Changes

Just some pictures of recent development here in Huatulco.  Construction of what I'm told will be an outdoor pedestrian mall, featuring shops and restaurants, is getting closer to completion.  The first two pictures are from the town side of this mall connecting downtown Crucecita directly to Santa Cruz.    It looks good already and should be amazing when finished. 
It's being laid down on the original road between  Santa Cruz and Crucecita before high- traffic Boulevarde Chahue existed.  I took this road way back in 2001 on my first Mexican vacation.  It's been widened considerably since then.

The view from the Santa Cruz end.

Anyone who can read Spanish can get a better explanation than I can offer by clicking on this final pic.

Plus Size Animals

Notice that big brown stain to the right of my left hand? That is all that's left of the biggest scorpion I've ever seen in my life outside of a Japanese monster movie. It's a shame I didn't stop and grab the camera while it was still alive but I wouldn't have had the nerve to put my hand next to it for perspective even if I had.

I often just fall into bed at nights. It's rare for me to flip the light on but I did and there it was. I picked my jaw up off the floor and ran downstairs for the mop. A sneaker wasn't big enough for this job. I've been shaking out my bed sheets ever since.

What baffles me is how the thing grew to be so big. We don't see that many scorpions in Huatulco in the first place. Men walk through the streets in the early evenings with big spray guns of insecticide. As far as I know, there's no atomic reactor in the neighborhood.

I saw this bigger than average tarantula while investigating some young girl's scream outside my classroom. We see tarantulas fairly often but some are definitely bigger than others. There's nothing in the picture for perspective but, trust me, it was bigger than my hand.


The most dramatic things happen when my camera is nowhere near. There were already lots of people in the water when I arrived early at Santa Cruz this morning. Before I got sorted out, they had all moved back to the sand. Near the shore, in the waist deep shallows, was a dorsal fin cruising the water. It was just like in the movies. This fish was as long as I am tall.

It was all good fun as long as no one was trapped in there with it. Oops. There were four oblivious people still out by the buoys. I shouted out to them to get out of the water, that there was a shark; in Spanish, I'm proud to say. They understood me and started heading back immediately. "Go to the rocks!" Also in Spanish. The rocks were much closer than the sand and they could avoid crossing its path.

That's when a man explained to me it was actually a swordfish, a small one as swordfish go in fact, that was just looking for food. Usually they stay out in the deep, like sharks. When I looked again, it was clearly not a shark fin. Sorry for the false alarm, folks. Better safe than a lifetime of regrets for slow reaction time. I rather doubt that swimming with swordfish is entirely safe anyhow. Eventually, it drifted along

2013 UMAR Huatulco Day of the Dead

Day of the Dead had a new location this year at UMAR Huatulco. Costumes are mostly traditional face painting but a little variety is okay too. Time to go.



Carmen and I arrived together. I didn't see her again that night. She just vanished in the darkness.
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People arrived soon afterwards in a procession.





Shouldn't some of these students be more afraid of me? I am a vampire.



Edelma was very brave.


Nancy was just plain fearless.


Here I am, making friends with more dead people.








Mexico has the best hot chocolate in the world.




The young lady on my left sang us a lovely song that night. Great voice.


Yulma standing proudly in front of the altar she created with her students.



Me standing proudly in front of Yulma's altar.







Mayetsi looks a little nervous.



Here's Ilce looking about as scary as possible, for Ilce that is.



I'm not afraid of Ilce.

I am the scariest person in the whole place.


Uh, wait a minute.


It's not a word I use every day but "ghastly" feels right.










The rest of these pictures are all courtesy of Matthew Glasheen.  Some of the ones above are likely his too but I forget which ones.

New teacher - New tour- Huatulco 2013

It seems to have become a rite of passage for new teachers to take a quick tour on the back of the old Italika scooter. Each tour is a little different. Much as I'd like to take them everywhere, there isn't enough time in a single day.

Here is our newest recruit, Carmen, all the way from Virginia, the original home of John Carter from Mars, sporting the Sony Action Cam at the Tangolunda overlook.

The idea was that the person on the back of the scoot could get a better view of points of interest than the driver, who has to stare straight ahead for traffic and curves. It worked too but we had condensation problems and almost all of our footage looked like it had been taken on a foggy day.

The rainy season is almost all over. While it rained steadily in the mountains for most of the season, we didn't get much here in Huatulco until a few weeks ago. When it came, it came down hard for a full week. The canals gushed. Mud slid across roads and trees came down. A hard rain always causes potholes. We expect that but there are potholes and then there are potholes.



Drivers beware.



Our first stop was beautiful Bocana. Sadly this beach received some heavy damage. The seawall, which I believe is made of strong materials, had been battered to pieces during the hard rain.











Fallen trees from the hills, washed away with the soil that had sustained them, were everywhere.







I wasn't there when it happened but I suspect these trees battered the blazes out of the seawall when the water was much higher. La Bocana has periods every year when there is no beach to speak of, just brown wáter rushing against the wall over clattering rocks. But when it is good, this beach is pure gold. I have never seen it as wide as it was that day. A student tipped me off about the recent conditions but I couldn't have imagined just how vast it was. It is definitely worth the trip if you're in the area any time over the next few months.

There were only a few people when we arrived. There's a young woman reading a book under an umbrella.


Hey, wait a minute. She looks familiar. It's Yulma!



It was such a great chance for Carmen to start meeting some of her new colleagues. Plus I had Yulma to take care of the camera. I wanted to get wet too. Most of the upcoming pictures were taken by her.

This was Carmen's 3rd or 4th day in our town. She finally got wet.


We're already quite far out at this point.

Looking back.


Woo hoo! Body surfing!









Back at the shore, the water is a lot cooler in this little river channel. It's waist high on me at the deepest spots. If you lie down, the current whisks you away like a natural water slide park ride. Whee.





The tour continued but there are no more pictures.