More up to date blog http://stephskiba.blogspot.com/

As you can tell it has been a challenge for me to keep my blog up to date. Try as I might I never seem to have enough time or internet service to get things updated as often as I would like. One of my travel companions has been much more successful. I am going to give you the link to Stephanie's blog. It will not only give you another prospective of this Mexican adventure, she is much more up to date. I will continue to up load new entries as I can and hopefully will get caught up at some point.

http://stephskiba.blogspot.com/

Bacel/ Panama Hats July 5

On our way to the town of Campeche we stopped off in a small town totally devoted to the weaving of Panama hats. Becal is a small very rustic town. Jacques procured us some local transportation. These three wheel tricycles are used by all the locals to get from one place to another. The whole round trip ride cost us each 10 pecos about a $1.oo. We stopped and visited a gentleman's home and workshop. He had been weaving hats for over 50 years. He gave us a demonstration of how the plant fibers are separated with a needle to make the long fiber threads used to weave the hats. The actual weaving takes place down inside of a cave where the dampness helps to keep the fibers nice and flexible. Up to 10 people would sit down in his small underground cave and weave at the same time. The geography of this part of Mexico makes the ground like Swiss Cheese so that almost all houses come with their own weaving cave. He explained the different grades of woven hats. A true Panama hat takes around 3 weeks to weave and uses only the thinnest finest fibers. Those hats are in the $350.00 price range. Sadly I was unable to purchase any hats. The ones he had for sale that day were either to small or looked really bad on me.

Sculpture of Panama hats in the town plaza.

Bacel's church

Local transportation we took to the hat factory.

The plants on the left are the type used to gather the fibers to make Panama hats

This shows how a needle is used to separate the fibers on each leaf.

A partially woven hat-this is about 1 1/2 weeks worth of work.

We are down inside a cave and this gentleman is demonstrating how to weave a hat. They sit for hours and hours down inside these damp dark caves everyday.