November 8, Mexico City
Mexico City has turned out to be a lot easier to navigate that I ever imagined it would be. I'd heard all sorts of horror stories about the city - the subway pickpockets, car jackings, the pollution. But what I was imagining was something far worse than I'm seeing here - none of this is worse than New York in the 80's as far as I can tell. The subway is actually fairly clean, and reasonably fast. It sometimes stops mid-tunnel the same way that the N train used to get stopped under the East River in NYC, but nothing really that bad. It also goes just about everywhere - the coverage seems to be at least as good as in NYC. Subway stations also have art or archeological sites in them, making them attractions in themselves.
Likewise, the express buses that connect Mexico City with its satellite towns are great, with movies and comfortable seats. The driving style is a little insane, but does not live up to the hype. Anyone who could drive in Italy could drive here. I was avoiding taking the motorcycle in here because of that, but it's just as well because finding a secure place to park would have been a real pain. I still would have liked to try it.
The pollution does live up to the hype, though. I was supposed to meet another motorcyclist here - Tim Colla from New Hampshire - but he had to split the city because he couldn't breath. It makes me think that what we identified as altitude sickness might actually be some altitude mixed with breathing problems caused by the smog. It's hard to believe that 60 years ago, Mexico City was reknowned for its good air quality.
The look of the streets near the zocolo (city center) is somewhat similar to the older streets in Guadalajara - four or five stories, stone facing, grayish. In the center of the zocolo is the most giant of the giant Mexican flags I have seen - Mexico must lead the world in giant flag technology. Somehow they are still able to wave in the wind. The zocolo itself got the name because it was supposed to be the pedestal for an enormous monument to independence, but it was never built and now the zocolo is an enormous flat plaza in between the national cathedral and the national palace - and every Mexican town's center is called a zocolo. This is where I emerged from the subway, at the nexus of Mexico, and as the crowds swept by around me it took some time to orient myself on my map.
The first thing that I went to see in Mexico City was the Templo Major, a block away. It was the center of the sacred Aztec city of Tenochitlan, which was actually primarily a religious complex, surrounded by other cities at the edge of the lake that once existed where Mexico City is now. It was pretty well sacked by Cortez and Co. and was decapitated as other structures were built on top of it, but it has now been unearthed and you can walk through the site. The amazing thing about it is that it is down the street from the National Palace, which means that the locus of power in Mexico never really changed even after the conquest. The Aztecs found ways of inserting their religious symbols into the pillars of new churches as they were built, between the stones so that no one would ever be aware they were there, but people would continue to worship Quetzalcoatl and Tlaloc even when they went to mass. This seems symbolic of the overall reality that the top may have been cut off the Meso-American civilizations but the foundations remain. Mexico does have the feeling of being an ancient culture that has been transformed but has continued, in a way that America does not. This seems similar to Iran and Egypt, where in both cases the Arab invasion eliminated the previous religions and imposed a new ruling class, but never succeeded in eradicating all traces of the previous society, both physical and cultural.
Today I went first to the National Palace and saw Diego Rivera's mural history of Mexico from the conquest. I had expected something far more impressive than Orozco's Man of Fire murals in the Hospicio Cabaña in Guadalajara, which have almost the same theme, and I was disappointed, thought the murals were still great. I spent half an hour there amidst tours in every language (except English) and then decided to head out for my main goal.
Teotihuacan is a site that is actually about 40 miles outside of Mexico City to the north. It was actually not built by the Aztecs but by a previous culture that were contemporaneous with and somehow connected to the Mayan golden age. When the Aztecs discovered it they gave it a name which means "The place where men become gods." For me, it was easily as impressive as the pyramids of Egypt, because aside from the two main pyramids of the Moon and the Sun, there is an entire city of other buildings arrayed in a fashion that the original builders thought was a model of the universe. The main avenue which runs for more than a mile and connects the buildings is a series of rectangular basins with stone steps on all sides going up about 15 feet, then descending into the next basin. This complex is laid out in a broad, open plain, with mountains visible in the distance - there is an amazing view from the Pyramid of the Moon.
As I entered, tourists were gathered to watch the voladors. This is a ceremony that used to be done a few times a year, that is now done as often as there are paying tourists. Four men climb up a wooden pole at maybe 100 feet tall, tied to ropes which they wrap around the pole as they climb. How the ceremony works is, when a sufficient number of paying gringos is gathered below, the four men jump out and start swinging around the pole upside down, unwinding slowly down to the ground, while two of the voladors play a flute and a drum. A tour bus had just arrived, so I was able to enjoy this spectacle that they had paid for.
Teotihuacan was unfortunately mobbed with high school students - I got interviewed by two groups of girls, apparently for an English language class, which initially made me think it was a distraction scam so someone could go for my pack. One group had a video camera, the other a tape recorder, and they asked me the same questions both times - where I was from, what my name was, did I like Mexico, did I like Mexican girls, did I like tequila... when a third group approached me I begged off, figuring that there must be other gringos around. Vendors were everywhere, even on the pyramids themselves, selling Aztec new age schlock. The Pyramid of the Sun was like a mob trying to climb a mountain up a single path, but the Temple of the Moon had far less people and a better view. After I'd climbed the pyramids I felt no strong reason to stay, because the information in the Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City on Teotihuacan was far better than anything they actually had at the site.
I took the bus back in, and in the next few hours I tried to hit the BMW dealership for a mirror (a complete waste of time) and then went to the house of Frida Cahlo. Frida's house was very beautiful and main of the small details like the names of Frieda and Diego in the kitchen were touching. There was also a Day of the Dead altar there, with a skeletal Frieda Cahlo at the center, which I thought was the best thing about the house.
With all of this in two days, I've hit the bare minimum of things that I wanted to see in Mexico City. I could spend a week here, but I don't want to without Cathy. Tomorrow I'll finally get out of Cuernavaca and be on the motorcycle for the first time in well over a week. We're done with the central plateau of Mexico, the heart of Mexican culture, and now we're starting on the road away from the major cities to the Maya world and Central America.
November 10, Acapulco
I arrived today after a short trip down the toll road from Cuernavaca, to meet Cathy. She left Cuernavaca two days ago to try to get to lower altitude and be able to breathe easier. Acapulco was the closest place at sea level, and she thought she would sleep better there, and could relax near the ocean while I took on Mexico City again.
The name Acapulco conjures an image of elderly people from Kansas jumping up and down with joy on the Price is Right. And Acapulco was exactly the sleazy tourist haven we pictured - divided into three parts, the Old Town, Acapulco Gold, and the Diamante. Acapulco Gold was probably popular when Acapulco Gold (the type of pot) was - in the early seventies. Cheech and Chong aside, there wasn´t much reason to want to go there. The Diamante had a certain tired Miami Vice feel, all tired, pastel-colored high rise hotels fronting the huge crescent shaped bay.
Cathy had gotten a good hotel in the Old Town, since Acapulco Gold and the Diamante were outside of our price range. Her first hotel had been close to the cliff divers, and she´d felt like it was unsafe at night - when she was forced to go outside at 1am to make a phone call since the desk phone was locked for the night. She was having problems breathing from a lung infection and the doctor she got in contact with helped her find a nicer place for more money, but cheaper than the surrounding places. I joined her after a quick ride out from Cuernavaca on one of the toll roads - a ride of 200 miles that cost $35 US. Since the toll roads were built, the bandits have moved into the toll booths... but the road quality was excellent, so I won´t complain too much. I also had to buy gas at 12 pesos a liter - roughly $3.50 a gallon U.S. - because both of the Pemex stations flanking the toll booths have closed. I can´t believe any Mexicans can afford to drive these roads.
We went to see the cliff divers, because we are in Acapulco, we figured why not, and also some other riders that we were travelling with earlier - Merv and Ruth - were going to one of the shows. It was fairly entertaining, with the theatrical prayers at the shrine at the top of the cliff. We stood in a crowd with literally hundreds of people from the Princess Cruise ship docked in the bay. This group was on a 15 day cruise from Florida through the Panama Canal up to California. One couple we talked to couldn´t believe we had driven there... and didn´t believe it when I said it was about as difficult as driving across northern Canada. We never saw Merv and Ruth, and ended up going back to our hotel. Tonight we´re going to attempt Hable Con Ella, the new Pedro Almodovar movie, in Castillean Spanish... hopefully we´ll get some of it.
Wednesday, November 13, Puerto Escondido - A lesson in Mexican democracy.
Last night we finally arrived here after a harrowing journey from Acapulaco. We started on Monday after resolving some issues with our long distance phone service - i.e., we subletted our apartment, and we weren´t supposed to have any. Despite this, our untrustworthy tenants seemed to have run up a bill of more than $1200 calling Ireland. After we finally got it resolved, we left around noon. It seemed a little too late to make it to Puerto Escondido before dark, so we aimed for a spot about 3/4 of the way there.
As is fairly normal around a Mexican city, we got lost on our way out because the junction we were looking for was not marked on our side. We also got stuck in some road repairs, where the road disappeared into wet sand and craters for 100 meters in heavy traffic, which made it challenging to keep the bike upright. After asking directions and making a turnaround (not the illegal one suggested by the Mexican taxi driver because the cops would definitely nail us gringos) we headed back to our road. We still had plenty of daylight to make Pinotep Nacional. We sped along Mexico route 200, which is noted on our AAA map as being an area at risk for bandits, so we were determined to be off the road well before dark.
About 60 miles east of Acapulco we ran into a line of traffic, mostly trucks. One of the trucks ahead of us said that the blockage was "political" and that we shouldn´t have any problems getting through with a motorcycle. I rode the left side of the road a kilometer or two up to a bridge, dodging between oncoming taxis and the traffic parked in the right lane, until we were a few cars from the front. The bridge was a about 100 meters long, a small two lane bridge over a lazy river that was probably only about shoulder deep. On the other side was the town of Marcelia, and the bridge was blocked by a pickup truck, a few rocks, a huge banner and about 20 surly looking men in straw hats. We rode up to a sign, which declared that the bridge was closed because of fraud in an election that had taken place in October. People were shouting something, which we thought at first was some kind of political chant - "coup grande", as in a political coup. After a while I realized it was really Cruce Grande, as in the last major town back in the direction of Acapulco. I talked to the men who seemed to be in charge, who was also dispatching taxis for people who had walked across the bridge.
Pedestrian traffic was allowed, but I was not allowed to ride my bike over. I asked if perhaps I could walk my bike over - he gave me a hand signal indicating I should wait 20 minutes, and he would talk to those in charge on my behalf. Cathy and I waited, surrounded by people hawking taxis and agua frescas and platanos, and the impromptu taxi dispatcher told me to wait for another 20 minutes. Our riding gear, which is fairly cool when we have the wind hitting us at speed, was stifling in the heat, so we started taking it off. The locals gawked at the norteamericanos with the motorcycle who had driven up to the front of the line in front of everone else - which despite the advice of the Mexican trucker I now realized might have been a mistake. I talked to a platano hawker, Neddy "Banana", whose Spanish was so fast that I could barely comprehend any of it, but he seemed to be suggesting that we ride the bike through the river, and we both laughed at that and a few other things - I told him I would soon be renting a burro to replace the motorcycle. Once some of the guys at the front saw that I wasn´t as pushy and arrogant as they expected a gringo to be in a hurry to be, and I seemed to have a sense of humor about it, everything was much friendlier - which was no help at all.
After an hour, I tried to walk the bike through, but was blocked by a group of a dozen men. So I backed up and parked the bike in between some taxis and the poor bastard in a Centra who had been the first person stopped. We met up with other gringos, two brother from Germany named Frank and Dirk, and some folks from Missouri. In any situation where a road is closed, rumors abound as to why, and how soon it will end. One of the rumors we got second hand from the Missouri missionary types was that the blockade happened every couple of months in this town, and the blockade would end in a few hours at sunset. The cops arrived, negotiated, and departed, with no results. We waited for over two hours, and at 5 finally I decided to try again, and we talked to a new group of men, who I told that Cathy was sick, while she did her best Virgin Mary act. I told them that we needed to get her to a hotel - so they generously offered to let us walk over to the other side but we would have to leave the bike. Sure, I thought, I´d be happy to leave my motorcycle here with you.
We decided to go back 15 miles to a beach called Playa Ventura that Frank knew. We sped back, figuring that we´d return in the morning after a good night´s sleep, and according to what we´d been told the blockade would probably be gone. There were no parallel roads we could take short of a 200 mile detour through Oaxaca City, so we had little choice other than riding at night. We went up 5 miles of crumbling asphalt with one or two streams breaking through, and found Playa Ventura. The place Neddy Banana had recommended was right on the beach, with palapa pavilions (thatched with palm fronds) over hammocks on the beach in the restaurant area, and the rooms in a building just behind the beach. The town was a remote beach paradise, and we and the Germans were the only gringos in sight, with their Golf Volkswagen. We took an evening swim and had some great fish, had the de riguer political conversation with the Europeans about Presidente Bush and got to bed.
The next day Dirk and Frank rose before dawn and were long gone before we even got up. Their strategy was to get past the bridge before the morning crew arrived. We were hoping that the blockade would only be one day. We got rolling at 11am. 15 minutes later, we were back in line - but a shorter one, and Dirk and Frank weren´t there, which meant a lot of people had gotten through. We didn´t want to wait until dark again, because already the sun was incredibly hot, and there was no way we could sit there all day. We decided to try to walk the bike through. This time I wasn´t going to ask anyone, I was just going to go until they stopped me. We had to take off most of the gear including the aluminum side boxes, which decided to stick as I gripped them in my sweaty hands, calling for some WD40 and a vice grips. Finally I was ready to walk it through, while Cathy waited with our gear. I figured my best bet was to move through quickly before anyone had time to think about what they should do with me. In a stroke of luck a cop had just gone past them to do some negotiations, and the men at the banner looked at me but did not stop me. I walked the bike across the bridge, assuming it would be wisest to symbolically respect the road block by walking all the way - and as it turned out, there was another blockade on the other side. After crossing that, I put the bike in front of a store about 30 meters from the banners, and went back for Cathy.
By now it was around noon, and in the full heat of the day we made a single trip with all of our gear across the bridge. By the time we reached the other side we were both soaked in sweat and ready to fall over, and we took our time reassembling the bike - but then decided it was time to leave quickly after we saw the army move in with two humvees and about 20 heavily armed troops. We zoomed out of Marcelia, happy about our minor victory, and ran right into the next road block about 20 miles further down the road. Once again, it was at a bridge near a town, but this one was wider, and there was a truck with loudspeakers on top of it, and armored trucks blocking the way. Frank and Dirk were there - they had run the first bridge, but had gotten stopped at the second around dawn, and had been sitting there since. We sat on the steep steps up to an old man´s house that overlooked the road. Trash from the road refugees was everywhere as the piling everywhere as the blockade entered its second day, and the crowd at this bridge was somewhat angrier. Men unloaded trucks of vegetables onto hand trucks to pull them over the rocks at the bridge.
We found out that it would not have done us any good to try to go back, since a third bridge on the way to Acapulco was also blocked. There were protests along most of route 200 in the entire state of Guerrero. The rumors we got now were that this protest would go on indefinitely. We didn´t know for certain what had happened back in Marcelia with the army, but we definitely did not want to be around if the blockade here was lifted by force. Cathy and I were also short on pesos at this point, having some reserve dollars and some travellers checks, but in this hamlet we weren´t likely to be able to do anything with them. Dirk said, I assume humorously (hard to know for certain since he was German) that he´d been suggesting to the truck drivers that we were 500 to 20, and we could push through their blockade if we gathered in force. He ran right into the Manana attitude of the truckers, and they ignored him and went back to sleep under the trailers of their trucks. Poor Dirk was on a vacation visiting his brother Frank, who was based in Veracruz, and this was the third day of his week vacation in Mexico. Frank had been living in Mexico for a few years, and while not happy about it took all of this in stride. Both of them were engineering types, and Dirk found this blockade intolerable.
The night before we´d talked about Mexico´s recent political history, and Frank said that when Vicente Fox of the PAN party won the presidency two years ago, the first time in 75 years that the PRI party candidate had lost, it was like a revolution in Mexico. There were 3 main parties ' the PRI (the Institutional Revolutionary Party - a hugely corrupt patronage machine), the conservative PAN party, and the leftist PRD party. Both the PAN and the PRD had been making strides in local elections, but often it was still the case that in some states the process was corrupt until someone intervened from above in an election stolen by the PRI (the last PRI president had actually done this in the 90´s with a bunch of governorships against candidates of his own party). This seemed to be what was happening here, although we had no idea if the people on the bridge were right or only pissed off because they lost. Guerrero is the poorest state in Mexico, and the protestors were from the PRD party. Likening the situation to a protest against the political machine in Alabama in the south of the U.S., I figured that it was probably a legitimate protest, and whether we liked it or not, this was part of the package deal that was being a tourist in Mexico as it was becoming a real democracy. We were lucky it was a non-violent protest, unlike Chiapas, a nearby Mexican state where there is an indigenous insurgency. Dirk did not agree. He kept talking about being by the fireside back in Germany.
So I had no problem in principal with the protesters, I just intended to support their cause from the Puerto Escondido side of the bridge. Cathy and I sat for about an hour in the shade, munching down saltines and drinking water to avoid heat stroke. We wanted to make sure we were ready to push the bike and the gear half a mile up hill if we managed to get through. I asked Cathy what time it was.
"1:30", she said.
"Siesta time... let´s go."
We took off only one box this time to make the bike thinner, and she walked with me - I assumed we´d have more sympathy from the crowd this way - and I pushed the bike over the rocks towards the blockade. After I got stuck, one of the blockaders moved a log for me, and we were on the bridge. On the other side past the end of the bridge, we had a crowd of around 50 people that had erected an open sided tent on the road. We weighed whether we should go down a gulley to a dirt path below that met up with the road again on up the other side, but just then the crowd was letting a minivan through, and we walked right behind them and made it through the other side. I walked back for the other aluminum box, and said goodbye to Dirk and Frank, feeling sorry for Dirk on his vacation. We didn´t see them again, so we don´t know if they ever got their car through.
We mounted up again, and headed on towards Puerto Escondido. We wanted to rest, but it was also now about 2:30, and we were still far away. We needed water, food, and money. But after seeing that protesters in the next town had blockaded the bank, we decided to get the hell out of Guerrero - hoping that the protest had not spread to the state of Oaxaca. In Pinotep Nacional we found a bank, and got water, and were on our way, with 3 hours of daylight to make Puerto Escondido. Of course at this point everything seemed to conspire against us. The road wound through mountains where washouts at the edge dropped a quarter of the road down a cliff, and every town we went through was a patch of topes - like speed bumps, usually a foot tall, but steeper, and the bike´s center stand scraped on each one as we crossed at 5 mph. After the 50th one, I cursed them all, and every town we went through. Around 4:30, we were stopped at a military checkpoint - one of dozens that we have seen, and for the first time we were searched.
The land flattened out and I did 60 mph, well over the speed limit, in a notch of asphalt surrounded by jungle, keeping a close eye on the side of the road for wandering burros, cows, wild boar, dogs and unmarked topes. We made it in to down at dusk, grabbing a hotel by the beach. I´m hoping that when we get going again tomorrow we don´t have the same kind of problems, but I no longer assume that if I have 6 hours to ride, I will necessarily make it 250 miles.
November 16 - Palenque
Today we were at the ruins at Palenque, one of the largest Maya sites in Mexico and Central America. This site towers over a plain and the jungle, but sits right at the foothills of the Sierra Madre Chiapas Altas - the High Chiapas mountains.
Two days ago we were in Puerto Escondido, and we decided to switch to getting up very early, and trying to get off the road before the main heat of the day. We got up at 6, and were riding by 7am, to our surprise. We made great time, through flatlands, costal mountains, and an area of very high winds (there were actually windmills - surprising and encouraging since Mexico has so much oil.) We started up into the mountains of Chiapas, and after about 40 miles, the mountains opened up into a high plain, where the road was straight and flat and the air was cool. We did 350 miles, the most in one day since I was in British Colombia. We rolled into Tuxtla Guiterrez around 5pm, only to find that it was not a large town but actually a city of half a million people. We found a place, parked the bike, ate, and went to sleep with a feeling of great achievement.
I guess this gave us a false sense of how easy Chiapas was going to be. We woke up still tired from our long day before, but we were riding well before 8. By 9, we were climbing endless switchbacks. We hadn't seen the mountain coming up to it because of the fog, so we were surprised by how high we were going. Within an hour the plain below - which itself was high above sea level - looked like the detailess patchwork of farmland that you see from an airplane. We were well over 8000 feet when we stopped at a village. This was the area around San Cristobal, the area of the insurgency where the Zapatistas were fighting against the Mexican government, but it wasn't the active area. The Zapatistas came onto the world stage when they took over San Cristobal, a town of 30,000 people, for 36 hours. There was something very distinctive about the region. Houses were different, made out of wood planks, and there were pine trees. The air was clear and thin, the sun much brighter, and corn grew on the highest hill tops overlooking the road as it wound through the passes.
By midday we were starting to have problems. Both of us had something in Mexico City which we only discovered later was altitude sickness, exacerbated by the general lack of oxygen in the air in Mexico. In Cuernavaca we returned from our first day in the city to slightly lower altitude, and I had fever and chills and was slightly hallucinatory. The altitude deprives your body of oxygen, and when your ride a motorcycle you are also doing something active that requires more oxygen then simply being a passenger on a bus. Cathy also was actively leaning into turns and working with me as I rode, so we both got hit by it. For me it had passed quickly, and by the end of the week I had been climbing the pyramids at Teotihuacan, outside of Mexico City, but Cathy wasn't so lucky and had to take off to Acapulco a few days early, the closest city at sea level.
So we were midway to Palenque before we realized that we were starting to have severe problems. The road dipped and then climbed high again, and each time we could feel the effect as we rose up to altitude. I felt like I had the flu, somewhat disoriented, with joint aches and a sore throat. Cathy was starting to feel faint. We had to stop to rest often, which made the ride even longer, through winding roads up and down slopes, with speed bumps surprising us around every curve. We had been surprised by the altitude because our road atlas did not show topography, so now we scoured our guidebook for some sign that things would improve if we continued. The only reason we had to hope was that one description had Palenque at the edge of the Yucatan plain. Armed with this we kept going through the hills, and then through road work where we had to ride on loose sand. Finally with one last military checkpoint where we had to open everything we were in Palenque. We stopped for dinner and literally could not keep our heads off the table.
We took a jungle cabana near the ruins of Palenque, away from the noise of the city, so we could sleep. The cabana was deep in the jungle, over a small footbridge, fairly distant from a few cafes and another cabana place with a meditation center. Our room was screened on all sides, including above the room, and the noises of the jungle were feet away. As soon as we had the gear off of the bike I fell onto one of the beds and went right into a feverish sleep until 11pm, when I woke up. I was sure I was hallucinating.
"That's not techno music, is it?"
"Oh yeah," Cathy said. "What jungle experience would be complete without the soothing sounds of techno?"
It kept me up for about ten minutes. Then I fell asleep again and slept until dawn. We both had a hangover for the rest of the next day, but by the time we went to bed in Escarcega, we were recovering. I can't say how excited I am to get to Antigua Guatemala, which is in the same mountain range. Hopefully it will be different this time if we take it easy. Besides, it's good exposure for Peru...
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