Impressions from Mexico

When my dear friend suggested that we should get together sometime this year and we should plan  for a week or so and ideal would be an all inclusive resort, my thoughts were Caribbean or Cancun. Since we had a few friends who had earlier visited Cancun we decided with the same.

The all inclusive was the best and it was the first time for us in an all inclusive  resort which took us close to a day to get used to, but this blog is not about that.

Here are some of my take-away from the trip

• The blue waters and the white sand beaches are truly mind blowing. My best experience was to keep the window open through the night just so I could hear the ocean. The temperature was near perfect 80F through out the stay
• We hardly had to use it but the public transportation facility is very good.
• Being in the resort we are always shielded from real Mexico. Step outside and take a few steps up and down and one gets to see real Mexico
• I felt Mexico lives on bargain, there were multiple layers of agents for every single activity we planned (Chichen Itza, Islas Mujaras, parasailing and water ski). In some sense they have adopted capitalistic system for their tourist attractions.
• As always, the bigger the group and longer we persisted the better negotiating power we had.
• The visit to the Mayan village of Chitchen Itza reminded me of a stroll in our native in India, granted the main roads were much better paved than in India.
• Far too many Indians have visited Chichen Itza as it is evident from the fact that the local sellers were greeting us with "namaste, accha price"
• The tour guides while booking promise you that they will start at 7:45AM from hotel and be back by 7:00PM in the night but in my experience the start time is right but the end time will be closer to 8:45PM, I highly recommend this trip though.
• Outside the resort, I felt the everything had a different rate for tourists vs locals(just like India, not the pharmacy though)
• Islas Mujaras is overrated, when we negotiated the tour to the island the guy was very particular "no swimming with dolphins, only seeing them", I think he failed to mention that we will be in the boat itself when we see the Dolphins.
• It's hard to believe, but the restaurant we went while on the island the food was cooked on an open flame stove using wood as fuel, yes the food had a barbecue flavor to it.
• At the cost of being too harsh to the island, I won't recommend this specially with young kids. Unless you have an insatiable penchant for snorkeling and would do it at any cost.
• There is also the activity of holding the baby shark, that felt like animal cruelty and human rights violations than anything fun.
• I think The island is very very poor and lives on tourist income only, the evidence was when they said pesos 5 to use bathroom to change clothes.
• The resort we stayed from vegetarian perspective always had great breakfast and lunch selection but dinner was so so, come to think they have no other restaurants open for breakfast, 1 for lunch and 5 for dinner. Keep in mind this might be true for your resort also.

Needless to say the best part of the whole trip was catching up with old friends and making some new friends (as young as 2 year), The ocean and the beach were all secondary.

The Mayan village

During our tour to Chichen-itza we stopped at the model Mayan village and the structure of the same surprised me. It totally reminded me of my native village in India. The house was in 3 parts with one part dedicated for the temple, the other for the kitchen and the rest of it was boarding and playing areas. Wait a minute that’s how my native house in my village is built like.

The other intriguing common thing I found was the use of samrani aka benzoin resin, a sort of powder that when put on the burning charcoal gives an aromatic flavored smoke which we use specially around new born. The same is apparently true in Mayan also.

You are still interested, their back yards had Cuban oregano (dodda patre), banana plants and few others, voila that’s again our back yard in my native. We do have a few conconut trees there but these guys seemed to have some betel nut trees instead.

I am not here to talk about any major connections between the 2 cultures as one could argue that the same tropical weather led to the growth of these plants and human beings through evolution figured out the same.

Chichen-itza, the place of Maya

The place is one of the most famous tourist destinations in the Yucatan peninsula of Mexico, it is famous for its monumental constructions and the history behind it. It stands as an example for the Mayan supremacy over astronomy and math.

From what our tour guide described to us, the civilization lasted for over 500 years and through out most of that time they kept building and building and used slave labor to do the same. They developed elaborate rituals to perform the sacrifices and believed the more elaborate the ritual is gods would be pleased better and bestow us with great rains and harvest. I have a theory for this, but I don’t want to put it in the public domain. All wonderful and great for their times and might also would have worked during their times.

Again from what our guide told us, Mayans were like Romans (believed in destruction and conquests) but lacked the knowledge of metals and used wood for everything. If that is true, I am impressed by the knowledge they had about the wood itself.

The structures are plain amazing, specially the main pyramid in Chichen Itza and the way a clap echo's back as bird screaming (a dragon in their case) is beyond any numerology.

The questions that arose in my mind were of a different type, how come the civilization that were so good in math and astronomy that built such great observation towers lacked the understanding that destruction of forest leads to loss of rain.

Granted there were a council of very smart and intelligent people in those times who passed on their learning in astronomy to their next generations, for I do not believe the great pyramid was built in 1 go and there were multiple iterations of the same which were slightly imperfect. I wonder if this what led to the belief that Mayan’s were building for ever to please the gods?

Was there a lack of leadership which could have encourage other forms of science to develop?, its hard to believe that a developed mind like that would have been stuck in one field for that long. As per our guide the lack of food lead to destruction of the Mayans of Yucatan as due to their arrogant nature, they had amassed enough and more enemies among other tribes, even before the Spaniards came.

Looking at the Spaniards destruction of the Mayan temples and places of worship reminded me of the Muslim invasion of India and destruction of our temples. I guess human beings are the same irrespective of their religion.

Pumpkin carving

This Halloween, my artist wife Sandhya did this pumpkin carving, it is princess Sophia the first (a Disney character). This was her first time at carving a pumpkin and I must say she aced it.

The photo is truly not doing justice to the art but had to try.

Sweet Berry Farm

Sweet berry farm, I thought I had already written about this, but looks like I have missed it. Considering I have been visiting this place for the last two years on an average 2 times a year it does deserve an entry in my blog.

It's an hour drive from Austin near the city of marble falls. I came to know about this place through a friend of mine. It's one of those well managed commercial farm which opens twice a year for tourists, once in spring and once in fall. In spring season they have strawberry picking and in fall they decorate the farm for pumpkin festival.

It has always been a blast for my daughter,  for she gets to do her favorite activities like berry bounce, sand art, tractor train ride, face painting, feeding and petting goats, and this time we spent time running through the corn maze and lastly her most favorite, pumpkin painting (only in fall). In short we easily spend a day there.

If I need to pick one gripe about the place is that the food part is a bit scarce out there but they do have a ton of picnic tables for those who can pack from home and if you are there for the pumpkin patch don’t forget to try their wonderful pumpkin ice-cream and the very addictive strawberry lemonade (I think its the sugar).

  

Between strawberry picking and pumpkin patch, I feel pumpkin patch is slightly bigger for they open up the farm on the other side of the highway for the same and is more fun than the latter one.

One great thing for me is to see my kid grow, every time I have been there I have seen her doing the things slightly and some times much better than she did last time. I think the study is fairly scientific for she gets to do the same set of things but done over period of time.

The farm does not charge entry fee or parking fee and we pay only for the activities and food. The staff is very friendly and helpful. Of course needless to say, go there with decent amount of cash for it is a cash or check only place and they do have an ATM but not sure what they will charge for the fee.

If you plan the pumpkin patch, I recommend to visit before Halloween.    

Diya painting for Diwali

Last Saturday (October 11), the Circle C Indian community had organized a diya painting workshop for kids on account of Diwali. Please don’t get confused when I say the big name “Circle C Indian community”, I would prefer it to be read as organized by 2 individuals Kirti Joshi and Meenakshi Matai. The event was organized in a nearby public library and thanks to Sandhya I got signed up to be the official photographer for the event.

All the supplies required for the workshop was provided by the organizers including 2 diyas per kid. The kids were divided into 2 groups (I am guessing it was done based on age initially and latecomers joined in where they could find space) and the instructors were giving detailed instructions about the painting. It was fun to see the little ones listening intently to the instructions and following to the extent they could. There was a noticeable difference in the way smaller kids (3.5-4.5 years) approached vs the bigger kids (5 and above) approached. The younger ones believed in colorful palettes to start with while the older kids believed in more professional approach and were meticulous with their details.

For me personally it was double bonus, for one I got to document the entire event from beginning to end at the same got the opportunity to catch up and hangout with some old friends. It could also had been an opportunity to enhance my photography skills too but passed it up for good pictures.   

At the end of the event, most everybody had painted their own diyas and in some instances parents took up the brushes on behalf of their kids and painted the diyas. Either way everybody had 2 well painted diyas with them.   

The event was so good that it was initially announced to be a hour long event but ended up being close to 2hours. I will be the first one to say, some of the diyas painted that day could have competed in the professional league.

I don’t know if Kirti and Meenakshi had organized such events before but this one was professional grade. Kudos to you two for doing this.

Below are some of the pics from the art studio.

If Austin can do

A year and half ago while shopping at Walgreens I saw the notice "by city of Austin ordinance, use of 1 time carry out bags will be banned". I wasn't sure what it meant and when asked the store clerk he said the plastic bags I had taken for granted for ever cannot be used anymore and people are encouraged to bring their own bags.

Came home and told Sandhya the same and she was glad to hear this. As it turns out we had quite a collection of plastic bags sitting in our garage (this collection was from last 1 year or so since we moved here to our new place).

Yes, once upon a time we did try to use them as trash liners but considering a lot of them will tear at  the minimum amount of stress we weaned away from them specially for the kitchen and then occasionally used to use them sometimes for bathrooms. Frankly speaking they were a pain to use, I was glad to find the 10-gallon size trash liners at Costco.

It took me a while to get used to the no carry bag concept as I would end up at the store without the bags (on the way from work or some such things) and end up either carrying the items in hand or buy their newer/thicker bags.

For the thicker bags, previously we used to have 2 to 3 designs for the carry bags that would cycle through and new designs take their place once in a blue moon but now a days the designs keep changing every few months, it appears as though a new industry has started because of this (In my opinion, Whole Foods carry some of the cool designs ). Now, we have an assortment of bags and some of them are permanent residents of our respective cars.

I am sure it was a big ordinance and the city must have faced a lot of opposition as no other city in Texas including our next door neighbors have implemented the same. I am proud of my city Austin for taking this bold step.

Frankly we have been trying for a few years before the ordinance to use less plastic bags but I admit we had failed miserably. Now a days it feels strange when I shop in our neighboring cities and they bag the items in those white plastic bags.

I think it's one of those things in which a strong ordinance bought a good change, In my opinion the next thing to tackle is the Styrofoam carry out boxes.