hot child in the city

That I was. This weekend I missed the bus to la Sierra Norte for the hiking expedition. It was an 8AM bus, so I don't even know why I tried. Instead, I had a rather relaxing weekend in Oaxaca city, complete with a temescal.

When I was in Oaxaca in December, I had helped lay the foundation of a temescal in Teotitlan del Valle, but I really had no idea what it was. They just kept saying it was something of a sauna used for Aztec ritual ceremonies. Sunday, Nacho, who has been trying to get us to help promote his temescal as a tourist experience in Oaxaca, took Kate and I on an excursion to test it out.
Nacho, his wife Blanca, his three kids Kayla (7), Hoseal (5), and Osmar (3) came to pick Kate and I up in a hot wired Mustang. For reasons unknown to us, Nacho did not own keys to this Mustang, but used a pocket knife to start the thing. He also invited the duenos of the apartment complex and their ENTIRE family - 7 total. The duenos family, Kate, Kayla and I all piled into the back of the duenos' old pick up truck - 3 riding pretty in front and 7 of us hanging on for dear life in the truck's bed.

It was about 30 minutes outside of the city to this temescal. The environment wasn't that great - it was randomly situated on the side of the "highway" in the middle of nowhere. But the temescal itself was made of nice stone and there was space enough to do our pre-temescal business.
I had no idea what I was in for. The point of the temescal as explained by Nacho, was to cleanse the entire self - body, mind, and spirit. The temescal is basically a domed sauna made of stone. The whole thing went something like this:

• An hour of stretching/yoga/chanting/praying/painting your face with a mud mask/spraying yourself with some herbalwater
• Strip down to your skivvies
• Throw a piece of wax on to burning rocks, say "omateo" (no idea how to spell it...it's a náhuatl word that I was told means "welcome" or something along those lines), and go into the temescal
• Then comes the throwing of water onto the hot rocks until it gets almost unbearable
• There is chanting, praying, lashing with herb bouquets (to help with circulation), more chanting, more praying, more lashing, rinse, repeat for 30 minutes
  
• Finally there is pineapple and hot herbal tea (probably the last thing I really wanted to eat/drink in a 110 degree room, covered in my own sweat, and herb leaves, but it was part of the process)
• Leaving the temescal, you are immediately sprayed with some heirbal water of some sort to help cleanse your body further

And then it's over and you eat a lot of delicious food.

The whole thing was intense and a little uncomfortable at the time, but I did feel really good after. Plus, I liked hanging with a family for the day(even if it wasn't mine). More pics on Flickr.

Paz y amor.