Zempoala

Noche de Rábanos

This year, and just to continue with the tradition of celebrate Christmas in a different city (2008, 2009), I went to Oaxaca!!

Each year on December 23rd they celebrate the Radish Night, that was one of the weirdest festivals I've ever been. See what they make:

This night is also a contest with 6 categories: Radish, Totomoxtle (the dried leafs of an ear of corn) and dried flowers and each material in Traditional or Free style

On Christmas I visited Hierve el Agua, a petrified fall, and its saline lakes

I really loved Oaxaca for the second time...

And sorry for the very low-resolution pictures, but my previous camera has died [or someone killed it? ... ]

Isla de Pájaros II

September 23-26.

With Fernando...

The same Island...

Chuchucuac

Hugo termina su verano paseándose por regiones muy al noreste de la Ciudad de México, en un lugar donde las abundantes leyendas de gárgolas, bolas de fuego y ventanas a otras dimensiones entran en contacto con fiestas de música electrónica, familias ganaderas y comerciantes textileros. Ahí es donde Hugo aprovecha y se avienta un clavado a la gastronomía regional y admira el curado de Avena y ahora se lamenta no haber probado el estómago del borrego preparado al mejor estilo chuchucuacense.

Turtles

This summer I went to Isla de Pajaros not only to rest and meet people but also to save Golfina turtles, a species that is not already endangered but it was very recently. Until now, is still very common the illegal trade of the supposedly aphrodisiac eggs of marine turtles and their fins. Some dealers are able to kill an adult turtle only to sell it's body parts by five hundred pesos.

Some organizations and several independent rural communities have created camps with the goal of protect the biggest number of eggs. One of them is Isla de Pajaros, where locals and biologists organize camps every summer inviting guys from many countries. The idea is to patrol in the night the rounding shore looking for turtles or footprints of these animals, to pull out the eggs from the original nest made by the mom-turtle and to put them in a human-made corral in order to increase the number of born eggs. The preservation of the eggs is also like a moral undertaking that locals promote to their children with no need to have something in return.

The human-made nests:

Isla de Pájaros

This summer I spent 11 days traveling with 11 new friends, including me, in the south coast of Mexico in an international workcamp with the aim to save marine turtles. To be more precise, we were camping in Isla de Pájaros recently named Michigan Beach. It's an amazing place located very closed to the Tecpan de Galeana town in the state of Guerrero, Mexico. Just in the middle between Zihuatanejo and Acapulco. To get to the island it's necessary to get to Tecpan, then to take a combi to Tenexpa town and there you have to ask a pick-up driver to drive you to a kind of pier to take there a boat that is the last trip to arrive to Isla de Pájaros.

I met very many people there, both friends from other countries and local guys and families. As the trip is kind of organized by the UNESCO and Vive México organization, people from very different countries came to the island, one girl from Russia, two girls from Andorra, one guy and one girl that are studying in Montreal, and two other girls one from Estonia and the other from Germany, the rest were from Mexico.

We stayed in a kind of arbor, you know those constructions typical from the beaches, of a very kind family who lent us their kitchen where we prepared all the meals. One day, the oldest son of the family, Rufino 14yo, taught me to fish, to remove all the organs from the fishes and to cook them on garlic

We supposedly were there to build a corral for the young turtles but in general we were just enjoying the leisure time...

Another incredible guy we met there was Beto, he has been living in the island his whole life so he has learned lot of abilities like hunting crocodiles just for tourist exhibitions and armadillos, we were just about to try a soup of armadillo but in the last minute he escaped. Maybe I'm not totally agree with the idea of hunting just for fun but this is the life style in that island and I just wanted to include myself in that different culture...

Uruapan

Tianguis Artesanal Domingo de Ramos 2010

en su 50 Aniversario

Uruapan, Michoacán

Cocuchos y huanzupos

"El tianguis artesanal más grande de America Latina"

Hugo es llevado a Puebla

Una vez más, mi escuela me llevó de viajecín. Ahora a un pueblo muy cercano a Puebla [como 20 o 30 minutos antes, si vas desde Cuernavaca] llamado San Marcos Acteopan y luego a Puebla a comer tacos árabes, entre otras cosas...

Taxco

Ayer sábado fuimos a tomar muestras a Taxco. Fue la primera vez que visité ese pueblo. Tiene un poco de todos los pueblos que me más me gustan. Casas al estilo Páztcuaro, calles pequeñas como las de Guanajuato, lomas como las de Zacatecas y no sé porqué pero me recordó también a San Cristoba de las Casas.

El colectivo de Taxco es particularmente alternativo. Son combis sin puerta y apesar de que todas las calles tienen una pendiente bien extrema van llenas y la gente queda expuesta a caerse, pero parece que nunca ha pasado eso.

Luego fuimos al teleférico...

Vimos también una extensión de la Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas de la UNAM donde algunos pasaron a hacer uso de sus servicios y encontramos una impronta de la cultura higiénica de mi universidad

Finalmente entre los souvenirs vi esta playera del Mexican Piñata League