never get a hotel on a street where the trucks go uphilll....

craig and I are in a very vibrant city, Xalapa, in the state of Veracruz .... in a bowl in the mountains. nice place, however, the traffic here has been growing fast. the paper today said 20% more cars, in a single year. so, what probably once was an incredibly nice town, is still nice but a bit exhausty and noisy. too bad... but...

this town has one of The Best archeologic museums we´ve ever been in. it´s the state´s museum, its a huge collection, and the building is somewhat like the one in mexico city, except you don´t have to be there. it´s a great, marbled floored modernish building that cascades from one open level to the next so that each culture gets a lot of room and its own open patios. the bulk of it is Olmec, the big head folks, but the other scuptures they did are fantastic. I ended up taking so many photos in there, because the quality of the art and the sense of design was fabulous. Craig had a great time too. we took a cue from a nice french man we met, Laurent, to rent the headsets. great. the headsets not only explain pretty well, they have terrific sound effects -- overlays of lightning, jaguars, babies blabbing, and ceremonial drumming. it really was well done. It has been really nice to come here after being in southern veracruz, where so many of the olmec items were found.

Xalapa itself is pretty cool. It´s a semi colonial city, with some nice moder touches. It is build amid several small hills and valleys and there are a lot of small parks. the first day we went down to a lake park, and met 3 kids there who quickly steered us to what we wanted to know, which was, where would the virgin of guadalupe celebration be. they showed us the carnival rides, the several streets of booths selling carnival type stuff and also some V. of G. teeshirts (sorry Barbara, it´s too cool here, no boxer shorts) and lots of statues. and even grottos where you can get your photo taken with the V of G. Then, the church: they tore down an old church and replaced it with a basilica like a mini version of the one in Mexico City, complete with multiple flights of stairs for pilgrims to ascend, on their knees I guess if they wanted (like they do in mexico city). But in this town: groups or families get together, and buy or make a small float that is like a half helmet, they cover it with green leaves, and flowers, and the front flat side has a picture of the V of G, then they accompany it through the city with candles, down or over to the church, up to the church, and leave it there. so by yesterday noon which is still a day and a half early, there were lots. masses were going on and grey habited nuns were around keeping everyone reverent close to the church... but everyone had a lot of fun as soon as they got a bit further awáy. it´s nice... a local american guy we met here said used to be lots nicer, but now that the city has such traffic gridlock much of the time, they don´t do it on foot so much... they put it on a car or truck til a few blocks away then walk it in. so it´s a tradition being abbreviated.

Too bad xalapa hasn´t yet done what so many other towns have done... created a carless center. oh well. it´s still a nice town... just try to find a hotel on a side street... we are not on a side street but are on the inside courtyard of hotel salmones, for 440 pesos a night for a king bed, nice, modern, clean.

we have had good eats here. today on a streetcorner way out nowhere, we joined a fun group to eat from a stall that is only there on fridays. we had gordas with spicy pork sausage (a gorda here is a fat corn pancake with the meat inside) with green spicy sauce and lime and cheese, and, great quesadillas with squash blossoms and cheese and spicy red sauce, and, great quesadillas with a filling made of some green herby item we can´t explain with green sauce. very good. we did not try the cactus-nopal version.

yesterday lunch we ate in a touristy alley called Diamante at a place called La Sopa and had pretty good chile relleno with picadillo (spicy mincemeat) and really nice roast pork in a slightly sweet sauce that apparently has some prune or raisin in it but when you mix in roast chillles, it´s remarkably good. at lunch we went to a place called Casona de B... something, and had a good mixed grill of some kind and some not very good cochinita pibil (we are clearly not in the yucatan anymore so why do they even bother...)

we have been playing this trip very much by ear. tomorrow we are going by bus to Orizaba, the town that´s at 4000 feet at the base of one of the highest mountains, 3rd after mckinley-denali and mt logan in canada... it´s 18,000 something.

now down to go sing to the virgin... unfortunately I have lost my voice... craig is now having to be the main spanish speaker... kind of fun for me actually