Saturday, August 04, 2007


As a little boy in Buenos Aires, living near the Coghlan train station I always anticipated with great pleasure going to school on Tuesdays (I believe). My mother and I would walk to the station to take the electric train to Belgrano R where my mother taught at the Colegio Americano and I would walk the two extra blocks to the American Grammar School. Tuesday was special since that was the day the new Aventuras del Pato Donald would appear. There are three particular issues that remain in my memory (and of course I cannot remember their titles in Spanish).

Secret of the Incas

The Prize of Pizarro (which preceded by many years the rolling balls of Raiders of the Lost Ark).

The Seven Cities of Cibola

These historietas were dark and scary and this is where I became fascinated by lost civilizations, the Incas, the Aztecs and the mysterious fading away of the Mayans. I have never lost this fascination and every time I go to Mexico, or Peru, I feel the pull of the ruins. When I saw the beautiful Yucatecan women, some with receding foreheads and angular noses wearing their flowered uipiles they seemed to be visitors from that exciting past.

But Rebecca, at the almost age of 10 has yet to feel that pull. She is more inclined to get excited by bugs (bats), snakes, birds, horses, fish and any fauna you can think of. While I was admiring the pink stone of Uxmal Rebecca was busy running after huge iguanas, trying to record them on her pink Samsung.



And this she did. The picture here she took on a pile of rubble right next to the Palace of the Governors. But she did manage to almost smile for me by the courtyard of the nuns.



In Chichén Itzá between the terrible humid heat and the constant talking (it was interesting ) of our guide Juan Jara, Rebecca was complaining and almost in tears as you can see here by El Caracol. She was in her element posing by the mare, Cilindrina at the Cenotes of Cusamá.