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[transcribed journal notes — slightly corrected & expanded — written as a stream-of-consciousness travelogue, hence the curious style — you've been warned]
DIA CERO:
Wednesday 16 Feb 2005, St. Onesimo
Bisbee, Arizona.
We wanted to leave today, but didn't. As we worked the funky laundromat, an Old Mexico Hand advised us to cross at Naco, not Douglas -- much less hassle and delay, she insisted. Packing is almost finished. So are we.
DIA UNO:
Thursday, 17 Feb 2005, Fund. de los Siervos de Maria
Nuevo Casas Grande, Chihuahua - evening.
After much lifting and toting, grunting and moaning, we left the Bisbee house just after noon -- California time.-- ALMOST a morning departure. We feasted sinfully, then crossed the border at Naco with amazing speed.
THE PROCESS:
* Stop at US Customs to register our electronic gear (to avoid import duty when we return).
* Negotiate a ziz-zag maze of low massive concrete blocks to reach the port of entry.
* Cross the line.
* Stop for a cursory inspection.
* Park across the highway at Banjercito, waving away an old gent wiping our windshield.
* Walk 100 yards to Immigration to apply for Visitors' Cards (VCs).
* Walk back to Banjercito to pay for the VCs and our auto permit.
* Walk back to Immigration to have the VCs stamped. (I suspect this dance is to prevent Immigration officers from receiving payments.)
* Walk back to Banjercito, give a couple bucks to a fellow "collecting for the homeless" who's been helpful in directing us around.
* And drive south.
It only took a bit over an hour to clear all the border bureaucracy. (Good thing there was nobody else in line.) Then, off on our adventure!
THE ROUTE: South to the highway running just below the border, east through Agua Prieta's gritty suburbs and across the Continental Divide, threading a couple of grim military checkpoints. At the first we were waved through. At the next they didn't even look in our direction, focusing instead on west/north-bound traffic.
The roads ranged from "good" to "pothole mania," roughest especially in the shallow mountains passes torn up by massive truck traffic. The scenery was sublime under overcast skies, wet desert and rough hills and flowing barrancas, eventually into lush agricultural ranges. This is all worthy of further exploration.
At Janos, the junction with the Ciudad Juarez road, we turned south toward Nuevo Casas Grandes. Dusk descended. A cop pulled us over to see what the California license plate implied, and to warn me to slow down a little, the road is dangerous. Hey, I was just following the other traffic, dodging holes and stalls.
NIGHTFALL: As the sky darkened, we hit the Interior Zone inspection station. Nothing to declare, so on we go.
They say, DON'T DRIVE IN MEXICO AFTER DARK, but it's full darkness when we reach Nuevo Casas Grandes (NCG), almost 7 pm. No, it's 8, we crossed a time zone. This looks like a fairly prosperous western US city, but what could we see?
We roll into the guidebook-recommended Hotel Pinyon and grab a discounted room. Rates, room and decor all look rather 1975. In their attached dining room, munching Platillos Mexicanos and reading the guidebook while a Telenovela (soap opera) blares, we learn that the hotel bar is one of NCG's hot night spots. Oh goody. Too bad we don't do bars.
DIA DOS:
Friday 18 Feb 2005, San Simeon
Nuevo Casas Grandes, Chihuahua - early morning.
The dusty ragged roadways of the north have been fronted by shrines, many many shrines, often similar to those stateside, but more, and more intense and varied. Simple crosses with plastic flowers and beads, or more elaborate cruciform displays; or small locked structures; or a larger, grander crypt topped with an air conditioner. Some are at the roadside; some ride rearby rocks or slopes or hilltops; some with stairways painted white, or just simple tracks lined with white or pink or yellow rocks. To drive these roads is to be constantly reminded that death is at hand, our immediate neighbor.
These dusty ragged northern roadways skirt cinderblock colonias (neighborhoods), and wildly-colored arabesque cinderblock motels, and tarpaper barrios. They climb twisty igneous grades, overlooking vast playas (dry lakes) and serengetti-like plains and yet more ragged mountains. They are sometimes lined by dirt frontage roads smoother than the rutted pavement. These roads live hard lives.
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Friday 18 Feb 2005, San Simeon
Ciudad Jiminez, Chihuahua - late evening.
Along day. We left early. South of Nuevo Casas Grandes (NCG) we took the spur to old Casas Grandes and the ruinas Paquime. When the railroad bypassed old Casas Grandes, settlers founded NCG, leaving behind a charming, quiet old village. The whole are seems lushly agricultural and prosperous. We did a drive-by of Paquime, but it probably deserves a half-day of concentration, so we skipped the ruins and museum -- another time, a day trip from Bisbee, eh? So back through old Casas Grandes, around its green parque and bright orange cathedral, a few happy dogs running about -- and then onwards.
Roads were excellent the rest of the day. We traversed wide valleys rimmed by gnarly mountains, chunks of the Sierra Tarahumara. Over a crest to the lively town of Buenaventura, gateway to the back country north of Copper Canyon. On to Ricardo Flores Magnon, grab a couple of tortas and sodas, then down the superhighways to Chihuahua.
Chihuahua is as large as San Jose, California, as busy modern place with staggered multi-colored attached adobe-like housed stretching up hills and down valleys, ticky-tacky Little Boxes gone berzerk. Industrial zones, dusty strip malls, blocks of US fast-food franchises and big-box retailers, streaming traffic that's not quite chaotic. So it wasn't hard to get out of town fast.
ROADS: Many a secondary highway, passing through town and village, is interrupted by a tope (in Guatemala, a tumulus) or vibradore, aka SPEED BUMP. One comes to a near stop at such places, where vendors naturally place themselves. Another speed bump, another sales opportunity. In Guatemala, intrepid mechanics place wheel-, suspension- and muffler-repair stands at such locations.
The highways are lined with many signs, some with international symbols, some just verbiage. My favorites are those common signs that variously say (in translation):
OBEY THE SIGNS
RESPECT THE SIGNS
TAKE CARE OF THE SIGNS
RESPECT THE SPEED LIMITS
DON'T ABUSE THE SIGNS
DON'T DESTROY THE SIGNS
Draw your own conclusions.
ONWARDS: Out of Chihuahua we drove west up the plateau, then south down the old High Road to Mexico City (Ruta Paisano) towards Hidalgo del Parral, our goal for the day. We cruised more wide vistas, crossed many arroyos carved through alluvium, climbed past rugged hills and numerous villages. Many of the latter were marked only by bus stops, each with a dirt track leading through fields off to the habitations.
We turned off for a spin through Valle de Zaragoza, the spotless village's wide streets accessed over a long low newish bridge, away from the highway. Maureen sensed immense civic pride and community spirit here. The neighboring highway was lined with the usual dusty crusty hodge-podge of shops. How many other such dichotomies are invisible to the passer-by?
PARRAL: We reached Hidalgo Parral, lured by its description as a lively place, once the world's richest silver-mining town. We had hoped to stay a couple of nights, stroll and gawk. We found a twisted, bustling maze of incomprehensible streets, with no idea where to look for the recommended hotel or sights. Like Bisbee on steroids -- maybe ALL mountainous mining towns are such tangled webs of asphalt, eh?
So we bugged-out eastward, back to the main highway. Once again as darkness neared, we headed towards accommodations like moths to flames. (We read that it's suicidally insane to drive in Mexico after dark.) We found a terribly overpriced ultramodern (bright, clean, spare) soulless concrete motel in the truck-stop town of Jiminez, and have given up for the night. Ah well, we're one day closer to Yucatan. Thirty hours in Mexico so far -- are we adventurous yet?
DIA TRES:
Saturday 19 Feb 2005, San Alvaro
Ciudad Jiminez, Chihuahua - early morning.
We made mistakes yesterday afternoon that cost us money. First, by not reading the guidebook more carefully back in Parral, not searching out the inexpensive hotel there. Second, by not picking a cheaper option here. We were very very tired. We'll be more careful. We MUST be more careful, stretch the money, or this will be a short trip.
We've been driving across the expanse of the great Chihuahuan Desert, the largest, wettest and most diverse around. Plains of mesquite and stunted creosote bushes, a cholla forest just east of Benaventura, patches of yuccas and joshua trees, ridgetops fringed with spiny ocotillos. Should be spectacular when in bloom. And there's more to come...
Saturday 19 Feb 2005, San Alvaro
Parras de la Fuente, Coahuila - evening.
We escaped Ciudad Jiminez early, tired and grouchy, and rolled south across the nearly featureless plain towards the tri-cities of Gomez Palacio-Lerdo-Torreon. Many routes provide alternate cuota (toll) and libre (free) roads -- in this case they were parallel and not too dissimilar.
At the topes (speed bumps) in the desolate backroad villages are vendors offering nuts, melons, honey, newspapers, citrus, hot foods, spiced banana chips, and a young goat. Free enterprise is everywhere, rampant in the hamlets whose main services are eateries, tire repair shops and whorehouses. And the desert plain stretches on forever...
THE TRI-CITIES are an amazing sprawling metropolis, old ruins and fancy new houses and bleak barrios and globalized infrastructure all cheek-by-jowl. Old and new constructions are threaded by immense throughways regulated by fate. Traffic of all sized and speeds and centuries merges and diverges in all directions. Running across the expressways we see: people, dogs, goats, burro- and horse-carts (whipped furiously), but no wheelchairs. It's not quite chaos, not quite.
We spin off through the bustling suburban village of Matamoros, then out across more featureless desert through the hamlet of Emiliano Zapata and to the village at the end of the road, Viesca. Well, we didn't know it was the end of the road until we got there. We thought we were following the AAA-map route to Parras. After criss-crossing the tidy town's concrete streets and seeing only dirt tracks leading into the distance, we stopped and asked some guys about the Parras road. "No existe!" they laughed. But it's on the map, we said. "Mala mapa," they said. Bad map. Hmmm.
We retrace and vector east across yet more (guess what kind?) desert, then turn off south into the mountains and Parras. The guidebook says Parras "rises like an oasis in the desert" and it *is* pretty nice here. Nearby are the oldest vineyards in the New World (est. 1547), and natural pools to float in, and even some trees. Quite a few trees, really.
PARRAS DE LA FUENTE itself is old colonial architecture wrapped around a slightly twisted grid of narrow streets, not too difficult. We finally found (overpriced) accommodations at Hotel la Siesta and set off afoot to see what we could see. Downtown mostly comprises a couple of long east-west streets and their cross-streets set between and beyond the two main squares and their churches. There's another church at the edge of town, perched on a crazily-carved hilltop like a baroque mushroom. We'll try to get there tomorrow.
We arrived in time for siesta -- much was closed except hostelries and the few eateries (El Tiburon nourished us well) and the internet cafes. As a thunderstorm blew by, the latter kept us busy until nearly dusk.
Then the town really opened up. Hey, it's Saturday night! Everybody's out on the streets -- afoot, socializing and shopping, or cruising the mains in their beaters and bombers and pickups filled with happily screaming kids. Music and horns and only a couple sirens (and we only heard one car alarm all day). We stomped all over the centro, saw and smelt much, and headed back to our abode (nearly bumping into a darkly uniformed young man in parade hat and epulets).
Snack, shower, get ready to rest -- and suddenly there's a thunder of percussion and brass. I *quick* get dressed and run out. Across the street is a Teachers' Union compound. The sound comes from its courtyard. I peer in the entrance, and there's a gang of darkly uniformed young men in parade hats and epulets, a well-drilled drum-and-bugle corps. The full moon shone down through scudding white clouds; lightning flashes electrocuted the sky; and the drummers and buglers stomped-down the night.
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NOTED:
* So many roadside shrines -- mostly for dead kin, many for saints or Madonna-Guadelupe, many for kin AND saints. Is this totally a Euro-Catholic thing, or did pre-Conquest Mexicans (and if so, which?) put death-remembrance shrines along their roads and paths?
* Like 'stations' in the Australian outback, ranchos in the Mexican desert are often noted on road signs and maps -- probably the primary communities in their areas?
* Mexican road signs read "Puente xxx," the bridge over such-and-such, not the such-and-such itself. The puente may be a culvert, bridge, viaduct; it may cross a stream of any size, or a road or railway or village; there's no way to tell from the name just WHAT is being crossed. The dry West strikes again?
* The rooms we've taken may be overpriced, but the food certainly isn't. We have fed ourselves quite well for US$10-15 per day - plus a couple bucks for Pepto-Bismal tablets. Two tabs, three times a day, is the recommendced preventative for digestive woes.
* The People's Guide to Mexico says "that the laws of the highway are made by the drivers and there's no one to complain to if you feel you've been wronged." I suspect this is true.
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DIA CUATRO:
Sunday 20 Feb 2005, San Eleuterio
Matehuela, San Luis Potosi - evening.
We evacuated our digs in Parras before they could find we'd blocked the toilet, and drove around town until we located the road up to the mushroom church. (Oops, we forgot to note its name.) Then a slow leisurely desert drive (with a wet blanket tied to the roof to dry out) east along the high foothills, past arroyos and horsemen and goatherds and tiny hamlets, out to the spic'n'span town of General Cepeda. The town square was a forest, Sunday festivities roiling around it, the well-dressed populace out strolling -- another lovely desert oasis.
On the street in Parras, early Sunday morning: an old guy in a burro cart delivering milkcans to doorsteps, exchanging greetings with us. On the roads outside Parras, goatherds motivating their flocks and waving enthusiastically as we drive by. On many highway verges, cattle and equines and goats are grazing, sometimes tethered, often not. The roadside runoff provides verdant forage in this otherwise dry region.
SALTILLO: Midday found us in the metropolis of Saltillo, nearly a million strong. Yes, saltillo blankets come from here, those rainbow-striped wonders. We crawled the San Francisco-like streets and made our way to the magnificent cathedral, a glory of Mexican Baroque. A self-appointed (and not-so-cheap) tour guide explained and showed us its splendors, eased us past Sunday mass, and led us up narrow spiral stairways to the bell tower. Fantastic vistas from there, and incredible 'vibrations' when the bells rang noon.
We wandered through the downtown mercado, buying nothing. A fat albino said, "Hey, Americanos! I have family in America too!" and walked off. We searched fruitlessly for the local sweet, a pulque candy, but did find a WalMart to replenish our fluids and medications.
I was stopped by cops on the way out of town, and was admonished to have the licence plate on the bumper, not in the rear window. Hey, I was just trying to prevent theft.
MATEHUELA: We climbed across mountains (the free road) and down a long, wide valley to the city of Matehuala, whose name in Nahuatl means "don't come." But we HAD to come, we need a place to sleep! The street plan is almost a grid, almost a maze, and road names change randomly. Another stymied search for recommended lodging, then we gave up and found a 1960's-era motel on the outskirts, the Hotel Capri. Clean, reasonable, only slightly funky, quiet. We should rest well.
Many shops and eateries leave a TV on, loud. In Parras we lunched to babes and dance videos and a hot remix of MACARENA. So it was only natural that we sang down the highway: HEY, MATEHUELA!
DIA CINCO:
Monday 21 Feb 2005, San Pedro Damian
Xilitla, San Luis Potosi - evening.
We dragged ourselves from our hard but adequate beds in Matehuela, showered and packed, and stepped outside to find a flat tire. Luckily the Hotel Capri is next to a Pemex station (national gasoline monopoly) and repair shops. Two guys ambled quickly to remove and repair and replace the pneumatica disinflata, all for 60 pesos (US$5.50).
The morning saw us continuing southward across the altiplano (high plateau region) through forests of joshua trees and arborescent opuntias and cereus or organ-pipes (cactus trees), past real villages and tarpaper shantytowns and thatched roadside camps. And no cops stopped us today, so I must have behaved well.
We cut off from the autostrada above the city of San Luis Potosi and took secondary roads across the inner ranges and a lower altiplano. Except for the villages and cactus trees, we could have been inland near California's central coast. We hardly got lost at all passing through Cerritos and Villa Juarez and Rio Verde. Fields of fruits and corn and nopales (edible pancake cactus), hillsides of palo verdes and mesquites and citrus and wild tobacco; goatherds and burro guys and bicyclists.
MISSIONS: We loved the (excellent) back roads so much that we skipped around Ciudad Valles and continued southeast through the boonies. The towns of Conca and Jalpan and Landa de Matamoros are built around splendid missions, founded by Junipero Serra (famed for California missions), all UNESCO World Heritage Sites. The MISSSIONS of the SIERRA GORDA -- we MUST spend more time there some winter!
We roller-coastered through hills and valleys covered with a sort of chaparral, like the elongated interior of a slightly strange California. Towns are lined with topiary trees, neatly trimmed in extravagent shapes. Then, heading for Xilitla (he-LEET-la) we crested the Sierra Madre Orientale range and descended into a wetter, colder, foggier, tropical realm -- ferns and banana trees and bromeliads and cycads and carnosaurs. And the excellent road got twistier.
XILITLA: We reached Xilitla at deepest nightfall. We're here because the guidebook promised a surreal wonderland, Las Pozas -- we'll see about that tomorrow. Tonight we wandered around a mountaintop maze that makes Bisbee and Jerome (vertical twisted Arizona mining towns) look like chessboards. Steep and jumbled and jammed, with almost no signs. But we somehow made it to the centro and our destination, the Hotel Ziyaquetzas. (Now say that backwards three times!)
Our large, spare, slightly overpriced 'colonial' room overlooks a valley (as does half the town); the other side fronts the zocalo (town square) where a market will erupt in the morning. We're diagonal from the mossy lava cathedral (oldest convento in the New World) with a multi-story courtyard. Shops stretch in all directions, mostly down. I wonder what this all looks like in daylight?
DIA SEIS:
Tuesday 22 Feb 2005 - Catedra de San Pedro
Xilitla, San Luis Potosi - morning.
Dogs bark into the night. Birds squawk all night. Roosters start their song sometime in the dark of the morning. In between, we sleep.
Today is Tuesday, malaria tablet day. We'll take our malaria medication every Tuesday until after our return stateside. REMEMBER THIS!!
And now, down to market, and over to fantasyland...
Tuesday 22 Feb 2005 - Catedra de San Pedro
Paplanta, Veracruz - evening.
Market day in Xilitla wasn't exactly booming as we decamped down the steep slopes, helpfully directed down a vertical street ("It looks bad but don't worry, everybody does it!") past the "Onion Waterfall" (Cascada Cebolla, I shit you not!) to the promised wonderland of Las Pozas de James, the creation of a British royal-bastard surrealist poet some 55 years ago.
LAS POZAS ('The Wells') seems inspired by Salvador Dali (who visited) and MC Escher and HP Lovecraft. In the cloud-forest jungle we find overgrown and decomposing concrete, cyclopean architectures: hourglass columns and their inverse; large and small Roman and Gothic arches; staircases spiraling to nowhere; stone serpents screaming at the sky; doorways that enter nothing; floating chambers, narrow passages, disappearing vistas, warped waterfalls, etc, all built in a steep hillside jungle. And portions of this can be rented, with wood beds and hot water.
Not wishing to stay near Cthulhu's lair (or even the Parrot Cave) we wound down from the jungle heights to the coastal foothills, which we slowly slowly traversed by bumpy backroads, almost all paved. Having to stop for a tope (speed bump) every 200 meters slowed us a bit, so we took two hours to go 32 fascinating miles through tropical plantations, energetic villages (variously of concrete and/or thatch and/or corrugated tin and/or whatever) and steep volcanic cornfields.
KRAFTWERK: Some municipalitos (counties) specialize in wood furniture: thousand of dark varnished tropical chairs and tables here, thousands of light carved upland rockers there, in thatched-roof warehoused and by truckloads and in tiny roadside sheds. Elsewhere are coconut creations, and carved religious figures, and rattan stuff.
Along the roads now: pigs and piglets, turkeys, burning trash piles, wood haulers, machete-wielders, women in Mayan traditional dress.
JUNGLE? As we drove from San Luis Potosi state, across Hidalgo and into Veracruz, the landscape changed from sharp volcanic mountains to rolling inland hills to undulating coastal plain -- but if I expectecd a flat jungle, I was sorely disappointed. Steep grades alternated with banyan-like groves and fields of corn and agave (maguey, for making mescal and pulque) and nopales, separated by orchards of citrus and coconut. Lava plugs jutted up here and there. And oilwell pumps appeared.
A giant iguana ran frantically across the road, legs pinwheeling, tail extended. Wow.
Xilitla to Tamazunchale to Huejutla de Reyes to Tantoyuca to Alamo to Roza Rica, and then here into Papantla -- the towns and cities keep looking more and more prosperous. Crafts and agriculture and especially oil. Maybe some fishing too, but we haven't seen the Gulf yet. And a bit of tourism too.
PAPANTLA: We're in the Hotel Totonacapan in historic Papantla, downhill from the bicultural cathedral, because 1) the old Totonac ruins (pyramids, etc) of El Tajin are nearby, and 2) Totonac flying guys (voladores) swing and dance on 70-foot poles here. At least they're supposed to.
But today -- ah, we climbed to the square and found some strange festival with clowns, loud music, teams of little girls dancing rhumbas and mambos and hulas and whatever. We learned that this is the finale of Carnaval here; the Lent season starts tomorrow. It's not exactly Mardi Gras or Rio's blowout, but it's loud and lively, if rather inhibited.
We munched on the terrace of the Restaurant La Hacienda, overlooking the open stage. The crowded zocalo spread before us. A wandering vendor tried to sell us a rosary and crucifix made of vanilla beans. (Papantla is the HOME of vanilla!) The night faded away, and so have we -- but not the half-dozen or so peacocks across the street. They still sing.
ADDENDUM: Oh yes -- Maureen didn't notice that the shower's drain stopper was in place, and she managed to flood the hotel room. But no drownings; and then the waters receded, and the sun shone, and the doves sang.
And when we went to an ATM on the zocalo, an M16-wielding guard stood posted right beside us. Try to get service like THAT at a stateside bank, eh?
DIA SIETE:
Wednesday 23 Feb 2005 - Ash Wednesday
and San Policarpo de Esmirna
Chachalacas, Zempoala/Cempoala, Veracruz - late.
Down the Veracruz coast a few miles, in great heat and humidity. I'll write about it tomorrow, I'm just beat to shit right now.
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Las Pozas
NOTED:
* Mountains and valleys and more and more, steep slopes and deep cuts slashed through the volcanic layers, range after range after range -- Maureen says this is almost as good as Switzerland.
* Our 1996 Ford Explorer SUV with California plates is almost invisible here. Besides the beaters and bombers and junkers, towns and villages are crowded with newer cars and pickups and vans, and a not inconsiderable number of US licence plates. I guess lotsa folks come back home in the off-season, eh?
* Xilitla's zocalo, the Jardin Hildago, is kid-land this evening -- teens lounging or parading or necking, youngsters running and screaming or piled atop motorized contraptions. Cops hang out at the corner of the cathedral, next to where we've parked for the night. This town feels pretty safe.
* I am almost reconciled with Mexican toiletry practice, which is that toilet paper ('sanitary tissue') does NOT go down the toilet, but rather into an adjacent 'recepticle' (mini trash can), so as to prevent plumbing disasters.
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