We laugh when people wink and say we get to travel for free. It's true, Chiripa buying trips to Mexico are a business expense. In order to help you, the reader, understand what happens on these trips I'm going to follow the itinerary of my partner Beth who is traveling with JM and KZ right now.
The goal of these trips is to find great Mexican crafts that we can import and share with our customers, both in our brick and mortar shop and online. The beauty of the transactions is in the relationships we build with the artisans. In the next few days I will follow their trip and explain where they are and who they might be visiting on any given day. Real communication from them, as it relates to artisan crafts, will be shared. They aren't traveling with a computer, so, contact will be sporadic, at best.
Today is Tuesday, Aug. 4. I'm writing from Madison, Wisconsin.
I got up at 1:35 a.m. to be able to pick up Beth and crew at her house at 2 a.m. so that they could meet the 2:20 a.m. VanGalder bus at the UW Memorial union. This would put them at O'Hare around 6 a.m. for their flight to Mexico City at 7:45 a.m. They would arrive in Mexico around 11:45 a.m. and catch an airport bus to Puebla. (I think that's about a two hour ride.)
They will stay in downtown Puebla (I'm not sure which hotel) and hit the Artisan Market where they will visit with Miguel at Casa de las Artesanias.
Miguel Parades, his wife Lilia Cruz Ruiz, and their son Daniel have a workshop that makes skeleton figures and nichos with little skeleton scenes. These are very popular at Chiripa. We have requests for larger figures. We're also hoping that Miguel has some Chirstmas ornaments in the works. Whatever Chiripa purchases will probably be neatly boxed and will be carried on to Oaxaca where it will be consolidated with the Oaxacan purchases. (More on that later.)
B, JM, and KZ will have a nice dinner and turn in early, I'm sure. It's been a long travel day! And it's only day 1.
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