Lucha Libre

So much to write about—there is the job-side of things, and the travel-side of things. And within the job-side of things, there is the work & the students, and then the new colleagues and friends.
Today I was thinking—we encourage folks to be travelers and not tourists, but sometimes that nut is hard to crack. I talk to waiters & waitresses, I say hello to the security guards, I thank the store-tenders, and we chat with the taxi drivers. Today we caught the bus, with Tania’s enthusiasm for public transportation pushing us on, and what a great air-conditioned bargain. My Spanish is ok—pretty good to get by, but I’m hoping to do more than get by. It is coming back to me, and I am learning some new words—I think I’d benefit from a vocabulary list to study, because my brain needs to repeat things several times & see it in writing before it lodges there more permanently. And I found out I’ve been saying Chile Relleno wrong for years—I thought the n was an ennyay—can’t do the symbol just now. I asked Chris the photographer if she’d like to walk around and take pics together, and I asked her if we could chat about respectful ways to take photographs. She said that I really already know, that it varies by circumstance and context & manner, she said that I have the mannerism/respect, but it doesn’t always work out in a positive way. With such a power differential between myself and the people I want to take pictures of it’s hard. I looked up “beautiful”—linda or hermosa, because I wanted folks to know that’s why I wanted to take their picture, that they are beautiful. And then I ask myself why do I want to take pictures of “them”…what is it that I want? Am I taking something from them if I take their picture? I think if I take their picture and they didn’t want it taken then I am taking something from them. I also think that I want to take “their” picture because they are real people and not plastic models—I think part of it is that I want to bear witness to the myriad of ways that people live and walk through live and how the sun or the wind carves maps of their journeys into their faces. I am also remembering that I used to walk around Northampton and take pictures of people for my photography class, and it was much the same thing. Now though in Santa Barbara I’m usually not taking pictures of people I don’t know unless they ask me to, or if I’m at a rally. There was a beautiful woman stacking fruit with long black & gray hair pulled back in a clip with eyes that twinkled and an open smiling face. I would have liked to have taken her picture. I would have like to have spoken with her.

Acapulco is a tourist town, so that does add to it a bit. Even the German lady who serves us lunch (yeah, we went to a Mexican restaurant owned by a German—although she was super-sweet and cooked everything herself) warns me & Ray (one of the faculty) to watch our surroundings. So far so good. I did go off on my own a bit today to the supermercado, where they have 10 different kinds of Tang, including Mango Tang which I haven’t had since Malaysia. They also have Jamaica tang—I gave a packet to Tom (the assistant dean), and he ate it raw like a pixie-stick. In the market I got to wander for about 30 minutes. Big stainless steel bowls of mole are laid out at the deli—Oaxaqueno mole, others whose names I don’t remember but who vary in shades of red to chocolatey brown, including “dry” mole rub, a bowl full of a spice mix. Cheeses—not so many hard cheeses (Manchego from Spain, Parmasen from Italy are the only ones)—the rest are soft & creamy, or crumbly curds, all bright milky white.
The first day in Acapulco we went to El Zorrito’s, (the fox’s) restaurant. The usual $15 taxi ride to the restaurant for 5 (which later could go down to 3-8$, and once we got the hang of the buses, would have been .50 cents, but that’s the way it goes). Awesome food, chorizo sopas, silky lemony guacamole, cold dos equis beer, and ah-mazing chile rellenos—the best I’ve ever had. The chiles were spicy, smooth, and mellow all at the same time. Good stuff. We then went to the tourist flea market, which was just an amalgamation of trinkets in a maze of booths. After wandering for about 15 minutes I got a goofy octopus magnet—we call him Aca-pulpo (pulpo is octopus/squid)—one of my first Spanish-language jokes! Well, that was fun for about 4 minutes, so I wandered off to a side street where vendors were selling meat on tables on the sidewalks, and where, true to my internal cheese-sensing spidey powers, I found the local cheese store (really more of a cheese table). I snapped a picture, but as we cannot bring anything not grocery-sealed onto the ship, I didn’t get anything.
One evening we ventured out to La Perla—a restaurant overlooking the Acapulco cliff divers. The cliff divers dove at 9 and at 10:30. It was hard to photograph them, but they are incredible—they dive from a height of 165 feet. My pictures look like a little shrimp diving off of a rock into inky depths, (as does my video), so it was definitely something you had to be there for.

We went out to El Cabrito (the little goat) for dinner for Mario’s birthday on June 22nd. They served…little goats. But also amazing Oaxaqueno mole—I got the mole enchiladas—spicy, deep chocolate sauce over tender chicken in fresh corn tortillas. That was food of the Mexican gods. We also had queso fundido with champingnons (mushrooms) served with fresh hot hot hot fluffy flour tortillas. The food has been outstanding, from the chile rellenos yesterday to tonight’s meal, everything I could have wanted in my Mexican dining adventures! I did opt out of the little goat head specialty though. Maybe someday.

Air-conditioning—where even the air is privileged.

The last night in Acapulco, we went to Lucha Libre—Mexican wrestling a la Nacho Libre, the real deal, a hot immersion into Mexican pop culture. Tom, his wife Rebecca, and Ray all got tickets and Augustine (one of the lecturers here, a great fun 6 foot 4” Spanish guy) and I tagged along to see if there were still tickets available. We were in luck—there were 2nd row seats still available for 150 pesos ($15). We could have gotten cheaper seats, but those would have been up in the bleachers, behind the chain link fence and the barbed wire (really). It was an amazing mish-mash of rowdy teenagers, sweaty wrestlers in funky costumes with the whole head-masks, and families with little kids. Little cats were running around underfoot snatching up dropped popcorn, with what looked like huge former-wrestlers hawking t-shirts, cotton candy, beer, popcorn with spicy habanero sauce, and peanuts with lime/mango/habanero sauce. The big match was between Misterio and Los Perros, which the locals shouted repeatedly, along with “Otra! Otra!” whenever anyone got “slapped”. I learned new swears, and I learned that the first row was audience participation row as the wrestlers repeated threw each other into the crowd. Second row caught some of the action as well. It was pretty much the pinnacle of aerobic fake fighting but with real flips and body contact. Acapulco was hot, hot, hot, but after the wrestling match we left the auditorium and were happy to be outside. My description of the evening: “That was some crazy shit”. It was awesome.

Panama (accent on the last “a”) is tomorrow, and yes, this trip is flying by. I’m on duty the first day, we go visit an Embero indigenous people’s village the second day, and the 3rd day the plan is to jump on a train to the Carribean and spend the night over there.