We started with another delicious breakfast in the courtyard and on the terrace roof.
We met Esperanza in the hotel lobby for our "Tour of the Traditions". We walked to the public bus are behind the market and rode the chicken bus for a 20 minute ride to San Antonio Aguascalientes. (You can see the Volcano of Agua in the background.) We then walked through her family's town to meet with her family. Our cultural tour took place in a local public garden to accommodate our large group.
The family started out our experience by dressing all of us in traditional dress so we could participate first-hand in their culture. The women wore huipiles, hand woven blouses, cortes, long skirts, and fajas, sashes woven by hand. The men wore the traditional pants, shirt and hats. Each town has its own unique woven design and you can figure out where a person is from by looking at the design of their clothing.
Esperanza's family spent the next five hours demonstrating aspects of their culture: traditional weaving, coffee grinding and roasting using Maya ancestral methods, dancing, explaining how they teach their children to carry on the family traditions, preparing corn tortillas, potatoes, and a typical chicken dish,and reciting poems in Kachiquel, a Mayan language. There were about twenty-five members present, from her four-month old nephew to her Mom, a mother of ten children.
The posts about the rest of Day #3 are for tomorrow. Uploading photos takes a long time due to the slower internet connection and it's been another long day. Tomorrow we start our team projects at Camino Seguro!
