Chichen Itza & the Mayan Christmas Pageant (Mexico - Part 2)

Chichen Itza, Mexico

We spent the nights of Christmas Eve and Christmas at a hotel within walking distance of Chichen Itza. Part of a small chain called Villa Archaeologicos, these were once Club Meds but have been bought up, and they’re all right next to Mayan ruins. Our beachfront place in Sian Ka’an (Cesiak) was great, but fairly overpriced considering the shared composting toilet and only brackish water to wash/shower in. Here there is a hint of faded glory, appropriate given the setting next to the ruins of the great Mayan city, I suppose, but overall it is quite nice with a large step up in housing quality and (surprisingly), at only about half the cost. There are small museum-piece-type archaeological finds put behind glass in various places in the courtyard, and there are some HUGE tropical trees that they apparently built the hotel around, which is cool.

When we arrived, I asked if there were any interesting cultural events surrounding Christmas (Feliz Navidad!) in the nearby town. The clerk seemed confused by my question, but did hand me a program for the hotel’s own Christmas celebration to be held on the evening of the 25^th. The program was all in Spanish, and I wasn’t going to plan our day around it, but if we happened to be at the hotel when it was going on, so be it.

Our visit to Chichen Itza was excellent. We got up early and hired a guide, trying to get there near opening to beat the expected crowds. Surprisingly, we did. For the first 2 hours at least, there were hardly any people there, and even the hundreds of vendors that set up merchandise booths were still unpacking their wares when we finished our tour. Our tour, advertised as three hours, didn’t quite make it to two, and by the end our guide was dismissively waving his hands quickly towards several rather impressive structures off in the distance, but didn’t seem interested in actually walking us over there and touring them. No matter. It was Christmas morning, and our guide Diego had apparently been partying with the family until 3am, then got up at 7am to meet us. He guided quite well on a hangover, all things considered, and he didn’t get double-pay or anything resembling overtime from us, so I won’t complain too much. It was still a worthwhile tour. For those who have been before, I’m sorry to disappoint you that you can no longer climb on any of the Mayan ruins, especially the big pyramid. Apparently you could up until 5 our 6 years ago, when the combination of a visitor falling to her death and the elevation of Chichen Itza to one of the new “Seven Wonders of the World! caused the authorities to reconsider previous tourist freedoms. There are other Mayan ruins where you can still climb around on stuff Indiana Jones style, and hopefully I’ll have a report of those later.

Chichen Itza was a major Mayan city from roughly 650-1350 AD, and at various times was a political and/or religious capital of the Mayan civilization that stretched over the entire Yucatan peninsula and down into present day Guatemala, Belize, and El Salvador.  Roughly 20-50,000  people (estimates vary greatly) lived in the Chichen Itza metro area at it’s peak, which sounds small to modern day observers but would have rivaled our exceeded any European city of its day. Like today, the elites lived in walled-off compounds from the 99%, with the stinking masses living outside the ruins we see today, leaving no substantial stone memories of their passing. The ruins you see today were mostly ceremonial and religious, probably equivalent to visiting Washington D.C. in the year 2739 and only seeing the remnants of the National Mall with the Smithsonian and a few crumbling neo-classical monuments left above the swamp waters.  Still, what you can see is rather impressive.

The Mayans were excellent astronomers, so that their buildings acted as calendars, lining up equinoxes, solstices, and various movements of Venus exactly with features of the buildings. On the equinoxes, thousands of tourists throng to see the central pyramid create a shadow that resembles a serpent, which when it touches the ground was supposed to indicate the correct planting/harvesting time. They apparently could predict eclipses up to 32 years in advance. The ability to correctly predict the seasons and thus the right time to plant (there is a rainy/dry season here) would give you great power, apparently enough to create a whole religious system of astronomical observation and regular human sacrifice. The Mayans really were into the sacrifice thing. There was a platform decorated with hundreds of engravings of skulls where heads were removed. There was a ball game (somewhat like soccer or lacrosse) where the players had to pass around a heavy (12 pounds+) hard rubber ball without the use of their hands or feet, eventually getting the ball up through an elevated stone ring (higher than a basketball hoop). Sources differ whether the losing or winning team captain was then sacrificed (our guide said the winner, because it was an honor, and the loser had to do the decapitation, which humiliated him). Alternatively, the top of one of the temples held a special jaguar-inspired statue, which is where the priests placed the still-beating heart of a recent sacrifice, done daily to ensure favorable weather. These sacrifices were not an honor, just you know, daily prayers, so they used slaves.  Then as now, being a slave was just not a very good career path.

Many of the Mayan buildings at Chichen Itza have very cool acoustical design. Some of it was likely to project the priests’ voices over the courtyard, but today it means that if you clap your hands at the base of the main pyramid, it echoes and reverberates in a way to produce a sound like a high-pitched gunshot, or, as our guide said, like the call of a quetzal bird. Choose your reference point. In the royal ball court, the echoes bounced off concave walls to make a clap echo up to seven times in staccato succession – a very cool effect, until the tour bus groups all tried to do this together, and they couldn’t get their timing right, leaving a lame muddled cacophony of “Gee, why are we clapping again?”

THE Chichen Itza pyramid, called El Castillo.  Note the serpent heads at the bottom right.

The largest ball court found in any Mayan ruins.  You can see the loop the players had to throw the ball through high on the walls further back in the picture.

An example of the carvings in the temple walls - this shows a beheaded winner (or loser?).

Another building was covered with images of skulls - all the winners (losers?) of the ball games.

The observatory.

Note to my sister and brother: Many of the vendors were selling whistles that produced the rather startling sound of a jaguar growling when you blew into it. They liked to play a cute little bird whistle for a while, then switch to the jaguar, just to make sure they had your attention. They had our attention. Much as I hated the whistles, I couldn’t ignore them. They’re awful. Apparently we’re hard wired to notice things such as jaguars growling in the jungle. Puts you on edge, to say the least, but I suppose if Great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather Grog hadn’t been paying attention to those things, I wouldn’t be hear writing this today. At any rate, all the kids loved the whistles. I consider getting one for Joe J and John V, who would have loved them. But you wouldn’t have. And you would have never forgiven me, and likely would have reciprocated with something awful in the future. In fact, I should be keeping a list of all the wonderful/awful presents that I haven’t bought as gifts over the years as the non-custodial uncle. It really does show a great deal of restraint, believe it or not.

The Mayans were (are!) short. The women were about 4 feet tall, and the men about 5 feet. There are still quite a few Mayans in the area (and Mayan is spoken as the first language in many homes). Shannon had the unusual feeling of towering over people here – not so common for her!

We were pretty worn out by lunch time, so headed back to our hotel for a mellow Christmas afternoon. As I sipped my margarita by the pool, I watched workmen spend many hours wrestling with the props and sound and light system for the upcoming Christmas pageant. Weird and distinctly not It’s a Wonderful Life props. There was an 8 foot tall piece the size of a commercial refrigerator that looked like a model of DNA. There was a shopping basket that had been converted to have a human-sized birdcage like structure around it, with a car battery attached for some lighting effects. There were many other objects I can’t really even begin to describe. It seemed like these had been used year after year for this event only, getting a few updates every year. What was this pageant going to be?

The show was supposed to go up at 6pm, but no one was here. About 6:20, we wanted to take a dip in the pool, but by that time a man in some semblance of traditional Mayan garb called several loud notes on his horn, and lit the incense, and started the show. Shannon and I watched from behind the “stage” for a while, wanting to get in the chilly pool but not wanting to disturb the performance. As the show got going, more people stopped to stare. There were about a dozen people in total watching, including the restaurant waitstaff. It was mostly a ballet, of sorts. There was drumming. There were synthesizers. It was very heavy. I think the title of the show translated into something like “The Dwarf Legend of Ushmal” which doesn’t mean a whole lot to me either. There was a man in a full body spandex suit, doing some slow interpretive moves. The ending involved a fire twirler. I kept wanting to leave to go to dinner, but was compelled to stay. It was awful and weird and mesmerizing. I have no idea what it was about or why it was in any way a Christmas story. I’m not convinced that if I spoke Spanish or Mayan that I would have understood a whole lot more. I have included a video and photos to try to help explain.

The Dwarf Legend of Uxmal in front of the hotel swimming pool.

VIDEO COMING SOON!

After this first act, there was supposed to be an act of more traditional Mexican folk dancing. There were several ladies dressed up in pretty white with flowers dresses. Shannon wanted to see this, but we waited twenty minutes and it seemed the organization was lacking. Were they going to take the whole stage down before the next act? (No. Most of it was still up this morning.) We left for an uninspiring dinner in town. When we got back, a live classical music trio was supposed to be playing as the third act, but the whole place was deserted. Apparently the Dwarf Legend of Ushmal was too much for anyone to top.

It's chilly this morning – had to put on my long sleeve (with shorts) as I sit by the pool. Tee hee. In an hour or so there will be sun in the courtyard and it will be plenty warm. Green parrots are squawking as they fly overhead.

A Mexican Christmas tree - made out of palm leaves.

We really liked these three-wheeled bikes.  We saw people and goods being transported on them.

Cheating Winter (Mexico - Part 1)

Ah, cheating winter. It feels good. There hasn’t been that much winter either in Massachusetts, Colorado, or Michigan yet this year (at least while we were in any of those places), so it’s not like we're fleeing from the frozen depths of February, but it was plenty gray and gloomy when we left Detroit on the shortest day of the year. Four hours and a few thousand gallons of jet fuel later, we touched down in Cancun, Mexico.

The Cancun airport is nice and modern, bathrooms clean, and Hertz rent-a-car was no problems. Folks were friendly and generally helpful So far so good.

First stop: fuel and food. We were so hungry that we couldn’t handle spending time finding local food, so (sadly) ended up at McDonald’s. It’s always interesting seeing the local spin on America’s export – in this case, they gave little packets of spicy jalepeno death as well as standard ketchup.  Good times.

The gas station attendant tried to hustle me – I paid 400 pesos (cash) for 390 pesos worth of gas. I was going to give him a decidedly unearned 10 peso (about $1) tip. Instead he tried to scam me, hiding one of my 200 peso notes and replacing it with a 20 peso note. He tried to demand the “rest” of the bill. Too bad for him I had just been to the ATM and knew that I only had 200s, and there was no way I had given him a 20. I just shook my head and walked away, and he didn’t push it. I should have reported him, but I didn’t know how, didn’t have any proof, and didn’t feel like spending the first several hours of my vacation dealing with police bureaucracy. No matter – locals trying to hustle gringo for an extra buck should be expected, and they weren’t going to harsh my vacation mood.

We set out down the nicely-maintained highway towards Playa del Carmen and Tulum, our destination for the evening. Two uneventful hours later, we arrived in the town of Tulum just after dark. It was loud and traffic-heavy, but there was a music festival going on and there seemed to be quite a few nice tourist shops/restaurants, without it being overwhelming or terribly Gringo-ized. We found a dive shop to purchase a mask and snorkel, which we had foolishly forgotten back in Massachusetts. It was only another 10 miles or so to our bed for the night, but it took longer than expected.

First we had an easy cruise to the hotel zone along the beach (our first beach sighting!), which ended at the border of Sian Ka’an Biosphere Reserve, a Mexican National Park and UNESCO World Heritage Site (yet another for our list). We paid our 150 pesos for 3 days admission and thought we were almost there.  Only 2.5 miles left, but what a 2.5 miles!

The dirt road had more potholes than road (our pictures just don't do it justice). Whenever I took the econo-rental car out of first gear it was a mistake. Too fast! I found myself  weaving left, right, back center, back right, trying to find a path through the craters.   Thankfully our cheap Chevy has been trustworthy thus far (hopefully it will get us down the path once more). Recent rains left some of the potholes full of rain, making them much more difficult to judge depth and likelihood of suspension-crushing peril.  

Finally, we arrived at CESiak – the Centro Ecologico Sian Ka’an, (www.cesiak.org) an eco-lodge and education center that runs tours and hosts scientific researchers. The reserve itself is the largest preserve on the Mexican Caribbean, and has lots of wildlife in the jungles, lagoons, dunes, and coast. There are 336 bird species found here, more than in all of Europe, for instance.

Our Cesiak lodging was a cabana perched on stilts above the primary dune of this peninsula (ecologically speaking, it would be better sited further from the ocean).  There is a wooden platform with thatched roof, and then a frame canvas tent is built inside, providing protection from mosquitoes, rain (mostly), and most importantly, wind. Oh man is it windy here. Inside we had a proper queen sized bed and two candle lanterns with proper hurricane lamp covers (I didn’t know that the shape of the glass had a function, but Shannon informed me of this. They work – it was so windy, even with most of the windows zipped shut that I worked thorough 6 matches trying to light them, but they stayed faithfully burning for hours after that.) There is no power or plumbing in the cabana, but there is 24 hour power (solar and wind powered, all off the grid) in the office, and composting toilets a short spider-filled walk away. (Did you know: if you hold a flashlight near your eyes and shine it toward the ground in the dark, you will often see little sparkling jewels all through the woods. These “jewels” are usually the eyes of spiders, shining back at you. Shannon does not like this at all.) Our bed had been decorated with a swan made out of our beach towels – it felt like a pretty damn classy tent!

The swan towel that welcomed us to our tent/cabin.

Even with the ocean-facing screen window mostly zipped shut, our little tent rocked and rolled in the wind all night. Occasionally, the wind would shift and the tent wall would slam into the headboard of our bed and shake us awake. Shannon eventually resorted to earplugs over the din, but I rather liked the roar of the wind and crashing surf. The real estate is hard to beat. We wouldn’t enjoy the color of the turquiose water until the next morning, but I did enjoy the dark dark sky, probably the darkest I’ve ever seen at sea level.  (Science note: There is much more humidity here than in the mountains or desert, obscuring the stars somewhat, but the removal from civilization was pretty good here. Cesiak has also kept outdoor lights to a minimum. This is mostly because of their power restrictions from being off-grid, but also aids with sea turtle conservation. When baby sea turtles hatch, they orient to the sea by finding the brightest thing around and flippering like mad across the sand to this. Naturally, the crashing surf is brighter than the forest on land. Unfortunately, human outdoor lights screw them up, leading many baby turtles to head the wrong way when they hatch. Also, for reasons I don’t fully understand, bright shore lights discourage female turtles from both coming ashore to nest or from actually laying eggs if they do come ashore).

The spray off the waves was driven into the tent a little, even through the screen, so that it was a bit damp in the tent by morning. No matter. It’s gorgeous, and it’s almost all to our selves. There are only probably 30 people staying here, plus a similar number coming for day tours. The fine sand beaches are ours to play on.

Our first day we didn’t go anywhere. We got up and had a tasty breakfast at the Cesiak restaurant, then played in the surf for a few hours. It was much too rough to use that snorkel we’d bought, but the waves were fun to jump in. Once in a while I successfully body surfed. The water is so warm (82 F or 27C, roughly, based on a satellite image I found). It is much warmer than the Red Sea was last winter (my life is so hard…). The dry air in Egypt combined with slightly cooler water meant that after snorkeling in Egypt (with a thin wet suit) I was shivering uncontrollably. Here, I could play for hours and still feel comfortable. Awesome.

The view outside our tent.

On a whim, I spent an hour or so before sunset picking up trash. I don’t think any of it was local – it had all spent many weeks or years riding the tides. Plastic never dies it seems, it just washes ashore somewhere. Mostly I picked up plastic bottle caps and bits of bottles. I wish that in the hour I fully cleaned up my little piece of paradise, but alas, the task was greater than I. Oh well. Just trying to leave things a little bit better.  Maybe I’ll try to do something good for every place we visit, to ease my travel/carbon guilt just a smidge.

Today we had a busier day. We got up early (by vacation standards) to head into Tulum to visit the Mayan ruins before the tour buses arrived. We didn’t quite beat the crowd, but it was still a great visit. It is a beautiful site, right on the coast. The town of Tulum was occupied later than the bigger/fancier places like Chichen Itza, and had Mayan inhabitants much later, even after Spanish contact. We didn’t bother taking the time or spending the money for a guide, so mostly we just wandered around and looked at 700 year old temples and oohed/aahed at the views.

See the face in the corner?

The beautiful Caribbean Sea and part of the Tulum ruins behind us.

After that we headed back down the bumpy road (take-out taco + speed bumps = lunch disaster) to Cesiak for an afternoon kayak tour in the lagoon. We spent 3 hours paddling, sometimes in very still water next to the mangroves and other times battling some stiff chop in the heavy wind in the open water. It was great for birding, but we didn’t see the expected crocodiles (I think I’m OK with that…felt a little exposed in the kayak for that kind of wildlife encounter). We paddled out to a few islets made entirely of mangroves that are used as bird nesting grounds.

An osprey nest in a mangrove.  You can see two osprey on the left.

Each islet had different birds. Birds seen: cormorants (2-3 kinds), rosy spoonbill (look kind of like flamingoes), great blue heron, egret, vireo, pelican, frigate bird, and probably more that I forgot. There were a few puffer fish by the dock, and Shannon spotted a small sting ray in the silty water. The late afternoon warm light was lovely on the mangroves, water, and birds. “Sian Ka’an” is transliterated Mayan for “Where the sky is born” and our trip on the lagoon had indeed had some great sky views. Our guide, Fernando, learned Mayan as his first language, Spanish in school, and now also guides in English, French, and Italian - talented guy.

We finished off our day by splashing in the surf again once we got back to camp, and then inhaled some tasty chicken fajitas. I tried a few dabs of habanero salsa, which was a mistake. The burn lasted quite a while. I think Shannon has already passed out cold.  

Tomorrow we’ll leave the coast and head to Chichen Itza. It will be our second consecutive pyramid for Christmas (last year we were in Cairo). It’s good to be us. 

The beach at Cesiak.  It's good to be us.

We have a lot of moving-in to do...

A short (and shaky) video tour of our new apartment. Wow, we have a lot of junk.  Sorry the video is Blair-Witch style and the audio is at times incomprehensible, but the point is just to appreciate how much stuff was crammed into our shipping container! (No hurricane/tropical storm damage, by the way...)
Blog Contest!!!
We'll send a lovely postcard from beautiful historic (and flooded) Deerfield, Massachusetts to whomever comes closest to guessing in the comments how many plastic tubbies we have. Most were shown in the video, if only briefly, though there are a few more out-of-view in the closets. I actually have no idea how many there are, but we'll find out as we unpack. Hint: More than 10. Less than 1000.
Good luck...

Blogged too soon? Flooding in Deerfield (updated)

So earlier I mocked the unimpressive nature of Mother Earth's fury, as exhibited by Hurricane Tropical Storm Irene. I continue to hold that the actual storm was really quite boring as natural disasters go, at least around here. It rained for about 12 hours pretty continuously, but that's about it. We didn't get that much rain today (3.4 inches) and it never got super windy.
After that post however, I went for a walk around campus as the sky cleared. There was surprisingly little flooding anywhere near the academic and residential buildings, so I went to check out the lower athletic fields, and instead discovered a raging, frothy extension of the Deerfield River.   But I forgot that the whole lovely valley that Deerfield is in is in fact a valley, and apparently it rained plenty upstream, up North in Vermont. According to the old timers, the last time the water got this high was the "Great New England Hurricane of 1938."
I stood on some steps by the gym for a few minutes, assisting a local man that was concerned about possible cries for help from the lower levels of the building (we never heard/found anything). As I stood on the steps, I had to go up a step after standing there only about 5 minutes. I think the water was rising an inch (vertically, not horizontally) a minute at that point. An inch a minute. The tennis courts went from normal to submerged over the nets in about 30 minutes. The rate of rise slowed down, but the river kept coming up all afternoon. I don't know Deerfield well enough (I've only been here 6 days!) to know exactly how everything looked before, but I would venture that there is at least 10 feet of water covering the football field (it was up to the crossbar of the uprights) and moving FAST. Water was flowing across main street and the 5/10 Highway (both north and south of town), so we are pretty cut off. We can still go up and over the ridge towards the Connecticut River, but flooding on that river might cover the river road over there soon too.
There were rumors earlier in the day that the Harriman Reservoir (upstream in Vermont - the biggest rez in Vermont) had burst. As far as I can tell, that rumor is false, but officials are concerned about the stability of several upstream dams. The highway blockages are over 1/2 a mile from the river - there is a LOT of water down here.  Several families have had to evacuate their houses in town, and the historic Deerfield Inn has water 4+ feet up the ground floor (many of the evacuees are staying at the Inn!).  We're hoping that the river is done but some reports didn't expect it to crest until Tuesday. The Deerfield River dumps into the  (normally) much larger Connecticut River a few miles downstream from here, but the Connecticut River is flooding too, so that could perhaps push water back up the Deerfield from below.
It could be interesting for a few days.

Here are some photos and video shot this afternoon/evening (August 28, 2011).

Looking at the lower athletic fields, with water up to the crossbars of the goalposts. A groundskeeper watching the flood remarked "I guess I won't have to line the field tomorrow."

Track flooded. This area had never in the memory of anyone in town (50+ years) flooded.

Water creeping up to the back of the shiny new Koch Technology center, where I'll be teaching. I hope they put up some sand bags and/or the water stops rising soon.

Measuring how fast the water has risen at the historic Deerfield Inn.

Deerfield Fire Department: lots of antiquated emergency equipment got some use today.

Main Street of Historic Deerfield around 5 pm. The red house on the left was faculty housing that was evacuated.

We tried to buy emergency supplies on Friday, but the grocery store was cleaned out of water, and our camping water filter is still in storage.  We bought 50 16oz Solo cups and filled them with tap water before the storm. We've never lost water/power, but I'm a little concerned about the quality of drinking water with the river now covering many cow farms and outhouses. Emergency water ration flip cup, anyone?

Highway 5/10 heading south out of town. It was similarly blocked about 1/2 north of town.

View of the flooded valley from "The Rock" on Pocumtuck Ridge. The Deerfield Academy campus is roughly in the middle of the photo.

Another view from the Rock. The flooded area in the far right (next to a large building, which is the Deerfield gymnasium) is where the athletic fields are that are shown in the video above.

UPDATE: I found the USGS stream gage info for the Deerfield. Note that the median flow this time of year is 300 cfs (cubic feet per second) and about 3 feet deep, which is a pretty mellow river. Within less than two hours after Irene, it shot up to 100,000 cfs, and was running almost 25 feet deep!  The good news is that it appears to be heading back down now. Whew.

We'll see what happens tomorrow...

Waiting

So far I think tropical storms qualify as the most boring natural disasters ever (ok, excepting a drought, I suppose).  You get 3 days notice of something that is coming for you at the speed of a recreational biker, and then, finally, eventually...it rains. Not super hard like a thunderstorm or anything, just consistently  .My apologies to anyone harmed in this Irene business, I'm sure being in a coastal location or in a Cat 3 hurricane is an entirely different (and terrifying) story, but so far...yawn.

So I'm waiting for this tropical storm warning to turn into something worth staying inside all day for.

After  7 weeks on the road this summer, suddenly I'm doing a lot of waiting. Some of you may know that waiting is not a skill I'm particularly good at.
We traveled all of July in Europe (Slovenia, Venice, hiking in Switzerland, Milan, Copenhagen, Berlin, Budapest, and Belgrade...hopefully we'll get some photos up of those lovely places in the next few weeks, but here is a link to Hanna's nice blog on Slovenia, and we went with her) before packing up our life in THIRTEEN checked bags and flying home to the US of A. Once back in the US we visited friends and relatives in Colorado, Montana, California, Minnesota, and Michigan before ending up here in Massachusetts.  It was a busy few weeks.
First things I noticed about the US during my reverse-culture-shock: sad to say, but it's fat people. Lots of really, painfully, morbidly obese fat people, like the the guy at immigration at the Denver airport, sweating profusely just standing still in the heavily air-conditioned room (I was wearing my long-sleeve). There are overweight people in Europe, but nowhere near as many or as large. Some of it is certainly genetics, and lifestyle choices, but I have to believe there is something systemically wrong with what Americans call "food,", how much of it we eat, and our options to do otherwise.  [Not to mention our car-dependency that limits options for daily exercise.]  I also noticed the acres and acres of mostly-empty parking lots that we've put up around all of our big box stores and strip malls. Maybe only on 5 days a year are these parking lots ever more than 1/2 full, but think about how much good farmland is now under asphalt, about how it makes it impractical to walk from your average suburban dwelling to anywhere useful, without having to cross the asphalt wasteland on a hot August day, about how many more miles of sewers and roads and street lights we need because everything is so sprawled out on account of having sufficient parking, and about how damned ugly they are. Blech. Some things need to change.

After a day or two spent de-jet-lagging at Shannon's parents in Colorado, we got to spend some quality time loading the rest of our belongings, the stuff the didn't go to Bulgaria, onto a shipping container to be sent to Massachusetts. By American standards, we probably don't even have that much stuff, as it pretty much fit into one average shed. Still, we hadn't used it in two years, and with the exception of furniture, I'm not sure we will use it in the next two years. We half-heartedly tried to start culling our pile, but decided to procrastinate, determining that it would be easier to do at our new place, once we had a better idea of what we would need and what we wouldn't. Most of the problematic goods aren't even sentimental...just stuff that is not broken, but not currently useful, like extension cords and DSL modems. It seems wasteful to throw it away, but also wasteful to carry it around.

Perhaps I'm pondering these issues of waste and need and structural problems in society more than I otherwise would because of my new job. I'll be teaching environmental science at one of the top high schools (a boarding school) in the country. I'll also be the "campus sustainability coordinator," which is a new position that no one really has figured out yet. It's a little bit intimidating.
This is a campus full of talent and privilege. Some students were born privileged: the sons and daughters of kings, presidents, and titans of finance have gone here for two centuries. Others are privileged simply by being here. About a 1/3 of the students are on financial aid, some even getting full ride, which is quite a gift from a school that charges almost $50,000 a year (for high school!!!). The campus is beautiful, with exquisitely manicured green spaces and buildings (like the one I'm typing in) that date back to the Revolutionary War. The teaching and recreational facilities look like a nice liberal arts college at first, until you look closer at the iPod-connected-touch-screen treadmills in the gym and figure that most colleges don't have equipment this nice. The faculty that I have met so far have been uniformly talented, warm, and helpful. The few students I met last year during my interview were friendly, hard-working, and sharp. It is on all accounts a wonderful learning environment, but also at times a bit like the Truman Show. Is this place for real?

Right now, in addition to waiting for Irene, we're waiting for our housing. We've still got 10 days before students arrive, and I would love to get physically settled so that I can figure out my classes and the rest of my job. Unfortunately, we'll be living in the trailer park, excuse me, "modular dormitory" known as Chapin II (it's important to say it with the right looking-down-your-nose accent), and they haven't finished it yet. They're doing some construction this year so we'll be in the temporary housing (as new guy here I'm low man on the totem pole). There are 18 dorm rooms (all boys, all single rooms, mostly 9th/10th grade) plus three faculty apartments in our nascent trailer park. Our shipping container is parked next to the trailers, and we've got excellent temporary temporary housing, but it still would be nice to get moved in for real.

Home sweet home (soon to be), with shipping container in waiting in the foreground.

Half this week was spent in new faculty orientation, which was a bit of a blur.  They did a  nice job mixing social events (like dinner at the dean's and a canoe outing) with your usual anti-harassment trainings (favorite quote from the dean, "[the boys in the dorm] spend a lot of time naked"), but there was still a whole lot of information to take in. I don't think I've really scratched the surface yet of figuring out how the day-to-day life of this boarding school works. I guess I've got a few hundred pages of manuals to look over today as it continues to rain. (I've got extra batteries for my headlamp so I can keep reading in case the power goes out!)

New faculty plus some administrators, kids, and dogs. This is the view from "The Rock" above campus.

Spending 2 years in Europe was somewhat like an extended vacation. It was plenty of work, but I never really felt like I "belonged" in Bulgaria. In fact it made me come to terms with my own fundamental "American-ness", like it or not. 7 weeks on the road heightened our need to be settled somewhere, to dig in, to make a home. Now that we're here, it's frustrating that we can't start that process here. I hope this will feel like home. There are a bunch of free-range faculty children and lots of folks out walking their puppies; no one seems to lock their apartment doors. It's a friendly place, a bit like really expensive grown-up summer camp.


So now you're waiting, I suppose, for an ending to this rambling blog, but like any good literature these days, you won't get one. So there.

Last Weekend in Bulgaria

We're leaving. Soon. It's pretty hard to believe. Our two years here are almost up. Classes are through, and I gave my final exam last week. Now all we've got left is a LOT of grading, end-of-year paperwork, packing, moving out, and plenty of goodbyes. We've had some difficult times here, to be sure, but lots of amazing ones as well, and I think a lot of experiences that we'll still be processing for years to come. Next Sunday we're heading out for our month-long European adventurefest, so this was our last full weekend in Bulgaria. Many of our friends went to a big outdoor music festival, but it wasn't really our thing. I wanted to go to the Black Sea for the weekend or do an overnight hike. The reality that we were leaving in a week intruded on these plans, and we settled for one day in the mountains, and one day to get stuff done, which led to a busy weekend.

There's plenty of good hiking nearby on Vitosha (theoretically we could walk from campus, but a 30 minute drive is better), and an hour+ away are great hikes in the Rila mountains. I always like to go to new places though, and there was one major mountain range in Bulgaria that I hadn't hiked in yet: the Pirins. Situated between the ski-resort of Bansko to the north and the little wine village of Melnik to the south, they have Bulgaria's second-highest peak (Vihren at 2914m) and are delightfully rugged due to their glaciated past.  It's a 2.5-3 hour drive down to the Pirin range, which is why I haven't been hiking there yet (well that and the fact that during almost all of the school year there is too much snow for easy hiking). This was my chance.

Driving down after work on Friday, we spent the night in Bansko so we could get a morning start on our hike.  Our decent hotel room including breakfast was only 40 leva (off-season prices)!  Meanwhile our acceptable dinner at a schmaltzy and touristy mehana was 75 leva! Rarely have I paid twice as much for dinner as for lodging in the same town...oh well.
We drove over to the nearby village of Dobrinishte, which has a single ski lift that also provides access to some great hiking. 30 minutes on the lift carried us from deciduous forest at Hizha Gotse Delchev to sub-alpine krumholz and the beautifully situated Hizha Bezbog. Very nice.

Hizha Bezbog, in the Pirin Mountains near Dobrinishte, Bulgaria

We hiked a few hours through excellent mountain landscapes.

Djangal Peak, 2730m, in the Pirin Mountains

I wish we'd had more time. The lift stopped running at 4:30 in the afternoon, which is reasonable in the winter but dumb in the summer when it is light out until well after 9 o'clock. If we missed the last lift, we would  add 2.5 hours of steep (and fairly unattractive)  downhill walking on a ski access road.  The timing of the lift meant we had a farily short outing, but it was still excellent.
At the turnaround point for our hike we decided to go skinny dipping in Big Valyavishko Lake. This is not the coldest water I've swam in, but at 2280 m (~7,500 ft) it wasn't exactly tropical. At least there was no ice floating in it. Luckily it was windy and overcast, and we had nothing to use for a towel. :)

Big Valyavishko Lake, with two islands. Nice.

View East towards Djangal Peak from Big Valyavishko Peak

Swimming in the lake. It was chilly. I swam to the island, just 'cause.

Zoom in of above picture. You can perhaps appreciate from our faces how cold it was.

 
After our dip and air-dry, we realized we had 1:50 to hike back to Hizha Bezbog (and the ski lift) or we'd miss the lift down. It took us 2:30 to cover on the same distance on the way here, and we hadn't exactly been lollygagging.  Unfortunatley, the Hizha was only about 250 ft lower than our lake, meaning we couldn't even enjoy much of "it'll be faster going downhill" speed boost.  Time for a forced march. We hustled up the hills, and cruised on the flats, even running a bit on the downhills until Shannon's feet screamed at her to stop. Neither one of us really thought we could make it. But somehow we did...sweaty and breathing hard but with 10 minutes to spare. Woot!

The rest of the day was uneventful...30 minutes down on the lift, 20 minutes driving down on a windy mountain road, then 3 hours drive home, mostly on neglected and pot-hole ridden Bulgarian "highways." Note to folks living in BG: Google Maps will suggest that it is faster to go to Bansko via Velingrad (instead of Blagoevgrad). Don't believe Google. I didn't really, but I was curious to see the other route. The Velingrad route is about 30 minutes slower but much more taxing driving. The roads are in much worse condition and a lot windier. On the plus side, the Velingrad route has little traffic and is quite scenic, especially in the gorge between Velingrad and Septemvri. The portion west of Velingrad was interesting also, as it seemed like an area of Bulgaria that time forgot, with (I think) Pomak villages (mosques and all) old hunched over ladies in kerchiefs working the tobacco fields, and old men wasting away the day on a bench in town. Interesting byway, to be sure.

Today we had a productive day. I got up early (for a Sunday) and did laundry. Then we went downtown and did some shopping. We wanted to pick up some last minute Bulgarian souveniers. We went back to the Ladies Market, which had been the seen of some very frustrating cultural faux pas and/or "neither of us speak the other's language" miscommunications when we first went there in October of 2009. Now we understand the culture better, and our Bulgarian is as good as it will ever be. For no particular reason, we ended up at the shop of the same woman that refused to sell to us 2 years ago, after we offended her in some way. We were more careful this time. We bought pottery from her. We also bought pottery from her neighbors, but we were sure to wait until we completed one sale before we started another, lest it appear that we were trying to play one saleslady off another.
Then we headed over the gift shop of the Bulgarian Ethnographic Museum, where we bought some more pottery (more expensive, but we like some of their styles better). We also bought all kinds of other Bulgarian trinkets that suddenly seem important now that we're leaving. Last item on our souvenir agenda: art. Mike and Kate have lots of paintings from a local artist, and we've admired their work for 2 years. Yet whenever we saw the art sellers by Nevsky Cathedral, we never saw anything we liked. We were determined today. Past the booths selling old Bulgarian war medals and Russian/Bulgarian nesting dolls, we found the painting stalls. We eventually found Stoyan, dealer of some nicer work, including our favored artist, Rusalina Mihailova. We didn't find the exact thing we were looking for (a landscape of a cute Bulgarian village that we had visited...all of her works on sale today were of places we hadn't been), but we were both taken by a nice oil painting (framed and on canvas for only 50 leva) of some rowboats, so we have some art now. 

Sunny summer day in downtown Sofia.

The souvenir vendors near Nevsky Cathedral (the gold domes of the Cathedral are in the background).

Enough shopping...time to get to work. [Well, after a burrito (shannon) and duner (Jeff).] We found ourselves a table at an outdoor cafe in the park near the National Theater "Ivan Vazov" and I busted out all my final exams. Shannon graded multiple choice questions (THANKS SHANNON!) while I worked on the short answer. After a while a classical music quartet set up and played an hour-long concert at a summer festival stage right next to our cafe. It was about as pleasant a day as you can have while grading final exams.

The National Theater from our cafe.

Shannon, wielding her red grading pen.

Fountain in the park.

 It was a little less fun when the second act turned out to clowns. Seriously. Clowns aren't any less creepy when they're speaking in a language you don't really understand. Eventually the clowns drove us away, off to another favorite place, Pizzaria Ugo, where we graded and ate pizza and salad.
Hiking, shopping, grading, and even some laundry. It was a good, productive weekend.

We topped it off with yet another item that I really wish I had a picture of. We were waiting to turn left from the Billa corner onto Malinov (a very busy intersection), waiting next to the meager excuse for a carnival that was currently occupying the vacant lot formerly covered by the Balkanski Circus. As I got ready to turn, I saw a horse headed my way. Half-starved horses are not so rare in Sofia, but usually they're pulling a horse cart. This horse was was running free, running fast, and running at me. It came from across Malinov, near the Shell station, from the lane of on-coming traffic. It careened around idling cars, then bolted across Malinov, heading straight for us. I quickly dug for my camera, but only managed to capture this shot. Notice the blurry leg moving out of the frame to the left. I don't think I've ever almost been run down by a stray horse before while sitting in my car at a major urban intersection.

There's a lot going on here. Foreground: crappy carnival. Background: Vitosha mountain. Far left: A HORSE running down the street.

WikiLeaks hits Bulgaria

Wikileaks hits Bulgaria...
In this rather unflattering description of Sofia, written by a US Embassy staffer in April 2009, the author talks about the terrible streets, wild dogs, and organized crime.There are many nice things about this city and this country, but unfortunately, all of this is true as well (at least the trash strike ended before we got here...we saw one in Naples, Italy in 2008 and man was that awful). I particularly liked this line:

Drab, decrepit soviet style blocks rise up, in
stark juxtaposition to the Porsche dealership. Crumbling
streets with unevenly patched pavement, potholes that can
pass for tank traps, and sidewalks crammed with parked cars
are routine. Basic infrastructure is mediocre to poor.

 Read the whole article for a full view.  I honestly think things are getting better here, but it's really touch and go. The new Metro system opened a few months after this diplomatic cable was written (construction started in the 1980s, then was abandoned for 20 years), and is still quite shiny. It's great, and will be even better when they open the 2nd line and 1st line extensions that are currently under construction.  Streets are being paved in preparation for this fall's elections (apparently every 5 years the roads get better in preparation for elections, trying to convince voters that their MP is not so bad, even if the rest are bums).  The new expressway around the city (the "Ring Road" or околоврустен пут) is great in the sections where it is completed, and they've gone from 0 to almost-done in less than a year on the sections near the new IKEA (also going up in record time). The juxtaposition of old and new, flashy and trashy, are really quite overwhelming here. We had a lovely dinner last night with some Bulgarian colleagues in their very nice apartment, in a new building completely surrounded by drab, falling-down soviet-era apartment blocks. It turns out we didn't really need a map or directions to her place at all - her instructions of "go to Fantastico and it's the only new building in the neighborhood" were patently clear. I'd like to buy the whole country a few thousand gallons of paint. It would go a long way just to give everything  a decent paint job (something they've tried with some success in Tirana, Albania, actually). So anyway, read the unofficial "official" bad word on Sofia from WikiLeaks. I don't mind saying such things, as I'll soon be posting an album full of beautiful shots of Bulgaria taken on various ACS hiking club outings, which will even out the bad press, I hope.

5 perfect days in Thassos

Apparently some evangelical Christian pastor in the US did some heavy calculating and determined that the end was nigh, in fact, Saturday the 21st of May. Well-behaved Believers would be "raptured" bodily to heaven, while the rest of us would wait for our miserable end. We counted down the hours until showtime, but didn't see anyone ascending to heaven (we had even spent quite a while discussing who among us was most/least likely to be raptured...Hanna didn't have much confidence in my chances!). Although the rapture was apparently a bust, we spent a long weekend in what already seemed like paradise, so it was pretty hard to tell.  The paradise that would have to do for us un-raptured was Thassos Island, Greece.

Thassos Island is known as the "Emerald Island" of the Aegean. It is one of the largest and most forested of the Greek islands. It is far from the cruise ship circuit, and a bit off the beaten path of heavy tourism that fall upon other more famous isles like Santorini.  It is about 6 hour drive south of Sofia, then a short 45 minute ferry ride. Several of our friends have gone before, and all loved it. Shannon was skeptical that I would enjoy going to an island for 5 days -- would I get bored?  No, I wouldn't. It was wonderful. Or, as Shannon says "The most perfect amazing excellent vacation ever!"

The lovely bay that forms the 3km long beach of Skala Potamia and Golden Beach on Thassos. The high point of the island, Mt. Ipsario (1206m) is in the background.

This is the off season in Thassos. Many of the shops/restaurants are still shuttered up for the winter. It's a shame, because the weather was absolutely fabulous. It was about 80 F and sunny every day, with a breeze to keep it from getting too hot. The sea was pretty chilly still (I'm sure the swimming is better in July), but we still got in the water every day, and one day played at the beach all day, alternating from the beach chairs to frisbee in knee-deep water to playing catch/keep-away a little deeper. The beaches were very clean, and the water just sparkled.

20+ teachers (plus some family members, former teachers, and a boyfriend) caravanned down to Thassos, staying in a variety of nearby villas and hotel rooms. It was great. 9 of us shared my villa, about a 10 minute walk from the middle of a 3 km long beach (Skala Potamia and Golden Beach). Thassos is famous for its marble. Several colors are quarried there (including the "second whitest in the world"), and have been for millenia. Somewhat ridiculously, this leads to marble being so commonplace that the street curbs in the main town are main of marble, and crushed marble is even used as gravel on the dirt roads. Yup, gravel roads paved with sparkling white marble. The rocks of the island also made for enchanting sparkling sand (it looked like flecks of gold in the water) and excellent rock-hunting. Carolyn in particular found herself quite a rock collection.

Beachside cafe, with white crushed marble below the chairs.

I took runs along the beach, among the olive groves, up to a little village, and scrambled to a secret cove. One day we circumnavigated the island in our trusty red VW "хаиде". The 60 mile loop showed us different sides of the island, and we stopped at several beaches to sample their different flavors. One memorable spot was fairly unmarked but obviously no secret...we were never there alone. It involved turning down an unmarked dirt lane, driving 10 minutes down a gnarly dirt road, then hiking 10 minutes steeply down to the marble cliffs at the sea. A prehistoric marble quarry had left a hole next to the ocean that filled up with incoming waves. It was hypersaline because of evaporation (check out how well Pei Pei, Jess, and Carolyn are floating in there). The hole was so clear it was deceptive how deep it was...it looked only 3-4 feet deep, but I never touched bottom, even when jumping off a smallish cliff (I never felt brave/foolish enough to jump off the top cliff, but Jamie and Rich did last year after he proposed, apparently!)..

Jess jumping into the quarry hole.

Jess, Pei Pei, and Carolyn in the quarry hole.

The refraction does funny things to their body size. That and the high salinity that makes them float really well make for silly pictures.

Another day Shannon, Martyn and I did a 6 hour round trip hike to the very top of the island, 1206m high Ipsario Peak. It was quite a stunning hike, with huge cliffs, ancient trees, views to the beach, the mainland beyond, and even the not-so-close island of Samothraki. There was so much contrast on the island, with a great beach, a stellar hike, history (we kept driving by and sadly never stopping at any of the many Ancient Greek archaeological ruins...I've heard they're pretty good though).

Martyn and Shannon climbing up to the summit of Ipsario peak. The ferns above treeline made is super green.

The beach viewed from the summit. We of course went swimming after the 6 hour hike.

Jeff and big big very old and gnarly tree.

We all got plenty of sun, sea, relaxation, and good food. Our two-day work-week after Thassos was HARD -- everyone just had such a great vacation, and it fully felt like summer. At the time, we still had a full 5 weeks of the school year left! Still, I have to thank the monks Kiril and Methodious, who brought Christianity and literacy to Bulgaria 1200+ years ago, as our long weekend was in honor of their efforts. Thanks K! Thanks M!

In summary, Thassos is freakin' awesome. Beautiful beaches. Great hiking, ancient ruins, etc etc. We had no crowds, though I'm sure that's a different story come July and August.  Either way, highly recommended.

Click below for a Flick slideshow with some additional pictures.



P.S. Bulgaria finished a new piece of freeway a few months ago, that allows the main Serbia-Greece highway to bypass Sofia with a proper 4-lane limited access divided highway (called the "Lyulin" highway). This 17 km section is lovely, but I never expected to take it, as it doesn't go anywhere I want to go...just for bypassing the city if you're on a through route. NOTE: If you're heading north from Greece, and trying to get to Sofia, near the town of Pernik you'll come to an exit. It will tell you to exit for Pernik, and stay straight for Sofia. If you follow the signs for Sofia, you'll zip right over the "old road" between Pernik and Sofia, that cuts between Lyulin and Vitosha mountain. The old road is congested, windy, and in bad condition,  but is also goes to Sofia. The new road is shiny, empty, well-paved...a generally excellent road. Well, excellent unless you're trying to go to Sofia. The new road will eventually connect to the city center from the west, which is quite a bit out of the way for us in Mladost, over on the southeast. I said eventually, as you currently can't get to Sofia at all from this road. That's right. If you follow the signs for Pernik, you can get to Sofia via the old road. If you follow the signs for Sofia,  you can't get to Sofia.  Nice highway, Bulgaria, but you need to maybe work on your signage, maybe just temporarily cover up some stuff until you finish the rest of the road.  On the other hand, I suppose it's not so much worse than the 710 freeway in California, that heads from Long Beach to Pasadena. At least it's supposed to. It stops several miles short of Pasadena, leaving you in a surface street traffic nightmare, and it's been this way for decades, so if you're trying to go to Pasadena, it's best to NOT take the road labeled to Pasadena. Tricky.