Fifty Feathers Village - Straight Up

Having planned with Fr. Felipe to leave at 7:30, we left at 8:15 am to take him an hour and a half straight up, into the Sierra Madre Oriental, to where he thinks the bishop is going to post him in a month, and whose present pastor will come to our parish in Barrio Nuevo. We headed up the winding road toward San Juan Texhuacan. We passed Tlilapan, Tequila, and past Zongolica, the biggest town in the area. There has been a town there since the 13th century or earlier, and we discovered the name Zongolica, means "Fifty Plumes" or "feathers" referring to the feathers of the Quetzal, which used to be used as currency.

If you get sea-sick, don't take this trip; the forever winding roads go ever on and up, and you have to hold on with both hands while tightly belted up. But oh! the View! I counted 8 ranges of mountains, the highest lightly crowned with fluffy clouds. The houses, mostly little huts, but covered with flowers in tin cans, and in those houses if you roll out of bed on the wrong side, you don't stop rolling till you hit the bottom of the valley. And there are lots of huge boulders and craggy outcroppings. So don't fall out of bed. Luckily the road has been mostly paved except for one rough and rocky patch. The Jeep passed this test with flying colors.

The landscape is gorgeous, the air pure and delicious, but the real beauty is the people. Absolutely everyone, after a wondering and bemused glance at us in our Jeep, returned our smiles with the sweetest of smiles and greetings. And when we arrived at San Juan (letting off a young teacher who was walking up the hill) the priest was in Mass for parents and godparents of children to be confirmed, so we opened the unlocked door and availed ourselves of his facilities (don't ask!) and waited in the ancient decrepit parish house. The priest arrived, had his ladies serve us a full lunch (at 10:00 am! and asked us to gave a 15 minute talk to the folks in church about their responsabilities to the children. Which we happily did. The little ladies gave us warm affectionate hugs, the men, shy smiles and soft handshakes. (In this culture it is bad form to squeeze or give a too-firm handshake.)

Most of the ladies were in the traditional outfit, the men in more ordinary well-worn work clothes, but we saw one older gentleman that looked a perfect stereotype of a Mexican peasant: white shirt and full white pants gathered at the ankle like bloomers.

All the water seems to be carried by hand. Maybe a little arrives through the pipes once in a while, but you can't count on it.

When we got back to the parish, where we understood Father had to be in time for a Quince Anos Mass at 1:00 pm, a few minutes after 1:00 a frantic mother is knocking on our door saying, "We arranged for this Mass last week, now the priest has left, the office is closed, can the Deacon come and give a blessing?!!! After checking, (sure enough, Father was nowhere around, nor his car either.) Dick got out of his shorts and into his alb, and hustled over to the church. All the guests were waiting in the church for the "mass" to begin. I've never heard of a situation quite like this before. It will be interesting to hear Father's explanation.