An Amazing Trip to Southern Mexico

This is an old story from a trip I took in the fall of 1991 just before the birth of my oldest son.

So then, in October (by now you will get the sense that this is an expectant father jamming every moment of last hurrah before his youth comes skidding to a halt), my friend Don and I headed off to Mexico for a two-week zip through Oaxaca and Chiapas. The great irony of this trip was that it began by our being separated at the San Francisco Airport because his plane was unable to leave San Diego due to the storm in Northern California. When we met in Mexico City sometime the next afternoon, he brought me the terrible news that the same storm that had separated us had killed Bill Graham and my friends Steve and Melissa, whose helicopter met the business end of a power pole the night before. I made the hasty decision to continue on with the trip, figuring that it would be easier to cry as I journeyed through Mexico than it would be to live out my dream of seeing those places while I cried at home.

Having that happen had a distinct impact on my recollection of Mexico. My usually sharp memory of places is dim, and the trip seems more like I read about it in a book than experienced it. None the less, it was a great book. We flew from Mexico City to Oaxaca, having successfully reunited following the storm through an amazing combination of long distance phone calls, intuition and obliging airline vacancies. I didn’t find Oaxaca per se to be that exciting of a town. It is, however, a great place to buy art, and my five-month flurry of Spanish lessons took hold, I started to get ancy. A city is a city, underneath it all.

We stayed in a hotel that was formerly a convent (are all hotels in Mexico former convents?); made the obligatory trip to Monte Alban (where we learned that playing Frisbee in Las Ruinas esta prohbido), ate far too much mole, went to San Bartolo (of black pottery fame), took in some open air symphony, went hiking and wasted a lot of time trying to rent a car in Spanish,

After three days of negotiation and blunder, we settled on El Limon Grande, an overpriced “1991” bright yellow Super Beetle. When we got it, though it had just 1,800 miles on it, it was effectively an ’81, and when we returned it, 1,200 miles later, it was effectively a ’66. Our apologies to the Budget Rental Car Agency.

From Oaxaca, we drove 90 miles west, through the most stunning mountain rainforest imaginable, to beautiful Puerto Angel. This is a small fishing village that, sadly, was “discovered” by some of those absurd gringo transplant types who run around with impeccable tans ruining the local culture while all the while calling themselves “locals” and telling you how long they’ve lived there every chance they get. Its still a real nice place. The long, wonderfully barren Zipolite Beach to the north is gorgeous, and being a working fishing village, Puerto Angel serves up a good fresh snapper (without fucking mole sauce, thank you very much). Whether the place will retain its charm for much longer is questionable. The Mexican government’s latest instant resort (ala Cancun, Mazatlan, etc.) is a scant 35 miles down the highway at Huatulco. Huatulco today looks like a ghost town – albeit brand new – awaiting the screaming masses who will come its way once the tourist board starts letting the word out. The ruin of the neighborhood is assured by the brand-new international-scale airport.

It sure would have been nice to stay in Puerto Angel for a while, because the annual sea turtle landing was only days away, but San Cristobal beckoned. Oh, did I mention that one of Mexico’s famous potholes in the Oaxaca Valley blew out our right rear shock absorber? And did I further mention that I can tell you exactly where every other pothole in that corner of Mexico is because of it?

The drive south – to the Straits of Tehuantepec – is gorgeous. Nearly devoid of traffic, the drive of about 100 miles passes through terrain I would never have expected to find in Mexico. The road follows a course just west of a prominent coastal mountain range, punctuated by huge farm plots and an occasional village, and now and then swings out along the ocean. We finally emerged, a little fried I might add, because driving in Mexico is like going to an aerobics class, through a high pass looking down over the massive Straits. It was then time for a reality check.

From Puerto Angel to San Cristobal in a VW driven by a sane foreigner takes about 13 hours. So, rather than go crazy doing that all in one fell swoop, we elected to stop in a conveniently placed charming little village approximately halfway. Wrong. This particular region is quite devoid of charming little villages. Halfway between the two is the auto parts capital of Mexico – lovely, romantic Juchitan. There are only two hotels in wonderful Juchitan – one which enters through the back of the Segundo Classe bus station, that we didn’t find – and the other, La Mancion, which looks like a water tower and is the highest structure for miles around, which we did. Easily the shittiest hotel on the whole trip, and the most expensive, the Mancion presented a classic tourist dilemma: Do you open the window so the air conditioning won’t freeze your ass off, or do you close the window so the cascade of unmuffled diesel trucks won’t keep you awake? Did I mention that Don’s only piece of luggage was a diaper bag? He lost his backpack in the plane mix-up. We opted for the freeze-out, and I slept (I had a sleeping bag). Don did not – because it is “warm” in Mexico and they don’t give you any blankets.

The next morning, we learned that the best way to really bum out the staff of La Mancion is to tell them you want to leave. The night before, we were the first car into their small parking lot. The lot has 12 parking spaces. When we awoke, there were 30 cars in it, each of whom have left their keys with the jefe downstairs. You can guess the rest. With tears of glee in our eyes, we happily drove out of Juchitan.

From then on, the trip was like a fantasy come true. Shortly after Juchitan, we left the state of Oaxaca and its cratered road surfaces and entered Chiapas. For grins en route to San Cristobal, we took a launch up the Sumidero Canyon, expecting an overblown tourist attraction and being quite blown away. The canyon, until 1979, was a river valley. Then it was flooded – to become the second largest hydroelectric plant in North America, now supplying a good part of Central America. The dam created a mammoth, twenty-mile long remote lake, served only by two government-sanctioned launch companies. The canyon is a tropical paradise. Its walls rise over 3,500 feet above the surface of the lake, zillions of birds crowd the banks, alligators sun themselves and there is nobody around, save for the occasional passing launch. Of particular interest was the Arbol Navidad, a bizarre natural formation of moss resulting from a series of springs coming out of the rock face that looks like a 200 foot high Christmas Tree. Wow.

San Cristobal is the greatest place in all of Mexico. We arrived as planned, the day before Dia de los Muertos, and spent the better part of the day sitting in the cemetery talking with our new friend the Mexican construction worker and drinking beer. Its amazing how far pidgin Spanish goes if the person you’re talking to cares about having a conversation. We spent a fair amount of time driving our reluctant piece of shit Volkswagen around the mountains and visiting the little weaving villages. The church in Chamula was the high point – one of the most fascinating cultural experiences of my life. We got real sick, by the way of pleading Capitalist Chamulan women following us around town trying to sell us friendship bracelets for “Ceeeenco Mil.”

We got very attached to Na Balom. It was such a privilege to eat in their dining room (and they had the most palatable and digestible food in town). We had dinner one night with some Lancandon Indians from Yaxchilan who looked like they had stepped out of a time machine, so different were their features from any other Latino I’ve ever seen. San Cristobal was also textile heaven for me, as I’ve never been to Guatemala.

After about six days, we headed north to Palenque, stopping along the way at Tonina - a remote ruin roughly eight miles north of San Cristobal – and at Aqua Azul. Aqua Azul was more like Aqua Negro, because it rained like a mutha that day. I have never seen water come out of the sky like that. For a time, we were literally unable to drive, because the windshield looked like the inside of a washing machine. Aqua Azul was a bummer – too many tourists, and I got carped at by this prick restaurateur who now inhabits what was my favorite swimming hole and who objected to having my naked ass hang out in full view of his customers.

Between that and the tourist scene at Palenque, I wished we had never come north at all. The town of Palenque (actually, Santa Domingo) is a pit, with lots of trucks and tourist buses. When we went to the ruins, which I remembered as being the high point of my last trip to Mexico, the place was overrun with obnoxious French tourists who threw their garbage on the ground and acted as though they were in Disneyland. To that point in the trip, we had completely avoided the tour bus crowd, and seeing them gave being in that special place kind of a tainted feel.

When then had a bit of a drive back to Oaxaca, and I fully expected this to be a bummer. However, the savannahs of the south part of the states of Verazcruz and Tabasco were gorgeous, and I felt at times like we were in the Serengeti. The singular funniest moment on the trip came during this drive. As our by now quite thrashed VW approached a slight rise in the road, a small pickup truck approached the crest. Its driver appeared to be motioning with his hand to indicate something like “slow down.” We did.

The next thing over the rise was a small flatbed truck with a massive water tank on the back; so wide, in fact, that it occupied our lane, his lane and the shoulder on the other side of the road. We slammed on the brakes and pulled off the road as it narrowly missed us. As this aberration drove by we saw, spray-painted on the side of the tank, the words “Peligro Mucho” (much danger). Yeah. No shit.

After a nice in a beautiful little town somewhere en route, we enjoyed yet another awesome drive through the rainforest – this time through the mountains north of Oaxaca. We spent one last night in the convent and flew home the next day. With hangovers.