The Mountain’s Path

The radio is blaring. The driver taps his fingers. Its fast pace and overwhelming beats are just part of the momentum of it all. The less you pay the louder it is. This is the rule in Mexico.

The mountain’s path is snaking and sprawling, winding and binding us to its motion. I sit in the back seat of the cab, which is covered in layers of colourful fabrics. Reds, pinks, teal and orange. The sun screeches through the open windows. The engine screams on every inclines, even over the Latino beats. The driver is all business. A bus could never navigate these tight turns, but he speeds fearlessly through the scrawny dirt tracks. Static electricity builds up in the rugs as my body moves with the curves of the road.

The driver suddenly speaks rapid Spanish, and I take a second to realise it’s directed at me. He waves his hand, annoyed. He asks, in English this time, if I know much about the waterfalls we are heading to. I say ‘a little’, in Spanish. He nods. The air is dense with heat. Outside, the mountain is dry but teeming with desert plants. Waterfalls seem unimaginable.

We make a sudden jolting stop. A herd of cattle is walking towards us. The driver yells out his window. A voice in the distance replies. The answer is clearly not satisfactory. On the narrow track the cattle can’t be shooed off the road. We wait as they pass. The driver taps his fingers. We start to talk. Soon we are moving, but he keeps one hand on the steering wheel, and twists his head around like an owl, showing me his notebook. The pages are filled with words he had learned: the English pages at the front, then German, French, Serbian… each separated by blank pages, for all that’s still to learn. Each handwritten in painstaking, beautiful lettering.

When we arrive at the end of the road he gestures his hand vaguely, but there’s only one path to follow. My shoes are soon covered in pale yellow dust. The impossible exists at the end of the road, pristine and ethereal pools of blue. The less you pay the louder it is. These rules don’t exist in nature, and the waterfalls are loud and thriving in constant motion. Unexpected road sharing, unexpected word sharing, unexpected water appears. Music and momentum, it is all part of the ride, part of the mountain’s path.