I came back to the States on the 19th of December.
Getting Around
At first glance you're tempted to think that travel in Mexico is all about busses and taxes. There is more to it than that. In fact, the freeway system is alive with a form of hitchhiking-all you need to do is stay by the side of the road and stick your thumb up or give some sort of visual signal that you want a ride.You need to know where you're going, and it helps to know if your destination is on the main highway or a ways off the main highway. When I was in San Jose I needed to get back to Pochutla first and then over to Huatulco because none of the comunetas went from San Jose to Huatulco.
The big bus company in Mexico is ADO. There motto is siempre primera. Always first. They are better than any Greyhound, mainly because the bus travel in Mexico is the main way to get to and from the main cities. You can recline in your seat, watch movies, you have light and air controls, these buses are great. The drivers are sensible too, but if you are traveling in the mountain regions the roads are just curves back and forth and it may take a lot of fatigue before you can simply shut your eyes and fall asleep.
Not all of the ADO stations accept credit cards but the newer ones do, for instance the Huatulco ADO accepts credit cards (tarjeta de credito…desculpeme, aceptan tarjeta de credito?)
If you become ingratiated into the community you will learn that people simply wait for one of their friends or relatives to go somewhere. If so and so is going to Oaxaca, you will tag along with them if you want to go to Oaxaca or somewhere in between.
Of course, a lot of travel is accomplished by walking. Especially if you don't feel like wasting money on taxis. Most of the time the stuff you want to get to is pretty close by. And if while you're walking you decide you don't want to walk anymore, stick your arm out and grab a ride from someone.
As far as prices, you can ask someone up front what they are going to want for a ride by asking "cuanto cuesta." Or just expect that the person is not going to rip you off. I usually ask up front but a few times I didn't. Once I was expecting to pay 20 pesos and was only charged 5. Test your luck!
One thing you'll notice on the busses is that even on the longer trips, 10 hours plus, many people do not use the bathroom. I found this interesting so on my way back to Huatulco from San Cristobal, I decided that I wouldn't use the bathroom. So I didn't drink any water. I was on the bus for 15 hours that day with a one hour wait between a five hour ride and then a 10 hour ride. I went to the bathroom twice that day-in the morning and while I waited for my next ride. I didn't leave my seat for the duration of the 10+ hour bus ride back to Huatulco.
I felt a little creaky and stiff getting up in Huatulco, but I was used to that feeling because I had about 50 hours of bus riding under my belt at that point (in under a week). When I got off the bus I opened my backpack and sipped some water. I had read somewhere that when you are dehydrated you don't just slam water, you nurse it. So I took a few nourishing sips. "Taxi! Taxi!" I glanced over to see about four taxi drivers standing near me.
"No," I replied.
"Taxi, Taxxxxxiiiiiii, Taaaaxxxxxxxxxxiiiiiii," a persistent and whiny driver said.
I looked at him and paused. I'm sure my hair was messy and I know I was dirty because I had been rained on all day and was walking around in the mud. I also hadn't moved much and was dehydrated and hungry. He looked at me imploringly, seemingly like a small child who wanted his ball back.
"Voy a caminar." (I'm going to walk.)
The driver shut up immediately and backed away from me. I looked at him some more, then grabbed my bag and walked away. It took me about five minutes to realize that my simple statement held the power of fasting and deprivation. Deprivation develops power!
Family Life
One of the best ways to describe family life is to talk about the experience I had in Puerto Escondido. Here we met tres vinos-three wines, an affectionate nickname for one of my buddy's friends who drank too much. We picked him up near his business and aside from calling everyone compradre right away, he handed me a beer.He was into the drinking thing so we found a cheap bar, a bar with beers that were around a buck each. Three beers and a coke were under 50 pesos, which is under five dollars. We hung around here for several round then about midnight went back to Compadre's Casa. The house was dark when we entered but as soon as we were heard to have come in the mom and two daughters aroused themselves and began working to prepare food. The men sat at the table and bullshitted…and consumed more tequila.
I was informed their daughter was turning 15 soon which was a good age for marriage. I should come back for the quincianera I was told. It was October 18. Rosy shook my hand and smiled shyly. In the morning she greeted me with the most American sounding "Good morning" I had heard all trip.
Any time the father wanted to sit down, the younger boy who was with us would relinquish his seat if there were no others. And if people were standing around talking, someone would grab some plastic seats and bring them so everyone could sit and talk. Refreshments would come shortly thereafter. Even if you were not thirsty, you would accept what was offered you. I turned down a beer and was told, "In America you can do that, but not here." Thus, por que no (why not?) became a popular phrase.
The woman would always prepare the meal. Occasionally if the man were particularly hungry, he would say "rapido, rapido!" to encourage a little hurry on the part of the women.
Another component of Mexican life is that if you ask a question about a city, practically any city, you will get this response, "Oh yeah, I know that city, I have an uncle there." Or some other family member. Everyone I met was connected!
Getting Business Done
My first two days in Mexico were spent trying to help my friend fix his jet ski. To accomplish this we first had to have a mechanic who worked down by the beach take the engine out. He was busy when we arrived so we sat and waited until he could help us out. Whenever you wait, you always search for la sombra (the shade) because the sun is hot!Once the motor was removed we put it in the car and headed over to another mechanic. He disassembled the motor further and made a list of exactly what was needed to fix it. He said how much he would charge and then told us to get the parts so he could do the work. Then we went to the Yamaha store and got the necessary parts-first we got the cost then we got more money from the bank and went back to the store to buy the parts.
Once we had the parts we went back to the mechanic and gave him the parts and negotiated a time when we would be able to pick up the engine. Of course there was some haggling with the price to get a better deal. La cuenta de amigo (the bill of a friend) as one person from Spain that I met would call it.
The following day we returned to retrieve the motor and then went to the beach where the first mechanic was and he began working on putting the motor back in the jet ski. At this time we discovered another piece that was broken from the disassembly. It would need to be welded. There was also another piece that the engine rested on that needed to get fixed.
We went back to the Yamaha store to buy the part then found a Taller (workshop) where they did welding. I was offered a beer here which I politely turned down saying that I was going to exercise later. I felt bad turning it down, but hey. They did the welding here, stopping all the other work they had been doing in the process, and then charged us some pesos. The cost was not discussed until after the work had been done.
Finally all the components had been put together and we returned to the beach again and gave the mechanic everything he needed and the next day the jet ski was ready for business, three days later.
Waiting. Waiting. And more waiting. Changes in Perception.
Using the bus system you get used to waiting. You know that a certain ride is going to take about 10 hours. You have three hours to kill before the ride. You have no money. You haven't had much food. Well, might as well have a seat and wait for the bus.A joke with my friends became tiempo Mexicano o tiempo Americano? (Mexican or American time.) My friend would take me to the beach. Ok, see you in four hours. Waiting. You need a ride back. You wait by the side of the road. When is a ride going to come? Quien sabe? Who knows?
You have to go to the bathroom. There are no bathrooms around. You wait. Then you get an opportunity and bam, there is no hesitation.
Por que no? Why not? When you go to a foreign country and aren't proficient in the language and want experiences, you learn to just take whatever gets thrown at you. So por que no was the phrase I uttered so much that my friends started saying it too. Hey do you want to go to a party this Friday night? Por que no?
A lot of times, do the openness of experience I wanted to have, something would come up in the meantime and I would find myself across the country when I had made obligations. I found some pretty understanding people with regards to this. It really didn't seem to matter. This was either because I was a foreigner or people were expected to change their minds or circumstances changed so frequently that you just could never really know if you would be able to do something when you said you would.
It leads to being very flexible. One night I wanted to take a girl out to dinner. We agreed on 7 pm. Naturally, I thought at 7pm I would pick her up and we would immediately go to dinner. Instead I found out we were first going to take her mom to find a mechanic for their washing machine. Then she wanted to say hi to some friends she had met in Chiapas. I was getting frustrated, but then Mexican Charm took over. As we are talking to her friends one of the family members brings out some chairs and refreshments. You feel totally at home. I also liked that you could just go over to someone's home on a whim and expect such hospitality. They had no idea we were coming over, or that there would be company, but it didn't matter. The whole house came out to chat. Finally at 9:30 we were able to have some dinner.
I had no job or nothing to really do in Mexico besides whatever I felt like so if I wanted to sleep, I would sleep. It didn't matter what time of day. I didn't need to look at the time and usually when I did it was much later than I had suspected. If I had a bunch of coffee at night, I would just sleep later the next day. If I got two hours of sleep one night, the next I would get 12. This mental flexibility actually increased my physical flexibility.
My greatest test of time was two days on a boat on a fishing trip. I had never gone fishing before but figured por que no and went. It was 8 hours per day. Unfortunately, as we were with Tres Vinos, there was a lot of drinking the night before and not a lot of sleep. Being hungover and tired and bored on a boat facing a language barrier was probably the greatest test of my mental fortitude. At times I stood holding on the a pole and imagined I was an explorer seeing land for the first time in months. At other times I sang songs to myself. I conversed a little bit with the people on the boat. But mainly I just sat and looked and visualized returning to land and setting my feet into the sand. The third day I couldn't mentally or physically take sitting on the boat and being thus confined. So I explored Puerto Escondido.
I had no idea where I was going but I was open to anything so I just walked. Finally a lady pulled over and in perfect English asked me, "What are you looking for?"
"I don't know."
"Well, if you go up to the end of the road, there is a really cool market. And after that you can check out the beach. The pussy is great."
At the times when I was completely at a loss for what to do someone would always come up to me and give me the perfect thing to do at the perfect time. It was how I met Alejandro and went to San Cristobal de Las Casas and Pelenque, it was how I met a tour guide and went to San Jose del Pacifico and it was how I wound up at a quincianera and how I found myself in the back of a truck going to Pochutla. At times it was incredibly painful and the lack of money and the sheer boredom of waiting for something to happen was almost unbearable. But the escape from corporate America and the ability to write whenever I felt like, sleep whenever I felt like, and learn things about an amazing culture always kept me optimistic. An occasional bottle of Rum also did the trick and on a few occasions I sat outside a park sipping a rum and coke watching the sun set and listening to the birds and observing the world around me.
I'm Here Now What?
Travelers from Europe were the most prepared. They had books of all the places to visit and they had a plan. I had no such plan and if something sounded interesting, I figured, por que no? So when I was in San Cristobal, the ruins of Pelenque sounded pretty cool so I decided to go. I had no idea where it was but I asked the dude who ran the hostel where I should go, what bus to take, how much I should pay and before I knew it I was on a bus heading to Pelenque. When I arrived it was about 9 pm and I didn't know anything about the town. I only knew that I wanted some food and needed a hotel.In Pelenque this was accomplished easily, but in San Jose it was a little more difficult. In San Jose, there are only a few places you can stay. And at night, it is almost impossible to see and the town gets pretty damn cold. I found out that the cabins that I had heard about would require a ten minute walk on the highway (carreterra). I was cursing my blonde hair on this walk which seemed to take forever. I could see nothing and the sound of trucks and cars seemed threatening. I got to the cabins and learned that they were 300 pesos. I had no choice and was wondering if I was getting ripped off. I wasn't, I later learned, but they totally had me by the balls!
People and Places
People make the place. I met some pretty interesting people in Mexico.One person who I am grateful to have met is Alejandro. I was bored one night sitting in La Plaza Principal. It's the dilemma of travel by the seat of your pants. Sometimes you have to wait for something to happen, or you want to wait for something to happen to see what you get. Well Alejandro and Yoana came up to me and started talking. Alejandro spoke English so I knew better what was going on.
I was receptive and sensing this, he asked if they could sit down. Of course I told them. After about five minutes of talk-can't get luggage, have no money, want to go to San Cristobal, what is near San Cristobal?, ruins-I said, alright, let's go! So we got some dinner and I bought them bus tickets.
We also got some water and a bottle of tequila for the 10 hour journey on the trusty ADO bus system. We walked to the bus station and then saw some tourists approaching. Alejandro said, I bet they are going to San Cristobal. So I asked them, "Hey where are you going?"
San Cristobal!
We got to San Cristobal early in the morning. It was chilly and I was shaky from drinking and dehydration and travel. We dropped off the German folks we met at a hostel that cost 5 dollars per night. Then Alejandro and Yoana and I went to the market and had some food. Alejandro hooked up with some of his friends and they gave him some things to sell at the market. (He could work wherever he wanted, just get some stuff to sell and walk to a market.) I walked around town for a little bit then at noon we met up with the Germans again and went to a nearby town that I forgot the name of. I was hurting pretty bad at this point from the night before on the bus with our friend tequila and there wasn't much I could do to alleviate it because I was low on cash and had to pay for transportation to the town.
It was a small town that spoke mainly another language. The people in this area were much shorter than the other Mexicans and it was obvious that the town was heavily influenced from proximity to Guatemala and at one point had actually been part of Guatemala. Alejandro, Yoana and the German travelers drank some tequila type liquor while I laid with my eyes closed in a hammock trying to regain myself. It wasn't until we returned to the hostel and I had about 3 hours of sleep that I finally felt human again. I got some food and then we sat and talked in the hostel with other travelers.
People from Denmark, Canada, Germany, the US (me), and Mexico. It was an interesting night and I got a lot of perspective. The lady from Canada owned a farm and people came through and worked on the farm for a week, a month, whatever, and she provided room and board and food in exchange for the labor. She only made $534 per month she told me, but had found a way to keep expenses low. The Germans were traveling on a round the world ticket. They had lost some money in Guadalajara getting ripped off. The people from Denmark we hitting more locations in Mexico.
At one point there was a documentary about Oaxaca and the violence contained therein. It was pretty wild, especially since I began to realize that every time I saw the TV on there were some aspects of violence. On my later bus journeys, every movie I saw contained a lot of violence. I was fascinated by the fascination with violence and suffering.
Alejandro had traveled around a lot. He had just gotten back from England where he was married. He told us he had six kids and that he had lived in several different countries. It wasn't unbelievable because everywhere we went he knew someone and always knew his way around. And he knew a lot about the world in general. He was a great tour guide. I was able to trust him right away, even though the paranoid side of myself kept waiting for him to take advantage of me or ask for more money but he never did.
I didn't get a chance to say good bye because I was heading to Palenque and he was already at the market which was far away from the bus station I was going to. I was fatigued from lack of food, too much drink, and a pervading sense of lack of money coupled with a desire to not have to work.
Palenque
Palenque's bus ride was about 6 hours from San Cristobal. At times, the roads were down to one lane due to erosion and landslides. The TV on the bus kept flickering on and off as the bus lurched up and down over large bumps in the road. I saw some people running with flames slowing traffic and had no idea what it was all about. A man I had met at the bus terminal who told me about 20 times he was ex-Military and was going to Ocosingo finally decided to write me a letter and ask me for 100 pesos. I was waiting for this. I couldn't give him any money-had I given him money, I would have been stuck in San Cristobal because the ADO station didn't accept credit cards.I looked for hotels as soon as I was in Palenque and found one for 100 pesos. It had a warm shower! It was my first warm shower in Mexico. I took two! So much than showering with a bucket as I did in Puerto Escondidio. In the morning I looked for transportation to the ruins. It was the stand by the side of the road and wait deal. I couldn't handle that so I looked for transportation and paid the price-100 pesos. The Colectivo on the way back cost only 10 pesos. Had I been more patient I would have saved 90 pesos.
To say the ruins at Pelenque are beautiful is an understatement. The natural area surrounding the ruins is breathtaking jungle with waterfalls and streams. I learned quite a bit but also realized how similar they were to us. It was disappointing to learn they had the same wars (only during the non-growing seasons which I thought was interesting) and the same class structure. In fact, in their history you really can't find much out about the common man, the history is all about the wealthy. Another thing reminiscent of our culture, history is written by the winners. Our information is always coming from one source. Even at Palenque.
After seeing the ruins I found a nice restaurant and sat down for a much deserved cup of coffee and sandwich. It was the only food I would have all day. We drove back to town and one of the more fun aspects of the Mexican culture is the appreciation of feminine beauty, which can sometimes be considered condescending to American eyes. So as we passed a beautiful Mexican woman, the driver honked. I couldn't resist saying, "Hola, me quieres?" Which is basically hi do you love me? This pleasantly surprised the men in the car and they got quite a chuckle.
After the ride back to town I found the bus station and left immediately. My money was dwindling and I could only spend it on transportation. Again, no credit cards here which was problematic. A big mistake not to have an ATM card, but it probably kept me from spending more money.
The bus ride took me back to San Cristobal (the best way to get back to Huatulco) and then in San Cristobal, I waited a cold two hours for the bus back to Huatulco.
Everything with a power cord is expensive in Mexico so even in the colder areas there was no heat. You just bundled up. I had some warm clothes, but not enough for sitting in the cold for so long. I had a cup of coffee to warm up a little bit. I was cold, hungry and dehydrated and ready to sit on a bus for about 10 or 11 hours. It was in that state that I met the taxi driver I mentioned earlier.
The heat of Huatulco was welcome. But as soon as I got back I wanted to leave again. The tour guide had told me about San Jose and I decided that was the place to go. After two days in Huatulco I got transport to San Jose.
San Jose
It was an interesting ride to San Jose because we ventured off the nicely paved highway onto this dirt road that took us through a mountain pass. At times there were about six inches to spare before the earth dropped off hundreds of feet. It didn't bother me because we were going slow and I always have an assumption that the driver has no desire to kill himself. I met a man who was going to Oaxaca and we talked for a while and I realized my Spanish was improving. Travel seemed to help, especially the movies on the busses and just hearing different accents and being forced to use it more in situations where if you don't you basically drown and don't get anything you need.It was night when I got to San Jose and I found a restaurant to get some food at. I learned all about the lodging and everything I needed to know. I then spent one of the most cold and windy nights in my life buried under the covers and watching CNN in English and remembering that the world was still fucked up.
In the morning the temperature rose quickly and the sun was hot and I spent a great portion of time admiring the beauty. It was so beautiful that I told some friends back in Huatulco they had to come so I ended up in San Jose twice.
On the second time there I met a man from Italy and he was sitting in his cabin with the door open just totally open to the world, or so it seemed. He was mellow, probably from years of smoking dope. He told me the extent to which he went through to prepare it. It was like a celebration.
Of course, marijuana is the bane of many people here in the United States, many people who have no idea about anything about it accept what they have been told by popular culture, media and their parents and so they hate it because they have been told to. Then you have people who are raging alcoholics who destroy families and themselves. Alcohol is pretty cool in the US, you can talk about it and people won't give you dirty looks, usually, unless they are very religious and then they are subject to the mind control of whatever particular religion they think is the king of all the other world religions.
San Jose is so unequivocally beautiful you don't need any substance at all to help you appreciate it. At night the stars stick out so bright that you feel as though you could grab hold of them. The sunset was amazing as a planet had wedged itself in between earth's view of the sun and was plainly visible as the twilight waned and night took over. Words can only do so much, the pictures tell the tale.
In the morning a wait by the side of the road quickly manifested a vehicle to Pochutla for 60 pesos and we were on the way back to Huatulco. Unlike the last time in the bus back to Huatulco, there was no Christian man who had the solution to everyone's problems as long as he could have a few pesos. It was quite a pleasure. The more areas I went the more I saw that one person, one system, enclosed and dry and unchanging couldn't possibly contain the answers, especially when there is so much corruption and mistakes in the time from the inception to the time of now when people are reading these manuscripts using language and symbols hundreds and thousands of years changed.
As an aside, the man on the bus could have been less annoying had he perfected his speech to the point where spit didn't fly from his mouth upon pronunciation of certain sounds.
Finally after the second visit to San Jose, Huatulco really started to feel like home and I settled in there and glanced at the calendar and realized I was heading back to Wisconsin for the holidays in a few short days. I walked to the beach and met my friend who I originally met on the bus ride to San Jose, I went to a quincianera, and I cleaned up my living quarters.
I had brought 3 bags with me to Mexico and had only used a fraction of what I had brought. I had no need for the rest. I only used a small backpack on my trips and found that two pairs of underwear and a pair of pants some socks and a few shirts, books, and notebooks were all I needed. This feat neatly into a bag that is reminiscent of the ones people from the ages of 5 to about 22 use in this country when they are in the process of getting educated. I could argue that the few trips I took in Mexico over the course of the month were far more education than the math and reading and writing that was available in school.
Photo Stories