“We’re both around 50 years old, and for the past few years have been imagining a move to a Latin American country when the time seems right. That time still looks to be a few years off, but we have been using our vacations the past 3-4 years to explore areas that we think might be a good fit.”
The obvious is these folks are on the young side of retirement. I have to question searching for a retirement place 4-5 years or more out; certainly this is difficult if not misleading. The fabric of a place can change quite radically within that time frame. In other words what looked great five years ago might not be so great depending on many factors.
Case in point in 2001 we moved to Colorado after doing much due diligence. Within three years of the move many of the factors that had drawn us to the area had changed – in some cases radically. It should be noted that 911 changed the entire fabric of life in the United States during that period and continuing.
In Jeff’s words, again from his introduction to the Forum:
“My wife Vivian and I live in Seattle, where I am an engineer and she has a ballet school.”
From our perspective that part of their background is a good fit for our area. However in short order of meeting Jeff and Vivian it was obvious they are operating on big city energy and ambition. The slower pace of retirement in general and retiring to Mexico specifically is certainly going to require change.
I have stated it before. Learning to unwind from the pace of the working world is no small task – it kills some and drives others to some form of madness.
My take on this is intelligent people seldom get bored – they will find something to do. We believe our area affords many opportunities for the transition from being so busy that you seldom have time to think, to having what seems to be on first glance gobs of time with little on your plate. Believe me when I write, when you truly turn the corner to retirement you will wonder how you were able to fit living life in when you were part of the working world.
More from their intro:
“While haphazardly researching cities in Mexico in late-2008, I stumbled across Xalapa. Neither of us had any previous knowledge of the area, but it seemed like everything we read only further piqued our curiosity. So, last March we decided to take ten days and check it out. Long story short, Vivian and I both had a great time – we loved the area, its people and its culture.”
After spending a couple of hours with Jeff and Vivian we got to thinking about the mission of this Blog, the Forum and as to their interest in meeting us. They are intelligent and thoughtful people of this there is no doubt.
Jeff writes of the Viva Veracruz Forum:
“I have found many of the topics both interesting and enlightening.”
A sensible and erudite young fellow indeed!
Our local amigos BJ and Charles joined us for the meeting with Vivian and Jeff. Like the previous nights get together I had thought that exposure to more than just the rather eclectic Calypso’s would be a good thing. However in both cases the multiple conversations were perhaps distracting and to less advantage towards Vivian and Jeff’s purpose? I suppose we will have to default to their judgment on that.
Obviously hooking-up with a group of retired people living in a foreign land that are likely to be smitten by the opportunity to speak with their own kind – in their native language – this situation could elicit a certain chaotic dynamic.
The point of exposing the virtues of your place on the planet often comes up. Is it truly wise to be telling people how great your area is? Will hoards of people invade your space and indeed change its fabric? Will Xalapa become another San Miguel Allende? Probably not.
But, there are a lot of valid reasons to be here – you have but to read the musings in this Blog to gather some details.
Because Jeff and Vivian are charming, erudite and most certainly an asset to wherever, the tables almost were turned. We found ourselves wanting to sell them on the place rather than reluctantly dispensing information like a living Lonely Planet Book.
The Calypsos went from reluctant providers of information to timeshare salespersons. Had we become carrot danglers for our area – oh no!
Coming down off the high of meeting Jeff and Vivian we realize it is a two edged sword touting the virtues of our south of the border life style. In truth not we or anyone for that matter will stop the hoards from heading to the great places to be. The places that breath life on this earth will be discovered – maybe even without our help? To learn more – Stay Tuned!
This is not as the title might suggest. These visitors are not from another planet – it just sounds that way. We did have visitors from Tlaxcala (pronounced tlas kala) yesterday. They were three. Steve and Pat who stay in Mexico each year several months. They are involved in providing medical and dental services for the very poor. Also along was Bob Cox. Bob is active on the Viva Veracruz Forum. He appeared to be quite a character. He is the genuine article on that score we found out. Bob has a Blog here.
The truth is I am not the most gregarious person around these parts. Every now and again, I venture out of my safety zone to meet new people. In a manner of speaking, I have known Bob by way of the Forum for the last 2 years. However, no face to face meeting before now.
So nine of us met up at El Meson Xiqueno Restaurant here in Xico. Bob had some wonderful stories to tell. It is obvious to me that he must be a terrific guide in Tlaxcala in as much as he is knowledgeable about his area and very charming.
We had not seen Steve and Patricia since 2007. We admire their efforts on behalf of mostly very poor children here in Mexico. They told us a disturbing story about how the Mexican government in their infinite wisdom prevented a team of doctors visiting here to offer their services to the poor. Apparently, it was a threat to the doctors and dentists here in Mexico.
I am continually amazed at the insensitivity and poor logic of refusing the kindness of strangers in order to help their own people. If you have been reading along then you know the internal mail system (that is giving it a lot of undeserved credit) requires substantial duty (again this is all within the country) to send donated items for the poor in Ursulo Galvan and the surrounding area here in Xico. Infernal mail system is more to the point.
We had a most enjoyable time with this group – perhaps my being intimidated by such get togethers is too extreme.
In fact in order to further test the waters we are minutes away from heading over to BJ and Carlos’ casa; from there the two couples will scoot into Coatepec to meet up with visitors Jeff and Vivian. They are a couple from Seattle thinking about retiring to our area of Mexico. I suppose they will pick our brains (slim pickings) about our lives here. More on that tomorrow.
Our amiga Leah Flinn has provided some interesting information on the very complex H.R.3962 health care plan that is now official. You can read about that here.
Come back tomorrow for the report on the visit with Jeff and Vivian. Stay Tuned!
Our friends Margarita and Tony got married yesterday. They have been a couple for five years. Tony is a retired tugboat captain out of San Francisco. He also was/is a photographer/artist and all around remarkable hombre. Margarita is a Mexicana entrepreneur currently in mid construction of her second rental house as well as maintaining a terrific greenhouse and plant business. A remarkable couple and our very dear amigos.
Margarita and Tony – March 25th, 2010
Tony is a young 83 year old that blossomed in the 1960’s, and has never stopped blooming since. He banters his own brand of spirituality and chases after my wife a lot. Will marriage tame the beast – only time will tell.
Senor Antonne Karczinski – The Groom
About ten friends, fans And witnesses of the couple arrived at the Xico court house for the legal aspects of this ongoing union. The paperwork was mind numbing. At one point Margarita had to run back to their casa to get still more documents. This after several weeks of visiting public offices from Xico to Xalapa. Anita and I ran across the street, had a mora cocktail (blackberry liquor), and visited with our aviary amigo Paco.
Paco the Parrot
All the papers together the wedding went off without a further hitch. Tony who plays to the camera staged many good photo opportunities for me who acted as the official wedding photographer.
Do You Want Cheese with that Ham?
“Say Cheese.”
Pronounced man and wife, we all signed the wedding certificate; then we headed to their casa for a fiesta.
Congratulations Mr. & Mrs. Karczinski
A couple dozen friends arrived on the scene to share in the joy and lots of gourmet food. Tony along with his own brand of religion has his own brand of diet – mostly meatless and having many interesting concoctions. At one point he served Anita and I some Polish wedding cake dessert that was scrumptious.
Tony & the Bride (Mine Actually)
Party On!
While our amigos have been out of the starting blocks for five years we wish them continued success at being a wonderful happy couple. Saludos Tony & Margarita! Stay Tuned!
We are in our sixth year here in Mexico and the writing of this Blog.
A lot of water and tequila over the bridge in that time. We still don’t drink the water, the tequila – well – we still do.
The Guapa Senora Calypso reminds me that this is about the time I start to get antsy for change. She has weathered five 5-year cycles qualifying her as an expert on that. We did recently make the change to living in town – so a move was made pretty much on that schedule.
Mexico feels like home even though we are strangers in a strange land. Some locals have embraced us, few extranjeros (foreigners of our persuasion). We are OK with that.
Today it is back to cold and mostly gray causing me to grumble a bit.
A few minutes ago Anita apprised me that the Army Ants were cruising through our front yard. Back in November of 2006 we had already been here nearly two years however, we were freaked out by a path of ants the thickness of a garden hose that were traversing through our yard in Ursulo Galvan (read about that here) – no longer.
We were more than startled by those fast moving ants, where as now we know what those Army Ants are up to. We also know a whole lot more about the Mexican Army drug barricades. We know more about getting passports, visas, buying property in a foreign country as well as buying a car and registering it here in Mexico. We know how to pay our property taxes, our electric and water bills. We think we know how to pay the phone bill (more on that later). We can stand in line with the best of them and we know how to elbow out line breakers.
We know how to avoid most transito (traffic police) attempts to mordida us (put the bite on). We are not afraid to walk or drive down the Mexican streets at night. We negotiate our big truck down narrow roadways as well as scoot our little blue Chinese scooter through Xalapa’s curvy, confusing, maniacal highways.
The nerve endings that can be upended when a foreigner first comes to Mexico barley flinch after six years.
We are not intimidated by Mexico.
Yes there are robberies, hi-jackings, kidnappings and murders that happen here – like they do in the United States. We have encountered a number of United States warnings about visiting Mexico.
We have experienced two earthquakes and weathered a hurricane or two.
We have lived the ups and downs of daily life in our adopted country for a while now. It feels more like home than does the United States; or perhaps Mexico has made us people without a country as we are continually reminded (mostly by gringos) that we are just visitors. And we need to conduct ourselves as such.
We certainly feel more like a foreigner in our country of origin – go figure that one out.
Mexico is not perfect, far from it. But, the love affair continues. Perhaps this is somewhere between love and sex. Mexico is sexy. It is a country that wears many masks.
Masks of Mexico
I still complain about the trash, graffiti, poor education, corruption, environmental destruction, occasionally the Catholic Church and more – but then I had most of these complaints in the United States.
No se puede vivir sin amor
What is not the same is Mexico doesn’t scare me. I can go nose to nose with a uniformed 18 year old brandishing a machine gun as well as going toe to toe with a gordito policia oficer trying to get me to give him lunch money and maybe enough additional for a new dress for the wife or mistress.
I now have bravado; blustering and swaggering my way around Mexico. I suppose I am Malcolm Lowry-esque in this regard — alcohol, literature and Mexican life with some misadventure. Those shoes fit.
I can be late like a Mexican. I can say yes no matter what I really mean like a Mexican. I can be patient and impatient like a Mexican.
I can: barter with Mercado vendors; blather with some homeboys about futbol; and get boisterous when I feel put upon by some inefficient public minion.
A man without a country – maybe. But right now Mexico is where I hang my sombrero and I am OK with that. Stay Tuned.
Xico, Veracruz is celebrating. Shiny black incense urns fill the air with smoke as they are paraded along streets. It seems like there is always a celebration somewhere within the tri-city area of Xalapa (population 600,000); Coatepec (population 40,000); and Xico (population 17,500). These celebrations are a religious experience.
Each Iglesia (Church) has its patron saint. A patron saint is a saint who is regarded as the intercessor and advocate in heaven for the church faithful.
Not far from our casa in Xico is Iglesia San Jose. Saint Joseph is the patron saint. I understand there are at least two Saint Josephs. They usually have some further defining to their name. Ours is Saint Joseph the Worker – better known as the husband of Mary.
There are also some conflicting dates within the Catholic community as to when Saint Joseph has his day. Here it is March 19th. However we have been celebrating Mother Mary’s lesser half for more than a week already.
There is a big statue of Joseph that has been moving around town more than the local autobuses. He normally resides at the San Jose Church – but these days he is a traveling man. Up and down the streets he is paraded ended in some lucky family’s front room each night.
Saint Joseph in our neighbor’s living room.
He is carted around by a team of young girls who are required to be virgins. There are backups who switch off when some of the girls tire. They have small pillows to ease the pain of the wooden rails upon which sits Saint Joseph.
Once the smoke clears you can be sure the fireworks will begin. The celebrations are quite well organized. They include lots of incense, fireworks, Mariachis, singers and guitar players and sometimes colorful dancers in clown like costumes and masks. This is all really quite something to see – as mentioned this has been ongoing for the last week and will run to at least Friday (the 19th of March). At that time we will be entertained with the running of the firework laden wooden bulls.
Yesterday there was an alfombra (carpet) created in the street in front of San Jose Church. This is a colorful carpet created out of colored sawdust sprinkled into large wooden stencils. The alfombras are beautiful. Sadly in our area where it rains a lot they don’t last long. In fact it started raining late yesterday afternoon and it continues off and on this morning. We had not seen rain for about a week – bad timing on this.
Also up the street from San Jose Church an Arco is being constructed. It will be hauled by many men through the streets eventually to be erected in front of the church. Friday the firework laden ‘Bulls’ will be set off and a dance is held in the street.
Guapa Senora Calypso and I are not Catholics. But, this doesn’t keep us from enjoying and respectfully watching all the pomp and circumstance surrounding these events. There colorful parades and celebrations are part of the fabric of Mexico. Stay Tuned!
Here in Xalapa-Coatepec-Xico we are having some grand weather right now. We had the hardest winter in the last six of being here. But now – well it is as good as it gets.
This morning the birds are paying tribute to the sun. A thousand melodies that couldn’t have been scored more harmoniously. How do they do it?
This got me to thinking about the phrase “For the birds”. This indicating that something is rather useless. I don’t think of birds this way. What is the origin of this disrespectful comment on birds?
Google to the rescue. The answer turns out to be pretty funny – and definitely old school:
Before the advent of cars, one could see and smell the emissions of horse-drawn wagons in New York. Since there was no way of controlling these emissions, they – or the undigested oats in them – served to nourish a large population of English sparrows. If you said that something was for the birds, you’re politely saying that it’s horse crap.
Sundays around here are about family and fireworks here in our part of Mexico. You will only sleep in if you are used to sleeping in a foxhole on the front lines of a war somewhere. But that’s OK because sleeping in would only waste precious time. It wouldn’t be prudent to miss any of a day like today.
Early evening last night we took a walk up the street to get tortillas. There was a line. Sundays you better have your tortillas because the tortilleria is closed.
Walking back to the casa I spied a little lady carrying calla lilies; not unusual around here.
“¿Cuánto cuesta señora?”
“Seis pesos senor.” The equivalent of about 48 cents.
50 Cent Calla Lilies
Calla Lilies are synonymous with Mexico. Everyone has seen the famous Diego Rivera paintings incorporating calla lilies.
Diego Rivera
Occasionally, here you will see them growing wild even though they grow from bulbs. They are a hardy plant that will grow in just about any soil type as long as the climate is humid enough (our area certainly has the humidity aspect covered.)
It is getting close to Easter. Many people involved in processions, arco building and church functions. There are some amazing traditions in our neck of Mexico stay tuned to learn about some of them in the days that lead up to Easter.
“So why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: They neither toil nor spin; and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.” (from the Bible: Matthew 6:27-29)
No argument here – God’s calla lilies couldn’t be more beautiful.
A wonderful time to be here in Mexico. Stay Tuned!
The weather here is quite unpredictable. They try. Try as they might they are wrong more often than not.
One might think that this dispensing of misinformation was due to a lack of good science and equipment to support that; being that we are in a developing nation whose financial standard is the tortilla.
But I have learned that our unpredictable weather is as much a part of living on the side of a mountain range as anything else.
Weather swirls. The natural tendency is for weather conditions to move from west to east. What happens on the west coast of Mexico arrives here a couple days later; quite the opposite of time – time happens first to the east and later in the west. Somewhere in there is science.
Wikipedia Screen Grab – Xalapa
But when you throw in the facts of living on the east side of Mexico only 45 miles from the Gulf; and that we are located beneath the volcanic peaks of the Sierra Madre Oriental you can get the picture of our swirling weather circling around like so many ominous hurricane swirls – moving in and out over the mountains into the Gulf and sometimes back again.
We had similar conditions when we lived in Colorado; also due to living on the east side and below the peaks of a mountain range. The weather there was also less predictable because of that darn swirling phenomenon; even with all the First World science and equipment.
The good news is those darn swirling winds cleanup the air quality. The Mexican life force certainly doesn’t.
Yesterday was sunny and 85F.
This brings us to today. It was reported that we were to have rain; and perhaps we will later on? But right now it looks like the reported bad weather was wrong. Which of course means if you are wrong about bad then it is good; because the weather will end with good results from your bad science – does this make any sense?
We grouse more when predictions of good weather go bad than the other way around is what I am saying – I think.
In a sense I suppose one might consider this ineffective weather predicting part of the Mexican adventure – and leave it at that. The sun is up, the birds are singing and blue skies loom large looking to the east or west. So I am going to take advantage of bad science and maybe go have myself a long scooter ride with Carlos today. Life is good here in Mexico albeit unpredictable. Stay Tuned the adventure swirls on!
Resuming our lives in Xico – the current primary residence, home. The weather has turned warm. We are a land of three seasons going right from winter to summer with no spring in between. It was over 80 F yesterday and is predicted to be near 85 F today.
No complaints here.
Traffic in the Hood
Playing catch-up with laundry, banking, and getting some of winter off the BIG white truck and the Jetta. We are visiting too.
Anita and I stumbled into a warm-up party being held by several of Guapa Senora Calypso’s amigas. They were celebrating Javier’s birthday (he by the way was still at work).
Party Girls – Warming Up for Javier’s Birthday
We spent some time with our friend Veronica checking out the progress of her pharmacy construction. The building is huge by our areas standards – the rooms remain long and narrow – the Mexican way.
New Pharmacy in the Hood (The light pole is leaning. This is not a parallax problem)
I am sorting through photos. Yesterday I came upon a ‘hack’ for my Canon 400D camera. I am amazed at what some people will do to entertain themselves and then bless the rest of us with their playing with bits and bytes.
My Canon is more than two years old – in digital engineering time that is a old.
The hack provides several features that give the old picture taking box new life! I am excited to be able to get additional ISO values including double the fastest from 1600 to 3200! (ISO values tell you how fast your camera reacts to light. With a high ISO you can take photographs with a slower shutter speed, which is often an advantage – in low light situations, for example, or for exposures with flash or telephoto lenses.
I don’t mean to turn this into Photography 101 but, I am excited to have many more ISO options and an additional focus option - a spot meter feature that had been lacking. There is even a new special menu that heretofore was only available to Canon techs. I was able to see I had 13,517 shutter releases (shots) since my Canon was new. That is a LOT of exposures!
My photography aficionado amigo John Paul who I just had to tell about the hack asked if I really needed ISO 3200 being that the digital photos are noisy (grainy looking) at that high of speed. The short answer is yes. I will use it and the 1000/1250/1600/2000/2500/3200 ISO’s in as much as Xico and the other cities in our area come to life at night. I love to take night time photos. Recall the photos I took at 3 AM of Boulder Dam construction.
I have to put my camera aside and pay bills that were waiting patiently for our return. Stay Tuned for some night time pictures.
We are just back from Puerto Escondido. The weather here is cooperating with some – but not us. The cloud forest weather which elates coffee growers is in full gear. The coffee plants did not have it good this past season. I am told there was too much rain; something much of the earth is lacking these days.
Xalapa the Garden City of Mexico is all above 3500’. It is typically described as a semi-humid forest laden tropical area with misty cloud covering that is ideal for coffee plants that are scattered here about on both small fincas (farms) and large ranchos.
Our area is located on the eastern side and beneath the volcanic peaks of the Sierra Madre Oriental.
None of that romantic description appeases me when I have to wait more than a day or two to see father sun. Hot off a three week plus visit to Puerto Escondido you would think we could endure a few cold days but, alas I have exercised my aged right to grumble about no sun and the cold.
The good news is it does seem to be turning around and we may actually live up to “The warmer season in Xalapa tends to fall between March and reaching a peak in May when the average high reaches 28 °C and low of 17°C.”
Yesterday afternoon turned bright. We jumped on Scoot Azul, our little blue China scooter, to bask under the Xico sun for much of the afternoon later the Guapa Senora Calypso joined me for a scoot over to Acmalin Restaurant for a fine dinner and later a bottle of wine and a movie.
I enjoyed chatting it up with Senor Gómez the proprietor of Acmalin making some suggestions about the menu and asking if business has been affected by the fact the town has been totally torn up with the installation of underground electrical wires. “No. business remains normal.” He reports. A fact that surprises me since if we didn’t live here I might avoid Xico altogether until this traffic mess and the hiding of wires is complete.
Little “Cruise Azul” makes easy work getting around the mess. The food was outstanding as usual. We also chatted about their mole (pasta) which is for sale in jars – just add water to gain the correct consistency and then ‘oh my’ that stuff is good!
I had suggested Acmalin Restaurant also offer their green sauce which is to die for. Senor Gómez explained that the fresh verde sauce would not stay preserved in jars suggesting he had thought this out before me.
We both had the Enmoladas de Queso smothered in Mole and glasses of Mora – ummmm good!
Yup! I have little to complain about.
We watched a documentary on Maria Sabina the magic mushroom healer highlighted in the previous entry. I had a desire to find out more about Mexico’s first lady (Mazateccurandera) of sacred hongos (magic – hallucinogenic – mushrooms).
The 80 minute documentary was mostly filmed in 1979 at her little casa in Huautla de Jimenez, Oaxaca. Sabina who died in 1985 at the age of 91 was ‘given’ to a 20 year old man at the age of 14. He died possibly at the hands of one of his mistresses 6 years later after they had 3 children. She had a total of nine.
Her second husband was killed by the son of one of his mistresses. Maria Sabina was shot twice while trying to protect one of her sons who was killed. An eventful life indeed.
This woman at 85 was smoking cigars, cigarettes, marijuana and hosting mushroom healing ceremonies for the locals and the occasional extranjero. She lived in a dirt floor tin roofed cabin at high altitude in reality and not.
A fascinating character now part of Mexican history and folk lore.
Those of you that might have further interest can find out more:
The only documentary on Maria Sabina available on DVD – MARIA SABINA, MUJER ESPIRITU (MEXICO, 1978) Described as an intimate portrait of the world-renowned Mazatec curandera and her extensive use of psilocybe mushrooms as a healing aid. Narrated by Maria’s biographer, Alvaro Estrada; directed by Nicolas Echevarria. Actually you can watch the entire thing for free here. Although it is in Spanish whereas the DVD has an English option.
We will continue to keep an eye out for sun.
Now at 11 Am there is sun. We will scoot into Coatepec to the Eco Faire where we will buy this weeks bread and cheese. Life is good! There is no place like home – unless it is Puerto Escondido or some other warm Pacific Ocean beach Stay Tuned!
Donovan, Dylan and the Beatles discovered the magic of the mushrooms in Mexico back in the 60’s. Oaxaca became the focus of those wanting to get unfocused and healed from harsh realities.
We took an alternative route heading back to Veracruz from Puerto Escondido. Actually this route is the more common; so one might say we began the ride from Oaxaca to Puerto Escondido with the alternative route highway 131 and returned via the more common highway 175.
These two highways essentially run parallel ending at the southern Mexico coast Highway 200 some 65 kilometers apart. Highway 131 spills out into the middle of Puerto and 175 ends in Pochutla.
Both highways are curvaceous and scattered with unpredictable holes in the road; with the occasional fog white outs. Add to that commercial transport vans rocketing down the roads driven by absolutely insane drivers traveling at breakneck speeds. The picture painted here is dark with splashes of red. You have to be a bit insane to travel either of these routes at night. Of course your host did just that on both trips – this is not recommended.
I admit I have often besmirched the common sense suggestion to never drive in Mexico at night. These roadways as well as the one between Oaxaca City and Tuxtepec (also Highway 175) should not be driven at night. Most of these were driven at night by your fearless reporter – in a word – yikes! Did I mention that you will drive between sea level to over 9000’ during these driving routes? The first thing Anita did when we arrived home was to Google remedies for car sickness; gingerroot and peppermint oil.
I actually stopped writing at this point to approve a Comment on the previous Blog entry that included the following (for those of you that do not read comments).
Christine writes in part: “We still haven’t decided how to go to Oaxaca. I read an article that said Hwy 175 was ‘one of the most [beautiful] highways in the world.’ [We’d] like to drive ourselves and check out San Jose del Pacifico…but I don’t know if we could rent a one-way car.”
This brings us to the subject of this entry.
About midway on Highway 175 between Pochutla and Oaxaca City is the small puebla of San Jose del Pacifico. We reached this nearly 9000’ high small town after a little more than three hours driving time out of Puerto Escondido. Filled with a sense of occult expectation we arrived in the late afternoon having departed Puerto Escondido about 1:30 PM.
Even before arriving in San Jose proper there are roadside artisan shops featuring San Jose’s center piece – the mushroom. While there are many varietals in the beautiful mountain terrain surrounding San Jose the featured fungus is Los Hongos Mágicos (The Magic Mushrooms).
San Jose del Pacifico at Sunset
Maria Sabina’s actual home town Huautla de Jimenez, Oaxaca is northwest of Oaxaca City but, she has a prominent role in San Jose del Pacifico. Actually Sabina’s image appears throughout Mexico on t-shirts, cups, designer boxes, photographs and posters.
T-Shirt Spotted on the Adonquin – Puerto Escondido
Fireplace Surround – Rayito Del Sol Restaurant – San Jose
According to Wikipedia:
“María Sabina was the first contemporary Mexican curandera, defined in New Age parlance as a native shaman, to allow Westerners to participate in the healing vigil that became known as the velada, where all participants partake of the psilocybe mushroom as a sacrament to open the gates of the mind. The velada is seen as purification and as a communion with the sacred.
In 1955, the American banker and ethnomycologist R. Gordon Wasson visited her hometown of Huautla de Jimenez, Oaxaca, and experienced a velada with her. He also brought spores of the fungus, which he identified as Psilocybe mexicana, to Paris. The fungus was cultivated in Europe and its active ingredient was duplicated as the chemical psilocybin in the laboratory by Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann in 1958.
American youth began seeking out María Sabina and the “holy children” as early as 1962, and in the years that followed, thousands of counterculture mushroom seekers, scientists, and others arrived in the Sierra Mazateca, and many saw her. By 1967 more than 70 people from the US, Canada, and Western Europe were renting cabins in neighboring villages. Many of them went there directly after reading the May 13, 1957 Life Magazine article written by Wasson about his experiences.”
Today, that Life Magazine article is considered by many as the catalyst that kicked off the Psychedelic Revolution. Donovan, Dylan, the Beatles and a host of other celebrities and extranjeros have visited and written about Oaxaca’s Hongos Mágico.
We loved the little village of San Jose nestled in the mountains. We bought a wonderful wool bag for 80 pesos at Lupita’s just outside of town (the same bag was 150 pesos in San Jose central).
Lupita’s Just South of San Jose del Pacifico
In town a hotel owner, an older lady, graciously showed us a pleasant, clean room with private bath. We agreed we would rent it next visit. Along the way I ask her if she ever takes the magic mushrooms. She replied, “Yes, but they do not have an effect on me. I took it but never had a viaje [trip].”
We ate at a terrific restaurant at the back of the Cabanas San Jose Hotel and watched an incredible sunset from a nearly aerial view before heading out to many hours of night driving on Highway 175 – what a trip!
You Had to be There – But the Idea is Here. (ENLARGE HERE)
The history of the mushroom tradition, of course, goes back much further than María Sabina or the gringo Oaxacan invasions of the 1960′s, at least to about 1000 B.C., according to archaeologists. This date is based on pre-Columbian stone artifacts that have been discovered in the Mayan highland zone, stretching from the grassy highlands of western Guatemala to the piney mountains of Mexico, in southern Chiapas State. Roughly hewn and generally measuring about a foot high, the stones, which resemble mushrooms and have been dubbed “the mushroom stones” by archaeologists, are thought to be linked to religious mushroom cults that were found in Mexico at the time of the Spanish conquest.
Modern Day Mushroom Artifcats Abound in San Jose
These Fascinating Fungi Artifacts Stand More than Two Feet Tall
San Jose recognizes and touts its sacred roots and fungus. It is a must visit.
Hurry Back to San Jose del Pacifico!
We are home in Xico now resting up from our vacation. The weather here – well my fingers are numbed by the cold dampness and I am wishing we were still in warm and sunny Puerto Escondido. We are thinking January 15th to March 15th in Puerto next year. Anyone want to join us next year in renting a lavish six bedroom house with a pool?
Maria Sabina (
Stay Tuned!
