Museums | Hole In The Donut Cultural Travel

Kick Your Shoes Off in Puerto Lopez, Ecuador

Published November 12, 2011 | By Barbara Weibel

This entry is part 6 of 19 in the series Ecuador

If you’re looking for a party, don’t go to Puerto Lopez, Ecuador. The loudest noise I heard during my week stay in this tiny coastal village was a rooster crow and many of the shops that cater to tourists were closed during the week. But after eight days of cruising in heavy seas around the Galapagos Islands, I needed a quiet place where I could drop anchor and let the ground stop rocking. Puerto Lopez turned out to be the perfect choice.

I arrived in darkness after a five-hour bus ride, took a 50-cent moto-taxi to my hotel, dragged my weary carcass to my room and collapsed into bed. The next morning I wound through spectacular gardens at Hosteria Mandala to the main lodge and sank into a chair on the wrap-around deck. Spread before me, as far as I could see in either direction, was a stretch of pristine golden beach dotted with precisely planted palms spaced perfectly for hammocks. I sighed contentedly and kicked off my shoes.

Beach in front of Mandala Hosteria, sweeps for miles in both directions

This sleepy little fishing village located in the center of Ecuador’s coastline is best known as a gateway to other attractions. A short ride to the north are beautiful Los Frailes Beach in Machililla National Park and the indigenous community of Agua Blanca. I visited both in one day, starting with Agua Blanca. Residents of this communal village are all descendants of the Manteña Culture that inhabited the area from 800 AC to 1532 A.C. They provide personal tours of a small museum that houses a collection of artifacts dating back to 3500 B.C., all of which were discovered in archeological digs around the area. After the museum, a half-hour walk through brittle forests and a bone-dry river bed led to an unexpected sulfur lagoon, the last remnant of an eroded volcanic caldera. Gratefully, I stripped down to my swimsuit and began spreading mud from the bottom of the spring on every square inch of exposed skin. The slate-colored clay dried quickly in the sun and I jumped in the warm water to wash it away.

Mud from bottom of sulfur lagoon is great for the skin

Later that afternoon, refreshed from my swim and sporting silky smooth, baby soft skin, my moto-taxi driver whisked me to Los Frailes Beach, part of the greater Machalilla National Park. At the end of a short sand path I mounted a low rise and a surveyed a perfect crescent of white sand. A lone sun umbrella, gleaming sea-foam green in the dazzling midday light, canted toward the ocean at the edge of the surf. I sank into the powdery sand and wriggled my toes, reveling in the feeling of having the exquisite beach all to myself.

Los Frailes Beach in Machalilla National Park

Another day I headed south to the tiny fishing commune of Salango and its small but impressive museum, the first in-situ museum in Ecuador. Its extraordinary collection of authentic pottery and artifacts tells the story of pre-Columbian peoples who inhabited what is today known as the Spondylus Route. As early as 3500 B.C., coastal inhabitants valued the Spondylus shell for its vibrant red color, diving to great depths to find the coveted mollusk. Initially used to craft elaborate necklaces and highly polished ornamental pieces, Spondylus eventually was as highly valued as gold is today. In addition to being great divers, the ancients of Salango were excellent navigators. Abundant sources of balsa wood and the cultivation of cotton allowed them to develop elaborate balsa wood rafts, in which they sailed from the southern tip of Chile up to present-day Acapulco, diffusing their new ideas and technologies to the diverse people with whom they came into contact and spreading the use of Spondylus as a currency.

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Posted in South America travel |

Tagged Agua Blanca, beach, blogsherpa, coast, cultural travel, culture, Ecuador, Los Frailes, Machalilla National Park, museums, pacific coast and lowlands, Puerto Lopez, Salango, Travel |

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Living Close to the Land in the Adirondack Mountains

Published September 30, 2011 | By Barbara Weibel

This entry is part 6 of 7 in the series Adirondack Park, NY

After two weeks in the Adirondacks of upstate New York I began to learn more about the culture of the area. Though the Adirondack Mountains are ancient, the human history within them is relatively young. It is unusual to meet second generation residents and third generation families are a rarity, so it was a privilege to meet Judy Damkoehler, a descendant of the men who built the Irondequoit Inn. “My great-grandfather and great-uncle Herbert first saw the Adirondacks in 1877. To celebrate Bert’s graduation from high school in New Jersey, they decided to walk to Montreal to visit my great-great-grandmother. Bert went on to college and married, but he never forgot this area.” When Bert finally convinced his buddies to visit the area they were so smitten that they immediately began buying up land. The present-day Lodge and Annex of Irondequoit Inn – originally old farmhouses in the village of Piseco Lake – were dragged up to the site on rollers by a team of oxen. Soon, the partners were welcoming guests and selling shares in the property. One hundred and twenty years later, many shares are still owned by descendants of the original investors.

Judy Damkoehlar, a descendant of the developers of Irondequoit Inn, began coming to the Inn in 1930

Damkoehler first came to the Inn in 1930 at the age of three. Piseco was an unincorporated rough and tumble lumbering town, full of bars and raucous men. “There was no electricity in those days and we ate fried sneaker soles for dinner – probably illegal venison,” she grinned. “By the time I was 10 or 11 I was allowed take the rowboat out on the lake alone.” During the Depression years she worked at the Inn. “We called ourselves ‘slaves’ and lived in the ‘slaves quarters’ (the annex). We waited tables, washed dishes, cleaned rooms…and met boys.” Damkoehler has traveled to South America, Iceland and Europe but her favorite place in the world is still Piseco Lake. “It gets in your blood,” she insists, adding that the next generation – her cousins – are now coming to the Inn every summer.

Can’t view the above YouTube video of the paddle making workshop at Adirondack Museum in Blue Mountain Lake? Click here.

Everywhere I went in the Adirondack Mountains I met people living close to the land. At the Adirondack Museum Caleb Davis was sponsoring a paddle-making workshop. Caleb made his first paddle by hand at the age of 11 and has run a paddle-making business each summer for the past 22 years. While it’s great fun, paddle making is also hard work; participants on the day I visited had sore arms and aching shoulders from working with wood planes and files. So why do they do it? “Making something themselves – I think that’s the thing people are missing more and more nowadays. It’s about being connected; working with your hands, your eyes…feeling things,” says Caleb. Certainly, that was motivation for Brian and Leia Johnson. “We’ve just gotten into paddling and we thought it would be kind of cool to have our own paddles. It’s a sense of pride to be able to say, ‘This is the one I made and I’m going to use it.’”

Can’t view the above YouTube video of the blacksmith shop at Great Camp Sagamore in the Adirondacks? Click here.

At Great Camp Sagamore, I found artisan David Woodward in the original blacksmith shop that served the Vanderbilt family back in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. In his long leather apron and protective ear muffs, he stoked the furnace to a temperature of 3,000 degrees, pulled a red-hot metal wedge out of the fire, and pounded it with a ball peen hammer to demonstrate the rustic ornamental ironwork that the rich owners of the camps coveted. Woodward, who attended the Brotman Forge Blacksmith School in Vermont, has turned his fascination with the art of blacksmithing into a successful career. When he’s not demonstrating at Sagamore, he is in his studio, Train Brook Forge, where he creates intricately detailed metal implements ranging from fireplace screens to cooking utensils.

Back at Irondequoit Inn for dinner, I was mulling over the unique ways in which Adirondackers had carved out existences in this challenging corner of the world when I turned over the Inn’s dinner menu and read the following: Continue reading →

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Posted in Northeast US travel |

Tagged Adirondack Park, blacksmith, blogsherpa, cultural travel, culture, farms, Great Camp Sagamore, Irondequoit Inn, museums, New York, new york state, NY, paddle making, the adirondacks, Travel, USA |

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Guanajuato, Mexico – Most Beautiful City in the World

Published May 4, 2010 | By Barbara Weibel

My first impression of Guanajuato was, “Wow, this city reminds me of Rome!” After two days of wandering around its pristine cobblestone streets, discovering one jaw-droppingly beautiful plaza and church after another, I was proclaiming it the most beautiful city in the world. By day five I was looking at apartments.

Guanajuato is a city that I could happily live in the rest of my life, and that is high praise from a vagabond like me. Aside from its astonishing colonial architecture, exquisitely landscaped plazas, and ideal weather, the city has a vibrancy unlike anything I have felt elsewhere in Mexico. This is partially due to the 20,000 students who attend the University of Guanajuato, located right in the city’s historic center; the university’s fine arts focus is the impetus behind many of the cultural seminars, workshops, and exhibits that occur throughout the year. But the vibrant energy of Guanajuato is also a result of its history.

Guanajuato University

Basilica de Nuestra Senora de Guanajuato

At night, crowds gather on the steps of the illuminated Teatro Juarez

It is said that in 1548, a muleteer named Rayas, who was camping in the hills around what is today the city of Guanajuato, found silver ore inside his bonfire. The land belonged to the New Spain Viceroyalty at that point and the King of Spain was quick to take note; by 1571 the city had been founded on the wealth of what would, for many centuries, be the richest mine in the world. Nouveau riche mine owners poured money into creating a city that would reflect their social standing, building theaters and mansions and funding churches that rivaled one another in opulence. Continue reading →

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Tagged Basilica, blogsherpa, cathedral, culture, Don Quijote, Guanajuato, jardin de la union, jardin reforma, Mercado Hidago, Mexico, mummies, museo de las momias, museums, northern central highlands, Pipila, plaza baratillo, plaza de la paz, plaza de san fernando, plazas, plazuela de san roque, teatro juarez, theaters, theatres, Travel, university |

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Zacatecas: Built from Silver but Sustained by Art and Culture

Published April 29, 2010 | By Barbara Weibel

The territory that today comprises the State of Zacatecas was originally inhabited by diverse ethnic groups who left important traces of their presence and cultural development, beginning with its name: Zacatecas is derived from the Nahuatl Indian word “zacate,” which means a place of abundant grass. The present day City of Zacatecas was founded in the sixteenth century when rich silver deposits were discovered in the area. Exploitation of the mines created a new class of aristocrats that rivaled those in Old Spain, and the newly wealthy filled the city center with distinguished colonial and Neo-Classic style buildings designed to reflect their importance. The Centro Historico (downtown, literally historic center) of Zacatecas is one of the best preserved historic cities on the American continent and since 1993, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Today, many of these exquisitely preserved buildings have been converted into museums, all of which are worth a visit. But with no less than nine major museums in the city center alone, there was no way I could possibly visit them all, so I selected two that seemed to be most highly recommended.

Stunning grounds of the Rafael Coronel Mask Museum

The Rafael Coronel Museo de Mascaras Mexicana (Mexican Mask Museum) is perhaps best known, as it is included on every list of top attractions in Zacatecas. In this case, the lists are right; this is one museum that should not be missed, if only to stroll through its amazing, lush grounds. Housed in the former San Francisco Convent, the museum boasts the largest collection of masks in all of Mexico. The main exhibit, “The Face of Mexico,” presents a large portion of the ten thousand authentic masks in the museum’s collection, many of which are still used today by indigenous tribes during festivals and traditional ceremonies. Other exhibits include puppets from the Rosette Aranda Company, pre-Columbian pots and vases, terracotta figurines from colonial Mexico, and other art displays from pre-Hispanic to contemporary times, but the masks are the stars.

Devil masks, part of the 10,000 masks in the collection of Rafael Coronel Mask Museum

Continue reading →

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Posted in Mexico travel |

Tagged Art, blogsherpa, crafts, culture, handicrafts, huichol, indian, masks, Mexico, Museo de Arte Huichol, museums, northern central highlands, peyote, Rafael Coronel Museo de Mascaras Mexicana, Travel, Zacatecano de Cultura, Zacatecas |

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From Traitor to Nobel Laureate – the Work of Jane Addams is Chronicled at Chicago’s Historic Hull House Museum

Published February 7, 2010 | By Barbara Weibel

Jane Addams, photo courtesy of University of Illinois

Jane Addams attracted national attention when, with with her friend Ellen G. Starr, she founded Chicago’s Hull House in 1889. The facility was located on the city’s near west side, in a densely urban neighborhood populated primarily by struggling immigrants. Modeled after the settlement houses in London, the mission of Hull House was to assist immigrants by providing a center for a civic and social life, improve the quality of education, and to investigate and improve the conditions in the industrial districts of Chicago.

Hull House provided kindergarten and day care facilities for the children of working mothers; an employment bureau; an art gallery; libraries; English and citizenship classes; and theater, music and art classes. By virtue of its efforts, the Illinois Legislature enacted protective legislation for women and children, setting the stage for passage of a Federal child labor law in 1916. As her notoriety grew, Addams was appointed to Chicago’s Board of Education, helped to found the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy, and led investigations on midwifery, narcotics consumption, milk supplies, and sanitary conditions in Chicago. Yet despite her laudable work, when Addams opposed the country’s entry into World War One, she was branded a traitor by the press and expelled from the Daughters of the American Revolution. Fortunately, history treated Addams with more respect; fourteen years later she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her humanitarian work and pacifist ideals.

Jane Addams Hull House Museum historical landmark

Of the 13 buildings that once comprised the Hull House complex, only the original home and adjacent dining hall escaped the wrecking ball when a six square block area was razed to make way for the Continue reading →

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Tagged architecture, blogsherpa, Chicago, culture, historic, Hull House, Illinois, Jane Addams, museums, national historic landmarks, settlement houses, Travel, UIC, University of Illinois at Chicago, USA |

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Sarasota’s Mable and John Ringling Museum – An Unlikely Melding of Fine Art and Circus Memorabilia

Published July 19, 2009 | By Barbara Weibel

In the world of museums it would seem unlikely if not downright preposterous to find circus artifacts mingled with fine art, yet that is precisely what visitors find at the John and Mabel Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, Florida. With a name like Ringling, the circus connection is not surprising – the benefactors of the museum are the famed couple who owned and operated the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus for many years. What does surprise is the impressive collection of European, Asian and American paintings and sculptures.

One of numerous galleries displaying the impressive collection of Baroque paintings amassed by John and Mabel Ringling

With the great fortune amassed through their circus, John and Mabel Ringling traveled extensively throughout Europe. In Italy, especially, they developed a passion for fine art, which led to John becoming a regular at New York and London art auctions during the 1920′s. He purchased masterpieces by Rubens, Titian, Velazquez, Hals, Van Dyck, and Gainesborough, as well as a collection of Cypriot, Greek and Roman antiquities from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. By 1931, Ringling had built a museum designed after the Renaissance and Baroque palaces and museums of Italy to house their ever-growing collection.

"The Triumph of Divine Love," one of eleven enormous canvases painted by Peter Paul Rubens for his series "The Triumph of the Eucharist"

Immediately inside the front doors of the museum hang five enormous paintings by Peter Paul Rubens from the series titled The Triumph of the Eucharist. At a time when the Catholic Church was losing membership to the newer Protestant denomination, Isabella Clara Eugenia, a devout Catholic and daughter of King Philip II of Spain, commissioned Rubens to paint a set of 11 scenes depicting the Catholic celebration of Eucharist or Mass. The paintings were produced for weavers of the day, who used them as templates to create tapestries that hung on the walls of royal palaces and homes of the wealthy. After Eugenia’s death in 1633, the paintings were dispersed throughout Europe. Four of the originals were destroyed in a fire, two eventually landed in the Louvre Museum in Paris; the remaining five were purchased by the Ringlings in 1926, becoming the only large-scale painting cycle by Rubens outside of Europe. Continue reading →