Awake Before Dawn

Boy I hate it when I wake up and it’s still dark out.

Here in my gully grotto it’s just me and the burro on the hill. Heeehaaaa Heeehaaaa. Hawwww. In the daytime he sounds like he’s laughing but the dark puts a sadder spin on his plaintive rebuznos.Well, maybe we’re not the only ones awake. Our opossum is probably cruising the hillside, pushing his Pinocchio nose into crevices & sliding through the bars of bodegas to see if some unsuspecting human forgot to lock down the pet food.

A few days ago, in broad daylight, a gray squirrel chased me off my hammock. Scared the hell out of me. I was laying there reading. Suddenly it flew across me-not 10 feet above my head, from tree trunk to tree trunk. There it hung or what ever it is they do with their sharp little toenails, upside down, yelling at me. Now I have mastered some Spanish derogatory phrases but not a single syllable of squirrel. I could tell by his body language and sheer decibel level though, that he was agitated about something and didn’t intend to back down. Sophie, lying in her crumbly cement/dirt hole and I looked at each other and agreed it was time to go inside for a snack.

Then last week, heading inside through the back door I was surprised by a long slender Vine snake. It was lovely- sort of a burnished gold and slate green combo. They can make themselves stick straight up like a, well, stick.

Laurel and I took some road trips north and south along the coast exploring villages and new developments this winter. There are so many of the latter. Pretty, yes, but I prefer the coastline before it got privatized for the privileged few. One place, El Tecuan, was a ghost town of lovely homes over looking a wide expanse of pristine beach all empty. It was creepy. I could hear the approaching bulldozers and concrete mixers; if not this year soon. Soon.Then, we were driving on 200 South when we encountered a white pick-up with a man standing beside it. He didn’t attempt to stop us, but I slowed down. When I did a blue van behind us ignored the fact that we were almost stopped and sped around. At the exact time, a stampeding herd of steers burst over the embankment onto the road. The van spooked them causing them to change course and head straight for us. I was going to back up but there wasn’t even time for that. It was a treat to see the caballeros and their amazing dogs working up close. They definitely saved the day!

My Anna visited me for her birthday in February. It was way too brief but so sweet. I took her to Yelapa where I am moving next year. It’s a several hundred year old village on the south/west end of the bahia. The only reasonable way to get there is by panga; the alternative being a mostly impassible road through the jungle or on horse back. I’ll move into Casita Jardin on my friend April’s compound, Passion Flower Gardens. Yelapa has a web site because there are many gringos there with palapas for rent or retreat. The draw for me is that it is small, has the river, the ocean, and horses and although now there are ATVs and electricity (fast few years), there is still no room for cars. Margaret will stay parked in Boca ready for frequent road adventures and shopping. Sophie, who as I write, has the runs because she drank too much aqua del rio, (poor Perrita) will appreciate the other folks and few dogs that already live there.This week is the beginning of Semana Santa, Easter Week, here in Mexico. The busiest two weeks of the year. Folks come from all over Mexico to the beaches to party. Small bands, vendors, tents, and pickups full of extended families suddenly abound. Some of them wash in the river and change in the reeds along its edges. It is a reminder for me that little money is needed to enjoy life.

I am going to Zacatecas in a couple of weeks to see/hear Placido Domingo. I’m excited. I’ll stay at Casa Santa Lucia, a refurbished 19th century hotel next to what is said to be one of the oldest and most beautiful cathedrals in Mexico. It’s also one of the oldest and I think the most lucrative silver mining cities and a major site of the revolution. Gary Jennings, writes in his Aztec books about how the enslaved Indians actually lived in the mines. The women gave birth there and then the children, if they lived, became slaves, too. Most didn’t live long. The woman, because they were small and more nimble, carried the silver up the ladders on their backs. Isn’t it true that most man made beauty is so because of somebody’s sorrow.

On that note, I wish you all a wonderful Easter. May the bunny bring you good health, love and joy and the world, peace. -ruby
1 comment
4/7/09
by Ruby

Taste of Morocco

Morocco is my ex-lover; the one with whom I had nothing in common except an overwhelming chemical need to be intimate; the ultimate bad boy whose vibrant unpredictability: alternating charm, admiration and disapproval, threw me off balance and woke up my dormant carnal desires.

Like many muddled relationships, my recent trip there was an impulse. After traipsing through France and Spain for a few weeks, I disembarked the ferry in Tangier a bit travel weary. My guide book warned the cabbies would descend, and they did; but I wasn’t prepared for the shoving match two of them got into while I stood there with my small (but comparatively heavy) roll-away yelling, “HEY. HEY THERE. KNOCK IT OFF!” And, I certainly wasn’t prepared when the winner of the match drove into the medina, an ancient walled city, and dropped me in front of a steep set of concrete steps. “Your hotel is up there,” snatched the bill from my hand, gave me half the change I was owed and sped off before I could demand the proper amount. Welcome to Morocco.

The guide book also warned of touts who vie for travelers’ money, pick pockets, and wily rug salesmen. It reminded us to be respectful of the Muslim customs and to dress with modesty. It described Morocco as ‘like no place else on earth.’ Boy howdy. What it didn’t, well, couldn’t prepare me for was the overwhelming masculinity of the place. Don’t let anybody kid you. That isn’t just smog from environmentally unfriendly vehicles hovering over Casablanca; I submit that it is, in equal measure, a musky layer of testosterone-aromatherapy on a grand scale.

“Where the hell am I is what I was thinking as I bumped my suitcase up the stairs into the dim, labyrinth of the medina to the Riad Tanja, hoping they had a room because I was told it had a bar and a good shower-not givens in this mostly Muslim country with public bath houses. I rang the bell. After a few minutes a pretty young woman wearing jeans answered the door. “Good morning.” She greeted me. And, yes, they had a room.

It was sweet. Wooden shutters opened onto a balcony with a sweeping view of an active market where you could buy anything from stockings to livestock. On a low round table surrounded by colorful leather ottomans was a lovely china plate with individually wrapped cookies, a silver teapot and china cups.
“Would you like tea?” The man who showed me to my room asked.
“No. I’d like a big shot of Irish whiskey. I was just ripped off by the cabbie and am reconsidering my sanity.” But what I said was.
Yes, please, that would be perfect.” And I felt myself relax.

After I sipped the sweet mint tea and was assured that CNN came through on the TV I wandered out: first to the market and then through the medina’s dim, narrow alleyways. Other than the day trippers from Spain the only women I saw were shopping or selling stuff. There were none in the cafes or restaurants. In Tangier, most Moroccan women wear conservative caftans or jellabas and cover their heads. I felt conspicuous, as if I’d been cast into the wrong movie or run aground on the Isle of Macho.

As I eyed a rack of brightly dyed, pointy toed shoes the proprietor asked, “How are you today?” Is this your first time to Tangier?”
“Yes. It’s my first time in Morocco.”
“Welcome to my country.”
“Thank you.
“You vote for Obama or McCain?”
And so it went. When they had determined that I was an American, everyone wanted to know. Obama was hope for the world it seemed and no more so than Africa, the land of his father, where men are men and unquestionably powerful.

More than once I was reminded by Moroccans that their country was America’s friend. A shop keeper held two fingers together. “We are like this, America and Morocco. Friends. You understand?” Really I didn’t. Truthfully I hadn’t read enough history to understand our alliance with this country-a sad truth that sold us both short.

That evening I dined in the formal dining room of the hotel. I had no idea what to expect because couscous was the only word I understood on the menu. Entrée A or B? O.K. B. I ordered a bottle of red wine. A basket of bread and a plate of assorted olives was set in front of me. A few minutes later small bowls of salads with names like: zaalouk, pepper taktouka, and the obvious: carrots, beets, potato, something mushy green which turned out to be cucumber- and so on until there were six. Six salads, bread warm from the oven, olives and wine. I was full when the entrée arrived in a covered earthen bowl. When the waiter lifted the cover off steam fogged my glasses. In front of me simmered a round section of leg about three inches thick and 6 inches in diameter-the bone dead center.

It was my first lesson in Morocco. Pace yourself, eat slowly: appreciate the unexpected, the colors, the crunchy, the mushy, the spicy, the sweet, and the savory; even the steaming when it fogs your vision.

The next morning I woke before most of the city. When I opened the shutters a vendor in a blue shirt across the large vacant lot between the hotel and the market was rinsing and shaking dry large bunches of vibrant green herbs and placing them in a wooden tub for sale. He spotted me and waved. I waved back. That simple gesture made me feel welcome – like I was a part of the day, the city that I had just met, that I had just begun to explore.

Weaving among bins of spices, heady aromas, and traffic-both foot and vehicle, I lost myself in the past and present. I bargained for shoes, small brightly colored leather handbags for my friends, and what I hope is an authentic fossil. I spent a few quiet moments of reflection among the British souls buried in the graveyard of St. Andrews Church, a small, lovely Anglo-Moorish building nestled behind a busy street where women sell cooked eggplant and handicrafts. I rested on the bench in the Grand Socco, a vibrant park surrounded by a traffic circle that is the main entrance to the medina, and emailed my family from the Cyber Café.

In the market a man buying what looked like a slice of fried mush pancake from a street vendor encouraged me to try it. “It is very good, he said, you have some.” OK. I paid my 50dh-about 60 cents and was handed a piece of brown paper with the delicious hot-surprise- fried corn meal mush on top. I scrapped the paper with my finger to get every morsel.

That afternoon I searched in vain for the hamman; the public bathhouse found in every Moroccan city. My guide book said it was in the medina but except for one that reserved a few hours each day for women, and I was too late, I came up empty. Frustrated, I asked a shop owner if he knew of it. Because I am an American in Morocco and it is assumed that I have money, I was directed to the Le Misbah, a five star hotel with a European spa where for big bucks I could be soaked, gromaged, and massaged privately. And, because they were right and traveling takes its toll on the body and constant vigilance of ones stuff on the mind, I succumbed.

After I was sufficiently steamed a young woman began the gromage- a vigorous scrubbing with a green glove reminiscent of the scouring pads we use to scrub stubborn stains from our cooking pots-intended to remove the first layer of epidermis from my body, then finally, and mercifully I might add, I was finally massaged and able to relax.

I followed my indulgence with a glass of red wine and a sandwich in Caid’s bar, a spacious cosmopolitan 30s place complete with a grand piano but, while I was there had a CD of the Eagles’ Hotel California playing. My waiter, a tall handsome young man wearing a white uniform, with a sash, red turban type hat and the Moroccan pointed shoes made me feel I was in one of the movies made in the 30s& 40s when the hotel hosted politicians, mercenaries, secret agents and other cigar smoking WWII dealmakers.

The three days I spent in Tangier only whetted my appetite. I was hungry for a full complex Moroccan meal; one that would indulge my senses, my intellect, and my understanding of this amazing complex country that dates back further than 100,000 years BC; whose nomadic, brave, and resilient Berbers have prevailed against all odds, where ancestors from the Phoenicians, Romans, Carthaginians, Africans, and Arabs (among others) still live.

I decided to head south to Casablanca on the train, with plans to stop at various cities and towns along the way. The first stop would be Asilah, a small beach town an hour or so south of Tangier. I sat with five Moroccans in a small, enclosed 2nd class compartment. The only other woman, who was traveling with her husband, had intricately hennaed hands and feet. We had no common language except for a young man who asked, “You vote for Obama or McCain?” But it didn’t matter; we all smiled and shared our cramped space comfortably.

As the country side sped by the window I marveled that I was on the continent of Africa, venturing alone into unknown experiences, excited like a five year old wondering what surprise Santa had for me, but knowing that because I’m not a child the few weeks ahead would most likely be complex: frustrating, rewarding, complicated, nerve-wracking and fulfilling. I was right. They were all that and then some but it was still just a taste. I will go back to Morocco soon for I am hungry for more. And, I will pace myself.

Hills-So many; So little time.

It used to be that over the hill ( and through the dale ), was the way to grandma's house. Now, I am grandma, and some infer that I am over the hill. Did I miss that metaphorical hill ?

Maybe it was the one the single engine train stopped in the middle of in the Pyrenees Mts on my way into Spain from France last year; or the hill with 80+ rough, stone steps in the Mexican jungle I had to climb to visit my friend, Jacque. It might even have been the hill here in California on route 58 that climbs 4000 feet up from the Mojave desert floor and cuts through the Tehachapi Mountain range into town.

I love hills. I love the excitement of anticipation, of not knowing exactly what lies on the other side, reaching the crest, and the descent. Even the tiniest hill offers a bit of a challenge.

I've read that at age 66 I have an average of 20 years left on this earth. I've chosen to spend them traveling, enjoying every possible hill: the climb, the view from the top, the descent and rolling down the grassy ones with my grandkids. Over the hill indeed.