No sooner had we arrived in the city of Oaxaca and checked into our hotel, than I heard intriguing music drifting down the street. I investigated and found this:

You got it. A bagpiper. He was pacing in that slow, solemn manner bagpipers use at memorials or wakes.

I felt mightily disoriented. Why was a bagpiper playing in front of a 17th-century Mexican church door?

He wasn't looking for donations. No tin cup, no hat, no open bagpipe case salted with a few coins and a half-dozen self-produced cds. No playing to the audience—he ignored us all. He was just playing for the hell of it.

He's a Scot, through and through. The shaggy beard, rumpled hair, gray woolen shirt, gloomy expression—this guy is straight off the moors. He's a quintessential piper: long thin fingers held straight, cheeks reddened from blowing, bag firmly pressed with his left arm, the noter gripped in the corner of his mouth. He's bringing a little bit of Scotland to Mexico: two places that couldn't be more different.

What was that tune he was playing? Ceilito Lindo.