Claireabelle

The musings of a girl named after a pig. All love letters to claireabellexx[at]gmail.com

next stop…

have you ever seen two radishes fashioned into copulating scorpions? neither had i until i hit oaxaca (“wa-HA-ca”), a city about an hour or so south of mex city by air. once i sort through the zillions of pics i took from the radish fesival, your eyes shall have them too.

meawhile everyone here is talking about that canadian couple who got butchered in nearby town huatulco. rumours are flying about why they were targeted and there are lots of gory details being debated, but mostly i just think its sad for them, and sad for this beautiful place to get a bad rep and be in the grip of fear mongering. rest assured i am fine, being sensible etc. for my 2 cents there have been numerous occasions so far where mexicans have gone out of their way to help me, not to mention being super patient with my shitty spanish.

January 9

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in high school i used to write quotes from karl lagerfeld in whiteout on my backpack. if i recall correctly, ‘the only thing more boring than illness is health’ and ‘the only thing more boring than listening to peoples problems is listening to peoples dreams’ (as you can imagine i was very rebellious). when i saw the doco ‘lagerfeld confidential’ a few years back, the excessive quantity of silver rings unkle karl wore transfixed me, and ever since then ive been building my own collection, as well as paying much more attention to the kind of jewellery other people wear. ive noticed its hard for guys to pull off any kind of ring that isnt a wedding ring, unless theyre an old italian dude and its a butch signet ring on their pinky. i thought this guy in oaxaca pulled off an unusual piece with great style.

January 12

fashion jewellery oaxaca photography ring style karl lagerfeld

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noche de rábanos

as promised - pics from the ‘night of the radishes’ festival. every december those crazy oaxacans grow enormous radishes for the specific purpose of carving the bejesus out of them and then putting them on display in the zocalo (main square). it was quite unlike any other vegetable-related experience ive ever had.

behold.

this last one is frida kahlo painting diego rivera. i like the second one a lot too - i still dont quite understand the Mexican attitude towards death, but it seems to be a lot healthier - and dare i say it, more fun - than what im used to. people make such a big fuss celebrating when people are born. why does death have to be so drab? i much prefer graveyards carved out of radishes and brightly coloured sugar skulls.

¡viva muerte!

January 26

mexico noche de rábanos travel radishes radish festival oaxaca

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wild grapefruit, Oaxaca.

January 29

mexico oaxaca grapefruit photography nature

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el árbol del tule

first up, sorry for the silence - life has been rudely intruding on my internet time. i promise it won’t happen again.

so visiting the tule tree, one of the biggest trees in the world, was pretty cool. its a montezuma cypress in santa maría del tule, and is around 1500 years old. its also on record as having the stoutest trunk of any tree in the world. ‘stout’ is a pretty cool word. as well as meaning chunky, its also a type of beer.

i knew this tree would be big, but even as i beheld the behemoth, my mind couldnt quite grasp its scale. my eyes were overwhelmed. Jorge (“HOR-hay”), the sweet old man who ran the hotel where i stayed, told me it was dying, and asked me to help save it. other people seemed to think it was fine, and yet others said it was dying a natural death. i wasnt sure who to believe, all i knew was that it was. and it was wonderful.

February 10

mexico nature photography el árbol del tule tree oaxaca

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Sometimes dejection can be beautiful.

Santa María del Tule, Oaxaca.

February 11

photography Mexico flower Oaxaca

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street art, Oaxaca.

February 19

street art Mexico Oaxaca art

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MAKIN’ MEZCAL

So I’m way behind on my blog, soz about that. But check out how I spent Christmas! Mezcal is like Tequila, only nastier. It’s made from maguey plants that get roasted in a pit for a few days, then ground up and fermented. If you’re lucky, you get a worm in the bottom too.

“para todo mal, mezcal, y para todo bien también”

March 4

mezcal Mexico Oaxaca drinking

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Jardin Etnobotanico

Pics from my visit to a private garden full of crazy cacti, herbs and trees in the grounds of a former monastery in Oaxaca.

Above is the shadow of a tree nicknamed ‘arbol de matrimonio’ (the marriage tree), so called because it’s prickly and brings forth sour fruit. Needless to say I was rather taken with this example of how a culture can reach out and give cynicism a good firm hug.

the name of this one roughly translates as ‘the sunburned gringo’

and I call this one ‘the bird’.

March 16

Mexico Oaxaca Jardin Etnobotanico plants photography nature

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