Featuring the Bear as: Cupid

Monday, I took another tour to some other villages, and to the ruins of the most capital of the Zapotec capitals, Monte Alban. First, we went to Monte Alban, which is situated on the top of a mountain overlooking the city.

The peak of the mountain was not naturally flat enough to build on, so the Zapotecs spent an estimated 300 years flattening - just so they could begin construction on their ceremonial center. That's dedication. The buildings of Monte Albán weren't as dazzling as the pyramids of Teotihuacan, but the entire complex felt more organized, and was better preserved. The scale was also somehow grander - Teotihuacan had a lot of open space, but was incredibly spread out. Monte Albán felt like it enclosed a huge space, and as I stood atop the ruins I tried to think about having a few thousand people arrayed out below me, intent on my echoing words. It's not so crazy that some of the priests believed they were divine.

Maria Fernanda, the Brasilian I had met the day before, was on this tour. We chatted quite a bit (in Spanish) and generally got along pretty well. She's 30, and an editor of a culture magazine in Sao Paulo. Very well-travelled, with lots of good advice on places to go. We hit it off really well.

So much for my anonymity, and any rumors/hopes that I might be roguishly handsome.

After Monte Albán, the only notable thing on the rather mediocre tour route was a Dominican convent/basilica. It was a beautiful building, somewhat in ruins, but the really intriguing thing were the traces of the indigenous religion that pervaded it; the church itself was built from the stones of a Zapotec temple, and you could still see some carvings in walls were the plaster had been weathered away. But even in the work of the church itself, much of which was done by indigenous laborers, you could see little traces of Zapotec symbolism mixed in with the Catholic.

I ate lunch with Maria Fernanda after the tour, and then we went on to La Casa de la Cultura Oaxaqueña, just to see what we could see. Guess who we bumped into there? My Norwegian neighbor, Reidar. He's 35, by the way. Maybe you can see where this is going. I introduced the two of them, and Reidar invited us to go check out some son jarocho band that was going to be practicing downstairs. Um... we ended up playing with them, too. Fernanda on the tamborines, me on some box-percussion thingy, and Reidar on guitar - along with five Mexicans and two other gringos on varying instruments. It was a hell of a lot of fun, despite my total musical incompetence. After two hours of this, the three of us walked back to the hotel together and drank chamomile tea. What a surreal night.

Reidar is the guy on the far left. His expression is that of the forlorn, who are in love but have no hope of realizing it. Mafe's expression, on the other hand, is that of a giddy schoolgirl in love.