The Paloma And The Jaguar – where the Heck is mom

There is one exact shape of clay palomas in 100s of sizes and ornmentations and 100s of jaguars with a specific attitude all around town made in the neighboring village of Amatenango del Valle. We’ve learned the historical reason for the jaguars and are still looking for an explanation on the palomas (which translated by google, a paloma is both a pigeon and a dove).

Our first outing of the day took us to the museum Na Bolom, coming from the Tzotzil Mayan language and means ‘House of the Jaguar’, and home to an excellent collection of artifacts from the the home of the Danish archaeologist Frans Blom (1893-1963) and his wife, the anthropologist and photographer Gertrude Duby de Blom (1901-1993) .

Here is a not-too-long but very academic report of the Jaguar, God of the Underworld.

It’s very beautiful and interesting too containing art galleries, historic objects, and a very well known research library.

Representing the research area of the Bloms.

Taking a taxi to our next destination, note the objects on the dashboard. We got to talk about them with the driver and when I picked up my camera to catch a picture of the mural which just happened to have the dashboard in it…the driver stopped dead in the street so I could get the shot. Thanks for that!

We were making plans here for NYEve and this guy was in the window. It’s the place where the first picture was painted on the wall.

Cynthia caught this precious child from the back seat of our next taxi.

It goes by many names, all of them deserved: The Main Market, The Central Market, The Big Market!

It’s an amazing place and overwhelming as the Main Central Big Markets can be. We ate a popular street snack containing corn from the cobs boiling in front of you, shredded carrots, cucumbers, salsa, and beets all crushed up in a bag of something like tortilla chips. YUM!

I had a lot of fun in the market because everyone was chatty and seemingly happy to engage. One of the things I learned was that in this picture on the right are all the ingredients you need to make an important beverage, ponche, and there are a lot of ingredients involved!

The neighborhood street dog. Cynthia says she runs into her everywhere and everyone knows her and gives her pets.

We had to make a reservation two days in advance to be able to eat at this well-known Italian place where the owner and his wife run the six table establishment by themselves. It was totally fun and pretty darn tasty too.

The type of arcade that is in every Plaza Central I’ve ever visited in Mexico.

This might be some part of the back of the Cathedral, it’s the same color anyway.