Last weekend was the beginning of college football season, so I dutifully sat on my couch and watched every single game that was available from Thursday through Monday. Actually, I will do that most of the rest of college football season…just until January. My dear wife Judy has no such affliction, so she decided to go on a tour of Guadalajara. But her trip did give me an excuse to insert one of my favorite Mariachi tunes:
Our Spanish language teacher, Gabriel González, is starting a new tour business called Mexplore (note to local expats: check out their Facebook page for further info. His first trial-run was a day tour of Guadalajara. The tour did the greatest hits of the Centro (downtown) area of Guadalajara, including:
This church which features a continuous exposition of the (huge) Blessed Sacrament above the altar;
A park honoring “illustrious citizens of Jalisco” (the Mexican state in which Guadalajara resides), which includes a rotunda where the ashes of some these citizens are interred;
This bronze relief representing the original settlers of Guadalajara;
The original Cathedral of Guadalajara from 1549;
The Museum Cabañas, a former orphanage which is now decorated full of stunning murals by José Clemente Orozco, a unique artist known for his mix of stark realism and visionary symbolism;
and the iconic current Cathedral. This walking tour also took time out for a lunch break at a typical local restaurant, and visited the literally endless Mercado Libertad, which could easily take a day by itself!
That said, the tour took all of nine hours, including travel time to/from lakeside, and was a big hit. I hope to make a future tour, perhaps for an evening of Lucha Libre!
Got up this morning and whipped up some bacon and fresh eggs for breakfast. I was in no rush, so I used the leftover bacon grease in the frying pan to brown up some diced onions and toast some bread, because you can’t let bacon grease go to waste: it’s just the liquid essence of bacon deliciousness.
The dog was running out of his custom, expensive dog food ($2000 MXP per 16 kg bag); he offered to share my meal, but instead I made a run into town and picked up another bag of his food at the local veterinary office.
Vet office
Traffic was bad on the carretera (main street) in Ajijic. It probably took me ten minutes to get across town.
Car seats? We don’t even have seats!
Headed north on the main road from Chapala to Guadalajara. As an expat at lakeside, you’ll undoubtedly travel this route all the time. It is one of the two main ways to get to “Guad,” and it passes by Don Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla international airport (or GDL). Visitors arriving, family returning, traveling most anywhere other than within Mexico usually starts with a visit to GDL. There is really only one road to use to get there, and it is poorly maintained south of the airport, as the Tapatios (Guadalajarans) coming south only need to go so far.
Sometimes the ejidos, local indigenous peoples, protest at the airport. They contend the Mexican government took some of their land (for airport expansion) and did not pay the agreed price, so the ejidos blockade the airport. Sometimes they stop all cars from approaching the terminal area , making you walk (which is bad), and sometimes they take control of the parking garage and make it gratis for the day (which is good). The ejidos did protest today, so free parking for everybody!
Ejidos occupying the parking booth, with their lawn chairs. They wave you through, and the toll takers just stand there.
Picked up my lovely wife from the airport and had an uneventful thirty minute drive home. We did also pick up a quart of milk (for me) and a bag of chicharrónes (for the dog) at the local super, La Huerta.
That’s my sweetheart, learning you can’t take the cart out of the arrival zone.Goin’ home, over those mountains
By now you’re wondering what the point of all this is. This past year, Mexico set a record for violent homicides with over 30,000 murders, and this year is on pace to exceed that number. If you want to hear about the latest violence in Mexico, almost any NOB news source will regularly feed it to you, and there are websites which specialize in it. The stories are sensational, as the drug cartels which promulgate almost all the violence are purposefully theatrical (i.e., sending a message).
These numbers are real, but like any numbers they tell only part of the story. One would think life in Mexico is like life, say, in Syria or Afghanistan, with constant gun fights and bodies strewn all over. But it is not. You’ll note in my coverage of this day’s events, there were no gun shots, no headless corpses, nothing out of the ordinary. Yet I traveled through a “plaza” (the nickname for a drug territory) which is actively being contested by two of the most violent Mexican cartels. Hmmmm.
I once lived and worked in the Washington, DC area. At times, my office was on a military post in South East DC, the poorest and most crime-ridden part of town. Inside the gates, things were serene, but outside was another story. I drove in and out of those gates at all different times of day, going to many different locations. Even when DC was briefly the “murder Capital of the US,” I didn’t really fear driving through it. Why? I knew that most of the violence was drug-fueled, or opportunistic, happening at the wee hours of the morning outside bars and pool halls or clubs. I didn’t do drugs, didn’t hang out at clubs in the middle of the night, didn’t flash a wad of cash at the 7-11 or the gas station. Sometimes bad things did happen to someone just in the wrong place at the wrong time, but like being hit by lightning, the odds were pretty much in your favor.
The same holds true for Mexico. If you don’t do drugs, flash cash, or get drunk and hang out super late, the odds are pretty much in your favor.
Last year, Mexico set a record for visit by tourists (almost 40 million, mostly Americans), and those numbers are up again this year. There are more American expats in Mexico than in any other country. Those are real numbers too. They all have stories to tell. Unlike the stories on the news, these stories are boring, like the one about my trip to the airport. But they are just as real. And they don’t make it to the news.
Last post I intimated our travels were at at end and we were making our way home to Mexico. We flew Norwegian air again, this time from Madrid to Los Angeles via London/Gatwick. Except we didn’t.
The first leg to London went fine, and we boarded the 787 Dreamliner (a plane I already praised on the flight over to Europe), but we never got off the ground. Some kind of equipment issue brought us back as we rolled into take-off, then back to the gate. Like most, I am all on board with maintenance delays, even for a relatively new aircraft: safety first! Now we were stuck for an hour or two as the UK authorities decided how to handle us: since we did not transit the country we had to be treated as arrivals and de-plane, get our bags, and go through customs.
While they were deciding all this, Norwegian canceled the flight via text message, but did not bother to inform the captain, who was still stalling and hoping for the best until the passengers showed him their cell phones.
I have been in airline mass cancellation situations before, and it can be everyone for themselves, but at least when you are working with a large airline, they recognize the potential negative effects, bite the bullet, and get you new flights with another line, a hotel room and a meal, or all the above.
Not so with Norwegian. They sent a follow-up text about a minute after the first one saying they were having difficulties getting replacement fares and hotels, and encouraging customers to find their own! This set off a frenzy, and the pilot even came over the intercom to encourage calm.
Eventually we got off the plane and through customs: kudos to the UK customs officials, who handled their end very well. We all ended up in a huge line at the Norwegian counter, where the number of available seats and rooms dwindled fast. I went online and rebooked, and we’ll use both Norwegian’s claim system and the EU passenger rights process for reimbursement and compensation.
Meanwhile, we are stuck at the Holiday Inn @ Gatwick airport for two whole days. I promised a verdict on the low-cost carrier Norwegian air after this trip, and here it is: guilty of incompetence. The low fares and Premium seating just can’t make up for the poor customer support, the delays, and now the cancellation. Go elsewhere for your flying needs.
We’re making the best of the situation. Judy is recovering slowly, so we are taking it easy. We’ve been to London many times, and while we would never say we’ve grown tired of it (nod to Dr. Johnson), we have seen all the easy tourist sights, so we may just spend the time in the countryside.
Welcome to Horley, mate!
Gatwick is about a mile from the town of Horley, which is probably in the OED as the picture beside the definition of the word “village.” After six weeks on the continent, we have been stunned at how well they speak English here. An old joke, I know, but I really did speak slowly and loudly at the hotel check in, until the young lady behind the counter rattled off a standard hotel greeting and I thought: aha, English. We understand what’s on the telly (mostly), the food is (ahem) interesting, everything is in Pounds and expensive: must be England!
So it’s fish & chips and a pint for a night or two, then another try at a Norwegian air flight to LAX. Continued prayers requested; Cheerio!
We continued heading south in search of sunshine and warmth, and finally found it in Lisbon. We had blue skies and temps in the 70s, which was sooooo welcome!
Belém tower, Lisbon
Before we left Fatima, the relentless cold and wet got to Judy, as she came down with a nasty chest cold. We went to the farmacia there to get something for her cough, and the pharmacist kept apologizing for the lousy weather, saying she had never seen it like this in June. We laughed and explained that it was our fault, we brought it with us from Spain! I did see where Mexico is suffering from a heat-wave associated with the La Niña weather phenomenon. I’ll have to research whether that has any effect here in Europe.
Given Judy’s condition, our sightseeing in Lisbon was pretty much canceled. We did stumble into a great restaurant for lunch (skewers of salmon, shrimp, and vegetables). Later we made it to a Lebanese place around the corner from our hotel, and that was about the extent of it. Lisbon will have to wait until another trip.
Mezze, of course
We drove to Madrid, just to stage for our flights via London/Gatwick and LAX to Guadalajara. We’re ready for home, sweet home.
For those who joined my blog for the Camino, there will be one last Camino post soon. Otherwise, I will return to writing about the day-to-day trials and tribulations of being an expat.
We decided to trade eight hours of walking in the rain in Spain for six hours of driving in the rain in Portugal. What is going on here in Iberia? Are we cursed? I have friends in Ireland and Quebec reporting out on the sunny warm weather, and here we sit with leaden gray skies and the drip, drip, drip of cool, steady rain.
OK, enough whining!
Like Lourdes, Fatima is a purpose-built site of religious pilgrimage. Otherwise, it is a tiny village which would never garner any attention. During the period May to October 1917 (notice those dates), three illiterate peasant children reported seeing visions of a woman as bright as the sun, who implored them to pray to end the Great War, to convert Russia and thus prevent more evil, and to arrange for a church to be built on the site, which was a pasture. The preposterous nature of the claims (Russia was a Christian nation, the war was several years old with no end in sight, why would anybody build a church there based on the claims of three shepherd children?) led local civic and religious authorities to reject the childrens’ claims. Still, a growing number of people joined the children on the 13th of each month, even though only the children could “see” the apparition.
All this came to a head on October 13th, when the Lady appeared one last time before a crowd of tens of thousands. Only the three peasant children saw her, but the crowd witnessed the sudden appearance of the sun on an overcast day, and the sun appeared to spin and move in irregular ways. Not all agree on what happened, but the sodden ground and damp witnesses admit they were now dry and amazed. Two of the peasant children died in the flu pandemic in 1918, as the Lady predicted, but the third, Lúcia became a nun and lived until 2005.
Much is made of the “secrets” the Lady told the children, which they only grudgingly revealed: the first was a vision of hell, which convinced the children of the necessity of leading holy lives. The second was a prediction that the Great War would soon end, but would be followed by an even worse one if people did not renounce evil, and Russia was not reconsecrated to the Sacred Heart. The third secret involved some danger to the Church, which Sister Lúcia confirmed included the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II in 1981.
Like Lourdes, the area outside the grounds of the cathedral is a garish mess of hotels, cafes, trinket stores and religious kitsch. The grounds themselves are tranquil, although we did run into an aggressive group of beggars that started telling at us when we did not respond to their entreaties! Fatima is a huge complex, and the original nature of the quiet grove where Our Lady appeared is gone. It is impressive simply for the size of the facilities, if not their architecture.
Here is the sole remaining tree, which the children stood under when they saw the apparitions.
It is next to the partially enclosed chapel of apparitions, where we attended Mass.
The statue resides where Our Lady appeared
The complex is reminiscient of St. Peter’s square in Rome, and it stretches away from the former grove, with a neo-modern, partially underground complex of chapels on one side, and the Basilica of Our Lady of the Rosary on the other.
Looking toward the neo-modern structureThe basilica of Our Lady
The latter has an especially dramatic altar scene:
What really happened at Fatima one-hundred and one years ago? Did the children make up a story eerily similar to Lourdes and Guadalupe? How did they know before the October Revolution that the communists would take over in Russia, that the Great War would end soon, that it would be followed by another, or that the children would soon die? Why weren’t the children more upset about their impending demise? Why did progressive, socialist reporters and Portugese government officials admit something very strange happened in the sky that day in October? Why did Pope John Paul credit Our Lady with saving his life during the assassination attempt? Was it just a coincidence that he finally, specifically consecrated Russia to the Sacred Heart of Jesus in 1984, and Sister Lúcia confirmed in 1989 that this met Our Lady’s guidance?
So many questions, yet here stands an immense monument to the power of faith.
Here’s a collection of thoughts I had walking in the rain across Spain. I was too tired most nights to flesh them out and post them, but they lingered in my mind, so here they are now. If they are half-baked, put them back in the microwave for a few minutes and see if they make more sense.
Extroverts probably enjoy the Camino more then introverts. Introverts can certainly find quiet time and walk alone, but for extroverts, the Camino Frances is like an extended, adult summer camp. Every 100 meters or so, there is a brand new friend you can share your life story with, and who will share theirs with you! Look, we already have something in common: we are on the Camino! Extroverts can overshare with little worry, pledge to be BFFs, then move along to the next fellow pilgrim. That has to be very attractive to extroverts!
Oooh, friends!
The single biggest variable in whether you will enjoy your Camino is this: do you really like the great outdoors? Yes, I know, Captain Obvious talking here, but in all the reading and research I did before the Camino, I never saw it put that way. You’re spending 8-12 hours outside every day. If you are an outdoors person, you will find a way to love the heat, the cool, the rain , the fog, the mud, the dry, the pollen, the manure, and (ahem) eliminating in public. If you’re not such a person, these things will wear on you. Simple as that.
I love puddles!
John Brierly of guidebook fame had a social media post the other day where he was defending his inclusion of “mystic” guidance in his books because he feared that pilgrims were losing the notion of pilgrimage as something more than a hike. I am sympathetic to his view, but he misses the religious forest for the mystic trees. Would-be pilgrims come primarily from a variety of advanced, industrialized societies that are increasingly secular. You can’t take someone steeped in non-religious or anti-religious culture and give them a few mystic thoughts for their walk in the woods and get a “pilgrim.”
99.9% of the Bicigrinos (bike pilgrims) are wonderful people who ring bells, shout “buen Camino” and share the trail well. Those that weave through the walkers at 30 kph on treacherous downhill sections without warning? Saint James would like a word with you.
Northern Spanish cuisine, in which I include Basque and Galician, is very simple but delicious: high quality ingredients without many additional spices or sauces. It restored my faith in peppers as something not to be feared, just enjoyed.
Speaking a little Spanish goes a long way on the Camino. Just mastering a combination of por favor, buenas-, gracias, ay-perdon, lo siento, and donde will help immeasurably.
Some pilgrims (apparently) carry things like Sharpie’s in order to write something profound and permanent in public. Don’t. You are not profound, even after a pitcher of sangria. Nor are you witty, or original, or encouraging, or motivating, or appreciated, when you scrawl or scratch something on a fence, tree, rock, or whatever. Just walk, por favor.
No.
How many more pilgrims can the Camino Frances sustain before it becomes a Disneyfied charicature of a pilgrimage? The numbers keep increasing, and the way from Sarria at times resembles the walk toward a football match from a distant parking lot. It is ok for now, but continues to grow at a steady rate.
The Camino will redefine the meaning of the word “hill” for you. Mountains will still be the same, but from now on, when someone says “there’s a hill” you will go all Crocodile Dundee with a “that’s not a hill, this is a hill” story from the Camino.
I got very angry several times out on the Camino: not just mad, but downright seething. It was always due to bad information provided to me, that led in turn to either bad advice or bad decisions, which could have been dangerous for my wife and me. I prayed about why this was happening. Certainly God didn’t want me to accept this with equanimity (“hey, we could have been seriously injured, but no harm, no foul!”). No, this was righteous anger, and it was our very own pilgrim St. James, one of the sons of thunder, who asked Jesus to call lightning down on evil-doers. In a moment of clarity, the Holy Spirit inspired this thought in me: my righteous anger was a tiny taste of that which God experiences every day, as we promise to do better and then fail Him time and again. His justice would demand severe punishment, but his Divine Mercy is fathomless and unrelenting, if we only ask for it. So He forgives us. My anger was just a prelude to learning how to be more merciful, just as God is merciful.
Angry like this guy
One of the big mysteries of the Camino is “will the Botafumeiro swing when I reach Santiago?” Here is a good clue. Around 1030, go to the museum and get a Pilgrim’s ticket and walk around. When you get to the 2nd level, the cloisters, walk around the courtyard to where the entrance to the Sacristy is (it is marked, but with a Prohibida sign). If there’s a brazier out in the corner of the courtyard and it has charcoal heating up, the Botafumeiro will swing at the end of Mass. You can use the side entrance from the museum to go directly into the cathedral and see the Botafumeiro, then return to the museum.
Look, a clue!
I will have one final Camino post, a wrap-up for those considering doing the Camino.
Slept in this morning and didn’t walk anywhere more than 100 meters. We found a great little cafe next to our hotel and had bacon and eggs and cafe con leche. Returned to the cathedral for a mass in English at 10:00, in a nice little side chapel, celebrated by a priest from Tanzania. We wandered around the cathedral museum, then we saw something very unusual: a charcoal brazier in the courtyard next to where the sacristy for the cathedral is. It was unlikely the priests were going to barbecue, but just as unlikely the botafumeiro, which flew the last two days was going to fly three in a row.
Will it stay or will it go?
We skipped out of the side entrance in the museum and found a place to watch the noon pilgrims’ mass, and sure enough, the botafumeiro flew again!
Sorry for the video quality!
Back in the museum, I saw this wooden carving of St. Sebastian, and I thought “this guy should be the patron saint of Washington bureaucrats!”
“Are we done here? I have another meeting to attend.”
Then there was this great painting of St. James as Santiago Matamoros: notice the Moor in the foreground, having a very bad day.
Pilgrim saint with attitude, and sword
Finally, we made our way to the top of the cathedral museum, so I can show you what the square is like when the rain just threatens, but does not pour:
Well, we made it. The pilgrimage ended much like it began, in pouring rain, thick fog, and about 50 degrees. There was very little jubilation in the square in front of the cathedral as the drenched pilgrims huddled under anything to get out of the rain.
Anybody seen the cathedral?
As we appoached Santiago, we passed all the usual sights without seeing any of them. I know we went past the airport runway because I heard the jets landing. I saw the sign for Mont Gozo, the hill of joy where one can first see the spires of the cathedral, except no joy today, just fog. The good news was the terrible weather kept the arriving pilgrim numbers down, and we only had a 90 minute wait to get our Compostela.
We had heard about the strict scrutiny the volunteers sometimes enforce: where did you start, why is this place stamp missing, how did you get from here to there. We had none of that, which apparently is only for those who start in Sarria or ask for a distancia which elaborates exactly how far you walked. We just got the gratis Compostela provided by the Cathedral. It took all of 4 minutes to fill out the form and received the printed certificate.
Everything looks better in Latin!
I want to thank everyone who followed along on this adventure, especially those who prayed us forward, because Lord knows we needed it. I will have some more about the Cathedral and Santiago tomorrow, then a quick recap of thoughts which occured to me along the way, and finally a longer bit of advice for aspiring pilgrims. And we still have Fatima and Lisbon to visit!
I’ll skip the weather report, as you already know it. Every morning, we watch the Spanish news and morning show in a bar or cafe as we have breakfast: the weatherman always shows a map of the peninsula covered with clouds and rain, then he complains about the cold temperatures. I could be a Spanish TV weatherman!
We only did 16 kilometers yesterday, and got into our pensíon in Arzua just in time to watch the town’s Corpus Christi procession go by our window. Turns out this Catholic feast is the town’s special feast day, so most everything was closed for the festivities which included a canon and a fiesta in the town square. Enjoy the video:
We went to the Pilgrim’s mass at the local church, then out to a restaurant called Casa Nené, where we lucked into the last reservation, as they have only 20 seats. Turns out this wasn’t your typical pilgrim stop. We had English speaking waiters and a real menu with small plates for sharing: lobster and cheese toasts, grilled fresh vegetables, locally-made cheese sticks and a nice bottle of local wine. It was a great change of pace.
Camino Frances? More like Camino Drench-es
Today was our penultimate walk, and the Camino decided to go full circle and end as we began: all day thundershowers. We completed half the remaining distance (20 kilometers), so God-willing we will be in Santiago tomorrow around lunch. We may have to swim the final few kilometers, but at this point we’re ready for it. We are holed up in our albergue, drying our clothes on the radiator, eating our emergency rations (don’t need them anymore), and taking naps.
Yesterday was a long walk, 25 kilometers (about 15 miles) from Portomarín to Palas de Reí. We had the full range of weather, starting with cold and overcast, a little rain while we ate lunch (thank you, Lord), and eventually ending with mottled sunshine. We took some nifty shortcuts along roads, owing to a hidden treasure I found back at Samos.
Y’all know how I have been complaining about the “maps” in my guidebook. When we finished dinner next to the monastery in Samos, as the waiter bussed the table, I noticed the tabletop was…a 1:50,000 map of the Camino going forward! This was a military-grade map, and I was like a child at Christmas, but how to capture this extraordinary find? Judy reminded me to take a digital picture, and now I had a real map to use as needed.
Look familiar, anyone?
So now when I face an evening’s planning session, I go to the enlarged digital photo. Yesterday, the guidebook had us walking downhill to a trail which then went back up over the crest of a large hill. I checked my map, and yes, the road we were about to cross went right around that same hill and rejoined the Camino on the other side.
While I was writing this post, I saw someone on Facebook calling out pilgrims who don’t carry everything, or take shortcuts or rest days. It was a classic “I’m a real man and you’re not” post. I could not resist responding, mentioning heat, light, fabrics and medicine as things you might want to consider avoiding if you think you’re a real pilgrim. I guarantee you the medieval pilgrims went around a hill if they could, among other things they did to lessen the hardship.
We also passed some 3rd century BCE ruins along the way, some of the best preserved in the Iberian peninsula. They don’t even have explanatory boards up yet, bit were still quite remarkable.
Castromayor ruins
Today was much shorter (15 kilometers), and we are only 53 kilometers from Santiago. The morning was as gray as ever, but the path was soft and smooth, and the hills and valleys very manageable.
More like the Camino in my imagination
We even spread out my poncho on a grassy field and took a nap: something I imagined us doing all the time if the weather had cooperated. Pilgrims were walking past us taking pictures: we’ll have to see if we show up on social media.
In the early afternoon, a giant glowing orb appeared in the sky. It seemed friendly enough, provided some heat, and was around most of the rest of the day. Anybody else see it?
Don’t be alarmed!
We are all checked in another great room in Pensíon Berenguela in Melide. At the local church, they were getting ready for the feast of Corpus Christi. Another short day tomorrow, then two long days to Santiago!
museum, then we saw something very unusual: a charcoal brazier in the courtyard next to where the sacristy for the cathedral is. It was unlikely the priests were going to barbecue, but just as unlikely the botafumeiro, which flew the last two days was going to fly three in a row.
