Xalapa

We hopped on our bus out of Catemaco at about 3:30 am…you might notice a change in the time…so did we when we had to wait an hour at the bus station in the middle of the night because the bus was late!! Thankfully, there were about 5 other people waiting for the bus too, and they had cartoons on!! Sierra went back to sleep on the floor until the bus got there, and then she slept on the bus. One thing I can say for this girl…she can sleep anytime, anywhere!!

We got into Xalapa (pronounced Huh-la-puh), which is also sometimes spelled Jalapa in the morning. The bus station in Xalapa is definitely the nicest one we’d seen…it was big and orderly and clean, and looked like a high class mall! We took some time there looking around, and then took a taxi to the youth hostel we would be staying at. Xalapa is a big city, a college town, and it’s really cute. We had a long list of stuff we wanted to do. We settled into our hostel and decided to take a nap before doing anything! All those late night buses really wear on you…actually, I’d say all those bus rides period were wearing! It’s exhausting to be on the bus for hours at a time, but it’s still a great way to get around. I think we were just getting a little travel weary, and Sierra needed the sleep to help her get better. She ended up sleeping a good part of the day.

One of the things on our list was to go white water rafting, but due to Sierra’s stomach problems we decided to scrap that plan. Instead, we took things easy and looked around the town a bit and found this great little area where they sold some neat stuff. It was a small alley jam packed with artisans, mostly selling hand-made jewelry and beads. There were some great cafes and restaurants where you could get a fantastic comida corrida for about $2.50 which included chips and salsa, a drink, soup, main meal and dessert! I found a neat set of dominoes, so bought those so Si and I could play.

That night we weren’t sure what we were going to do. We came back to the hostel and there was a group of people hanging about. One guy said hello and I asked him what the group was there for. He told me it was a meeting for Campus Crusade for Christ for the local college. I was really excited! I told him that we were Christians too, and doing missions work for 6 months. He invited us to the meeting, so we went.

There were over 100 college kids there, and they needed music so I pulled out my computer and collection of music for them to listen to…they were able to hook it up to a big speaker so it would be loud. We played an ice breaker game where we all got balloons and had to blow them up, then throw them in the middle and pop one and pick it up. Each balloon had a small piece of paper inside with an animal written on it. I got “Leon”….lion….and we had to go around making that animals’ sound until we found the rest of the like animals. I felt a little silly, but it was fun anyway. After this we went in and had a service, and it was great to see all these college students there to hear about God.

After, I spoke with the young man I had met earlier, Jose Luis, who is assisting the Campus Crusade missionary. He graduates this Spring and plans to go into full-time missions with Campus Crusade in Central America. I also spoke with the missionary who is working there. She is a young woman named Heather and is from Georgia. Her friend was there visiting her, another young woman from Georgia named Shu-Che. Shu-Che is a missionary to China, and we talked for a long time about what she does there. I also spoke with many of the students, who were all very excited to practice their English with us. It was such a fun and uplifting night, and I was so excited to be a part of it and felt really blessed.

The next day we went to check out the Anthropological Museum. It is supposed to be one of the best museums in Mexico, and is home to the giant Olmec heads…these are heads that are over 6 feet high, carved out of stone…they weigh tons and tons. We went to the museum and were really impressed. It was amazing to look at things that these Pre-Hispanic cultures had done some 3 or 4,000 years ago! Some of the stuff was so elaborate and detailed and it was mind-boggling to think they did this work with no modern tools. It was fantastic fun to watch Sierra….she was really intrigued by the things we saw, especially the giant heads. We both had headphones and you would walk up to things and they would have a number assigned to them. You punched the number into the cassette and it would explain to what the item was. Her assignment was to draw some of the things she thought were interesting, and to write a paper about one thing the really caught her interest. She spent a lot of time really studying the artifacts and learning about the Pre-Hispanic cultures. We were there about 3 hours and she didn’t start to lose interest until about the last ½ hour. Here are some of the pictures we really liked:

This is another one of the big Olmec heads. The one above is considered the best preserved of them all, but this is also one of the really well preserved ones. They are truly amazing to behold in person!






Here you can get some perspective of the size of these heads. This one is one of the smaller heads!! They weigh some 8-10,000 pounds. How did these people move them and mount them????







Sierra is listening to her headphones about one of the displays, and taking notes. She was really into it, which I thought was awesome!







These are some small heads they found that were made out of clay and fired. I think it's really interesting how they look Asian in their facial features, and have Celtic knots in their headresses. There were lots of little things like this, and also small toys.






These are the twin Jaguars. The Olmecs worshipped the Jaguar, among many other things. These statues are worshipping the sun.






This is an alter, with twins holding it up. Many of the Pre-Hispanic cultures were pretty bloody and practiced human and animal sacrifice.







After the museum we went to check out some lakes that we’d heard about. We walked around the lakes and watched the people, and were amazed at the beautiful flowers. We found an old playground and had fun playing around. There was this impossibly high and steep slide which Sierra wanted to try out…she went up, up, up to the top and came barreling down. At the bottom, she slid on her feet for about 3 feet in the dirt, and then fell hard on her bum…she wasn’t sure if she should laugh or rub her bum, so she did both. She met another kid and they threw bread to the ducks for awhile. Later we found this guy renting these bike things…imagine a golf cart that has bike pedals and you get the idea. We thought this looked fun and so we rented one – it was hard work! We quickly found out the trails weren’t flat and we had to work hard to get up the hills. The downhills were a lot more fun! We were laughing and having a great time. Sierra was steering, which was really terrifying at times! We kept passing this one lady…it seemed like she was everywhere we were. She was wearing a polka dot slip under her black flowered dress, and the slip was hanging way out, which we thought was pretty funny. We finally made it back to return the bike when it started to sprinkle, and then to rain, so we headed out and caught a taxi to go home.

The next day it was time to move on, but we both agreed that we’d like to return to Xalapa and spend more time there.