In and Out of Culture Corner: Oaxaca
MEXICO | Monday, 4 August 2008 | Views [903]
Well, unfortunately during our first few days spent in Puerto Escondido, I learned that anger is contagious when I had that particularly memorable encounter with a very tangible breed of anger. But I'm glad to report that the latter half of our week in Puerto showed me that kindness is equally infectious and luckily things picked up for us at the tail end of our time spent at the beach: I discovered the joy that is RENT (thanks to our gay neighbour Juan's fine taste in musicals and his being kind enough to lend us some movies for the week) and that Super Chafa provides the town with at least one good product - goat cheese; we visited old friends and made new ones. Between the intense relaxing that was required of us, I took care of such domesticities as shaving doors, touching up filled-in holes with paint, paying bills, and killing giant ants who infested the place as soon as they sensed a food presence in the vicinity.
One of the dateless days during the week, we arranged to meet up with Gerald and Yolani. Gerald is the newly-inaugurated President of the Rotary Club of Puerto Escondido and came to know our family through my Grandad, who, along with my Granny, has been a frequent visitor to this palm-tree-lined paradise. Somewhere in the years that they've been visiting, my Grandad attended Rotary meetings, forming a fellowship with the members of the Puerto club, and initiated an international project to be carried out between the two far-flung clubs. So for some 4 years now, the Ladysmith Rotary Club has been collecting wheelchairs and walkers and sending them to the Puerto Club who then distributes and donates them to people in need. When they first met, German Gerald was not the President but since he could speak English he and Grandad naturally gravitated towards one another and have been in contact ever since. SO whenever anyone from the family makes their way to the sunny shores of Mexico, we make sure to catch up with Gerald and his wife Yolani just to keep the connection open and see how the hand-overs are going with the wheelchairs. Kristen, being the good sport she is, was up for a bottle wine with people she didn't know and so we went and visited Gerald, Yolani, and their dog, Chocolate, one hot afternoon.
I was wondering how German Gerald ended up in Mexico and thus began quite the conversation. Apparently Yolani had been visiting Germany at some point, they met, Gerald was bored in Germany and decided to move to Mexico. He had visited Puerto Escondido once before and based on this visit, simply decided to move there with his wife. Though a qualified architect, Gerald ended up building a successful business making wood furniture when he discovered how difficult it was to find what he wanted in what was, at the time, a small town with limited options. The business came to a halt when laws were created to protect the forests of Oaxaca and it became increasingly difficult to find a wood source large enough to support customer demands. We enjoyed a bottle of wine, Gerald's homemade bread, and talked about the adventures of their only child, Claudia, who among other things has squatted in London, been healer to Subcomandante Marcos, sky-dived 30 times, and is currently working on a documentary on desert tribes in Morocco despite being an architect by degree. All very exciting!
That same evening we had Juan and Ray over. Ray's our unofficial neighbour from Georgia whose best friend owns the condo and indefinitely lent it to Ray while he made some changes in his life. So Ray had been in Puerto for just 3 months when we arrived and had already managed to get the scoop on most of the town's notable characters (and others) and had networked enough that he already had a pretty decent clientèle built up to whom he was giving physical training. He's a 47-year-old bachelor who's dipped his toes in just about every kind of business, from antique stores to bars, from construction to physical training, which makes him an interesting guy to talk to, his signature phrase is "Daaamn!" which is his equivalent of "Wow," and he is kind to the core. In fact, on our last morning in Puerto Escondido, Ray had invited us over for pancakes and when we didn't turn up (Kristen was still sleeping) he came running over because he had to go and wanted to warn us that he wouldn't be back until later. He handed me a pot of coffee for Kristen when she woke up and said his see-ya-laters. We made arrangements later that day in the pool to have evening pancakes and when we came a'knockin' we saw that he'd laid everything out for the morning: 3 spoons, 3 forks, 3 knives, 3 plates, 3 glasses, and there they were, still in their place. Now I felt bad that we hadn't come over earlier...and even though we were full from dinner, we couldn't exactly say no the pancakes that he'd been anticipating sharing with us all day long...!
Juan, whose partner Peter was in Poland at the time wrapping up a few things there, is CUTE and ultra-positive. I just wanted to wrap him up in a little hankie and stuff him in my pocket and bring him out for a giggle every once in a while. Juan's family is from Oaxaca and he had tucked out for the weekend to go visit him mother in the city of Oaxaca, so Ray was quite upset that we were leaving as well and he would be on his own so we left him in the company of some Serrano ham and goat cheese leftover from our party with them.
And that was Puerto essentially. Ah, must not forget the massage. Based on Ray's recommendation, we indulged in a full-body massage each down by Zicatela on our last day and I think it's worth mentioning only because it was kind of life-altering. I'm not quite sure what went on in there but I came out with a stupid grin on my face, feeling about 20 pounds lighter, and in no rush to go anywhere fast - all that "bad" that I'd been carrying around was apparently pretty heavy. So, as always, I was sad to leave but at least I left feeling lighter and more positive and I know I'll be back for the surf competitions in November.
We'd opted to take the day bus up to Oaxaca mostly for safety reasons, although as we discovered, legions of travelers do overnighters in and out of the city and state without a hitch. The 10-hour ride could've been horrendous but one anti-nausea pill later and I couldn't so much as open my mouth without drooling nevermind lift my arm. Yolani had warned us that one of Oaxaca's most renowned festivals was going to be taking place in the city that week, the Guelagueta, so we should try and buy tickets and go, and reserve a room beforehand. And this was how we ended up at El Quijote.
Marta and Emilio are a soft-spoken, family-oriented couple whose son got married two weeks earlier and whose daughter is attending school in Mexico City but was "home" helping her parents out during the busy season. They opened the hostel just over a year ago and with just one mention and a great review on hostelworld.com they found themselves inundated with calls and reservations - and Guelaguetza week was no exception. Even though Marta and Emilio have had enough business that they could easily expand, they haven't because they pride themselves on providing a personal, family atmosphere for their guests and expanding would mean that they wouldn't get a whole lot of face-to-face with their guests. Kristen and I dropped off our heavy loads and jetted out for a bite to eat. The zocalo was beautiful and the whole city center was a zoo in all senses of the word - yes, it was a Friday, but even Wednesday night brought out performers, drew in crowds, housed a plethora of pencil-balloon-selling floor stalls and esquite/elote pots on wheels, and brought the noise factor to an all-time high, but all in keeping with the zoo-ness.
At some point we'd gotten stuck on Italian food and so we decided to switch it up and go Mexican seeming that we were in, in my opinion, Mexico's capital of culture. So, we sat under the portales surrounding the zocalo over chile relleno and enchiladas and took it all in...and I saw something that was quite possibly one of the most heart-warming things I've ever seen. Similar to Chiapas, Oaxaca is host to a lot of poverty and it's not unusual to see kids weaving in and out of tables between tourists, slinging necklaces and wool shawls around the necks of older, sympathetic-looking women. While we were sitting there observing a young girl dragging merchandise around, we saw that she was accompanied by her younger brother and toddler sister, both of whom mimicked her by wearing a batch of seed necklaces on their shoulder. I watched the snot-stuffed toddler stop for a few seconds between chairs and look at her older sister. She watched her selling technique, and since the near-baby had few words to work with she set about coping her sister's motions instead, approaching tables and quickly thrusting the batch of necklaces in happy faces without realizing what the goal of her actions was exactly. Then she would let them slide back down her arm to her shoulder which usually resulted in a big mess of entangled necklaces. Her brother would come to her rescue, help her sort them out, then place them back on her shoulder from where they would hang the entire length of her little body. Here she was learning a way of life, learning to do adult things at the age of 2. It would have been easy to forget that they were children...and I was doing just that when I saw an old American guy motion for the toddler to come towards him with a swift flick of the hand. She made way for him, necklaces held high up to his face, then suddenly dropped both arms to her sides still clutching the goods in one hand. The man had a napkin in one hand and had her chin cupped in the other. He wiped her nose and took a good look to make sure she was all cleaned up. Satisfied, he smiled and patted her on the head before she ran to catch up with her siblings. So somebody in the crowd was parent-enough, caring-enough to see a dirty-faced baby who needed her nose wiping and not just an under-aged necklace-bearing nuisance - he took care of her in that moment not because he was probably a parent at some point in his life, but because she was a baby, and it didn't matter where she came from or where her parents were. They weren't there so he wiped her nose. It probably seemed an insignificant act to him, maybe even natural, but I was amazed by it.
The next day we painted the town...only to find that it was already painted: with graffiti. On our search to find tickets for the Guelaguetza, now only 2 days away, we ended up climbing a hill only to arrive at the Guelaguetza Auditorium itself. Of course, the ticket booths were closed, but the view was well worth seeing without the chaos of thousands of people in its midst. We headed back towards the center of town noticing all of the stencil graffiti along the way when we stumbled upon a graffiti competition whose theme was "Cultural Liberty and Resistance." There must've been 25 canvases set up against the southern wall of Santo Domingo church, each with a collection of spray paint at its base, and all a point of interest. Hip-hop music blasted from a set of speakers in the sunken part of the plaza and a steady stream of viewers wandered in and out of the zone over the course of the next 5 hours - we would know! We watched blank canvases turn into outlines turn into images turn into messages turn into art, reality. According to one of the artists I spoke with, the contest was the city's way of supporting graffiti as an art but trying to move it away from its valuable building walls.
We located some tickets, spent the afternoon sucking into museums between a raindrops, and met new roomies Johanna and Will, both Americans come from Cuernavaca where they were studying Spanish for 6-weeks, and Canadian Nicholas, who was set to be presenting at the AIDS conference in Mexico City the following week and decided to make a vacation out of it. The highlight of the day (sad but true): the spinach and tofu burger I had at Restaurante Flor de Loto.
With only 5 full days to dedicate to Oaxaca, we'd ambitiously planned to do everything that we wanted to do to the east of Oaxaca in one day: Tlacolula's Sunday market, Mitla, and Hierve El Agua. So we caught a taxi colectivo to the center of Tlacolula in order to arrive just as the market was setting up. It wasn't an artisan market as I'd thought it'd be, but more for the likes of the locals. Did you need any diabetes pills today? Strainers? Trainers? Rugs? Garlic? Movies? Better yet, pick out a live turkey for dinner. We wandered amongst traditionally-dressed indigenous women, watched some pretty old ones lift two turkeys at a time for assessment, and I picked up a quarter kilo (the minimum) of garlic-and-lime-flavoured crickets, a typical treat, from a shallow dish at a random stall, but they could also be found being carried on top of women's heads. And there were different sizes of crickets: small, medium, and large. Or maggots if you prefer? Kristen was still lacking a gift for her youngest brother, Evan, but eventually decided to go with mezcal and what better place to find it than Tlacolula: where all roads lead to mezcal. It didn't take long to find the blasted drink, and not much longer to get obscenely drunk. I've gotta say, even though I was feeling sleepy by noon because of this taste-testing episode, I was glad to discover that not all mezcal tastes like boot water, and even picked up a bottle of coconut-flavoured crema of mezcal, otherwise known as the 20% better-tasting version of the drink.
Our tuk-tuk driver winked at his friends as he took off with the two foreigners in the back of his three-wheeled machine and dropped us off at the "bus station" a kilometer later. Anything is better than China, but this wasn't a far cry from undecipherable. The "station" was a building with a few lines of leftover seats around its perimeter and the only money that was being exchanged was between people with full bladders and an old man at a table covered in neatly folded piles of toilet paper - yep, no ticket booth. We asked some guy when the bus would be here and he just pointed his finger at an empty, dusty parking lot. When a bus finally rolled in, he whistled us over and pointed at it. Wow, those buses...I didn't know this model even existed outside of the Henry Ford museum. The one we climbed onto was a silver-plated, steel-bodied Bluebird that could've been mistaken for being a rocket perhaps? Judging by the color of the fabric, the inside had been nicely refurbished 20 years ago and given a personal touch with the plastering of a Jesus head sticker on the front window. The going rate was 6 pesos to Mitla and we were dropped off at the town's entrance from where we walked the 2km uphill (just follow the tour buses...apart from them, the town was quiet and peaceful). Just as we approached the archaeological "hub" an old man waved me over from his spot on some church steps, so I walked over to him thinking that he wanted to give us directions or offer us a tour but it was nothing of the sort. He grabbed my hand and smiled up at me, then pulled me in and went to put his arms around my neck and would not let go. He grabbed my hand again and pulled it tighter and tighter every time I tried to edge away from him, the whole while keeping polite conversation with him of course. Since he wouldn't let go of my hand, I decided to give him the "sign" that I was leaving now and bent down to give him a semi-kiss on the cheek and he went and planted a big wet one on my cheek - ewwwww. We determined that he was probably crazy, and later confirmed this when we ran into him on our way back when he asked me my name 3 times.
The pyramids at Mitla weren't all that impressive but their design was intricate and the underground tombs interesting. Still, we couldn't help but think about Uxmal and Yaxchilan and it just didn't compare. We stopped for lunch at a fly-infested restaurant, and the only one open, in town on our way back and just as I went to put my camera away, we heard the sound of trumpets and drums, and there in the distance we saw this small parade of people dressed in white with red scarves around their necks coming towards us. It was a Guelaguetza celebration, village-style, and a nice prelude to the Guelaguetza we'd be seeing the next day in Oaxaca.
From the highway, we caught a truck colectivo that would take us over the mountains and out of the valley to Hierve El Agua. We spent some time waiting for our driver who told us "two more people, then we go" then "10 more minutes, then we go" and again "one more bus from Tlacolula, then we go." An hour later, we set off on an incredibly dusty, hour-long, butt-banging trip in the back of a truck sitting on wooden seats, but when we arrived at Hierve El Agua, we were not disappointed. Besides the spectacular views, the pools, literally oozing with so many minerals that the water appears to be boiling (hence the name: The Water Boils), sit atop a cliff's edge that has turned into what looks like a soft, white, frozen waterfall due to mineral deposits. Since we'd arrived on a Sunday, the pools were crawling with locals come from the city for their weekend getaway and the usual handful of tourists but we did manage to take some time out and enjoy our surroundings nonetheless.
It was a long day spent colectivo-hopping in the heat so we rounded it off with noodles in a cup, wine, and an evening chat with Marta and Emilio.
Finally the day of the Guelaguetza had arrived, but the show didn't begin until 5pm so we traveled to Monte Alban with Nicholas, Will, and Johanna that morning. Again, I think we were at the rope's end of pyramids and Monte Alban, though the views from this hilltop site were impressive, was not terribly exciting. Although, we might've also just overdone it on the pyramids (which I suspect was the case). However, the company was great and it was nice to have that "cup of culture" first thing in the morning. We'd been advised to arrive at the Auditorium a couple of hours early due to the huge amount of human traffic that would be making its way up the hill and it would ensure us good seats. So we arrived with Will and Johanna around 3:30, settled into our free bum cushions wearing our free cowboy hats and drinking alcohol-free micheladas, a mix of Clamato, lime, and beer (Kristen later complained to me that they "ripped me off of my buzz").
And then the Guelaguetza began. There's really no way to describe being at the event, but the event itself is a 4-hour performance by maybe 20 different indigenous groups of Oaxaca where they get to showcase a tradition, most were of marriage ceremonies or other rites of passage, their traditional clothing, and traditional dance particular to their group and region. I imagine that the Guelaguetza is a proud moment for Mexico, and especially Oaxaca, since they are displaying and preserving some of the traditions that define the country, but also educating everyone else outside of these indigenous groups about them. People in the crowd were singing along to some of the songs and even when the rain came, the dancers kept right on with the routine. To me, it was fascinating (I know Saul is gouging out his eyeballs right now just at the thought of 4 hours of dancing) and we all walked out of the event, post-fireworks, pretty pumped.
We decided to spend our final two days in Oaxaca outside of Oaxaca and up in the high hills of Cuajimoloyas, whose 3200m altitude brought us 1000m higher than Mexico City and right out of the summer and right in to a cold fall day. Will, who was itching to do some physical activity, had opted to join us for the day and planned on making his way back to Oaxaca later in the afternoon just in time to catch his 10:00pm bus to San Cristobal de las Casas with Johanna. Well, things didn't really go as planned. By the time we'd arrived at the second-class bus station, following a delicious and relaxed breakfast at Cafe Alex, the next bus to Cuajimoloyas wasn't set to leave until noon - too late for us since it would take 2 hours to get there and Will would have to leave again just 3 hours later which wouldn't leave us much time for a bike ride. So we took the next bus to Tlacolula so that we'd at least be going somewhere, and figured we'd sort something out from there. However, the half-hour taxi from there was grossly expensive and the colectivos infrequent. But for the 60 pesos we'd be saving taking one, we decided to just wait it out and an hour later we were loading ourselves into the back of a truck cab. A man was already sitting in the back so I slid down next to him, Kristen next to me, and Will, thinking that there was no more room, tried to squeeze himself in. After a few attempts to close the door, Will only ended up slamming it against his shoulder and when the man next to me opened his door to move to the front seat, he just plopped out! Then he and the two others in the front spent the next 10 minutes speaking Zapotec, most likely talking about us "stupid Americans."
We arrived at the tourist office a short while later - in the rain, in the cold, and in shorts. We waited it out for an hour by talking with a few volunteers from Canada (yay!) and sorting out "tours" ($12 and an educated local takes you off the beaten path), and in the time we were there, a group of Brits arrived back from a hike soaked to the bone and in their sandals. We were getting hungry and it was getting late for Will, and with the rain, we weren't able to do the bike tour anyway, so we ventured out of the shelter of the tourist office in search of food...the pickings were slim, at least when you're in a hurry to find food fast, and we turned up at a woman's house where she had two tables set up in front of her kitchen and a store next door. As we began arranging the tables for the 7 of us to sit together, the woman invited us behind the kitchen where there was a table and a brick stove on top of which she did all the cooking. Over bowls of hot chocolate (literally - they were served to us in bowls), chicken soup and stuffed chiles, we warmed our fingers, satisfied our stomaches, and waited out the rain some more. Everyone was interested in having a go making a tortilla, which amused this poor woman stuck in a 4x6ft kitchen with a bunch of foreigners and their cameras, so there were tortillas on the go for a while, others warmed themselves infront of the tiny stove fire, and I just thought, this is going to be a long night if it's this cold...and remember: I have not been cold for nearly 2 years and I've exerted quite a bit of effort to keep things this way, some measures extreme (i.e. moving to Mexico) and other not so much (i.e. making a habit of drinking green tea). I wasn't about to jeopardize my awesome record of staying warm over a one-night's stay up in the mountains so we booked ourselves into a cabin in the woods with a fireplace. But before we could go to the cabin we had to deliver our promise to Will to do some physical activity with him since he had made the trip up here to do just that. The three of us shared a guide with a German woman, Jill, and did the only option open to us really: a hike.
14-year-old Daniela, who had recently completed secondary school in the village and was preparing for a move to Oaxaca to stay with her aunts while attending high school, was well worth having around. There were no designated paths and it would've taken us no time to lose ourselves here had we not rented a guide, although she didn't speak English and could only whistle at us to get our attention. We traversed daffodil-filled fields and climbed through barbed wire fences, put there to prevent local animals from digging into the place's main cash crop: potatoes. All the while, Daniela pointed out a number of medicinal plants used by the locals - some are used in baths to put a high fever in its place, others are placed between molars to relieve toothache, but the most interesting plant she told us about was maguey, from which the popular drink, and friend to Kristen and I, mezcal is derived. I noticed that there were magueys planted underneath fences, again to keep animal intruders out, and so I asked her if they would be used to collect mezcal later on. No, this depends on the colour of the flower that blooms from the maguey plant. Interestingly, the maguey only flowers once and always at the end of its 80-150-yr-old life. A thick stem grows tall out of its center, the leaves start to turn black as though infected by mold, the flower blooms and the leaves shrivel and fall to the sides of the plant, ending up looking like a skirt. Meanwhile, the stem is cut and of the many seeds that lie below the plant, one will sprout and create a new maguey in the exact place of the old one. From here, the mezcal-making process gets complicated. Essentially, the leaves of the maguey are cut off until all that is left is a pine-cone-shaped core, which is then burned, crushed, fermented, and distilled. I wasn't lucky enough to see all of this but those young guides are pretty knowledgeable! We were out in the fields for nearly two hours, then returned to drop off Will at the tourist "shack" office so he could catch the last bus out of Cuajimoloyas at 6:30pm, and continued climbing uphill to a viewpoint. But when we returned from the viewpoint at 7:00, we were surprised to see a large group, including two of those Brits we'd met earlier at lunch, still waiting. When in Mexico though, you do have to consider their concept of "time" and "schedule" so we figured the bus was just late....but when we returned from our cup noodles dinner back at the place we'd had lunch at 8:00 and found an even larger group of people still waiting we were curious as to what had happened. The last bus back to Oaxaca had broken down and the only other way to get down from the mountains and to Tlacolula (from where buses frequently departed to Oaxaca) was by colectivo. Some guy in town had a truck, ideal for 8 seated passengers, but it seemed everyone was in the same situation as Will and had a night bus to catch to somewhere else and so 14 people and one baby piled into the truck instead. And so there went the truck swaying out of town as it dodged potholes, completely overflowing with people, and with its tail door bouncing open.
Jesus (Hey-zeus - NOT Jesus) drove us out into the boonies to our cabin and set us up with some firewood which didn't do a whole in terms of warming the place since its roof was so tall, but it did leave a "fragrant" reminder of our night by the fire on my clothes.
The night before we made arrangements with Jesus to pick us up at 7:30am so that we would be able to arrive at the tourist office in plenty of time for our "bike tour." We were half an hour late and though he didn't seem too bothered so we didn't get into apologizing too much, and this is kind of how it goes in terms of "meeting times" and such here in Mexico. And the thing is, just when I thought I understood the phrase "ahorita" ("in a bit"), I got a lesson in Mexican Spanish. Take it from me...when in Rome, do as the Romans do. When in Mexico, use "ahorita." We arrived for our 8:00 tour and the entire tourist office was closed. Okay, we thought, no problem. Having lived in Mexico for a year now, I've learned to give people a half-hour to hour flex period in which they can arrive and not be considered "late." So 8:30 passed, no problem. 9:00 was coming up and I thought to ask Jesus what was going on. "Ahorita viene," he tells me. He's coming. That's good. It's 9:15 and the shop keeper across from the office assures us, "Ahorita. Ahorita viene" and pushes his bottom lip up toward his nose and winks at us. By 9:30, I'm starting to worry that if we don't leave soon on this 3-hr bike tour we're not going to arrive back in time to catch the 1:30 bus and will have to wait until 6:30 for the next bus back to Oaxaca. I ask Jesus if the kid lives here in Cuajimoloyas? Yes, yes...he's sleeping (*wink*), there was a party last night, but "ahorita viene." Well, they'd been saying that our guide was coming for over an hour and he wasn't anywhere in sight. Really, in a town of 1100 inhabitants, I was thinking it shouldn't be that hard to get anywhere. 9:45 came and went and we were just about ready to pedal off on our own when Jesus cried, "Mira! Viene!" Thank you Jesus...he had answered our prayer that very moment.
The kid, an 18-year-old whose name I don't remember, said good morning to us, hopped on his bike, and that was it. After anticipating the bike ride for so long that morning, I was shocked to hear Kristen saying she was throwing in the towel after climbing the first hill on our way out of town. Just as soon as we'd arrived at the top of the hill she was rolling right back down it, but assured me she would be fine if I wanted to continue. Since that first climb didn't seem too bad - rigorous, but not too bad - I nodded at my guide and we continued. I hadn't done any significant amount of exercise for about a year but I thought, hey, it's just biking. There's downhill, right? This was NOT just biking and I don't recall if there was any downhill because either way I was so out-of-breath I was beginning to think I might be asthmatic. In the first 10 minutes of the ride I decided that I was never going to do this again which was great....but I still had 3.5 hours left, dammit. We rode through narrow walking paths carved into the earth that led us down some steep terrain to begin with. This apparently requires some technique.
As I'm sitting there cruising head-high downhill with my right leg straight and the pedal down, my left leg relaxed at the knee, I suddenly come to a halt that nearly throws me off my bike when my right pedal catches on the earthy wall of the path and I quickly squeeze on the front wheel brakes which strengthens my inevitable momentum forwards. Rookie mistakes...a) don't try and ride a mountain bike downhill like its a banana seat bicycle and your Dorothy on her way to Aunt Emma's house, but do act like you've got ToTo out front and try not to launch him from your pretty wicker basket, and b) don't squeeze the front brakes going downhill. It's physics. Duh. My precious guide looked back on occasion to see if I was still alive. Yes, on we go.
We made a stop at a waterfall, very pretty, then got back on our bikes then rode through the streams leading to that waterfall. Again, technique. I soaked my shoes, my guide did not. I think I was doing the one pedal up, one pedal down thing again - what a vice if you're going to have one. Okay, so I'm now pedaling uphill with wet shoes and my only thought between breathes during this invaluable moment of pure bliss was, "God, Kristen would've hated this." I can't say I wasn't suffering, but this part of the ride was relatively easy, with regular intervals of up and down, and then we reached a fork in the road. Did I want to take the 5km route that would eventually wind its way up part of a hill from where we would climb to the top? Or did I want to take the shorter route that was just a "poquito," a little, harder? Let me just say that whenever Mexicans tag a diminutive onto the end of a word, it doesn't make the significance of the word any smaller, it just sounds cute. As we learned in the morning, "ahorita" is a diminutive of the word "ahora" which means "now." You make it cute and it supposedly means "in a bit," which then can mean anything from 1 minute from now, to 1 hour, to 5 hours, to 3 days...and so had I not been trying to revive my lungs in that moment I would've noticed his cuting-up of "poco" when he made it "poquito." Now it's not just a "little," it's just "a little bit" which could mean anywhere from a tiny bit harder, to kind of strenuous, to blow-your-temples arduous, for extreme athletes only...
The pathless, wet from the day before, grassy uphill was seriously uphill, and that was okay, I like a good challenge (what...?) but when the uphill got so steep that we had to carry our bikes in one arm and pull ourselves up through a leafy layer with the other, I just about threw up from the exertion. My valiant guide carried my bike the final 10 meters, thanks a bunch. And the thing was, it wasn't like we hadn't been talking the whole time, he just failed mention at some point in the conversation that I would be rock climbing with a bike on my arm should I choose option B. At the same time, it was evident to me by now that his perception of time, size, and difficulty was a bit inaccurate, maybe just misinformed, and so perhaps it really was just "a little bit" more difficult for him. Not the case for me. We climbed a rock face after dropping off our bikes at the base of the peak (when we finally reached the hill - the bike-carrying only brought us to a road that carried on uphill for a kilometer) and when we finally reached the viewpoint I was exhausted. We sat there, I shared a fruit bar with my guide that I'd brought with me, and he shared some town gossip with me (note: if you wanna get yourself talked about, have 17 children in a small village). Every cross has a story behind it and the one at the top of this mountain was brought to the peak in the name of San Miguel Arcangel.
I reluctantly checked out Kristen's watch, not particularly keen on the ride back, and noticed that it was already noon - an hour and a half remained. There was just nothing easy about this trip - even on the way back down, we slithered underneath fallen boulders in a push-up position...? Down, down, down...after that, that, and that, the only good thing I remember happening was seeing a donkey on the side of the road and using it as an excuse to stop. The real trouble was that with such time constraints I couldn't even get off the bike and walk the thing home, and as 1:00 rolled around the corner, I panted over to my guide and asked him how much was left until we reached town. 15 minutes, so...half an hour. At least. I started to get a rustrated at all the uphill and conveniently mentally blacked out until we reached the highway, which I saw as being "the end," and even my guide was like, "We're here." Where? There's no town here. "Just 10 minutes." Maybe for Lance Armstrong. I was really starting to worry now, the bus should be whizzing right by me any minute...and the work wasn't getting any easier. Up, up, up. And then I heard the roar that only a 30-year-old bus could make catching up to me and it was gone. I got off my bike, defeated in my bid to beat the clock, when my guide told me we'd catch up to it, handed me his Gatorade and ordered me to take a sip and get back on the saddle. Sir, yes, sir, 18-year-old guide.
20 minutes later I saw a brick home, passed a few more and Kristen came into view sitting there waiting. I looked at her apologetically and sighed, "Yeah...it passed me. SO mad right now." If it hadn't been for our tardy guide we wouldn't be in this predicament. She looked back at me with panic written all over her face and shrieked, "What?!? Did I miss it?!?" Oh, the bus hadn't arrived yet. I guess it made a pit-stop in "town" somewhere which gave me enough time to pay for my bike rental, shake my guide's hand, curse him, and collect some change for the bus. Kristen had apparently spent her morning taking pictures of a pleasant, well-mannered and social donkey while I was enduring some sort of punishment for underestimating the sport mountain biking and trusting the Spanish language "a little" too much.
When I woke up, the first thing I felt was the heat. Finally, back to my second skin! We arrived back at El Quijote, interrupting Marta and Emilio's private English classes, but they were kind enough to get us organized and had been kind enough to even reserve our exact same beds. For our last night of the trip, we indulged in more Italian (it's not like I make spinach-stuffed tortellini with four cheese sauce at home, okay?) and reviewed our time spent on the mountain while sipping on sangria. Even though I probably should've returned to the hostel and collapsed, I took Marta and her daughter, Marta, up on their invitation to join them while they went and collected tacos for dinner at some taco stand in the north of the city. Nothing particularly interesting, just sights, smells, and sounds, but it was nice getting to know the family a bit better and since I plan on returning with the brother and sister in December, I thought it would be nice create a good rapport.
Emilio helped us get a cab to the bus station the next morning at 6am and surprisingly, Kristen told me that she was excited to get back to Mexico City. Considering her initial impressions of the City, I didn't expect such a comment to come from her, even though I was sure it would change as time went by and as we traveled further away from the first place that she got to know and the only place she would be returning to. We had made plans to make just one final stop on our way back into D.F.: Puebla.
I'd visited Puebla once before with Saul - and by car. I certainly didn't remember it being so busy and industrial but I did remember it being beautiful once we arrived at its center. It really was a whirlwind tour of the city, but we managed to take a handful of pics, grab some lunch, and visit the Revolution Museum, in fact, the scene of the first battle of the 1910 revolution in Mexico and home of Serdan family. It was a loss on their part, but as a result the street-facing facade of the house is dressed in hundreds of bullet holes and some its remnants inside show signs of having been hit. This is what the guide book says:
"Betrayed only two days before a planned uprising against Porfirio Diaz' dictatorship, the Serdan family (Aquiles, Maximo, Carmen, and Natalia) and 17 others fought 500 soldiers until only Aquiles, their leader, and Carmen were left alive. Aquiles, hidden under the floorboards, might ahve survived if the damp hadn't provoked a cough that gave him away. Both were subsequently killed."
After nearly missing our bus for being in the wrong waiting room, we were glad to be done with the whole "bus" thing for a while...we arrived back in Mexico City just in time for dinner and I arrived back to one very happy boyfriend! Now I'm just looking forward to traveling back to Canada for a month tomorrow and squeezing in some much-needed but precious-little family time. Especially with my grandparents' 50th wedding anniversary coming up at the end of August, there isn't a better time to be going home.
