A Gringo in Rural Mexico: People ask at times....

Wednesday 16 May 2012

People ask at times....

Some frequent requests over the weeks and months are responded herewith. A long tour or stay in Mexico, reasonably safe, without emphasis upon the banal, or the disco, or throngs of banal, disco go-ers. That seems to be the common thread.

Hotel San Leonardo Puebla, Puebla, Mexico

Lobby of the San Lorenze, Puebla

Two or three weeks moving between, and including, Puebla and Oaxaca cities. That is the recommendation of the Gringo Viejo. Fly to Puebla, transfer to either the very downtown Hotel San Lorenzo, or stay on the edge of the urbanised part of the city at the poofy, ritzy Marriot, where the Volkswagen executives stay.

We used both of those places many times over the years. We think that for a couple or a trio of couples travelling together the San Lorenzo, warts (which are few) are tolerable, and the colonial and pre-revolutionary ambience is very enjoyable. Plus (but wait there's more), it is in midst of that incredible, almost mystical ambience of DOWNTOWN. Some say that Puebla reminds them of a fusion of Paris, London, and Madrid. El Gringo Viejo's clients often said that without knowledge that others had said that before them. It also has Mexico City Modern ancestry....very modern. It is a really fine place. Food!! Food!! Italian, Mexican, Indian, French, American Smoozy, Chinese, taco-stands on the street; FOOOOOODDDD!!!!

And then shopping....whether you buy anything or not....talavera pottery, common for daily use, elegant, or designer museum quality type stuff....woven things....general junque....it is a wonderland. Sidewalk saloons and restaurants. Museums, the Fortress of Loreto, the Pyrmid of Cholula, the Chapel of Cholula, the City of one chapel for every day of the year, the almost cold nights in the summer, and the warmth of the afternoons, the Cecil B. deMille Geographic backdrop cannot be duplicated. It is like Mexico City with 1/10th the problems. The population is mixed with full-blooded Indians (Otomi' and Tlacalan), in typical dress at times (especially women on weekends), people of mixed red and white ancestry, and people composed of totally or almost totally blood from the European Tribes....Spanish, German, Italian, French, English, Irish, Scottish, is about the right order of blood lines of the white tribes.

An investment of three or four nights would be correct. A minimum of three nights, try to hit it mid-week for better rates. If you have any Spanish at all, engage a carro de sitio for the afternoon of arrival....to go to the Fortress of Loreto and whereever else the driver might recommend....like Gilligan and the Captain....a three hour tour.

Other recommendations, for whomsoever requests such, will be made to the best of our ability..

Then, on to the South, perhaps a direct ADO bus. There are several million things that the OROG will miss by taking the direct bus, but you are going to the City of Oaxaca where there are ten million things to distract the visitor. It is a comfortable 4 hour run on a toll-road. Very compelling geographical passage. What you are missing are places where a curmudgeon might semi-retire and grump around, being grumpy. Huehuapan de Leon is an example.

Monte Alban Archeological Site

Once in Oaxaca City a person or small group has about a zillion and two/thirds bunch of choices about where to stay. Spend a lot for a common, a little better than first class room, but enjoy an irrefutably perfect ambience and location. The place is an old convent from the 16th Century. It is rated ultradeluxe....and you pay for it....but once again, the rooms are what one would find in a three or four star hotel, and the ghosts of much of Mexico's past are pleasantly accompanying the visitor. Such is the Dominican masterpiece, confiscated by the Constitution of 1917, left to rot for 65 years, and finally converted into the government owned Hotel Presidente, then the Hotel Ambassadeur, then the Camino Real Oaxaca. It is a quirky place. We had many groups there. The staff never once said, "thanks, have a nice trip", or "come back soon"....Their initial flurry of welcome always changed to almost cigar-store Indian mode for the rest of the stay. Our clients seemed to love the place, and the restaurant was excellent....although expensive to the extreme....the waiters were the only ones who did not work in the cigar store. http://www.camino-real-oaxaca.com/?gclid=CO2SoN-2hbACFaNeTAodv3qi4g

But, where would you stay, Gringo Viejo? The crowds clamours for a response. Okay, my favourite of all is an un-presuposing place with the odd name of Hotel Gala. It is in the very, very, very middle of town. If it were any more in the middle, the guest would wake up in the centre of the Gazebo in the middle of the Zocalo (main plaza). It is only first class, which in Mexico means...middling high. It is two stories only, no elevator to fail during the earthquakes, and has only a little dinette that has a really great breakfast and "breakfast ambience". The rooms are neat as a pin, small but very clean baths, completely uninspired decor, but nice. One can beg for a "plaza view" room or cleave to the quiet of an interior room. Right now, the walk-in rate is about 32 USD http://www.gala.com.mx/ . This link is a bit clunky but it is worth the effort to click through it.

Within five blocks in any direction, everything can be found. Watch repair for you grandfather's gold watch, nice stores with crystal, onyx, semi-precious stones, gold and silver jewelry brought in by Indian craftsmen from the mountains. Every little family restaurant is a delight, sidewalk saloons and restaurants, nice mezzanine restaurants overlooking the pleasantly noisy and musical plaza, the central market is all but adjacent. Two days can easily be spent walking the six blocks to and from the Church of Santo Domingo, for on that route are literally a thousand diversions. In the depths of Summer, the temperature swings between 84 F in the afternoon down to 54 F in the earliest hours of the morning. In the Winter, it's about the same. It is heavily touristed, but it is also a State Capital, and educational centre with Pinko U right downtown, a dedicated to various processing operations for coffee and chocolate which is raised just a few miles to the east. Therefore, it is a working town, very tolerant of tourists, but also very intent on accomplishing the mission for the day.

Mitla Archeological Zone

      Not far away, crossing over the plaza and more or less adjacent to the Cathedral, is another of those places where one might expect to find Sherlock and Dr. Watson, sharing a gin and tonic with Poirot and Capt. Hastings.   Miss Marple would be drinking hers from a tea cup, of course. (She really prefers Coca Cola with the local mescal and half a lime on the side.).     This hotel has at least a billion dollars worth of the finest tile appointments.   Rooms are small and neat.   But once a person manages to check in, he realises that he has done himself a favour on many fronts. It is about 1,000 pesos per night for the better rooms, 900 for the higher floor, lesser rooms that are wholly adequate. Go through the clunky but fairly easy to navigate site to see a rare thing....a true picture of a place and its ambience....here http://hotelmarquesdelvalle.mx/english/ .
     There are many places to stay, even in the outback, like the Posada de Don Cenobio, down in Mitla, about 25 miles to the south.
It's a pleasant little place with a nice small swimming pool, and a restaurant of sorts....good food, in any regard.   One can take a taxi, negotiate closely, although El Gringo Viejo has always found the rates to be almost ridiculously low, if a person just grabs one of the common, circulating taxis.   It's about 25 miles to the south of the city of Oaxaca. The driver can be easily coaxed into side trips and into revealing shopping and restaurants and bars....making a complete day trip of it.

The OROG can stop and tell the driver to put 200 pesos of fuel into his tanque. It will assure him that you approve of his driving and that you intend to use him to-day..and maybe more. His tales, experiences, and studies will usually dovetail well into the OROG's studies of the area and places being visited. If one wishes, we have heard good things about theis new little place out near the Mitla Archeological Zone...a strictly major league mesoamerican dig. The Hotel Restaurant Don Cenobio is a good place to "cool it" and generally relax. These are the really fun ways, in the Gringo Viejo's opinion to really have a good time and to get to know people and their conditions and their dreams and hopes and accomplishments.

Please understand that these are simply a few places in Oaxaca. There really are hundreds, and any 50 of them this writer would consider a good place in which to die happy.

The only point about any of this is that there are hundreds of things to see and do in and around Oaxaca. Visiting the surrounding towns could and has occupied visitors for days, weeks, months, and even years. One can do the "pottery tour" or the "minerals tour" or the "archeological tour" or the ''culinary tour" or the "language tour'' or the "coffee and pineapple tour" or do these and many others or just sit on the main Zocalo and watch people and eat fine food and gossip. It's a good place to live, or whatever.

NOW, once done with these couple of weeks, a person can board a flight in Oaxaca, they have eight flights per day to Mexico City, via AeroMexico, make your connections in Mexico City to fly to Gringolandia, and be home...."before you know it"....with no jet lag....because you will have been in the same time zone the whole time. (!!)

Just some thoughts....tomorrow, or sometime soon, a couple of other easy trips.

El Gringo Viejo

Click to visit our little Adobe Hideaway…

This is our rustic, but very comfortable place, out in the rural area to the northwest of Ciudad Victoria, Tamaulipas…the State's Capital. From a bustling city of 400,000, we placed our domicile a bit more than 20 miles into the scenes of mountains, citrus groves, spring-fed creeks and rivers with crystal clear waters, and an abundance of bird species that make veteran birders shake their heads in wonder.

We are all but adjacent to the venerable Hacienda de Santa Engracia (about 500 yards away), which dates to the 1720s and has ancient structures still in use, very elegant, and mystical in many ways. It has operated as a guest hotel since the 1970s.

Our little place rests on three and a fraction acres, fronting on the Rio Corona, which is lined with over-1,000 year old cypress trees. The nearby Sierra del Cautivo…a major segment of the overall Sierra Madre Oriental that dominate most of eastern Mexico, lies to the west by about three miles. guards the many springs that maintain the almost perpetual flow from those heights (up to 12,000 fasl) while our place is situated right at 1,000 feet above sea level.

Give us a call, come by and visit…it is truly a different venture in the most positive sense. We can be reached by our email - privatouring@gmail.com - which is our preferred method of communicating.

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What is an OROG?

Once a person lands on our page, that individual becomes a member of the Order of Readers of the Old Gringo, (OROG). There are no dues or assessments to pay, no meetings, no requirements. We are not associated with the KKK, the WCTU, the French Masons, or the Global Warming Glacier

Protection Committee.

We do have a distant connection with the Knights of the Golden Circle and hold the maps to the internment sites of 34 tonnes of Confederate Gold, and 1,000 tonnes of Mexican Imperial Silver (bar and coinage) derived from the collapse of the Reign of Maximillian von Hapsburg, Emperor of Mexico (1863 - 1867). I think we can remember where we put it.

All kidding aside, we are acerbic, but we do not bite. We do believe in our antiquated philosophy, but we try to not impose our quirks and beliefs so far as to be disrespectful.

El Gringo Viejo

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Wise Words

Communism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy. Its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.

Winston Churchill

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Be sure you are right, then go ahead.

I bark at no man's bid. I will never come and go, fetch and carry, at the whistle of the Great Man in the White House, no matter who he is.

I told the people of my district that I would serve them as faithfully as I had done. But, if such was not to be, then you may all go to Hell, and I shall go to Texas!

David Crockett

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And on and on it goes. The more the Government gives away, the more it takes, and the less Americans do for themselves, until finally, like Europe, there is nobody left to do anything, and there is nobody left to pay for, the nothing that is not done.

And, yes, Virginia, there truly is a Santa Clause, and he and Mrs. Clause and their helpers care greatly for the good children of the Planet. So long as there is happiness, kindness, charity, generosity, and the Spirit of Fellowship, Santa Clause will be there, representing those noble things, and he will always move in a spiritual way so as to provoke humankind to goodness.

El Gringo Viejo

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“There is another class of coloured people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs — partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.”

Booker Tallaferro Washington

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It is impossible to make a poor man rich by making a rich man poor.

Abraham Lincoln

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El Gringo Viejo: a fair description

Life for El Gringo Viejo began on the Texas-Mexico frontier, near McAllen, Texas literally on a real, live farm. The farmer, as one might imagine, was his father, who had moved with his parents from Gwinner, Sargent County, North Dakota in 1915 - 1916 period, down to the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas. (And yes, Virginia, that is the way Sargent County is spelled.)

His parents farmed in an area close to the new community named after its founder, called Ed Couch, in Hidalgo County of Texas. My grandfather is buried in the Weslaco Municipal Cemetery about 10 feet away from his friend, Ed Couch.

After studies, and a stint in the 1st Cavalry, 12th Regiment (mounted), Headquarters Squadron of the United States Army...riding warhorses back and forth along the Rio Grande from the late 1920s and early 1930s. He did not speak much about his service, but we determined that he apparently made rank of 1st Lieutenant.

El Gringo Viejo's Father established his farming and citrus grove-care operation just north of McAllen, Texas. Mother was a housewife and a professional woman....a learned, eloquent, well-read woman.

They were educated people, my father winding up as a Superintendent of a major school/facility of the Texas Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation in Austin, Texas after a twenty year career in education at the secondary level. He had degrees in History, Psychology, and Education Administration.

El Gringo Viejo is the last of three children, all males. Number one was Milton Birchard, Jr. who was born in 1936 and died in a vehicular incident in 1988. He was narcoleptic. He held a doctorate in geography from Louisiana State University and was head of the Department there for a good while.

Number two is Norman Francis, who was born during the WWII situation in 1942 and became an important Republican political engineer and fundraiser. He served as Executive Director of the Republican Party of Texas during the late 1960s and early 1970s and as Senator John G. Tower's immediate Executive Assistant. The Senator is the Godfather of Norman's first son.

Norman died at age 77 in Austin, Texas and I was one of four eulogists who was chosen to speak at his en memoriam at the Austin Club in downtown most Austin…within sight of the State Capitol.

It was a personal duty and very rewarding

in every way.

My arrival was in 1947, and I was destined to confound my parents and all those around me. Educated entirely in public schools in McAllen, skipping the third grade, and stumbling out of my high school in the upper 90% of a class of 606. I

attended and graduated from Southwest Texas State University (now named Texas State University, unfortunately), being one of the few conservatives to graduate out of the School of Sociology, although my treatment at the hands of my tormentor-professors was not so unpleasant in those days. Emphasis of studies were social demography, and Latin American Affairs with a concentration on Mexico's history and current political evolution, with a minors in History, Geography, and Political Science.

El Gringo Viejo is one of the old, unreconstructed high-church Episcopalians. Politically, he is very fundamentally conservative. He prefers Baseball to football, and considers that baseball with a designated hitter for the pitcher should be called "poofy-ball". Favourite major league team of all times? The Brooklyn Dodgers of the 1950s. It will never be the same again.
El Gringo Viejo's father was born to a Hudson Valley-type girl and a man who had lost two older brothers who served in the Pennsylvania 96th Regiment of Volunteer Infantry during the War Between the States.

The surnamed line (Newton) originated from East Anglia, not far from a place called Washington in northeastern England. They came into Boston Harbour, Massachusetts in 1642 (the 1st voyage of the Mayflower had overbooked), and settled there and in Maine as well as spreading out to Vermont, New York, and Pennsylvania, over the generations for the first 220 years.
Another batch of folks, mainly Anglo, settled in the middle Hudson Valley. There was another group of Celto-Teutonics types from Saxony and Prussia, establishing and settling along the Hudson River from around what is Catskill County northward to Duchess and Rennselaer Counties around a place named Red Hook. The main group came in during the early 1650s.

My mother's people were another English line of long-term Southern and Tennessee people, from the Eastern part of that State, who originally came in during the 1660s through Virginia and North Carolina, and finally into Eastern Tennessee, settling in and around a county to be named Franklin, and helping to establish the city of Winchester. Almost all of these people originated from southwestern England, near the frontier with Wales.

Only recently did we verify that she had many people involved in the service of the Confederacy. One died in northern Mississippi, another Captain Asa Grant, 2nd Tennessee Volunteer Cavalry, was severely wounded and succumbed to his wounds finally in 1869, and another hung around in an Ohio POW camp (Camp Chase) for about 13 months, while three others were either wounded or died in action, including David Limbaugh, Lieutenant, 42 Tennessee Infantry. Another five made it through relatively unscathed.

Almost all were, oddly enough, related to the great-grand uncles and gggg-grandfathers down to gg-grandfathers of Rush Limbaugh. The gggg-grandfather came into the Colonies in the early 1740s from a Prussia and Saxony background, and served in both civilian and military capacities to the Continental government and Army. He was the XO of a Militia Battalion of 3,000 Pennsylvania effectives. They honed their military readiness under the supervision of Gen. von Steuben and someone named Washington at some place called Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.

A grandson of his, Isaac, settled in Tennessee after the War for Independence against King George III. So Rush and I share grandfathers, four generations deep on the American Continent.

It should be stated here that were I to be called to declare, my allegiance would still be with the Southern Cause, although I bear no rancor against those who feel the same about their instinct to maintain the Union. Oddly enough, both my mother (a Southerner) and my father (a true Yankee by blood) believed that we would have remained closer if we had separated, and each side gone the ways of their own yearning, but amicably.

The last of the English (El Gringo Viejo's) line came during the time between the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812. They left County Wicklow, where they had been involved, apparently, in that peculiar Anglo - Scots/Irish practice of making whiskey by the use of peat for fuel. They were also involved in the business of production and processing of various types of grains as well as the production of whiskey, gin, and beer. By their surnames one would know that, while coming out of Ireland, they were actually English, one with the surname of Christian and the wife, Webster. They had, in fact, married in Christ's Church Cathedral, Anglican, in downtown Dublin in 1796. They landed in New York, set up shop in the City among previously arrived relatives, and then in Albany. We have some record that this Christian who married the Webster had actually lived in the colonies, but travelled several times back and forth between the Spirits businesses in England and Ireland and the New World. They wound up as the generations progressed in and around Minneapolis (St. Anthony) & Saint Paul, Minnesota, and Racine, Wisconsin. My particular line went from New York to Alabama, then North Carolina, and then Wisconsin to join up with the rest of the extended family, finally in Minnesota, before the War Between the States.

The Time Line of entry of all lines of my children's blood ancestry on their mother's side in the New World begins in 1578, when Spaniards of mixed Hebraic and Iberian peoples, and others of ancestry from Portugal, Galicia, and southern Spain entered into what was to become Monclova and Saltillo, Coahuila. They are brought under the auspices of the Explorer, Conquistador, and Colonizer Jose Luis Carvajal y de la Cueva, with elements settling in Lampazos and Cerralvo (Nuevo Leon), in Palofox (Texas), and Revilla (Tamaulipas) on the Rio Bravo.
Also, the Count of the Sierra Gorda, Col. Jose de Escandon brought another group of mainly Spanish, Portuguese, and Azoreans in the early 175os, settling along the Rio Bravo (Grande), and then on the north (Texas) side, spreading up to what is now Yorktown, Texas (near and southeast of San Antonio de Bexar, more or less) before and during the Texas Republican period.

My children and theirs are qualified to join the Daughters of the American Revolution, the Sons of Liberty, The Sons of the Grand Army of the Union, The Sons of Confederate Veterans, and the Daughters of the Confederacy. By my side they are 16th generation English Colonial - American and 6th generation Texian. By my wife's side, my children are 23rd generation northernmost New Spain, Texian, and American. Isolating Texas alone, my grandchildren are 15th generation Texian.

LIKE?

Cats, and then dogs.

Fishing, even a bit of bird watching, now and then.

Really good music..antique, old, 1950s and early 1960s rock and roll, classical - Hayden, Mozart, Beethoven, both Strauses, and many others, African tribal sounds en chorus, Mexican bolero...mariachis when they play out-of-doors, some country and quite a bit of the old western (Sons of the Pioneers, the Texas Ploughboys, Marty Robbins "Gunfighter Ballads, for instance.), even some of my own piano works, bagpipes, Enya, marimba, Caribe.

The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess always seemed to me to have been, and remains, a true masterpiece of Americana.

Well maintained Firearms, smooth running small equipment, old autos that respond to repair and upkeep and keep going. Used to have BMWs and so forth, but being old helps tone things down a bit.

Antiques, and antiquities...Meso-American archeology...and religious history. Formal religious services among the Orthodox..as in Anglican, Roman, Orthodox and Conservative Jewish services and celebrations. Hard to find, now.

Overnight radio, rightwing talk radio until it becomes overly tedious and repetitive.

Weather and climate.

And strangely during the past few years,cooking. Not just barbequeing...but actually dishing up gourmet-type stuff...and gardening to a purpose.

We grow a lot of our own spices for our little bed and breakfast and we specialise in flowerng plants, bushes, and trees that attract bees and literally hundreds of species of common to extremely rare birds to our place.

Lifelong Republican, honourably discharged - United States Army (conscripted).

Now drifted into the position of favouring the amicable withdrawal of Texas from the American Union. My grandchildren are 15th generation Coahuila/Texas by my wife and 8th generation Texas by me and my will is to have them answer for the debt of Texas and not for the debts incurred by the National Socialists who have taken possession of the central government in Washington, D.C.

DISLIKES?
Any kind of socialism...bolshevik, national, marxist, social democratic, Trotskyite, progressive, ....and any kind of socialist.

The Ku Klux Klan and such types who figure that they have to hate somebody because of how he/she was born. They are just role players, resucitated by the Communist Party USA in the 1920s, whose members are fueled by a well deserved sense of inferiority.

And almost all social activism.

Almost all labour union officers and almost all labour unions. (There are some exceptions.)

Public assistance of any kind. All welfare and/or charity should and must be privately handled in order to avoid the trap wherein we have fallen, that being the multigenerational slide into the abyss of forlorn hopelessness that is government slavery and dependence. That slide is cheerfully supported by politicians who love to buy votes with other peoples' money.

Lotteries operated by governments.

Litter, filth, graffiti, gangs, and waiting in line for people using food stamps whil'st they argue with the cashier about how they "need" this or that to be covered...when they have three carts with 450 USD of snacks and things we cannot afford because we are in an 'upper income" category.

Church reformers who want to change my church instead of them going to another church and just leaving me alone.

Medications for boys who are over-active, and medications in general.

Lite beer, lite Coca Cola, fat-free, lo-cal, artificial sugars and sweeteners, anything marked "healthy" on food packages, sugar-free, margarine, and driving 23 miles to buy gasoline over there because it is 2 cents per gallon cheaper.

Any government programme designed to help anybody; 94% of the time the programme winds up morphing into some kind of monster. Then liberals and do-gooders will propose another programme, twice as costly, to cure the ills caused by the first cure-all.

Officiousness, and the term "non-profit", as if there is some kind of moral superiority in the failure to produce wealth.

Physical abuse of an animal, an extraterrestrial, a child, slave, woman, or anything like a tractor or power tool, firearm, sewing machine, or an auto, etc.
Loud and/or sharp noises, especially when such noises have no particular purpose.

Wasting anything, from paper towels to Clorox to cake and cookie batter...anything. And....waiting in a line.