Surrealistic days

Feb 16/09: Rain and cloud this morning. Up early nonetheless and out on the balcony to observe the early morning street scene. Later getting started than in GTO. Clouds again obscured the mountains but by 9:00 it had stopped raining so I set off for Las Posas, the main attraction at Xilitla aside from the setting. Las Posas is a sculpture park created in the early 70s by Edward James, eccentric English expat, rumoured to be the illegitimate son of King Edward the VII, Oxford educated, from a family of nobility and substantial wealth but notably dysfunctional. James had a passion for surrealist art, had the world´s largest collection of it and traveled in the surrealist art circles of Europe fubbing shoulders with the likes of Salvador Dali, Max Ernst, Pable Picasso, etc. He moved to the States and hobnobbed with the Hollywood set, Aldus Huxley, and others before throwing it all in and moving to Xilitla, Mexico in the early 70s where, with the help of noted Mexican architect Plutarco Gastelum, the skilled carpentry of Jose Aguilar, 40 workers from Xilitla, 5 million dollars and17 years, created a vast sculpture park in the jungle, full of his amazing surrealist creations. It´s a couple of mile walk to the park from town and, soon the houses and traffic thinned and I became aware of the jungle pressing in on every side. Here and there were groves of orange trees interspersed with the coffee that seemed to grow everywhere as well as giant ferns, banna trees, vines, racuous oropendula birds flitting about, growth everywhere, flowers unknown to me but highly photogenic. Rubbernecking the whole way, it took me a while to get there but when I finally arrived at Las Posas I was in for an amazing spectacle. There on the steep slopes of the jungle was the most amazing creation imaginable. Impossible, towering surreal concrete shapes covering acres and acres, blended into pools and waterfalls and stairways amidst the amazing forest vegetation, paths leading from one to another; it just went on and on and after several hours I still hadn´t seen all of it and was distracted by hunger so decided to save the rest for tomorrow. I also needed to clean some wounds incurred when I fell on the slippery stones and whacked my head. Incidentally, you can see pictures by Googling Xilitla.

Feb 17/09: Returning from Las Posas yesterday I lunched at La Flor de Café, a restaurant run by a collective of Nahua women (the largest of the indigenous groups Mexico). Had a nice mole rojo lunch and spent the rest of the afternoon strolling around.

Off early to Las Posas this morning. Though it was cloudy and misty when I left, halfway there the sun peeked out and the clouds began to lift and, if I thought this was paradise with clouds all around, in the sunlight it was even more beautiful. Again, I took a long time getting to the park, detouring through the forest where I could, picking oranges, taking photos. And the park and sculptures too were even more vibrant with sunshine. One of the custodians showed me the path that led way up to the top of the waterfalls where there were pools of fresh, clear water. I sat for a long time there by the stream, eating my freshly acquired oranges and just being still. After a while I explored the parts of the park I´d missed and revisited others until hunger again pulled me back to town where I again lunched at the Nahua place on enchiladas huasteca. (The Huasteca is a large area inland from the central gulf coast named after the Huastec people who have lived here for about 3,000 yrs.)

After lunch I visited the Edward James museum where there were displays of the wooden molds that the carpenter, Jose Aguilar, made for the creation of the concrete sculptures, and more information about James and Las Posas. Then I followed a road out of town with hopes of sighting the tall peak, Silla, that can occasionally be seen when the clouds part. Though I didn´t see the peak, I did see a lot more of the town and environs as the road wound steeply up, up, up. For the first time I got a sense of the mountains that surround Xilitla as they were revealed. And the more I see, the more I like this place. Many beautiful, brightly coloured homes, that lush growth, flowers, coffee, oranges, bananas, flowering vines, hyacynths, bouganvillia, growth, growth, growth everywhere. And friendly people.

Much as I like it here, tomorrow I must move on. Tomorrow´s destination is San Luis Potosí. It´s more or less a jumping off place for Real de Catorce but I´ll spend a day there as it´s reputed to have some nice colonial architecture in the old part and good galleries. As it turns out, I met a Mexican woman at my hotel and her Texan husband who lives in San Luis Potosí, teaches Spanish there and has rooms to rent. So I have accommodations there.

More as it happens. Adios amigos.