I discovered a country struggling with enormous economic and environmental problems. Despite that, I met wonderful friendly people who were eager to meet foreigners, eager to talk and share, and eager to help when needed… and, of course, I saw breathtaking art and architecture. I felt as if I was walking through thousands of years of history, going back to the conquests of Alexander the Great and before. There were many surprises, but perhaps the biggest surprise was how freely people in the street expressed resentment of the policies of the religious leaders. The other surprise was the deep respect and appreciation of President Obama for his loosening of sanctions and willingness to negotiate.

At the time of my visit, this seemed to open a window of hope for economic growth and a better future for the highly educated young people, almost all of whom spoke perfect (or almost perfect) English. I know many reading this will have other opinions… but it is important to separate the ordinary people from their government. It is quite possible to love one and not the other!

For a holder of a US or British passport, there are quite a few difficulties to be overcome to visit Iran.  Obtaining a visa involved a background check and took about three months to be approved.  As a citizen of the US or Britain, you have to book a guided tour and are supposed to have a guide with you at all times. I found in fact that once I was in Tehran, I was free to go wherever I wished, quite alone.

I spent one day exploring the very efficient and cheap Metro underground which whisked me from one side of the city to the other in swift comfort and was very easy to understand. There is almost no crime and I never felt fear for my safety. Quite the contrary, as women dressed “modestly” as required by law (headscarf and loose long-sleeve top covering the rear), are treated with complete respect.  I arranged my visit through GAdventures (www.gadventures.com) with whom I had been to Uzbekistan, Rajasthan and Eastern Turkey in the past. I appreciate their small groups, interesting itineraries and a great willingness to be flexible and make it possible to include things of special interest that are often not on the original schedule. They allow plenty of free time, too, to explore on your own.

I had a great time… hope you enjoy the photos!

Summertime!

It’s that time of year… children are out of school and everyone who is able has moved from Merida to the beach. There is always safe swimming in the Gulf of Mexico. The water  is smooth as a mirror in the morning,  and a cooling breeze comes up in the evening, which means you seldom need air conditioning. Average temperatures in Merida are reaching 94 degrees, and dropping into the 70s and low 80s at night. This is hot, yes, but comfortable compared to many parts of the USA right now (friends are sweltering at 110 degrees in Dallas, they tell me).  These are the days for getting up early to do anything energetic, enjoying the swimming pool or a siesta in the afternoon, then dinner al fresco when the sun goes down.

I plan a short get-away this year.  I have a new grand baby Oliver, born on May 20th, and it is time to get to know him.  My son Zac and his family returned from two years in Malawi and Heather (a doctor, OBGYN) is now working with the hospital in Yakima, Washington.  It will be my first visit to that part of the United States, and of course I am looking forward to it very much.

One of my reasons for this blog post  is this:  I just came across useful information on the care of pasta tile floors.  If you haven’t bought yet, perhaps you don’t need this, but almost everyone who already has a home in Merida has a home with our beautiful tile floors. And everyone who has a tile floor (including me) can use this information.

I found this on the website of one of the companies still making these lovely tiles, many from the original 150 year old forms. The site is www.mosaicosdzununcan.com.  On the same site you can find galleries of design, ideas for laying tile if you plan new construction. Also, I am sure they will arrange for you to see the tile being hand-made at their factory in the village of Dzununcan.

Another excellent site is that of Mosaicos La Peninsular, www.mosaicoslapeninsular.com.  They also have showrooms in Merida and are ready to explain the manufacture and care of the tiles… they can show you their manufacturing facility right there in Merida Centro. This is a very old craft and interesting to watch and understand.  After seeing it, you will appreciate even more those hard-wearing carpets of color in your Yucatan home!

Maintaining Your Pasta Tile Floor

Recommendations for cleaning the pasta tiles, after they have been polished and shined for the first time:

Do not use chlorine and acids. The continuous use of detergents will dull the mosaic tile. It is preferable to use Pinol cleaner with the use of gas morado (also known as petroleum or kerosene).

It is recommended to mop the floor once or twice a week with only water and a shot of gas morado (about one tequila shot).  Instead of sweeping with a broom, you should use a straight mop (dusting mop) previously sprayed with gas morado (kerosene) allowing it to dry up for 1 or 2 days or as long as necessary in order to get completely dry. For best results, instead of the gas morado, you can spray on anyone of the following products: “adelimp”, “tratamop”, or “red oil for polishing furniture 3 in 1.”

That’s it! Have a great summer!

The experience of traveling for a quick six day trip to Morocco (from England where I was visiting my mother) was very much worth it.

The first day,  I was up early and spent most of it on a bus crossing the High Atlas (868 hairpin bends on a very narrow road). The bus was First Class Direct, but it still took five hours to go 180 km.  The hands in the photo belong to the lady sitting in front of me. I loved the design on her hands and after trying to do so surreptitiously over her shoulder, got up the courage to ask in pidgin French if I could take a photo.

There was lovely scenery as we climbed about 7500 ft into a pine forest, then through a dry barren rocky landscape with adobe mudbrick villages. The houses are built one on top of another, huddled against the outcroppings.  Finally the bus descended onto a wide plain with an almost dry riverbed, passing crumbling remains of ksars, the adobe palace fortresses of Berber chieftains.

Ait Benhaddou is one of the finest remaining ksars, now partially restored by UNESCO.  After all that traveling, I was in no mood to do anything except relax, so I got up early and left this pretty little hotel and neighboring mosque to walk over to OLD Ait Benhaddou.  To get here I had to go into Ouarzazate, a large town built almost entirely since 1920 as a French administrative center controlling the south and Sahara. The town is now famous for huge film studios specializing in desert classics.  From there, a taxi back up the road 40 km and down the narrow track to this rather isolated and very peaceful village. (That is, except for the gaggle of tourists who just arrived…their voices echoing around the hotel.  All I can do is hope they’ll find their rooms and settle down!)

When I told my host Aziz I hadn’t liked the designs they offered at one particular hammam, he took me next door to meet his Berber neighbor Semia. She offered to demonstrate for me how they create the beautiful henna designs that the women wear on their hands.

I watched as first the henna powder was kneaded and pounded with warm water, until it smelled like grass clippings and had the texture of whipped cream at the “stiff peaks” stage. The design comes as a black plastic stencil, which I am assured is the correct traditional Berber way. Semia and her very strict-looking mother sat me on the floor, back against the couch facing the TV and began to very thoroughly plaster henna paste over the stencil. It all took quite a long time, while I watched Alice in Wonderland.

Once they were satisfied, first feet, then hands were encased in two layers of plastic shopping bags. Then I was buried in quilts and blankets to get REALLY hot and marinate for two whole hours.  While Mother Aisha finished plastering and bagging me, Semia cooked Berber flat bread filled with dried sheep, sheep fat and her own special spice mix which sounds awful but was really delicious.  As I had no hands, she sat and fed me bites followed by sips of mint tea. It was as if I was a baby again.

Waiting for the henna gave me plenty of time to talk to Semia in a mix of English and French.  She is 30 years old and won’t marry because, she says, Moroccan men want to control every detail of a woman’s life.  Her sister works, and Semia stays home to take care of her two small children. She says she hardly gets out of the house.  Her father is retired with a very small pension and life is very difficult.

Finally just as I could stand or rather sit it no longer, the big reveal. Blankets off, stencils peeled, excess henna scraped off with a knife, skin rubbed with baby oil and instructions not to bathe.  Semia and I are now lifetime buddies, too. She gave me a pretty headscarf and some of her spice mix, and I gave her a fistful of dollars, feeling inadequate to have nothing more.  Of course, I left with promises to return to Ouarzazate for a real local experience in her company.

I toyed with the idea of not coming back.

This is my sheik as he invited me to move in as his 4th wife. Okay, maybe not!

You can always recognize a tour guide because they are the only ones dressed as Berbers.  This one took me on a tour through the date palms and olive groves of the large Skaura oasis, with many old kasbahs which guarded the camel caravan trade routes from the Sahara to Marrakech.

From there to the oasis of Fint, a much smaller oasis but with dramatic black volcanic outcroppings. It has been much used as a movie set.

One of the photos is of a little “fixer upper”….no doubt soon to be a luxury vacation home for the Italians, French and other Europeans flooding into the area.   This is near where I’ve been staying in Ouarzazate.

The next day, I got back on the bus, back over the High Atlas and enjoyed a brief sortie into the souks of Marrakech. And now, back to England and back to Merida!

About 4pm, finally, we arrive at the yurt camp. Sadly, there are now no nomads in Uzbekistan. So the yurts are not exactly authentic… a little bit kitsch, but interesting to see. The Uzbeks have always been a settled farming and trading peoples, but the Kyrgyz, who were once nomadic, were “encouraged” to settle during the years the area was part of the Soviet Union. They still live here, but now in scattered farms, and their huge herds of black/brown goats and sheep graze far and wide on the brown grass of the hills. We are four “girls” to a yurt. Our yurt is quite roomy and comfortable inside, and pretty, too! I love looking up at the many wood spokes supporting our dumpy felt Hobbit house. Next on the agenda, a camel ride on a beautiful furry dromedary with eyelashes to die for. As it turns out, a camel ride is a bit like a pony ride. We are led, five at a time, around a short loop of trail… that was quite enough! It’s been a long time since I went for a pony ride! Right afterwards, we climb up on the highest dune to watch the sun set. My fellow travelers are all keen photographers, and it WAS a pretty sunset.

After dark and after dinner, we listen to a singer who accompanies himself on a sort of fish-skin guitar with dirgelike doleful music. It is not hard to imagine words, especially after the free bottles of rather crude vodka which accompanied dinner.

“It is so cold and the snow is so deep….the camel has died and now we will have to eat the baby camel…now how will we collect firewood?…I hate living in a yurt.” Ah, yes… vodka is great for the imagination.

4 Sept: I slept very well in the yurt. It was a perfect temperature… not too hot, not too cold. A few of the group are beginning to have wobbly innards, but for me, so far so good. Today, we go to Samarkhand, which is about a 5 hour drive. After the bus ride, we get to Samarkhand around 12:30, and start a city tour at 2 pm. Samarkhand has truly amazing historic monuments which seem scattered over a large area until you get the hang of the route. The second day they were quite walkable actually, especially because our hotel is just across the street from the Registan complex.

The first stop on our tour was the burial place of Timur (Tamerlane), the great ruler of Samarkhand. We couldn’t resist watching while a group of local ladies posed for their photo op…but surprise! They were just as fascinated by us, and made us join them for the encore photo!

6 Sept: We got for a morning tour, this time around the Registan. These are three of possibly the most beautiful mosques (also known as madrassahs) in the world. One is still in use as a Friday Mosque and the others are the domain of the ubiquitous artisans, including miniaturists, antique sellers, carpets sellers, sellers of embroidery, and all of it of very high quality. Next we see the Bibi Hanum mosque and after that, we get a free afternoon to wander around. On this afternoon our group split up, the majority going back to Tashkent a night early, to go on to Kyrgyzstan tomorrow. Six of us stayed on together for a last day in Samarkhand.

7 Sept: I apparently ate something which didn’t agree with me on my last night in Samarkhand, and spent the day stretched out on my bed drinking green tea, reading a bit, and sleeping. It was a free day and not being up to shopping probably saved me from myself. At 4 PM, we boarded the very impressive high speed train to Tashkent. The train is spiffy, new and Spanish-made, with pretty air hostesses and a small snack served on the 2.5 hour 200 kph run. We were met at the station and chauffered back to our group starting point, the Hotel Uzbekistan for one last night of luxury. The luxury included a king size bed, white duvet, and a 15th floor view over Tashkent. I was finally feeling better, but still ready to crawl between the snowy sheets for an early night. Tomorrow I will be starting my solo trip to Ferghana Valley.

9 Sept: It isn’t that they don’t have a Sept 8th in Uzbekistan. I have lost a day somewhere. It is easy to do!

On September 9, Hamid, my driver, arrives to pick me up. It’s a nice change to be able to ask all the questions you can ask because there are not 17 of you. So many questions about life here! And of course, I have a lot of questions about real estate. Although the government owns all the land, home ownership rates are very high. On the breakup of the Soviet system, everyone got the chance to buy their home for a very low price (a few thousand dollars) and low interest loans are available. Hamid is also curious to know about how WE do things… how I manage rentals, the buying process, costs of real estate. It turns out that some things are universal.

We talk all during the drive to Ferghana, which is the center of Uzbekistan’s silk and cotton production area and a very odd shape. Ferghana is a sliver of land poking north east from Tashkent between Kazakhstan and Kyrgystan. It crosses Uzbekistan’s highest major mountain range through an arid pass with a lot of construction going on. The road is being improved (it needs it!) and a new railway section is being built with the help of China and is almost complete. The area is dry and dusty, but in winter it is often snowed in by the severe weather which blows down from Siberia for around 40 days of the year. It makes me glad I live in the Yucatan!

And here I will leave you. Stay tuned for the next blog post, when I will take you to the potteries, spend a night in Ferghana and see silk from beginning to end at a Yodgorlik traditional factory.

The adventure begins! The names Samarkhand and Bukhara have always sounded magical to me, and I am finally off to explore a new part of the world!

On August 26th, after a week with family in England, I boarded a direct flight to Tashkent on Uzbekistan Airways. I was due to meet my fellow travelers on August 30th. Heading off for three days alone in a very distant city where I speak no common language was a little daunting, but exciting. As it turns out, as with most travel worries, my fears were unfounded. The weather on arrival was warm and sunny, and I was met by helpful English-speaking taxi drivers who organized me and got me to my charming small B+B close to the main bazaar.

Tashkent

Tashkent is big and beautiful, with wide avenues, lovely architecture, and many parks and big trees. The climate can be very hot in summer and very cold in winter, but Spring (April and May) and Fall (September and October) are the months to be here. Lucky me!

By August 27, I was settled in to a very comfortable single room at Hostal Gulnara. I quickly got to know some of my fellow travelers, and was amazed by so many adventurous single people going all over Asia alone on extended trips. I right away became good friends with Pip, an Aussie in her 60′s who is on the road for six months. She had already crossed China and Mongolia, and my first foray into the city of Tashkent was to help her get her month-long Iranian visa. We both love textiles and for the next two days had a great time in the Bazaar and on a visit to the Museum of Applied Arts. Both places gave us a hands-on chance to see amazing silk and cotton fabrics, both new and antique. We also learned to get around on Tashkent’s phenomenal Metro, an underground subway decorated with beautiful tile and definitely the way to get around. The Metro is both easy and cheap (it costs less than $1 USD to go anywhere in the city).

On August 30, I transferred to Hotel Uzbekistan, a huge and quite comfortable hotel (pictured below) in the center of the newer part of Tashkent (Gulnara was in the “old city”). In the afternoon, I took a bus tour of Tashkent. This weekend was a holiday for Uzbekistan Independence Day and everyone was in their sparkly Sunday best.

August 31 found me off to the airport for a two hour flight on an Ilyushin twin propeller plane to Urgench. Tashkent is on a major river with large irrigated farms for quite a distance around. Here they farm cotton, watermelon and corn. The fields are all lined with poplar trees (for building houses) and mulberry trees (to feed the silkworms). There is also the “Red Sand” desert, which goes on and on until one gets close to Urgench and Khiva. I took the bus from the airport to Khiva (about 20 minutes) and we checked into a magnificent old medrassah, now a very comfortable hotel. I have the afternoon free to explore. Khiva is small and easy to see on foot. In fact, I don’t remember seeing a car. It is an open-air museum, in effect, although people DO live there. Khiva was important in Silk Road days. The magnificent 14th century buildings have been allowed to decay during the time Uzbekistan was part of the Soviet Union and during that time, religion, while not prohibited, was definitely discouraged after 1920. Because they were built of adobe and soft low-fired brick, the old mosques, medrassahs , city walls and minarettes were soon in ruins. In the 1970s, Russia sent experts and donated the funds to restore the city, which is now truly spectacular.

September 1st was Independence Day and the town was filled with Uzbek families enjoying the old town. All the ladies were in bright colored dresses with much sparkle and sequins, with trousers to match underneath and bright head scarves.

On September 2, I was on the bus right after breakfast. The little children everywhere were off to school, dressed in their uniforms. The littlest girls often had two big pom-poms of white ribbons in their hair. Everyone was so friendly and almost everyone wanted to practice their English with me. “Hello!” “Where are you from?” “What is your name?” …just like the village children in Yucatan. English is spoken widely here, and there is a great emphasis on languages in college. They particularly emphasize English, French, German and Japanese.

The drive from Khiva to Bukhara is long and a bit tedious. Once we are out of the irrigated area around the Oxus River, it is desert all the way and a bumpy road almost all the way to Bukhara where we arrived at around 4 PM.

I’m still on this adventure and not home yet… stay tuned for more reports from the road in Uzbekistan!

I know many of you already know and love this amazing, vibrant city.  It had been 17 years since I had been there and it has changed so much. Many people now speak English and many are fluent in Spanish too, due to Istanbul’s increased popularity as a tourist destination for people from all over Europe.  This was my chance to get to know the city and explore alone.

Many of the old areas of Istanbul are now being “gentrified”. Just like at home here in Merida, there is a new appreciation for the old architecture and for the advantages of living in the center of the city. Unfortunately prices have sky-rocketed, although I am sure the old homes in the city center are still a good investment. Unlike Merida where most homes are single story, Istanbul’s Ottoman homes are three or four stories high and are being divided into flats. Apartments, or flats, are the most economical option for most people, whether buying a second home or retiring full-time to Istanbul. They purchase one or perhaps two levels in the home, which then is operated as a co-op or condominium.

Our huge older homes in Merida often got divided into slices as families grew, but there are separate footprints and the homes have separate titles. You can see this on some blocks in the city, where there are two to four homes that share a common architecture or even the same roofline, but are painted different colors and now have different addresses. In Merida, because of this, we have no need for the co-op model.  The other big difference between Merida and Istanbul are the construction materials.

In Istanbul, wood was and still is plentiful. And between the wood, they use brick, another Merida rarity.  Here in Merida, when you open a wall,  you find rock and more rock, held together with lime mortar. In Istanbul, both old and new construction includes wood and brick.

The narrow winding lanes lined with tall houses on each side have meant that major fires have gutted and destroyed much of Istanbul’s old architecture. Still,  much remains and can be a challenge to restore…  so much so that in some cases I wasn’t sure whether I was seeing a house being built from scratch or a restoration!  It was quite difficult to get good photographs, too. The owners thought it would be dangerous to have me wandering about on their scaffolding and I also felt sure that some work was being done without all permits being entirely in place. This doesn’t mean that the work was being done badly or not up to standard. I have been told paperwork can be extremely tedious and time consuming in Turkey… always one more rubber stamp to be obtained and another few month’s wait while paperwork sits in the pile.

Here in Merida, while that may have been the case years ago, nowadays we are thankful to have a far more organized permitting system, making it relatively easy and cheap to get your plans approved and work started.

The town of Mardin, is carved into terraces of rock beneath a steep cliff topped with a ruined citadel. It looks out from its perch over the dry plains which run uninterrupted the short distance to the border with Syria. Here, there is one drivable street and a spider’s web of narrow alleys running up and down and around the terraces on which the town is built. Mardin reminded me a little of Zacatecas, Mexico! The town is flanked on both sides with three- and four-story stone houses. No wood here. I noticed this in other parts of Turkey too… stone where we would use wood. In the photo you can clearly see the stone corbels supporting the second story. (Even here in Yucatan where there is much more stone than wood, our corbels are always made from wood.)

This contrasts with Istanbul, where the old houses are almost entirely wood, and few remain after fires, neglect and termite attacks. In Mardin, stone protects your home from these hazards, and the snake goddess will protect it from all others! Just to be on the safe side, locally made Mardin soap, pure and natural will take care of any physical ailments.

We detoured through the town of Diyarbakir, one of the largest cities in southeastern Turkey. At 1.5 million people, it’s about 50% larger than Merida is today. We went there to see the famous black basalt walls which form a 3.4 mile circle around the city and have protected the city for more than a thousand years. These are second in length only to the Great Wall of China.  There are four gates and 82 watchtowers along the walls, all built in antiquity and RESTORED in 349 A.D. (I wonder if any of Merida’s restored houses will last that long…).

In the 20th Century, the city went through many turbulent times, including massacres of Armenians and Kurds.  It was also the site of a major NATO Air Force Base for many years, but this was closed down in 1997. And Diyarbakir has been a center for Kurdish guerilla activity…but as you can see, the locals were singularly unthreatening! (And THAT reminded me of almost all of Mexico… reported in the press to be dangerous, but warm and welcoming and safe when you actually go there…)

Diyarbakir is situated on the banks of the Tigris and was once a hub of the ancient Silk Roads.  It became known for its craftsmen who produced glass and metalwork.  For instance, the gold and silver decorated doors of the tomb of Imam-i Azam in Baghdad were made by craftsmen from Diyarbakir.  There are still some jewelry makers and silversmiths in the city, but the fame of the craftsmen from here has long passed.

Today this city is relatively unvisited by tourists. This is a city where I would love to spend more time.

The main joy of traveling and the impetus to get out and see the world is always the people we meet along the way.

Here in my last photo are two more little friends from Eastern Turkey.

I have been away from the office now for more than a month. The work goes on at Tierra Yucatan, of course, and the wonders of modern communications have let me stay on top of business from some fairly distant parts of the world. For the last few weeks of June that distant part of the planet was Eastern Turkey, on the borders with Syria and Iran.  Eastern Turkey is less developed than the western part of the country and is filled with fascinating people and cultures. People come to this austere landscape of desert and mountains to get a glimpse of ancient cultures through architecture, museums and the living descendants of those cultures… much like they do when they come to the Yucatan.  Ruins and sites date back to before Biblical times… the Book of Genesis in the Old Testament mentions that Abraham and his family lived in Harran for awhile, and this is a city that I visited.

Of course, although the history and archaeology always fascinate me, I found myself consistently wandering off in the direction of interesting architecture. I thought you might like to see some photos and hear about what I saw there.

The mud brick and rock “beehive houses” of Harran (also called Altınbaşak)  are quite unique in Turkey, but I did learn that there are villages in Syria that still are using this method of construction.  The house in the photograph here (and in the photo gallery on our Facebook page) consists of 26 rooms! Each room has a conical roof built of mud brick with no mortar.  The bricks are placed so that each is slightly overlapping the one below. Gravity and I’m convinced a little bit of prayer hold them all in place as the cone narrows towards the top.  A small opening at the tip of the cone allows hot air to vent, and I found the whole house to be deliciously cool and breezy. Even the kitchen, pictured below and to the right, was cool enough. And you can see from the photo how the bricks are the basic building element, which are then covered over with mud. There are not as many colors in the architecture here as we have in Merida – mostly earth tones and the villages blend into the landscape… this architecture is more analogous to the Mayan huts that you see in the countryside outside the city.

These houses are really family compounds, built around a central courtyard where all family activities take place.  As the family grows and children marry, new mud brick rooms are easily added and the house expands. If you feel like enjoying the experience, there is even a compound in the village that serves as a simple hotel where visitors can spend a night or two! I found the architecture fascinating, but was happy to sleep in my more modern hotel.

The architecture in Harran is so different from our colonial architecture in Merida, but I noticed some similarities to both the colonial homes and the Maya houses. The houses in Turkey and the colonial homes of Merida are often centered around a courtyard, the place where the family gathers and enjoys visiting. That is true here in the Yucatan as well, where our courtyards are often the most beautiful place in the home… totally private and hidden from the public eye. The Mayans, on the other hand, seem to build family compounds by having a group of separate oval-shaped houses that all share the same property and often have a common kitchen. Merida doesn’t have the same rug tradition as the Middle East, but in Merida’s colonial homes, we adorn our floors with tapetes (rugs) of tile. Everyone around the world loves a beautiful floor! And it is certainly true that a beautiful handmade Kilim rug looks beautiful in both places!