Bits and Pieces of Oaxaca

This will be our last blog from this journey as we are heading home tomorrow. We hope you have enjoyed them as much as we have putting them together.

This is one of the many couryards in the most expensive hotels in Oaxaca, the Camino Real. The cost is between $330 and $5oo a night. It would be fun to stay but our budget would not survive very long.

We just discoveed this place this year and it has been a gold mine. It was started by the many expats who live in Oaxaca and has many books that they loan out. Also 4 free computors. It cost less than $10 to join for the month we were here but worth it

This was Easter Sunday in the courtyard of the church across the street from our apartment. They were to be in yet another procession. The frme on the basket of the girl on the left is covered with various types of fireworks and would be lit, somewhere on the procession route. the girl on the right just has flowers in her basket, not near as exciting.

And here they are, in all their finery, before the baskets.

This guy was also part of the procession

This market is along the edges of the central park. It is not their all the time but was set up all during SemanaSanta and this week following it still is there. It was very busy, selling all the things that Oaxaca is famous for, textiles, pottery and wooden figures.

This was the first time we had every seen this type of artist at work. He is using thread and a curved needle to create a work of art.

The church is called La Solidad and is suppose to be the most important church in all of Oaxaca.

We dont usuaally give money to buskers on the streeet but Nancy fell in love with this little girl and her piano accordian. She was very good and had a deep voice, a surprise coming from a little girl. Nancy tipped her well.

It seems that in any city in the world there is a place where drummers hang out and it alwasy seems to be the same place where people who make beaded things for sale, also hang out. In Oaxaca, this was in a small park a short distance from our apartment and every night we could listen to the drums and if we were there, we could watch the people dancing.

That same park was also used for a skateboard park if there were not to many people in it. This was one such time and I took a number of photos of the boy on this skateboard and then sent them to him. He was so thrilled that I would take the time to do this and and I got most wonderful email of thank you in return.

He was pretty good.

What a Show, Easter Sunday Evening

We had been hearing much during the day about a fireworks show in the evening and once again it was to take place on the street in front of our apartment. We were coming home for our afternoon nap and sure enough, they were getting ready for the fireworks right in front of our apartment and in the churchyard across the street. It was amazing. It all started with long sticks of bamboo, many bags of black powder, much plastic tubing and roles of a nylon type ribbon that they used to tie everything. This first photo shows one of the many structures that were built to hold the home made fireworks. There were maybe 20 such structures in all, some bigger, some smaller, the biggest maybe 3 m in diameter, the smllest maybe 1 m in diameter.

And here are the home made firecrackers that make it all work. There were many 100s of them, some big, like these ones and some smaller. They were all joined together with black powder filled tubes.

This shows the top structure of explosives that was to go on the tower first.

These cubes are about 1m cubed and are tied together with the nylon ribbon to make the tower.

Again, the homemade bombs and bombs they were. My they were powerful and noisy.

One of the smaller designs that will go into making the total tower.

Another photo of the top structure, the biggest one, and here it is in place.

Each piece of the tower was about 1m high and as each one, 8 in all, was put in place, more firework pieces were added to the tower.

Here they are adding another meter to the base of the whole tower. It was lifted with a very precarious jack but there were 4 ropes from the top and people hanging on to keep it balanced. The red stuff is all fuse, and all filled with black powder.

I had to lay on the ground to get this one but shows a bit the many, many firecracker structures that were tied onto the tower

The show was to start at 9:00PM and I so badly wanted to be there to see them light the fuse, in fact I even wanted to lite it...... but no such luck. We waited around, both in our apartment and in the church courtyard just watching all the goings on and by 9:00PM we were tired and really wanted to go to bed. But we hung in there and at 10:00 PM the boss came and lit the fuse and the following ten photos show some of what happened. It was very smoky and very loud and hard to get in too close. There were no roped off places where the crowd could not go, only the heat and the noise and the smoke kept people from getting too close.

It was an absoutely spectacular show, with not one custom made firecacker, not one electric circuit and no computor to time it all. It was just ingenuity and a big of guts.



















WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!! And it took about one half hour from beginning to end. What a show!!!

d

Easter Sunday

The church acrros the street from our apartment is a very busy church, it seems there is always something going on especially during holy week. This was taking place Easter unday afternoon and reminded me of the CWL suppers. Lots of food, lots of people and even live music. The first picture is of the band that was providing the entertainment.


This is part of the crowd.

And this is where they got their food.

All during the week before easter, all the altars and statues in the churches were covered with purple cloth, something I cn vaguely remeber happening when I was a child. I knew that they woudl be all uncovered Easter unday morning so I did about a 10 block walk to 6 churches and took photos of the altars and the abundance of flowers that adorned then. Mass was happening in some of them so I could not get too close so just click on them to enlarge them to get more detail.

Good Friday in Oaxaca

That day was yesterday and it started out very quiet, as Nancy and I were laying in bed, not hearing the usual sounds we hear each morning. We had to check it out and our street was very quiet also, so we had our breakfast and about 9:00 AM headed out to find out what had happened to our uusally very busy and noisy city.

It did not take long for it to come to life a bit as we started witnessing small processions, with a platform carrying the figure of Christ or Mary or both, carried by men or women on their shoulders. They started in various small churches in Oaxaca and all finishing at La Solidad, the mother church in Oaxaca. All very quiet and low keyed. This continued for most of the day but all during the day we were hearing about a huge procession, called the Procession de Silencio, or in english, the procession of silence. It was to pass right by our apartment. We heard that it was to start at 5:00 PM and then at 6:00PM. We went into our apartment for happy hour and supper and came out again at 7:00 and still no procession but people were starting to line the street. Finally at 8:00 we saw it coming and the following 15 photos show what it was all about. All the platforms come from various churches in Oaxaca, just as earlier in the day but now they were much more grand than the earlier ones. Again, carried by men and women on their shoulders, in bare feet and mostly hooded and wearing conical hats.

And as the name implies, it was silent only the sound of a drum, to add to the mysticism of it all. The streets were lined with 100s of people but no sound, just silence. It was wonderful but a bit spooky.

Besides the platforms there were maybe 200 meters of these banners, I am sure weighing 20kg each and carried on a sling around a persons waist.