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In an increasingly competitive field, bloggers need to do more than attract readers. They may also need to find sponsors.

An interesting summary of the growing commercialization of travel blogging. 

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Mount Rainier

We took a beautiful hike with Matt and Lucy last Saturday in Mount Rainier's national park. The drive there was also lovely - and reminded us that we are definitely back in America, home of beautiful landscapes, tiny white churches, and general stores.

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Images from our great visit to Pike Place - yet another market with its own flair and flavor.

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Wellbody Alliance in the New York Times

Check out this GREAT expose on mental illness in Sierra Leone, featuring our friends at Wellbody Alliance.

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Tacoma - Glassware and Hardware

It was an absolute pleasure to spend our first stateside days with Jeff's sister Lucy and her husband Matt. Lucy and Matt live in Tacoma, a small city 40 minutes from Seattle. Their house has a stunning view of Mount Rainier (when it isn't hiding), which we enjoyed very much along with their gracious hospitality.

Our first full day in Tacoma brought us to the waterfront where we took in the amazing Museum of Glass. This museum and active glass blowing workshop make up a small part of the dynamic glass scene in Seattle-Tacoma. The explosion in popularity is largely due to the influence of native son Dale Chihuly, whose works have been showcased far and wide; however, the artisan scene also seems characteristic of a regional lifestyle more focused on things you can make using your own two hands. Lucy's own beautiful ceramics are certainly a testament to the special nature of fine things made well. We loved having the opportunity to see her latest work.

Chihuly glass at the Tacoma courthouse

Flowers

More glass on the way to the museum

Tacoma waterfront

The Museum of Glass hot shop

Glass fountain

In addition to enjoying the art, we also got to experience another side of Seattle during our trip - the tech one inspired by Microsoft's longtime presence in the area. Jeff was nearly beside himself during our visit to the Living Computer Museum, a small space where original machines from the 1950s-present day are up and running. Though incredibly nerdy, our visit also became a little nostalgic as we recognized relics from our own childhoods. Lucy and I spent more time than I'd like to admit playing Oregon Trail on the Apple II...

One of the oldest machines, from the 1960s

Circuits under repair

Oregon Trail, in the original

Nerding out

More photos from our Sea-Tac trip to follow soon, including a great visit to Pike Place Market. We want to say thank you again to Lucy and Matt for their generosity and company. We had a wonderful time visiting and can't wait to see you again soon!

Love Sarah and Jeff

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Mazunte

We spent a lazy, lazy couple of weeks in Mazunte, a tiny beach town on the Oaxaca coast. The popular and touristy Puerto Escondido is only an hour's drive west, but its a world away in terms of atmosphere. We loved the laidback village feel of Mazunte. Its beaches are beautiful and the living is cheap. Even weathering Hurricane Barbara was pleasant, with rain falling on thatched roofs and the breezes cooling things off. A perfect retreat before our return to the US.

Hurricane Barbara waves

The western coastline

Jeff at the most southern point in Mexico

Rocky coast

Beautiful water

Our guesthouse, "Un Posada Mas"

Our breezy room

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A Peacock displays his plumage to a female peacock. She's not impressed.

Taken at Museo Dolores Olmedo in Mexico City

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While in Mexico, we (of course) had to go to a Mexican wrestling match. 

Cameras were not allowed in the luchador stadium, so we had to settle for some lower quality pics from my phone.

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A Mexican wedding celebration outside of Santo Domingo church in Oaxaca

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Teotitlán del Valle and Santa Maria del Tule

Oaxaca's Valles Centrales region is well known throughout Mexico for its production of exceptional handicrafts. Specialties vary across villages, with some renowned for pottery and some for textiles. We ventured out of the city to visit Teotitlán del Valle, a remote village famous for its skilled weavers. The small town is a 40-minute bus ride from Oaxaca's second-class bus station. (Note to travelers: This is less a bus station than a large, busy, and utterly confusing urban intersection. Look for the red and white "Mitla" bus, which stops under the pedestrian overpass.) 

On the day we visited, the dusty but picturesque streets were almost completely empty. At the town center, a beautiful 16th century church holds court, and the surrounding lanes are lined with family shops selling outstanding wool rugs, pillow covers, and tapestries. One local saleswoman invited us in to demonstrate how leaves, roots, and minerals are ground by hand to produce the fabric dyes. She taught us how to card and spin the raw wool into thread, and described the hours of manual labor required to produce a single finished piece. Looking around at the empty streets, we were saddened that those hours of handwork were marked at such a relatively low price - the flow of tourism to this village has slowed to a trickle. 

Organic materials for grinding into dyes; finished weavings and spinning wheel in the background

Rugs displayed by a merchant in Teotitlán del Valle

Street art in Teotitlán del Valle

The weaving village's 16th century church

On our bus ride back from Teotitlán del Valle, we hopped off at Santa Maria del Tule to see one of the region's strangest tourist attractions: El Árbol del Tule. This Montezuma cypress, or ahuehuete, is claimed to be the "stoutest" tree in the world, with a trunk diameter of over 11 meters. The tree is thought to be somewhere from one to three to six thousand years old. It is certainly an impressive sight, and is located in the town center next to a lovely adobe church. 

El Árbol del Tule

The cypress's mammoth branches

The day following our Valles Centrales wanderings we left Oaxaca for the southern coast, where we've been holed up in Mazunte, a tiny beach town near Puerto Angel. We head back to Mexico City in just a few days, and then on to the US of A!

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Monte Alban

The historic and beautifully preserved site of Monte Alban is a quick van ride outside of Oaxaca. After our trip to the pyramids of Teotihuacan we were prepared for the amazing stonework characteristic of Central America's ancient cultures. Still, Monte Alban amazed us with its beautifully laid-out city plan and layered history. For a thousand years, this was the powerful center of Zapotec life. It was abandoned around 700 AD but, like Los Pyramides, remained an important pilgrimage site until colonial times.

Monte Alban's north side

Stonework

Ancient playing fields

More reconstructed stonework

Atop the south plateau

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Toiletries of the World

Old Spice deodorant from Mexico next to our Thailand Q-Tips behind our Japanese toothpaste near our Nepali tiger balm. That just about sums up our life over the past year.

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Oaxaca

We took the easy 7 hour bus ride to Oaxaca last week and have settled into a nice routine here. This small city is still rebounding from a bad rap, acquired in 2006 when a teacher's strike led to city-wide riots. Today, signs of political activism are evident around town, but for the most part Oaxaca is calm, its architecture beautiful, its zocalo bustling, and its streets largely empty of tourists. Of course, we love the absence of gawking vacationers, but here's hoping that Oaxaca gets most of its tourist trade back within the next few years. 

Jeff has been our master photographer over the past couple of days. Here are some of my favorite shots that he's taken. I've split them up to show day, dusk, and night shots.

OAXACA BLUES - DAY

SUNSET GOLDS - DUSK

  MOMENTS OF LIGHT - NIGHT

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 Images from our day at the market town of Xochimilco.

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GOOOOOOAAAALLLLL!

We have seen two types of culture exported and integrated locally almost everywhere to the world: American culture and football (soccer) culture.

The universal language of the world is football. There hasn't been a single country in the world that we have visited where the words "Barcelona" "Manchester" "Chelsea" "Messi" or "Ronaldo" didn't initiate an eye gleam of instant familiarity.

In Rwanda, the village kids reenacted their own English Premier League championship over and over with compressed soccer balls of trash. In Sierra Leone, in the villages of Kono district, hundreds of people paid a $1 to pack onto wooden benches in a stuffy, dirt-floored thatched hut structure with a satellite to tune into a Chelsea-Manchester game and root for their favorite team. The adults in John Obey fishing village organized matches with the tourists and NGO workers because they know the positive influence of organized sport in a young kids life. The youth of Nepal took turns shooting penalty kicks into bamboo goals on a scare piece of flat land high in the stepped hills of the Himalayas, land that could maybe have been better used for farming for the food-poor communities. The list of examples we have seen goes on. 

While in Mexico City we had the chance to go to a football match at the Estadio Azteca, an enormous stadium (fifth in the world) opened in 1966 that holds about 108,000 cheering Mexican soccer fans. It was the venue for the 1968 Olympics, the 1970 and 1986 World Cup and also the location of two of the most famous goals in history (both by Diego Maradona). In short it has a lot of history. 

Filling a stadium of 108,000 people is a tall order and unfortunately the game we went to had only about 50,000 people; still, that's 10,000 more people than you would find at a sold out Fenway Park. The atmosphere was incredible. I have been to professional and raucous football games before -- a friendly match between Mexico and Brasil at Foxborough and a Premier league game in London between Everton and Fulham -- but those games didn't prepare me for the noise echoing throughout the Estadio Azteca. It was a quarterfinal match between two historical Mexican league rivals, Pumas and America, and provided for some great entertainment.

We were seated way in the top deck, continuing our budget travel streak, and in hindsight this was a great decision. Not only could we see everything, but we were also shielded from (and possibly participated in) the ritual that happens when a goal is scored: of course everyone goes crazy and starts screaming, but it is also common -- nay, expected -- that one throw his beer cup, nachos tray, and/or any other trash at hand down stadium as far as possible. Don't think for one second that it matters how much beer is left or how many nachos are on your tray --  you throw it anyway. We saw little grandmothers (abuelitas) in full jerseys stomping their feet, waving flags and yelling obscenities. We saw 9 year-old boys of the opposition team turn towards the scoring crowd in defiance, middle fingers up, screaming their team's cheer as a storm of beer, cups and peanuts swarmed in like a tropical storm. We saw smoke rising from hand held flares as they cascaded down from the upper decks. We saw it all and we loved it.

You might wonder if there is security at these events, just in case a beer cup hits the wrong abuelita or a flare lights someone's hair on fire. In fact, there are hordes of them! Security in full riot gear line each deck in front of the major populated sections. At the highest of rows, security with binoculars comb the seats below looking for suspicious activity. Upon exiting the match you are flanked by rows of security looking our for any funny business. Should anything have gone wrong, we have no idea what sort of violent face-off would have gone down...but that's all part of the experience.

In case you were wondering, the America team won 2-1 in the 90th minute with a last second goal to seal the win in extra time.

In short, would we go to a Mexican League championship game at the Estadio Azteca? Absolutamente

Some photos: 

Outside Estadio Azteca 

  Pumas fans

America Fans

Enormous Stadium

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Bellas Artes

As mentioned a few days ago, Mexico City is showcase to some of the world's finest murals and wall art. The local museums and public spaces indicate how highly art is prized in Mexico. This sentiment is reinforced by the passion and foresight of private collectors -- such as Dolores Olmedo Patina, whose home-cum-museum we were lucky enough to visit the other day -- and by the brilliant street art displayed all over town. It's a real treat to walk amongst such beautiful works, both old and new.

Admiring Rivera's Carneval de la Vida Mexicana, at the Palacio de Bellas Artes

Orozco's vision of the new democracy - Palacio de Bellas Artes

Central feature of the famed Rivera work Man at the Crossroads originally intended for New York's Rockefeller Center

Camarena's mural on liberation, Palacio de Bellas Artes

Local street art

Graffitti mural at the Insurgentes metro station

Street art

Contemporary installation entitled Horizontal

Dry fountain in Mexico City

Gigantic street art sculpture at Sevilla

The Dolores Olmedo Patina museum

Peacocks at the museum

Natural art show

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The Pyramids of Teotihuacán

We visited the pyramids of Teotihuacan the other day - what an amazing site. This Mesoamerican city was established somewhere between 100 BC and 250 AD. It was probably the largest city in pre-Columbus America, and it is thought to have been a holy pilgrimage site and inspiration for the Aztecs and Mayans.

The planned city is laid out along the central Avenue of the Dead and features two huge pyramidal temples as well as scores of smaller talud-tablero platforms. The archaeological excavation and reconstruction is remarkable. Most structures are open for tourists to climb.

It’s easy to see why later generations were influenced by the genius design and construction of this site. We ourselves were awed by the city’s scale and beauty. Here are some pictures from the day:

The gigantic Pyramid of the Sun

The Pyramid of the Moon, at the end of the Avenue of the Dead

With the Pyramid of the Sun behind us

Atop the Pyramid of the Sun - Pyramid of the Moon in the background

Descending the deadly steep stairs

View of the Avenue of the Dead and the Pyramid of the Sun, as seen from the top of the Pyramid of the Moon

Talud-tablero platforms 

Reconstructed painted interior of the Temple of Quetzalcoatl