A whole lot o' Mexico

Friends, I am attempting something very dangerous here. I am writing this before I have had my first cup of coffee. A full disclosure is in order however. I am sitting in an old iron rocking chair with chipping yellow paint on the roof of our hotel in Xilitla, Mexico. I made it up to the roof just as the sun was peaking up over the mountains, and was able to get in some poor man's sun salutations I've gleaned from Yoga classes over the years—I guess the west coast has rubbed off on me. There is also a strikingly warm southern wind blowing; it came in last night and raised the temperature at least 5 degrees or more. As I was saying, Mexico seems very dangerous.

We pulled into this great country five days ago. As you may have garnered from the last blog entry, that first day driving in was not such a good one for yours truly for reason that had absolutely nothing to do with Mexico. Crossing the border was much simpler than anyone said it would be, the only snafus being that we read the signs wrong for where you park your car in order to register it, and that Zeb's tiny Oregon bank thought someone must have stolen his card when he tried to take money out, so they locked his account over Martin Luther King Day weekend. But all those troubles were quickly sorted out.

The first night we spent on the outskirts on Cuidad Victoria. It was a small city at the base of where the flat plains meet the Sierra Madres Orientals, a four hour drive form the Texas border. The zocolo, or town square, was not quite as bumping as one would have imagined for a Saturday night, but there were still plenty of people of all ages hanging out about and plenty of street vendors around. Instead of a church being the main building on one side of the zocolo, there was a modernist government building. Another side of the square was flanked by a rather large Radisson hotel, though asides from a Church's Chicken, it was the only U.S. chain store we came across. The plain fact of having people just milling about immediately charmed me, and after some street tacos, tortas, and mexican hotdogs (wrapped in bacon with fresh tomatoes, mayo, and onion) I began to feel my spirits lift.

We stayed at a hotel designed for having an affair. The gave us the price in six hour increments, and they had private parking behind a gate to insure the discreetness of your indiscretions. But we were only stopping in this town because it had already gotten dark, and we were still four hours away from our first destination due to a late start leaving the U.S. But for $6 per person, the bed and shower were well worth it.

The next morning we entered the mountains and ate breakfast at a little roadside shack/restaurant appropriately named Trapico de Capricorn due to the fact that it was situated on the Tropic of Capricorn. They served up eggs, beans, and more tortillas then I knew existed, all for about $4. Most of the coffee in Mexico appears to be Nescafe, even though there are wild coffee plants and coffee crops all throughout the area. We also ate a local dish of eggs mixed with a native plant called chofa that seemed to be something in between an artichoke and honeysuckle.

The landscape made a quick shift to jungle; all along the roadside were banana trees, orange groves, and tall, vine filled forests. We picked up a three foot tall bag of oranges for less than $4. Many of the small (indigenous?) villages we drove through had concrete sidewalks that paralleled the highway and at times were elevated two or three feet above what must have been a basin for run off rainwater. We only passed one big industrial processing plant, which had about twenty trucks full of oranges parked outside of it along the road.

We arrived in our destination of Xilitla (pronounced hill-EET-la) in the afternoon. It's a beautiful town of about five thousand inhabitants that sits on top of a mountain. Being so high up it is usually cloudy, as it was upon our arrival. The streets are tiny, winding up the mountain. Even though one car can barely fit through the streets, with the other parked cars, the streets are two way for the most part, which involves much foresight in the drivers. We did manage, however, to go the wrong way up one of the few one way streets. There are also no streetlights in Xilitla, but a number of the more busy and complicated intersections do employ traffic cops during the day, who we also found out work to keep tourists in the commercial part of town when Dan and I tried to walk down one street into a more residential neighborhood.

Justin has stayed in the town twice before, and he found the hotel San Ignacio, where he had stayed two years prior. The owner of the place, Dona Elena, remembered him, and she cut us a deal on two rooms which worked out to about two fifty a night per person for five nights. Dona Elena is a tough ass; I saw her grab the broom out of the hands of her sullen fourteen-year-old helper in order to show her how to properly sweep water onto the concrete street. She is a bit of a matronly figure for all of us, doing our laundry, etc., and at same time making slightly flirtatious comments to Justin. She also owns the most obnoxious parrot known to man, a parrot that only knows how to squeal, as if it learned to speak from an overly excited toddler.

My room looks directly onto a staircase that every morning is full of school children and other townfolk coming to and fro. I think the people of Xilitla have figured out that if you build a town with lots of stairs, you don't need to spend money on gym memberships. Its interesting to watch the faces of the older folks before they tackle the stair case. They make it up a few stairs, stop, breathe, put their hands on their hips, then keep going. It's the same thing I do the few times I have gone to a gym, pumping myself up for the exercise. I saw one guy, maybe 40, walking up the stairs in a Montauk shirt. There's just as much of a chance that he's never been there and got the shirt through some charity as there is that he worked on Long Island and really likes Montauk. It's also true I haven't seen many handicapped people, but old people are everywhere, I've only seen one severely obese person in town, and there are roads for cars so theoretically someone could wheel themselves up.

Ninety percent of Xilitla is made of out concrete, the buildings and the streets, and it works beautifully. Many of the building have balconies, many of which have simple molded concrete railings. These little touches add so much. The town is human scale too; most buildings one to three stories. There are a few taller buildings, but they are placed well, are not more than six stories, and integrate into the streetscape. Less than half the buildings are painted vibrant San Francisco-esque colors, and they add a lot to the concrete without making the whole town seem too gaudy.

The streets are full of stores, which are all very small, and often have half their wares out on the streets. The streets themselves are permeable, and even where there are sidewalks, pedestrians walk in the streets until a car has to get through. Half the vehicles that try to get through are teenage girls on ATVs. In Xilitla, it appears everyone is married by seventeen. The square at night is full of young teens courting, and all the older teens seem to have children. The difference between courting and marriage in Xilitla versus courting and marriage in the U.S. seems like night and day. I've heard its different in the bigger Mexican cities, but if I grew up here I would have some teenage children by now.

Besides all its charms, the main attraction for tourist to Xilitla is Las Pozas, a surrealist concrete mini-city built by Sir Edward James, inheritor of a NYC trading fortune and possible illegitimate son and/or grandson of King James the VII of England. We went there on our second day, which was surprisingly sunny and clear. The work was actually made by a sculptor/craftsman from Mexico, Plutarco Gastelum, whose job it was to figure out how to make Edward James' ideas and drawings into a reality. There were so many spots where you could have easily fell to your death that such a place could never exist as a tourist sight in the states. But the magic of the place was undeniable. First off, its a half hour walk down into the valley from the town, which was a pleasant enough stroll on its own. Then you're in the thick of the jungle near a giant waterfall. We went off on a long hike to get to the top off the waterfall, and somehow got off the main trail and onto an animal trail. Justin was leading the pack and I think he was seriously concerned. We all became fairly certain it was a cougar trail and we were going to be eaten alive. But besides a few people slipping on some algae covered rocks and getting a little wet and dirty, it was one of the best hikes I've ever been on. The combination of the faked ruins and jungle scape pleased the senses.

Our third day in Xilitla, it was still sunny. And it was getting hotter. We drove to a nacimiento, or spring, and went swimming. Two little kids, maybe ten years old, possibly brothers, asked us if we wanted to pay them to watch our mini-van. They informed us that cars were known to get scratched in that parking lot. We declined the offer, which was wise since they still didn't scratch our car. The water was cool, but warmer than any water in Oregon during the high summer. There were a few other people there, a young couple walking around, some old women doing laundry down the way. Not too shabby for January. We then drove to a tiny tiny town Huehuetlan that had great gorditas, a beautiful church with giant sinuous trees and a mini Aztec staircase-esque zocolo, a charming little coffee-roaster with a coffee-bean based nativity scene that brewed our over-roasted coffee in Mr. Coffee machines (but hey, it was local), and no bathrooms. The coffee-roaster had a one, just no water in the john.

After Huehuetlan, we embarked on a wild parakeet chase. Justin found some info online about Xilitla that mentioned a giant cave on the edge of town where hundred of parakeets go to nest every night at sunset. We pulled off the road near what appeared to be a staircase down into the valley next to a few houses, but a gaggle of little children told us the parakeets were further on down the road. A guy who ran a muffler shop told us the trail was behind his shop through the cow pasture, though it was a bit over grown. At first we walked the wrong way, down the side of the mountain through a cow trail, and cows don't bother to leave the trail when the go to the bathroom. Eventually we figured out where the actual trail was and began to hear the parakeets. By the time we got there the sun was behinds the mountains, so most of the parakeets were already nested, but still were cawing up a storm. When we finally found the cave it was breath taking. It must have been seven stories tall, and there is purportedly a lake a bottom. It was getting dark so we had to head back, but a bunch of the guys planned on going back.

That night Dona Elena employed Justin to help translate for a newly arrived guest, Gary from Oklahoma City. Gary was retired and didn't speak Spanish very well, yet had been spending two months or so in Mexico a year for the past twenty years, mostly in San Miguel de Allende. He had taken a nine hour bus up to Xilitla in order to see Las Pazos. He joined us as we drank on the roof that night. Somehow we got on the subject of religion and Gary made the comment that with how crazy the evangelicals were and what a bad name they were giving the U.S. internationally that we didn't need Al Qeida. Upon learning that Samantha was from Shawnee, OK, Gary was excited to talk to her about their home state, but was surprised when she referred to it in a positive light, since he seemed to hold the state in very low esteem. The next night Gary was catching a bus back to San Miguel Allende.

Day four we woke up early and four of us went for a pleasant hike up a mountain. We picked up a guy hitchhiking back into town who tried to sell us his friends' ranch. Apparently land isn't that cheap around here. This is partly because for illegal immigrants who've made money in the U.S. its easier to invest it in land than to put it in a bank, which drives up the land prices. After the hike the four of us ate tortas (mexican sandwiches) at a lunch counter named “Las Tortugas de Huasteca”, tortuga being the word for turtle and a play on giant sandwich. We met another gringo at the sandwich shop named Stephan. He was a clean cut looking guy, a retired high school and college agriculture teacher. He was holding a baby, which we assumed was his grand child, but turned out to be his own brood. Sitting next to him was a beautiful Mexican woman at least 25 years his junior, Cindy, who turned out to be his wife, and another little girl of theirs, about two years old. Stephan and Cindy met when they were neighbors in North Carolina. Their first child was born in the states, and their second was born here in Mexico, near where Cindy grew up. They were trying to create a self-sustaining farm about half-an-hour from Xilitla. Stephan said he left the states for political reason, that he “didn't believe in Empire”. They looked more libertarian than hippy, but I didn't really have enough information to pigeon hole them. Its funny how the gringos we meet immediately make some comment in order to indicate some progressive, or at least not mainstream, leanings in their politics within the first few minutes of a conversation. I'd probably do same. Stephan and Cindy invited us down to their farm, which we may take them up on in a few days.

After the tortugas, we drove to a neighboring town in the valley that had a park by the river that was great for swimming. There was a rusted old ferry, large enough to fit two or three cars. It was pulled back and forth across the river on a thick wire. An old woman walked on the barge carrying an open black umbrella to block the sun, and it could have been a scene in a Fellini film. Swimming next to us in the river was an extremely obese woman, only the I've seen here in Mexico. I soon realized she was yelling at her children and mutt named Rambo in perfect English with a bit of southern accent. It turned out they lived in the small village we had hiked to that morning, where her husband was from, but they used to live in Florida.

Nearby we visited Ahuatitlan, another crazy concrete structure made by an eccentric rich person, though this time the man was a Mexican salesman who specialized in medicine fauna. People sure are into their pastel colors in this country. The good doctor Ramon had passed away a few years ago and it looked like the inheritors didn't quite know what to do with the place. We weren't charged admission, but the did give us mail order forms for the medicines.

Today is day five, it is still unseasonably sunny, and it keeps getting warmer. Last night the lights were out in about half of the town and Justin fell down a flight of stairs, possible spraining his ankle. Tonight is the last night we have booked at Hotel San Ignacio, and if Justin is up for it, the plan is to go camping in the desert tomorrow, or possible try to camp at Stephan and Cindy's farm. I'm fine if we have to stay here for a bit longer, it's a nice town, but I am itching to get movin' on. I'm beginning to realize I'm traveling with a bunch of small town folks who aren't so interested in big cities. That's fine, and I think with seeing new sights, and especially with once we get to the beach, I'll be entertained enough to be contented. I just wish I knew the language already. This trip is definitely giving me plenty of incentives to stick to my studies once I start language school in a month. If I knew the language already, I might already be on a bus to D.F.