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By the end of April, LuzElena and I had enough of Oaxaca’s dry, mountainous heat, which each day quickly reached 90 degrees Fahrenheit by eleven in the morning and did not cool until sundown at 7 pm. The city is situated in one of the three main valleys created by the convergence of the state’s large mountain ranges. The Pacific Ocean is six hours to the west via winding, nauseating, two-lane roadways; the lush coastal rainforest region of Veracruz, which we visited in February, off the Gulf of Mexico, is more than seven hours to the east. There was one day of clouds and light precipitation since we arrived in Oaxaca in March until the end of April. We were stuck in the height of the hot, dry season.

Nearly giving in to exasperation, we quickly conceived of an escape plan: an 18-hour road trip in a rental car to Chiapas, Mexico’s southern-most state. Indigenous, indigent, and popularly known for the 1994 Zapatista Rebellion, Chiapas has a long stretch of coast along the Pacific Ocean, some of the taller mountain regions in the country, and one of the greatest amounts of precipitation. We welcomed the humid heat immediately upon arriving to the state capital, Tuxtla Gutierrez; deeply inhaled the oxygen-thin, misty air soothing our lungs and passageways in colonial San Cristóbal de Las Casas, about 7,000 feet above sea level; and reveled in the cooling spray of the Palenque waterfalls, Misol-Ha and Agua Azul, diving headfirst into their fresh water pools. We climbed the limestone archeological sites of Palenque, overlooking the rainforests that descend toward the Gulf Coast, and Labná, a dramatically sited and recently discovered ruin in the hazy valley pastures below San Cristóbal. We returned to Oaxaca a week later for the valley’s first rains. The city streets radiated the rich, velvety smell of desert dust gathering moisture.

Video and photographs 1, 2, 4, 5, 6 from top, LuzElena Wood (2009)

Our trio took a round-trip flight to Puerto Escondido from Oaxaca City with a tiny local airline called Aerovega. On the return flight they transported us in a four-person airplane half the size of our outbound, covered in beige felt corduroy with a backseat like a 1980s German sports car, cutting a 6-hour winding mountainous nauseous drive into a 25-minute flight. Its cockpit was filled with cryptic, complex gauges showing altitude, ground speed, propeller pitch, wing-flap angle, temperature, engine speed, and coordinates, and levers adjusting most of the above. The control board rattled with increased engine speed, its center cracked below the glass, and the door offered a cool atmospheric draft. We descended into the state capital wrapped in cumulo-nimbus clouds, precipitation barely paused and visibility reduced to perhaps 5 meters. Equal parts beautiful and terrifying, the clouds wafted into the aerial tin can as the pilot glanced at a photocopied birds-eye diagram of the airport’s access points. The vessel emerged from the clouds at an altitude of 100 meters or so, the pilot disoriented and somewhat confused, and its passengers exhilarated and awestruck. Although the landing was peaceful and surprisingly smooth, the good feeling was disrupted by the newspaper headlines announcing the dreadful Air France crash off the Brazilian Atlantic coast.

Puerto Escondido in 10 low-season days: bikinis, board shorts, brown and stocky surfers, some pregnant or large, blonde Finnish-tourist groupie girls playing volleyball on the beach and waiting for their Oaxacan men, corrals of playful kittens, curly hair, salted humidity, sweet mojitos into the early morning, thick shore-breaking waves, and felled horses. Stray dogs lounging on steamy sidewalks. Sunsets over rocky coves nestled between bays filled with crustaceans, turtles, eels, and manta rays. Countless rip currents dragging Mexican tourists from the six-inch-deep sandbar and thrown by seven foot waves considered small to locals, eventually saved by California lifeguards on surf vacation. Reading by the hotel pool galore. Long boards and short boards and surf classes and flippers out to the point break and spinning body boarders and diving body surfers and scuba tours’ masked certifications. Surfboard-hauling motorbikes, pimped out VW Bugs and VW Things. Camarones al mojo de ajo, banana-papaya licuados, orange-pineapple-celery-parsley juices, and grilled dorado filets, and always, always, 10-15 foot swells three days from today.

Photographs 3 and 4, LuzElena Wood (2009)

Three weeks of tireless touring complete, LuzElena and I returned to Oaxaca de Juárez on May 20 with her aunt, Siobhan, to find our fridge overcome with unsightly growths and noxious smells. Power went out while we were away, leaving all the fridge contents inedible and undrinkable, so we promptly junked everything prior to our planned escape to the Oaxaca coast.

The last six weeks included skipping from rental cars to planes to family cars to planes and buses and planes again: ten April days in Chiapas; ten May days in New York; seven in the Dominican Republic; another four in Oaxaca de Juárez; and ten more along the Oaxaca coast between Mazunte and Puerto Escondido. We’re back in Oaxaca city with Siobhan for what will be our final 6 weeks in México.

Photographs Lucila Caro (2009)

My cousin, Mouvielle had a large, dramatically set wedding two weeks ago at a resort near La Romana, Dominican Republic, two hours east of the capital on the southern coast. The small altar was placed at the foot of a large infinity pool, which extended into the horizon of the caribbean sea. There was an enormous foam cake (courtesy of the bride’s mother) with elaborate icing decorations wrapping its numerous levels, copious amounts of food and liquor, and tables set above the pool deck, which served as the paryt’s dance floor. Around 30 members of my extended family attended, the bride’s uncles and first cousins, and another 200 or so friends and family from the bride and groom. All the relatives and newcomers were rife with small talk, so LuzElena and I attended the wedding mentally prepared for my family’s onslaught of questions about our future plans. I just didn’t expect the questions to come so quickly. Within one hour of our plane touching down on the Santo Domingo tarmac, my cousin, Lina, asked me when I was going to get married and, more importantly, have babies. As beautiful as the island is, tightly knit middle-class life in the Dominican Republic can get repetitive. Weddings and birthdays are an important part of making things exciting again, bringing disparate, diasporic parts of our family from across North America together again.

Photographs Lucila Caro (2009)

Blue surgical masks all over Mexico City, white ones all over Oaxaca, people holing up in their homes, libraries closed, museums shut down, and markets best avoided. Unsure and anxious, people panicked this week over the possibility of catching swine flu. Our downstairs neighbors’ parents forced them all to fly home once their schools were closed for the week, like most all across the country. Other people went about their daily lives as though little had changed. Some behavior included drunken debauchery, consequences of which were dubiously prevented by said surgical masks; after all, they do make you invincible. LuzElena and I finally got our first surgical masks after they came into our local pharmacy after a week’s wait. We really needed them for our photo shoot.

We were supposed to fly to Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, on May 6 from Mexico City DF to attend my cousin’s wedding. Upon catching wind of the swine flu outbreak, the day after we returned from Chiapas, we immediately worried that we’d either get sick or quarantined en route, and inevitably miss the wedding. So, we canceled our flight for free and bought a new, cheaper one with a five-day stopover in New York leaving May 2. We couldn’t be happier.

Photographs LuzElena Wood (2009)

We just returned from a 9-day road trip through Mexico’s southern state of Chiapas. The night of our return we searched every surface and crevice in our apartment for an uninvited homesitter. See, before our week away in Mexico City D.F. and San Miguel de Allende last month, we left our Oaxaca apartment with the windows shut and locked, curtains drawn, counters clean, and floors swept. Despite this, several hours after our late-March return to the apartment, with the windows and curtains open, dinner crumbs on the table, and bags splayed open to unpack, LuzElena encountered a lonely pair of insects. First, she found a large cockroach nestled in the kitchen drawer. Screaming to get me out of the bathroom, she then found a large, fearsome scorpion trying to blend in to our bedroom closet. I pretended to know what to do with it, employing many buckets and plastic bags. We didn’t sleep well that night, and it took several days before she approached the kitchen, bedroom closet, or any pile of clothes–a potential burrowing site for scorpions. Apparently, they’re common during the hot approach to the Oaxaca rain season. LuzElena’s spanish teacher collects embalmed scorpions in a large jar! Also, the big ones are allegedly non-fatal.

Screen shot courtesy of wikipedia (see scorpion).

Elvia, the chef at Casa de Las Tortugas, served me, LuzElena, and her family delicious homemade Mexican breakfasts and lunch each day during our stay in San Miguel de Allende. She let us ask questions and watch her make chiles rellenos de queso y res and pollo enmolado, sharing the details of her recipes with warmth and affection. I took pictures when she prepared the latter dish, chicken smothered in a traditional mole sauce. No cook makes it the same way, but most typically include up to twenty different ingredients. Elvia makes it just as her mother taught her, years ago growing up in the sierra near San Miguel de Allende. Believe it or not, one day I’ll splatter chocolate and chicken broth across the kitchen walls in an attempt to replicate her deceptively difficult (or seemingly simple) version.

• boiled chicken legs, breasts, and/or wings
• remaining broth from boiled chicken
• dried chile de guisar
• dried chile pasillo (optional, for darker color)
• white onion
• garlic
• tomato
• tomatillo, or green tomato (optional)
• apple
• banana
• raisins
• pepitas, or pumpkin seeds
• shelled peanuts
• pecans
• almonds
• bay leaf
• marjoram
• cinnamon stalks
• rosemary
• thyme
• large black peppercorns
• dark chocolate (sweetness optional)
• animal crackers, for sweetness and texture
• toasted sesame seeds (option to add early, or to use as garnish)
• sugar
• salt