Cuilapam and Zaachila

As we've settled into our weekly routines (Meri at the office; Mike at Spanish classes and doing some consulting; Tootsie relaxing in her yard) we are trying hard to make sure we get out on the weekends and enjoy Oaxaca.

Saturday, January 5th we decided to take a day trip to check out the towns of Cuilapam and Zaachila. Side note...as the blog progresses you will see everything down here is hard to pronounce and there will be pictures of churches from every town we visit. Both towns are only about 30 minutes from Oaxaca City which was key as we're both still recovering from our trip across the US and Mexico and Mike went on a crazy 14 hour day trip with my neighbor investigating local church archives earlier in the week. Another side note...our neighbor Ben is on sabbatical down from his professorship at MSU.

The Ex-Convento de Santiago (1st 2 pictures) which used to be a nunery was quite an interesting piece of architecture. The place got off to an amazing start but before it was finished in 1550 King Phillip of Spain demanded humility and moderation of the builders. In 1750, construction was officially ended and they never finished the roof. For you Mexican history buffs, this is also the site where Vicente Guerrero was executed. One weird encounter as we walked around inspecting the building was a young Mexican woman dressed in gothic attire followed by two Mexican men with a video camera and blasting some weird music. I think they were trying to create some sort of music video. Unfortunately we didn't get any shots of the wierdness.

After Cuilapam we drove another 15 minutes to Zaachila, home to some semi-recovered Mixtec/Zapotec ruins. There are two really well preserved tombs that you can view but the rest of the site has not been restored. The story we got from the man at the entrance is that the townspeople are aggravated that the original objects recovered from the tombs were all carted off to Mexico City and sit in a warehouse so noone can see them. The town will not allow anyone to fully explore and restore the site until they have their own museum to display what is found. Here's a shot of one of the owls in the tomb waiting to guide you to the underworld, well maybe not you, but they're ready.

Just so everyone can get a flavor of Mike's new facial hair, here's a shot from the tomb's entrance. More on the developments of Mike's grooming to come in future blogs.