PART ONE
LAST MOLTEN tongues of cirrus fading mauve, mottled in twilight
azure, shadows sweeping in, purple canopy drapes the sierra, now
it is night.
"We're not supposed to be driving at night. It's just not
a good idea. I don't know the roads, we're in the mountains. I'll
say it straight off the bat, I'm stressed. I'd have to call this
a miscalculation."
In the darkness, Ron talking his invisible audience of one, voice
throwing directly into my consciousness, shadows poised around us,
dips and curves like the enclosing wings of giant buzzards; here
in the outback the "Mexican night" - an expression poets
use, while ghosts sigh, and Moloch feeds on souls - paranoid, thinking:
a barricade across the highway; immediate, immutable, uncanny in
its luckless indifference.. simple stones and sticks.. lanterns
swinging.. banal song of terror wheezing through your senses. No
way out.
We're moving through the mountains...
...I hadn't been out of Mexico City in some months and I hadn't
been to Oaxaca in five years; I'd certainly never traveled the libre
route, the free roads - Highways 115, 140, 160, 125 - which coursed
through tinglingly unknown patches of my monstrously large fold-out
Mapa Turistico de Carreteras, past towns I'd never heard of or registered:
Amayuca, Izucar de Matamoros, Huajuapan de Leon, San Juan Teposcolula.
How mountainous would it be? How slow? How desolate?
Monday morning, Ron came by in his loaded Nissan pick-up and we
set off. Ron was in his usual great spirits although the drive out
of Mexico City - even though a short hop from my place in the south
- was fraught with its usual terrors: maniac drivers executing maniac
moves, tirelessly blasting their horns like agitated children demanding
lollipops and ice cream. We headed straight for the free road to
Cuernavaca, capital of Morelos state - south on Tlalpan, straight
run
The libre was jam-packed with trucks, old Volkswagens, delivery
vans, removal vans, tractors, sedans of every make and condition.
Into the hills, fanning out below, climbing the Ajusco ranges bathed
in sunshine, the great metropolis vanishing in the morning haze,
seemed strangely silent, distant, for all purposes gone.
The wind fanned carpets of dry grass, we felt poised to commence
our communion with nature. My lungs filled with real air. The forest
lay only a short distance ahead, and the refreshing silence of the
countryside - notwithstanding the traffic; although vehicles take
it relatively easy during the hour-long run to Cuernavaca via this
route - because most everybody is held up, anyway, by a lumbering
old tractor cantering up a slight grade here or there, and no one,
as a consequence, is willing to overtake on the busy two-lane of
oncoming cars and iron-girded behemoths. So just wind down the window
and relax.
We entered Cuernavaca, a city fairly familiar to me, but Ron drove
to a hostel called Villa Calmecac, which I never knew existed. It
also serves as a restaurant and the owners organize eco-adventure
tours - quite an enterprise. It's run by Meliton Cross, a very friendly
guy. The Villa Calmecac offers various workshops, mountain bike
excursions to the surrounding forests, and canoe/kayak trips on
the Rio Amazuac in southern Morelos.
It's strange but those of us who live in Mexico City don't generally
give the attractions of Morelos much stick, thinking we have to
travel hundreds of kilometers to sufficiently escape its smog and
mayhem - and of course one needn't do so; as for the tourist, they'd
rather keep moving, dog-earing as many pages of their Lonely Planet
as possible in the vacation time allotted, get that marker blotted
all over the map of Mexico. It's only natural!
But there is plenty to see and do in Morelos, nature can be communed
with here just as much as anywhere else, and Meliton is just the
fellow to help you. Hardly anyone is doing it. for mine, that's
the definition of ecotourism. Or at least the definition of peace
and quiet. In 1912, the British writer H.M. Tomlinson observed:
"the ideal traveler would venture out merely as a disembodied
thought, or, at most, an eye." To this wisdom I would add that
through silence, disembodiment is attained. Cuernavaca's noisy facade
can be easily transcended, and the perception of Morelos as a haze-enshrouded
byway on the way to Acapulco,
belies a region amenable to the realm of nature's silence.
But I was still the victim of my own sense of familiarity and wanted
to move, move, move. I'd had enough of day-tripping, it was time
to eat some dust. We bade Meliton farewell... Now we must go and
listen to other worlds breathe.. even though there'd be several
hours of screaming air brakes and exhaust fumes to contend with,
before this could be achieved.
Before I could become an eye.
We exited Cuernavaca for Cuatla, and from there commenced the 80-kilometer
libre run to Izucar de Matamoros. We stopped at the side of the
road to take photos of the stripped, jutting rock hill of Mount
Cerro Gordo, and the shimmering, dusty plain behind it offering
relatively clear views of Mexico's famed volcanoes Popocatepetl
and Iztaccihuatl. A light plume of smoke could be seen hovering
over Popo's cone, and as long as I could still see it, couldn't
feel that I was "going" anywhere, breaking free into unknown
landscapes. I had to put that smoking mountain behind me...
We drove off, after waiting for an interminable number of lorries
and old trucks to pass, but knew we'd catch upto them soon enough
and that the going would get slow. Presently we crossed the state
line of the Rio de Laja, left Morelos and entered Puebla state.
It didn't feel any different. The real outback was still some distance
away, in another dimension. Most of our time, for the moment, was
spent descrying every caprice of the traffic, so as not to be wiped
out.
The traffic is dangerous, namely the trucks, but luckily most of
the heavy traffic ended up taking a main turnoff that led to the
Puebla state capital. It made sense that they transported all the
Coca Cola, Corona beer, cold cuts, frozen orange juice, electronic
equipment and Pemex fuel supplies from southern Valley of Mexico
points on the industrial compass, and those rimming Cuernavaca,
to the city of Puebla by the Morelos libre route - instead of hauling
ass through half of Mexico City to reach the Puebla Autopista from
the capital's east. After that turn-off, the noisy metal purgatory
ended, traffic thinned out, nothing much more out here, we kept
on Highway 115, which soon led to the remote territories we'd dreamed
of.
Breathing easier... Windows rolled back down... Through rocky cuts,
past crumbling haciendas, roadside altars... Small towns and villages
breezed by, transient shingles of civilization hovering along the
roadside, like vague mirages: Tepexco, Calmeca, Rijo, Agua Dulce...
At last into the mountains, first stopping for gas, grabbing a
couple of sodas at Izucar de Matamoros - a bustling gas-stop town,
reeking of diesel fuel.. dogs sleeping in the shade of gas pumps..
faces staring at the two "gringos" here, why here? Good
as the middle of nowhere - staring, not with animosity, but with
a kind of hardened bemusement...
It was 4 o'clock. The plan was to reach the relatively large city
of Huajuapan de Leon, in the state of Oaxaca, before nightfall,
there to spend the night. It was 160 kilometers away. Judging by
how long it had taken us to get this far, and knowing the mountain
roads would slow us down, we sensed, without saying so out loud,
that there was no way we'd make Huajuapan by nightfall. But while
there was light there was still everything to see, and nothing could
bum us out.
The scenery was becoming truly gorgeous, noble, legendary... Now
I knew I was out in something beautiful - if harshly so, and sternly
spiritual. The perfect air. I drank it. Chiseled, towering rock,
these John Ford movie locations; and of course the myriad varieties
of ubiquitous cacti. Ron knew them all.
"Check out those organ pipe cactuses." "See those?
They're called paloverde, a less politically-correct term for them
is Peeling Indian cactuses." "Here we have mesquite. See
how they thrive in this dry environment? There's El Pitayo..."
"Those pencil-thin ones, without arms, they're saguaro."
Jaulillas, El Marques, Tehuitzingo, Ahuehietitla - gray smudges
of habitation, half-perceived; into the Acateco Canyon, no traffic,
but slow, curvy driving. We entered a plateau, then began a long
descent. Just before sunset we reached the delightful colonial city
of Acatlan - its church spires gleaming brilliantly in the last
half hour of light. We noted the prevalence of languid palm trees
dotted about the low square, the heavy tropical greenery, the fresh
white uniforms worn by pretty schoolgirls...
It could have been an inland town on the coast of Guerrero, a couple
of kilometers from the sea. In fact, we were near the border of
Guerrero state. It was a strange feeling. I had the sudden urge
to escape the existential beauty and soul-searching to be found
in the stark, marching mountains, and kick back at a beach.
A fleeting thought!
Acatlan is known for its pottery although you'd really have to
love pottery to undertake the minor odyssey to obtain it here. Although
if you're passing through, it's the perfect place to cheaply lay
your hands on some - which Ron did, at a fine warehouse. He perused
the wares as golden sunlight poured into the vast shop, spilling
over each clay bowl, candelabra, and Christ on His Cross.
We left Acatlan bathing in the colors of sunset and began a new
ascent, back forging our way through the mountains, the landscape
resuming its hard, Biblical aspect. Save for the occasional Ram
Charger or Dodge utility negotiating the curves, there was no one
out here.
At a peak affording a vista of the descending plateau, from which
rippled purple valleys and undulating peaks, an impenetrable realm
beyond the road leading, eventually, to the Pacific Ocean.. the
sun slowly descended, a pale orange lozenge, beyond the petrified
gulf of dusk-softened earth. The world was without sound.
Our first day was almost at an end. I could already taste the beer
that I felt it my birthright to be had when we arrived at Huajuapan
de Leon. That Negra Modelo was, however, hours away; still another
80 kilometers of night driving left to be done through high, unknown,
pot-holed, burro-populated terrain. We entered Oaxaca state as our
dying Apollo ignited the ether in Congo reds, cardinal pigments,
and sheets of blood.
Then it was night.
|
