We return from an evening in Oaxaca by taxi and stop for a few seconds at the gate of Marilee’s house where we are doing our house exchange. It’s 10 pm and it’s a silent warm night. Something doesn’t seem quite right and we sit in the cab in silence, staring ahead. The taxi driver asks us if we have come to the right house? We think so but something isn’t quite right. The driveway to the house is covered in blocks of adobe and earth. It takes a few seconds to take it all in. We then notice to the left of the gate a huge water tanker lorry is lying on its side with its headlights still on, a tree knocked down, a wall knocked over. We get out of the cab and venture over to get a closer look. There’s no one inside, or around for that matter, the cab bit of it seems pretty crushed. How long ago did this happen? Did they survive? Thank goodness Marilee’s son Santiago lives on the premises and is able to handle the situation. It turns out that a huge truck carrying water failed to make it up the steep cobbled hill next to the house on a very wet stormy night and slipped backwards down the hill, out of control, the huge volume of water in the truck swayed it uncontrollably to the right. Boom – crashed into the wall, knocked that over, split a lovely pomegranate tree in half like lightning. And turned over. Probably surprised to still be alive, the driver of the truck then did a runner. Lights still running, engine still running.
Santiago managed to get hold of the water company and then spent till 4am at the lawyers in town, trying to resolve who was responsible. We wake up the next morning and the lorry has unbelievably gone! No sign of it, disappeared! Did I dream this? Was it a figment of our imagination? How do you get a ten tonne lorry back off its side and then on to another truck to be carted away in the dead of night? By 10 o’clock the following morning, an army of local builders have arrived to rebuild the wall and tidy up. Such unexpected efficiency!
We find our favourite shop in Oaxaca, a papeleria – not a bog standard paper shop, but paper in all sorts and sizes, tins of felt tips, pencils, paint brushes in every shape and size and weight and all so cheap. This makes us want to be creative and of course, in the absence of toys, paper and pencil have become our best friends. We are here to pick up paper, more paper, special drawing pencils as Mark has now got the bug too, and to top up on coloured pens and some gouache paint for me. These paper shops are such fun, you take a trolley as you enter (they clearly expect us to buy a lot ). The mums and dads are out with their kids, buying stuff for school, ticking things off from a list. This is our toy shop!
We head out to the tiny village of San Antonini, a unassuming village, with not much of interest, 40 minutes out of Oaxaca. We have chosen NOT to watch the festival Gueleguetza in a big stadium, expensive tickets, but instead in a smaller, more local environment. It’s a hotter afternoon than anticipated – unprepared for the heat, we sit in our seats and wait for the show to begin and begin to factor ourselves up with number 30. This festival attracts a lot of people from all the local villages, there are no other tourists and we are clearly the only foreigners here, so we attract a fair bit of attention, the motley crew that we are! Within seconds of sitting in our seats, an umbrella is passed down the aisle and offered to us as protection against the sun, then along comes a bottle of water!
We’ve slightly missed the point of this festival – the idea is that you meet with all the dancers in the main square and then walk or dance with the parade as it snakes its way from one village to the next. We don’t get that bit, but instead arrive at the field to watch in this makeshift auditorium-style theatre in a field and can’t understand why there aren’t more signs of the show beginning. The whole arena is beginning to fill up, stalls are setting up cold beer, gallons of Coca Cola, which seems to be the favourite drink here, homemade lemonade and Jamaica, tacos in every colour & size, popcorn, chicharrones, toffee apples, pineapples and mangoes are being sliced. Candy floss in all variations of pink, which of course we succumb to, and last but not least, the Mescal bottle is liberally being handed along the line of waiting seats. the atmosphere is very lively.
Then they finally arrive, like a colourful snake, all the dancers and the rest of the spectators, young and old, dancing up the hill. First come the men with their feather plume hats, then it’s the ladies in the colourful skirts, Jemima and Millie oohing and aaaahing. Then it’s the ladies with the tall fruit baskets on their heads, the men in straw hats, all eight regions of Oaxaca are represented here, all performed by people from the local villages. It’s a blast of colour, I am remembering now that hat dance that I learned in my National class, at my ballet school in Mexico City. So this is where it came from!
At the end of each dance, the crowd roars as the dancers throw baskets full of bread (stale) and fruits and sweets in to the crowd. The whole crowd rises. With their arms in the air, in anticipation of catching something, anything. We rise, we screech along with everyone else, this goes on for hours, but we are enraptured. It really is very enchanting and becomes more delightful as night goes on and the amazing colours of the costumes are lit up and night descends. The Grande Finale is the dance of the Plumes. This is an old Aztec dance, all male, symbolic of the Conquest of Mexico. The men leap through the air to the rhythm of drums; it’s a powerful dance, a strong virtuoso dance, their tall hats masterfully staying in place as they twirl and spin. The show is over. And we are infused with their energy and run down the hill, leaping and twirling in mimic. The children fall asleep the minute we get in our cab.
Five Go Round The World 
The Mexican ballet is here in London – I was thinking of going !!!
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