Llama for Lunch (6 page)

I should have realised when I first entered Mexico and saw containers for used toilet paper alongside the loos what the significance of this was. But the penny didn’t drop until, arriving at this hotel and throwing a wad of paper down the loo, I spent the rest of the day trying to unblock it. The antiquity of the Mexican sewerage system does not tolerate paper in its drains. Just because it was called toilet paper didn’t excuse that use of it.

At the hotel reception desk, Dino, the resident spaniel, wandered in to have a sniff of me. I saw no stray dogs in Mexico, just a few well-cared-for pets.

I had been practising Spanish since before I left home and had a set of cassette tapes and a book along with me. I was getting better at it and managed to say, ‘Where is the bank please?’ to the hotel receptionist. The response was a stream of instructions I failed to understand, but after walking around for two-and-a-half hours I discovered that I was billeted close to the central square, the Plaza Principal, also known as The Jardin, which is the focal point of the town. On one side of it was the seventeenth-century parroquia, a pink, sugar-coated Gothic church with strange, pointed, soaring pinnacle spires that could be seen all over town and which were a nineteenth-century addition designed by an untutored local Indian said to have scratched the plans in sand with a stick. I believe it – it looks like it was designed by a blind man and built in the dark. The clock on the church struck regularly at a quarter past the hour but never got the time right.

I looked in the parroquia, discovering that was the word for church and not the parrots I had been asking the girl at the hotel about. Never mind. Inside the church was stupendous – just how I think churches should be – but I wondered whom the Spanish made do the building work. It was constructed of rough stone and had a huge cupola of brickwork high up in the roof, but at ground level everything was very ornate. There were several altars, the main one superlative, some magnificent glass chandeliers, pretty coloured-glass windows and a battalion of gilded statues. In the front courtyard the inevitable fountain burbled away, surrounded by ancient trees that, by the width of their trunks, looked as though they were planted when the church was built.

The centre of the piazza sported an elegant rotunda where on this day a band played martial music to lorry-loads of children who were massed around it. The uniforms they wore differed for each school, but the girls all wore long, white socks and looked neat and smart.

I walked many kilometres, saw a great deal of this lovely town and found all kinds of delights. But you had to watch how you stepped on the uneven old cobble stones of the street and the narrow footpaths made of rough-hewn stone blocks. Passing windows grilled with fancy metal bars and glazed with patterned glass, it seemed that everything had the touch of time on it. I encountered wooden doors with tiled facings, carved panels and peep windows barred with simple slats and spools or delicate iron scrollwork, personalised knockers, huge hammered metal key holes and handles, overhanging ancient lights, textured walls and swinging wooden signs. It was like a living museum.

I finally worked out that all the funny little hole-in-the-wall places that I had been walking past in my search for the shops were in fact what passed for them in this town and, once I poked about inside, I realised that they actually had all I needed. From the outside each shop looked to be merely a wooden door in a wall and the small signs above the doors hadn’t registered with me. Some of the shops around the piazza were tiny jewels packed full of gorgeous trinkets, ornaments and jewellery meant for the rich or tourists. And some were teeny cafes that contained two minuscule tables and seats for only four people.

The central area of the Jardin was constantly being swept by women with old-fashioned straw brooms. Most things were done the old way here and, as most floors were tiled, everywhere I went someone always seemed to be sweeping or mopping – even in the big bank, which possessed a bit of carpet, a woman scraped away with a straw broom. Despite all this cleaning activity, I saw much rubbish strewn about on roadsides and empty blocks as I rode around the outskirts of town in local buses.

I bought the local English-language newspaper and read it on a bench under the Jardin’s trees. The major news of the week was contained in a long article concerning the only person who seemed to have died lately in San Miguel. It described in gory detail how he fell down on the steps of the church, hit his head and ‘pools of blood came out’. The departed had been unidentified for a while so all his clothing was described minutely by the reporter. Then came a harrowing tale of how his relatives came and looked at him through the glass window of the morgue. There was a blow by blow account of the proceedings, concluding with the comments of onlookers outside the church who had said ‘what a good thing it was that he had just been to confession’, and ‘how fortunate for him to have died in a state of grace’. No one mentioned that going to church seemed to be a health hazard. I wandered into several churches but managed to avoid starring in the local paper, perhaps because I wasn’t in a good enough state of grace. All the churches were much the same in degrees of grandiosity and over-the-top decor.

As I walked along I decided that the folk here must be honest. I saw vendors’ carts left unattended in the gutters protected only by a piece of cloth that had been thrown over the contents and tucked in at the corners. You wouldn’t be able to do that down in Mexico City from what I’d read.

I was completely floored by the beauty of the town’s bank and wondered why all banks couldn’t be like this. Entering from the street through big wooden gates and a little portico, you came to the teller’s desks, which were on one side of yet another open courtyard full of natural light where flowers bloomed around a fountain. Mexicans seemed to be able to make all kinds of mundane places attractive. Unfortunately this didn’t always go hand in hand with efficiency. For some unfathomable reason the bank only changed dollars between half-past-nine and eleven in the morning. And later, between one and four, came siesta when everything shut.

The market was just a short way down the street from my hotel. It had a big veggie section packed with many stalls of fresh produce where I bought some delicious guavas. There were also stalls that sold huge glasses of fresh juices that I tried and found scrumptious. Women sat on the ground with cactus and prickly pear fruit laid out neatly in green rows on mats. The rest of the goods were pretty ordinary – clothes, shoes and tourist junk. No one harassed me. I could stop and fiddle with the goods to my heart’s content. I sat on a stool at the counter of a makeshift stall and had hamburgerzitas – better than McDonald’s and you got chips too. The chips were fried in corn oil, not cooked all the way through and came covered with sweet tomato sauce. The hamburgerzita had a slice of ham to keep the meat patty company as well as cheese and salad.

Street food stalls, where people sat on tiny stools alongside the gutter or walls, offered food that looked yummy. There were tacos and corn cobs grilled on braziers. After drinking my fijoa juice I watched the proprietress washing glasses with water from a tap on the wall and realised that it probably came from the canal. I’d passed the canal on my walk. It was a stinking horror of filth.

In a small shop I bought a bag of local coffee, bananas, bottled water and laundry powder that was sold from an open drum for a peso a kilo. It smelt like Omo, looked like Omo and was blue, so I can only hope it was. Seeing some bottles of hair colour I decided that if I rinsed my hair a bit darker it might make me look more like a local. Most Mexicans look half Indian. There are 1.7 million descendants of ancient Aztecans in the country.

And now I looked like one of them. I hadn’t meant to come out jet black like an Indian but, as usual, what I had hoped would be a light golden brown had turned out a definite light golden black. Maybe it worked. People now seemed surprised whenever I said ‘No, hablo espanol’.

That evening I ate at a small cafe close to my hotel. When I sat down at the table I thought that the red cloth had a pattern of black dots on it but the dots, resenting my intrusion, arose en masse and flew away. The waiter casually flicked their retreat along with a tea towel. Then I saw that the whole place was swarming with flies. They left me alone, however, while I ate a solid meal of enchaladas stuffed with cheese and drank delicious fresh orange juice. After dinner I was chewing gum to clean my teeth and, good grief, there was tooth filling in the gum. Lots of it. Oh, no, not again! This had happened to me in China. Why was it that the minute I got to a thirdworld country I lost a filling?

At seven in the morning, before it was even properly light, I was awoken by the sound of clanging church bells – and what I hoped were firecrackers and not a revolution going on outside. At first I thought that this day must be Sunday, but it wasn’t. The bells started again at twelve and I decided that if this happened on a week day, I couldn’t wait to see what Sunday brought. On Sunday the usual morning bells tolled and then at half past eleven and twelve more bells joined in and the lot went berserk. You couldn’t miss going to mass here – the bells wouldn’t let you.

During the day I found the library. According to my map it was straight down the street, turn right and you can’t miss it, but real life doesn’t work that way. After a fruitless search I asked for help from a woman who was carrying some books. I had walked past the library twice. I had been expecting something set back off the road in a large building with a huge sign, but this library was entered through the usual heavy wooden doors in a high wall. Only a small plaque set in the wall gave away its identity. A portico led into a cobbled courtyard dotted with chairs and tables shaded by umbrellas, where a fountain trickled dreamily in the centre. Tall pencil pines fronted by flowering plants stood sentinel around the four sides of the courtyard, while bougainvillea massed with purple flowers climbed the surrounding arched walls. Under the arches and colonnades at the far end were long wooden tables and chairs. In this enchanting, peaceful spot I spent a couple of happy hours and decided it was so wonderful I could live there. I gave it my vote for the best library in the world. The Chicago Library gets the vote for the most magnificent but San Miguel’s is the most delectable.

Cool, quiet rooms full of books radiated out from the courtyard and up a set of stone steps was a restful cafeteria in an upper courtyard filled with flowers and bird song. Up more rough-cut stone steps that took you out on the roof I found the stone office that housed the computer room. It faced the massive old stone walls and arches of the church next door, which looked like a fortress from the street. With a little help from a bystander, I used the internet to send an e-mail.

Returning from the library, I unwittingly walked past the corner of my street and went all the way around the town and through the square to come back the way I had gone. I did this twice more before I recognised where I was. What’s new!

Every now and then in the streets I would pass a water spout in a wall, beneath which was a sickle-moon-shaped tiled receptacle for the water to fall into. In the past people would have come there to get water. When it rained heavily, as it did some days, you would only have to stand outside with a basin.

I found a shop that sold small, round local cheeses and bought one. I think it was made from goat’s milk. It tasted rather home-made and could have been anything, but it was okay with the toast I had been able to buy in packets like bread. My hotel didn’t run to meals, so in the morning, after boiling water with my immersion heater, I made coffee in the little metal filter I bought in Vietnam. With cheese, toast and a banana, what more could you want for breakfast? Bacon, eggs, sausages and a steak for a start.

Mexicans were unfailingly friendly to me. As soon as I spoke to them they would smile. They didn’t know what I wanted, I could have been about to complain, but they smiled and seemed happy to help me. Even with my fractured Spanish I got by reasonably well.

The weather was divine in the mornings and warm in the afternoons, but on my first night in the town I nearly froze. The evening had been reasonably cool so I had a hot shower and got into bed. Half an hour later I was almost asleep when the cold fell on me as though someone had chucked a bucket of water over the bed. My whole body went into spasms of shivering. I got up and put on all the warm clothes I had, including long-johns and a cardigan, but still I shivered. In the morning I asked for another blanket and during the day a very heavy one materialised on the bed. I doubled it over and, of course, sweated all through the next night. Now I understood why there was a large, obviously well-used, open fireplace in my room. Even with this as encouragement I don’t think I’d survive the winter here.

This was the wet season, which lasts from May to October, and the nights were stormy. Active volcanos dwell in this mountain area and after I returned to Australia I heard that an earthquake had killed many people in San Miguel.

I loved my delightful room, especially the minute streetfront balcony where I put out food for my friends the sparrows, who came every morning for breakfast. On my first morning a couple of sparrows had flown down to sit on the electricity wires strung across the street close to the balcony. They had perched there for so long looking hopeful that I wondered if they were accustomed to receiving hand outs. I put some of my crumbled toast on top of the balcony rail and within minutes they were eating it. Other little birds hopped around in the courtyard below the other side of my room, filching the fallout from the budgies that spent their days in cages hung on the wall.

Standing at the hotel reception desk in the early morning when I first arrived, I had heard the loud cheeping of birds. The sound seemed to be emanating from the reception room itself but, although I looked around, I couldn’t see any cages. I asked the receptionist about this and she pointed to the floor. On a low bench I saw a stack of cages piled three high and covered with a cloth. Underneath the cover a dozen budgerigars were chirping to let it be known that they wanted to go outside to their places on the wall. The sparrows hop in and out of the creepers and crevices of the walls all around the cages and I wondered how the poor little budgies watching them felt about this. As I observed the sparrows flying around in the mornings, zipping in and out among the roof tops and landing on my wires, I thought of the bumper sticker that my hang-gliding nephew displays: ‘Hang gliders know why the birds sing.’ I bet the caged budgies know why the birds sing. I wondered if they still longed for the feel of the wind beneath their wings.