yesterday that Mexico is the highest consumer of coca-cola in the world and this state are the highest consumers in the country – I’ve found my people! In an interesting twist however, the people of San Juan de Chemula believe it has medicinal and magical qualities and it’s found as an offering on the altar of all of the churches and is used in healing ceremonies. Even I don’t like it that much…

Talking of churches, the reason we came to this town was to visit one here, it’s an ex-communicated Catholic Church and they now worship in their own very particular way, using elements both from Catholicism and from the ancestral religions of the region. You are absolutely forbidden to take photos inside, you can get fined hundreds of pounds and a European tourist was killed here in the eighties for breaking the rule. They allow a small amount of tourists in to raise funds for the church to be maintained but it’s heavily regulated. So, I’m going to have to do my best to paint you a picture with words instead, plus share a rubbish google images picture someone has obviously managed to sneak in the past and escape unscathed – hopefully…

First I’m going to say – the 20 minutes we spent in the church were potentially up there with the most fascinating 20 minutes of my entire life. As you walk in the heavy front doors the first thing that hits you is the sight of the candles. There’s no electrical lights but there are candles everywhere. And I mean everywhere. On every single available surface – tiny skinny taper candles stuck to the floor with melted wax, candles in small glass jars jostling for space piled 10 deep on every side and surface – it’s a sea of smoky, flickering sparks of light as far as your eye can see. Everywhere you looked people were constantly lighting them. I asked the others how many they thought were lit and we decided between us at a conservative 10,000. It was truly like nothing you’ve ever seen. The next thing to assault your senses is the smell – pine and copal (a tree resin that is burnt in cleansing rituals). The air was rich and heavy with the smoke from the copal and the entire floor was carpeted in a thick layer of pine needles – the worshipers believe the forest to be sacred and to pray effectively they need to kneel on a sacred floor – so they bring the forest into the church. There’s no pews and no services as such, you just find space with your family on the floor, surround yourself with hundreds and hundreds of candles and begin your worship. Men, women and children of every age including tiny babes in arms were all strewn across the floor, hazy in the heat and smoke and focused totally on their own rituals as people picked their way around them. We’d been warned they ritually sacrifice chickens in there and one family did have a live chicken with them in a basket although we left before seeing what happened – Lynsey is a vegan, she’s living in hope it was a family pet out on a jaunt for the day…

The walls on each side were lined with glass cases containing the effegies of indigenous saints and the back wall was blank where the Catholic Church had removed all of their own saints during excommunication – it now serves as a reminder of what they no longer worship. The vaulted ceiling was draped throughout with fabric banners, the thickly scented smoky air was rich with the sound of haunting music being played on guitars and accordion and officials in white fur huddled at the front around an altar loaded with flowers and bottled coca-cola offerings, looking very serious, wafting the copal sticks around and keeping a strict eye on proceedings. When they left it was in a procession, accompanied by music and they seemed to almost wave the church goodbye. They wouldn’t turn their back completely on it either and ensured it was within their sights as they walked away.

The whole time we were in there you could feel eyes on you, they have at least six men stationed in the church at all times with responsibility for ensuring the no photo rule isn’t broken, clearing the dead pine needles and replacing with fresh ones, and watching the candles to ensure no fires break out. Unbelievably, as the whole thing just seems like a tinder box ready to go up, they’ve never had a fire that’s affected the building. Those guys need a pay raise or at least some extra blessed coca-cola!

The whole thing was overwhelming, a total sensory overload. I could have stayed for hours to just watch and drink it all in. On a more prosaic note however, it was a bad day to wear a long skirt to walk on a floor that was basically alight, I had to pick it up and carry it tightly around myself and thankfully escaped untorched.

This is the google pictures photo below. It does it absolutely no justice whatsoever to the point I’m almost reluctant to post it here in case it diminishes your imagination of the whole thing. Just believe me when I say if this was the one and only thing I saw in Mexico, it alone would have been 100% worth the air fare.

Somewhat reeling, we made our way to the next stop of a house/business of a local family who told us a bit of history of the area, showed us their altar which was about 6 foot tall, exploding with flowers, photos, candles and assorted paraphinalia and gave us a shot of the local ‘liquer’ – you say potato, I say moonshine – which I took a discreet sip of and then foisted onto the entirely unreluctant recipient of JJ.

The main event was when they showed us a bit of weaving – women wear a loom around their waist to produce the goods which are very neat – it sews between the fabric weave somehow so that there’s no stitching visible on the back at all and takes a ridiculously long time to produce anything – a table runner requires around 2-3 weeks of work. Although thinking about it, they didn’t say how much work you actually did on it during those 2-3 weeks – maybe it’s 5 minutes every other day and they’re just dead lazy! Everything needs context doesn’t it…

They were sweet enough but obviously it’s mainly a way to sell you stuff (actually, I’m fairly sure we only went there as they were making a special kind of taco out the back and I saw JJ eat at least four while the rest of us were learning all about the art of the weave – this is a man that makes decisions based on his stomach…) In the interests of politeness and international relations I bought a brightly coloured woven key ring that is currently adorning my handbag – what with Pedro on my rucksack and now this, my luggage is taking on a very Mexican, if somewhat kitschy vibe! I was very tempted by a cactus table runner but I managed to resist the canny negotiating and cute kids dotted around to soften you up to make a sale and made it through with just the one small purchase.

The highlight of the trip is they have some flower growing greenhouses out the back (flower production is the main income for the area) and at the weekends, the older kids give you the tour. Juan Javier and Estefan were our guides and ploughed headlong into their script at a rate of knots before their mother interrupted and made them go and put on their ‘uniform’ of traditional tunic and scarf, obviously to add a more authentic aura to the proceedings, which they reluctantly trudged off to do. Cracking straight on through the script on their return, no-one learned very much as we were all too busy laughing at how funny and sweet they were rattling through the prepared speech in record time so they could go back to playing! They did ok out of it though, everyone gave them the equivalent of about 50p each so they made about £8 all in for 3 and a half minutes work.

Back to the bus and to our home base for an orientation tour around the town. First strange encounter was a guy coming up to people in the street (very much in the way of the toenail clipper entrepreneur from previously in this biopic), but this time selling superglue. I’m just not sure this is a sustainable business model although in fairness you do need to replace superglue more often than nail clippers so what do I know!

We had a whistle stop tour through the market as by this time it was really hot and a couple of people really weren’t feeling well. We saw the outside of a beautifully carved church, it was closed at the time so we couldn’t go in but that’s fine – I hit peak church this morning, nothing can ever compare.

We wandered home past a bakery where I bought a cherry jam and custard pastry which I consumed sitting back on the terrace of the hotel while I propped my feet up on several cushions – sleeping overnight on the bus combined with the heat had left me with comedy cankles and I was trying in vain to return them to a normal size! But back to the pastry – I’m not dissing Mexican food but this was most definetly the best thing I’ve eaten since I’ve been here. In fact it’s one of the best things I’ve ever eaten. I’ll dream of this pastry – I was going to get another today (I’m writing this the day after the event) but decided it could only disappoint the second time around so I will keep it as a perfect, puff pastry patisserie memory.

Willies everywhere in Mexico!

The girls came and joined me and we had a cup of mint tea and a chat, then set off walking up the hill to yet another church as apparently it was the place to be to watch the sunset. By the time we’d got to the base of the many, many steep steps up to the the promised vista view point, the black clouds had rolled in, obliterating any chance of seeing the sun, setting or otherwise. Debating whether or not to bother making the climb, we concluded that we’d come this far so should probably pop our heads into the church to look anyway, so dragged ourselves up the never ending staircase.

But oh, didn’t the universe deliver on our efforts. Because what was happening at the church when we got there – only a quinceañera! In fact two of them – the tail end of one was leaving from the side door as the new lot came in the front (bit like the crematorium…) We didn’t see the girl being celebrated from the first as she’d already left, but the menfolk were still hanging around and talking their manly talk so we ascertained the colour theme had been pastel pink due to the colour of their perfectly coordinated ties.

For quinceañera 2 we saw all the females of the party including the main star of the show herself. The colour theme was pastel purple and everyone matched – there were bridesmaid like attendants, flower girls and even Abuelita (grandma) was part of the colour scheme. Grandma had seen me looking and I was obviously very excited about the whole thing so she beckoned me over and asked, did I want to take their picture? I responded very enthusiastically as you can imagine and even managed to persuade her to get into the picture too. She was such a proud Nan, it was so lovely. The – I don’t know what to call her – I want to say bride but obviously not – quinceañera-ist…? Anyway, the girl in question was clutching pictures of Jesus plus other papers I couldn’t make out and very sweetly, even her glasses had been chosen to match the purple colour scheme!

Disney princess dreams realised, we dragged ourselves away and started walking back, passing what we assumed was the venue for the pink reception as much celebrating could be heard and you could see masses of pastel pink balloons and flowers. The music coming from inside – and you could not make this up – was the Benny Hill theme tune. I’ve posted a 6 second clip below as proof that that shot earlier didn’t go to my head!

Making it back to the hotel, we passed by a door to door candy floss seller – is it weirder than an ice cream van I wonder – and headed straight out for dinner to a recommended Thai restaurant – all I will say is the decor was lovely, the free sweet potato crisps and sesame dip were nice and I’d put some serious money on the chef never having been to Thailand…