Heigh Ho, Heigh Ho, It's Off to Work We Go

There may no longer be a working silver mine in Taxco, but we found a silver vein with our name on it.

Just coming off a two week holiday for Semana Santa, it may seem that we would not be in need of a travel fix. But yet, with flight prices being dirt-cheap and Amy celebrating her last few months in Mexico before going home to Canada, we just couldn’t miss the opportunity. Did I need to take a day off work? [well… no, not exactly… but we are given a ‘personal day’ to use at our discretion] Did I need to go to Taxco? [again, no, but how could I let Amy go and brave the Mexican streets alone?] Did I need to spend even a penny on silver? [this one is a given, definitely not! But why let it all go to people who won’t appreciate nearly as much?]

In preparation for the weekend, I had a brutal week at work. Monday, Tuesday AND Wednesday I was at the office until 8 or 9 each night. Progress Reports were due, I had a pull-out for Unit Planning on Thursday, and I was taking my Personal Day on Friday. These are the weeks that I hate having a job because all you feel like you are doing is working and sleeping.

Friday

Friday began like any other weekday, I woke up at 6 AM ready to go to work. But then it hit me like a ton of bricks: I could go back to sleep for a WHOLE HOUR! There are some people that feel guilty missing their kids, but c’mon. Kids are resilient, and they will be fine. When I am at school, I am full time all the time… but the kids won’t remember in the grand scheme of their lives that I took a Friday off. I worked hard to put my day plan together, but aside from that, any feelings of worry or guilt end there.

Amy grabbed a cab and we leisurely headed to the airport. Funny enough, another Grade 2 teacher was on the SAME flight because she was heading to a wedding for the weekend. It was an ASFM party at the airport [but let’s keep that between us!] Our flight was painless, even though we were completely surrounded by children; this was, only because of brilliant mothers who packed entire suitcases of play-doh and tools. At the airport we also had the luck to run into a lovely young women who was traveling to Taxco so buy jewellery to sell in Monterrey. She took us under her wing, and she actually directed us from the plane to the taxi to the bus that we needed to take to get to Taxco. She traveled in cute clothes, and had amazing taste in jewellery, so I could tell that the trip was off to a good start!

Taxco is actually built into the side of a hill/mountain, and is only really accessible by bus. The roads are steep and full of traffic [mainly VW bugs in vibrant colors], the streets are cobble-stone like with one clear distinction: jagged uneven edges and holes just big enough for your feet to go in and your ankle to go over. There are absolutely no American chains in Taxco [apparently there was once a Domino’s Pizza, but it didn’t survive], and the houses are ALL white with terracotta colored roofs. Jewelry is this town’s claim to fame, and there are more then 200 silver shops in the city as well as endless markets and booths covering the span of the entire city. All of this meant two clear things:
• We definitely made the wrong choice in footwear by choosing casual flip-flops for the downhill slippery treks to the market.
• If I wasn’t poor enough already, I certainly would be by the time I left this place.

We spent Friday afternoon walking up steep hills with our luggage, getting lost in a market, perusing the silver stores to get a sense for prices and sampling some of Taxco’s culinary delights. The sad part was that we were eating in a beautiful town square [called ‘zocalo’ in Mexico], at lovely restaurants on a Friday night… and it was almost empty. According to some locals, Taxco is dying, and is only crowded on holidays and Saturdays. There is always mixed feelings when I hear this, because I love when small colonial towns are undiscovered, but I certainly don’t want them to disappear completely.

Saturday

If we had brought our alarms, we would have been up at daybreak. Unfortunately, we both neglected to pack them, so we didn’t wake up until 8 o’clock. The day began at a cute café across from our hotel, where the French toast is as thick as a Bible, and the owners were still drunk from the night before. All fueled up, we began our mission for plata. You cannot imagine how much silver is in this town. The markets go on and on: the stalls go down staircases, into nooks and crannies, and on every spare bit of street. Some of it is cheap; some is not; sometimes you can bargain; sometimes you can’t; some of it is fake; and some of it is real. There are really no rules in Taxco until you know how it all works! Amy and I walked and tried on until we really could walk no more. [and I mean this literally, Amy could barely walk by the end of the day because she had worn shoes with no support!] I won’t give you a play by play of our entire 7 hours of shopping, but I will, however, offer advice for others who may want to attempt a similar feat:
• If you want something, buy it. It is difficult to go back and find booths or remember where you saw something in a sea of silver!
• Learn how to ask the difference between plated silver and genuine silver. I got ripped off on one of my first purchases because I did not realize the difference.
• In the stores, everyone wants to be your friend. You feel like Taxco is the friendliest town! Just remember, they don’t want your friendship, they want your money.
• Do not buy something at a booth because there is a cute little one-month-old wrinkly dog there to play with. Amy and I both own necklaces because of that damn dog’s marketing ploy.
• If you want a new career, come to Taxco, buy up a few thousand dollars of cheap silver, and open up a store back home. [and don’t forget to quadruple the price!]

We ended the day after our eyes were glazed over from looking at silver, and we settled into our favorite little café to reassess our purchases. The place was called Café Sascha, and it is one of the only bohemian style backpacker’s places in the city. We sat down with the owners [a strange, overly intelligent man named Javier who had killed too many brain cells over the years, believed vomiting was orgasmic, believed the past was the same as dreams and fervently advocated against democracy] and Sascha [a lovely business-savvy wizard in the kitchen who was also completely hammered] and didn’t get up for 8 hours! They fed us free mescal [similar to Tequila, but you sip it, and it is much sweeter], offered up discounts on delicious food, and introduced us to all sorts of characters who came in to the café. They were backpackers who had stumbled upon Taxco 9 years earlier, and had lived this transient-drinking-hedonistic lifestyle ever since. Amy and I enjoyed that life for one night… but NINE YEARS? I can’t imagine feeling fulfillment from night after night of drinking mescal with new travelers. But eight hours after being on your feet all day? Divine.

Sunday

We left Taxco early on Sunday looking like our very own silver mines. But let me defend myself: I also purchased tons of gifts, and almost finished my Christmas shopping for next year! The 6 hours of bus-taxi-waiting-plane did not even phase us, because we had had such a lovely weekend. Amy and I had a wondrous time traveling together, but this trip in particular suited as both perfectly: we are the only people who could keep up with each other and look at jewelry from sunrise to sunset… without running the other way.

Plata Power!