The Biggest Aspidistra

I enjoy the Internet because I like having history, geography, literature, biography, music and art at my fingertips. I don’t mind being offline  if that is a necessary condition of travel. However I do get a teeny weeny bit frustrated when the promise of connectivity is not upheld. 

I mention this because our situation currently is such that we pay $12 a night to park in the city of Cholula where we have a grassy parking lot with water faucets, household plugs for electricity, a toilet with seat but no paper and a cold shower. The swimming pool is lovely but cold at 7,000 feet though Layne and I enjoyed it but the WiFi is a sad case of “oh what a failure!” and the Telcel phone signal isn’t much better.

Mike from Yorkshire, below, cleaning his solar panels. I climbed the tower in the campground to get the aerial pictures. He rescued the brown dog in Baja. The campground husky pisses on everything which is why my computer case now looks so shiny and clean: 

Campgrounds are useful places in Mexico. A friend told my wife a place to park in Santa Cruz California charges $150 a night. We fell about laughing at the idea of paying 3,000 pesos to sleep. I understand a hotel room in Key West goes for a thousand dollars a night. We could live for three weeks on that if we didn’t drive or shop at Costco. 

Mike and Galleta (Biscuit) caught in an uncharacteristically pensive mood. He has a British registered 2002 Sprinter van built for the French market painted red and driven from Argentina to Alaska. The Swiss Toyota camper was driven by two young kids on their honeymoon on their way to Chile. Nice people but they left after one night.  We are moving out of the sphere of fear filled US RVers into the world of casual European overlanders.  We feel like neophytes but they like our ridiculously comfortable fat two wheel drive home. So do we. 

Laynes sister has organized a family reunion near Zihuatanejo next month and we have four weeks to spend in southern Mexico to be around the family April 11th. We dreamed up a Southern Mexico itinerary instead of heading north as we first planned. Our plans are changing constantly but it looks like this, starting today: Puebla, Veracruz, Villahermosa, Tuxtla Gutierrez, Oaxaca, Morelia, Zihuatanejo - all subject to changes deviations and side trips following the letters of the alphabet on the map below: 

I am looking forward to spending a few weeks wild camping on Baja beaches deserts and mountains after the family reunion but for now we will poke around campgrounds close to cities and see what we can find. Probably not many Americans as this area is considered a long way from the Rio Grande, too far and too “risky” and it is a long drive but even modest Cholula has its fascinations as we found out yesterday. 

It was Mike who turned us on to a fabulous pastry shop in Cholula five minutes from the campsite, flaky pastries filled with English style creamy vanilla custard. Layne prefers more austere crispy elephants’ ears: flaky sugary pastries. Once beyond that awful temptation we parked the van, walked Rusty, put him in the van and then by ourselves struggled to find the entrance to the Biggest Pyramid in the World. Where dogs aren’t allowed. 

And you have to decide how much toilet paper you’ll need before you go into the toilet (sanitario). Mexico is magical I tell you. 

If you look up the giant pyramid of Cholula important writers will tell you it is the largest pyramid by volume in the world. An unimportant writer like me will suggest you listen to Gracie Fields, a beloved  British music hall singer from generations ago singing one of her most popular songs about a plant popular in the North of England last century, a symbol of respectability called an aspidistra. Her brother crossed it with an acorn and her family had to live with  The Biggest Aspidistra In The World. This is the song that went through my head as we walked the desert dry field around the World’s Largest Pyramid.Gracie Fields Link 

But before we found the barely marked entrance to the Biggest Aspidistra In The World I had my Anthony Bourdain moment. One audio book we have listened to on our journeys is by Tom Vitale the TV chef and traveler’s director on his show made famous by CNN. In The Weeds  is a funny and revelatory book in that it describes Bourdain as a multi faceted human being and not surprisingly he was not in real life the person we saw on television. One nugget I found especially intriguing was that he was not especially into weird food. He ate it to be polite and no doubt to feed a story to the camera but when I was faced with a bucket of fried insects in Cholula I thought of it as my Anthony Bourdain moment.

Yup. I ate several scoops of different flavored fried grasshoppers, legs and all. The texture was that of a papery cracker and the flavor was imparted by the seasonings. Garlic was my favorite. 

If you check Layne’s Facebook feed no doubt you’ll find a picture of me on there stuffing my face with grasshoppers. She tasted a few and pronounced them “okay” but I had to persuade her to buy a dollar’s worth to take back to the Gannet Cafe for a more thoughtful taste later. We also bought fresh macadamia nuts in their shells, a first and some blackberries and delicious cooked sweet potatoes.

Next time you think we are being too gringo by shopping at Walmart or Costco remember we ate grasshoppers in Mexico. Legs and all. 

I’ve added a bunch of pictures here of the pyramid so you can see for yourself but beware this place has an odd, unexpected effect on some people. 

Let me confess right away I was underwhelmed by the place. We weren’t allowed to walk anywhere near the ruins, there were no cement walkways or access areas to get a feel for the place. 

I envied Rusty his cool shady bed in the van. 

Much of the pyramid is buried and it’s story is vague at best. 

When you read about ritual child sacrifices one’s bourgeois natural revulsion tends to rise to the surface unbidden. 

Why in hells name you’d put children in pots and bury them here I couldn’t say. But whatever the reason I came away from looking at this hole thinking not much good came from the Spanish  conquest but these people too had a few things to answer for. I’m glad I live in the 21st century for all its faults and failures. 

We haven’t learned much have we as we keep sacrificing people instead of nurturing them. 

The other profoundly odd thing about this place was the Catholic church’s need to lord it over these early heathen  influences. There is a church on top of the pyramid. You reach it by a separate free acess path. At noon it celebrated the Angelus by having the bells play Schubert’s Ave Maria which was a first for me. When I was child in Italy we said a short prayer at noon when the church bells sounded but we never heard popular classical songs ringing from the bell towers. Magical Mexico interrupting the Biggest Aspidistra In The World. 

Catholicism brooks no competition.

The Angelus (/ˈændʒələs/; Latin for "angel") is a Catholic devotion commemorating the Incarnation or the Annunciation. As with many Catholic prayers, the name Angelus is derived from its incipit—the first few words of the text: Angelus Domini nuntiavit Mariæ ("The Angel of the Lord declared unto Mary"). The devotion is practised by reciting as versicle and response three Biblical verses narrating the mystery, alternating with the prayer "Hail Mary". The Angelus exemplifies a species of prayers called the "prayer of the devotee".- Wikipedia

I was rather relieved to get out of there and return to the world of crass commercialism outside the fence. I have a hankering for a sarape (a poncho for you illiterates) to keep me warm at altitude but Layne says we must get it in Oaxaca as they have the best. As long as I get one before we tackle the Andes. 

We drove downtown and parked near the zocalo for some dog walking and people watching. We bought some home made chips sprinkled with hot sauce to restore our grasshopper’ed taste buds to normality.

Police canine training on the central square: 

Shopping and they had some delicious looking ice creams. Layne said custard counted for a weeks worth of sugar. Grrr. 

The parish church where dogs are forbidden. Dogs don’t have souls in Catholic dogma which was the last straw for me. 

And yet, glorious architecture: 

Abbey Road. Sort of. Cholula has lovely clean modern streets with easy sidewalks and lots of small businesses, few street dogs and a general air of modern prosperity. 

Most people wear masks so we do too even while outdoors and socially distanced. It’s polite to follow community standards. 

We accidentally parked near an Agua purificada store and this added 15 gallons to our water tank and Layne spotted  a key maker during our travels. 

We wanted a key to open the doors so we can have an extra secreted outside and never get locked out. The van has the modern remote key fob arrangement so all we wanted was an extra key to unlock the door. 

It’s a family bike shop. She sells he fixes and he took time away from a fork rebuild to find a blank that would fit the Promaster lock. He looked grim. “It will take some time.” Our faces dropped. How long? We wanted to leave tomorrow. “Oh about 15 minutes.”  We retired to the van to have lunch, roast chicken wrapped in tortillas. Half an hour later I handed over 200 pesos ( ten bucks) and we have our extra key. Magical Mexico. 

We returned to the campground where we had a swim and Mike brought us coffee poolside saying the water was too cold. He then found himself cornered by a Mexican widow who took a fancy apparently to van life and Mike. There is no accounting for taste… but she moved in on him hard core. He was squirming at the attention  but if I had been single I’d have taken her out to lunch. She was sweet and funny and apparently has an adventurous streak. All a van lifer needs in a partner. I left him to it and walked Rusty and then climbed the well worn water tower in the campground. 

The view from the top: 

Solid more or less but oxidized.

The biggest pyramid in the world on the horizon. 

The other altar of worship: 

Mike who had no desire to climb the tower. The bottom part was I’ll admit a scary rickety ladder.. .

And there endeth another long day. A shared box of wine with Mike and some stories, with a final parting planned in the morning. We are headed to the sea at Veracruz over some reputedly lush tropical mountains while he is possibly going north to find a new clutch for his Sprinter. That’s how you make friends and lose them on the road.

Circumnavigating Mexico City

We had a plan and it was a jolly good one. We followed it pretty close to the letter too which is how we left Pátzcuaro and found ourselves Monday evening sleeping in a rather busy, noisy truck stop.

Life on the road alternates between the days off when we hang around and sleep eat and type and days when we are busy being tourists visiting appropriate sites such as visitors are encouraged to enjoy and then we have busy days when we do the work necessary to keep the van afloat. I treat travel days as work days, not least because driving is work, but also because as we drive we stop and do useful things like loading with water, shopping for supplies and managing any problems that may have arisen. Our 2020 Promiaster 3500 has but 33,500 miles so one would like to think we won't spend a lot of time right now on mechanical issues but we still need to buy stuff.

Yes, I know the ancient city of Morelia is known for greater beauties than Costco! However Rusty's dog bed had got so smelly even Layne thought it was beyond laundering (she has a very poor sense of smell - ideal for van life!) and Rusty got a new bed. We got new towels as our fast drying towels were terrible at drying us after our showers. We bought a selection of treats for Rusty, an expensive dog. Costco sells delicious sliced Muenster cheese, a touch of home I can enjoy even inside a rolled up, fresh flour tortilla. Layne shopped I walked Rusty. I walked him too far, and as I pondered how very much like home the spectacularly clean and organized Costco compound felt a man in a car with a flashing orange light drove up and told me I was not allowed to walk in back of the store. Welcome home! Your behavior is prohibited! I walked Rusty back round the corner to Mexico.

Layne found a hotel for us to stay at, owing to the lack of a convenient campground near the city. We plan to return to Morelia and explore it's better at a later date but we wanted to make sure the hotel suited us. First, dogs are welcome at Villa San Jose. Then the parking area can accommodate the van easily, and best of all the entrance gate is tall enough to get our tall van inside. Result! $70 a night for a resort room overlooking the city, pool, WiFi and a restaurant on premises. Highly recommended and we haven't even slept there yet. We were finished with Morelia for the time being. 

Pátzcuaro is only an hour from Morelia and I wanted to get driving for a while. I missed being lost in Mexico, seeking the new, checking out what was across the horizon, sitting in the driver's seat of the Promaster and watching the world go by. It's a paradox because I enjoy it very much but it does tire me. It takes concentration to drive Mexico mostly because the road surface is utterly unpredictable. Traffic is gentle, drivers yield and aggressive driving is almost unknown. But the road surface- oh god. We started out enjoying a perfect freeway surface (see above), but we were driving around the capital city and obviously money has been spent to make the roads excellent close to the seat of the Federal government. 

The countryside is a mixture of golden straw on dried out hillsides similar to the desert grasses you can see in the Western states, while other areas are a neat patchwork of cultivated fields. The background is dramatic, steep dark hillsides, volcanoes, and on our drive a black thunderous sky promising heavy rain that never materialized. We drove at 65 miles per hour in the slow lane of the perfectly smooth freeway.

Evening. closed in on us and we started looking for a suitable truck stop. Much to our dismay what had been wild and lonely countryside now turned into a long stretch of highway with no rest areas or truck stops or even modest gas stations. Layne pondered her phone switching between Google Maps and the iOverlander app looking for Pemex truck stops. Night was coming and we don't like to drive in the dark even on fenced freeways...

The drama ended as the sun went down and we found a Pemex gas station right alongside the freeway. One slight problem in that it was located on the downslope of a bridge so all the trucks heading north used their very loud engine brakes when they hot the downslope. The second slight problem was that this it turns out is the only proper trucks stop for miles and it was severely crowded. Third problem was that a truck pulling in across our bows broke down causing a traffic jam and requiring a mobile mechanic to come out and get it going with maximum allowable noise in the effort.

I fell asleep after I fed the truck stop dogs and Rusty tried running them off on his walk. He has figured out Mexico pretty well at this pointy and he can assess threat like a pro. The dogs that make a living at truck stops also measure threat and he was an irritation when it came to eating a bag full of dog kibbles. They came back after he went to eat his dinner and got theirs. We saw a couple of dogs along the highway as we drove but they aren't going to accept us as saviors. Wherever they were going we had to leave them to it. It's not easy for me but I try to rationalize my pain away figuring that at least we saved Rusty from an unbearable life. We can only do what we do, and other platitudes.
We found a Starbucks alongside the highway. Want to stop? I asked my wife as I sipped the tea she had made for me while we were rolling slowly in a long traffic jam caused by a toll booth. She started drooling and mumbled something. I saw a gap and I flung GANNET2 through the hole in the traffic and pulled up within a short distance of the outside tables. 
It was in all respects a Starbucks as you know them. Toilet seats, toilet paper, cakes, mugs and a rather splendid upstairs lounging area- all present for us to enjoy. We shared a chorizo sandwich on a delicious crispy roll. Layne had an iced coffee and we used the WiFi to watch the latest video uploaded by Webb Chiles in distant Illinois. We greatly enjoy Mexican food but a little break is also in order for us. Europeans think we are funny for having a/c in our living space even as they gasp at the discomfort they suffered in sticky hot Latin American jungles. Building their character I’m sure.

We arrived  at our  turn off the ring road in  mid morning and made our way down Google’s blue line to our designated campground on the suburb called Cholula: 

Inside we found some WiFi which enabled me to tear my hair out getting this post uploaded. Mike from Yorkshire is in our side of the campground with the dog he rescued from a beach in Baja. His red four wheel drive Sprinter was built for the French market so it has the steering on the left side of the van. He wants to sell it to save shipping it back to Britain. If you’d like to buy it let me know. He’s a nice guy and has made our arrival here great fun with his stories of driving South America. We will be sure to hear more after we visit the ancient city of Puebla, my next post when WiFi allows. 

Tzintzuntzan And The Pyramids

 We arrived at the head of Lake Pátzcuaro and got slightly lost in the village of Quiroga which set us back a bit. I was acting a bit too casual as the cellphone signal was weak and I just figured we could follow the main road round the lake, which decision helped me miss the turn to head south and we carried on north for a bit too long. Layne was very patient as I reset Google maps and turned the airplane mode on to save Verizon gigabytes. At last I had us aimed south to head back to our campground via the town of Tzintzuntzan.

I am told the absurd name  is an Indio name for a bird that darts hither and yon and even though it looks hard to pronounce its actually quite easy. Sin-Soon-San and you make the Ts silent. Before we reached downtown we diverted to the archeological site about which I hinted yesterday. It seems before the arrival of the Spanish there was a tribal overlord who had two nephews and one son and he split his kingdom in three and his heirs were smart and kept control of the villages around the lake working together in harmony. Their family legacy is a huge stone construction which is described as a series of pyramids but whose construction blew my mind just slightly.

What you are looking at is the top floor of several terraces but on the hillside out of stones small enough you could, with a little effort lift and carry in your arms. And check out the stick figures in the distance maybe two hundred yards away. These aren't the pyramids of Egypt built out of huge blocks of stone. These were made by rocks you might find in your driveway and assembled one by one over a vast surface area in several terraces at least fifty feet tall.

That it is now forbidden to climb pyramids anywhere in the Americas, as far as I know, comes as a relief to me. I am quite content to walk their perimeters, or in this case, part of their perimeters and stare slack jawed at the work that went into these things.

There is a very nice museum on site which discusses hieroglyphs located on parts of the pyramids but no one seems to have figured out quite what they mean. The reason you don't see Rusty in these pictures is because they also have a sign saying no pets (mascotas) and even though a Mexican dog in harness came in on a leash I am too gringo to violate rules so clearly posted. I don't think he would have got much out of this place except a pleasant shaded walk...oh well.

The site closes its gates to new arrivals at three pm however as we drove away at 3:20 people were still arriving and entering. I should have made a Facebook post complaining or something but I have been here long enough to shrug and go look for lunch and not worry about people who break the rules.

I have to stress we are not pioneers in this endeavor and everything we have done has been done before. There are people online who will tell you it can't be done but the guidebooks and map designers have lots of ideas on how it can be done. You'll find reviews of restaurants, gas stations and tourists sites online just as you do at home. We had read of a first rate restaurant hidden inside a bland exterior that sells local food of exquisite quality. Naturally it was impossible to find as sign posting and advertising are concepts not known to small businesses in Mexico. We parked the van and checked out Tzintzuntzan before we hunted in earnest for the superb eatery.

This town is absolutely packed with souvenir stalls and crafts of high quality. Back at the campground we talked with a Canadian who lives outside Toronto and makes a good living shipping products from this town and the more famous Toluca to his warehouse in Ontario. He has a process that is almost automated as he described in extraordinary detail how he uses trailers from a shipper at home to be filled down here and driven back to Canada first by a Mexican driver to Texas and then by a Canadian driver to Ontario.  The way people make livings continues to astonish me. This little old lady held out black tamales.

No idea what they are made of but they taste like carrot cake. 50 cents.

I abandoned Layne to her shopping and passed under the gateway with Rusty on his leash into a wonderland of shaded grass and trees and churches and a few Saturday afternoon walkers out with their families.

No idea who the dude with there'd burn on his head. I joked with a young Mexican man nearby that we'd never know but I expect it was yet another statue of the sainted Vasco de Quiroga. He laughed. Who else could it be? he said. Everything around here is in honor of the kindly Spanish administrator who treated the Indio population with kindness and consideration and is still remembered fondly.

That I get to walk these places, never ceases to amaze me. The church looks like a movie set, a scene set in 19th century Mexico. The park was far from crowded and Rusty ambled around sniffing trees and shrubs, children played, unattended by adults at risk therefore of kidnap and broken limbs, lovers held hands and I tried to capture the sense of the place on a podunk digital camera.

I wasn't even interested in what the place was or where it came from. 

I walked and watched and hoped Layne's interest would be held for a while longer by the shopping stalls outside in the chaos of the main drag.

Rusty was in his own world and we circled keeping an eye on each other, me looking for contrasts in light and him sniffing whatever there was to sniff.

These are the moments that happen by accident, that creep up on you on the road. I went searching for them in the mangroves of Middle Torch Key but here they happen to me by chance. All it takes is walking a little ways and slipping the surly bonds of Earth, not on laughter-silvered wings but with my eyes looking up instead of looking flat across the spaces I come across.

But then its back to business and people and sounds and things to do.

Layne is always buying gifts of thinking about someone who might want that, drifting from stall to stall secure on the knowledge she would have much less fun were I there being grumpy.

Tzintzuntzan makes and ships and carves and parts all manner of things. Including for us a. rather colorful paper towel holder. We hadn't found a satisfactory one before leaving as we didn't like paper towels unraveling in the breeze, or occupying the space above the counter like an ugly piece of art.

Layne found a brightly painted towel holder that sits vertically on the counter and shows its painted face to you standing in the galley. I'll take a picture of it later the the counter top is reorganized for our journey that starts as you read this, heading south toward Chiapas, the state that feels forgotten by the Federal government that sits next to the Guatemalan border.

Eventually we found the restaurant that is a marvel of Michoacán cooking and it was okay. We had pork in a black sauce and pork in a green sauce at a table in a. corner away from the other gringos who apparently let Lonely Planet guide them. We both pronounced it not worth the effort to find and got back out into the street. 90 minutes to go until dark with a twenty minute ride back to the campground.

Rusty was sitting up waiting for us after our meal and he drew some attention. I let him out  and we took a turn in town before setting off for the last part of the trip round the lake.

It was a good day, sunny and bright as almost every day has been for the exceeding long nine days we have been in Pátzcuaro with cold nights under the covers and waking to temperatures below fifty degrees. 

I am amazed we stayed in one place this long but we have, parked next to people who don't move all winter after they arrive from the frozen north. We've met several Europeans who have imported their campers on Mexico's famous ten year permit plan and each summer they fly back to Germany and Switzerland and France to be with their families with plans to come back in September. They seem unfazed by fears of cartel violence that plague the American imagination. They are giving me ideas.

Van Life in miniature. Six months in Mexico and six months in the US when I am tired of seeing new places? Doesn't sound bad.