Wisdom, Madness, and the Ocean

December 3 - 15, 2000 -- Feeling chipper again after my little head cold, I bus it to Oaxaca and hang out with lots of travellers and then go over the mountains to the fabled Playa Zipolite for a touch of magic, meditation, and madness.

Oaxaca

Sunday, I got up early and headed for the bus station. Once again, the citizens of Mexico City proved they are incredibly hospitable and friendly by going out of there way to help me catch the right local bus and find my way into the TAPO bus station to catch my bus to Oaxaca. Once inside, I bought a $25 ticket on a bus leaving in 10 minutes to Oaxaca. It takes a good 30 minutes to get out of the sprawl of Mexico City, but once you do, it is truly breathtaking. On the highway towards Puebla, the hills are rolling and lovely, studded with oak trees and corn fields. Then, you rise into pine trees and see the unbelievably high volcano Popocatepetl off to the right, snow-capped and steaming as if it might blow at any time. After cruising through flatlands for a few hours, the road starts switching back up some mountains covered in thousands of cactuses. When we finally arrived in the Oaxaca valley after a Popped Bladder ride, you could easily see why the ancient ones chose this valley. Lazy streams wind their way along, and everywhere around you can see flat patches of fertile black soil that have been cultivated the same way for thousands of years.

I checked into the Magic Hostel for 5 bucks a night. I thought I�d buckle down and save a little money by staying at a hostel, and if I was lucky I might meet some interesting travellers to see the sites with. The advantages of staying in a hostel were apparent right away. There was a book exchange, where I traded my coveted A Confederacy of Dunces for a crappy Tom Clancy called The Cardinal of the Kremlin. Hey, beggars can�t be choosers though, and I was just thrilled to have something thick and diverting to read in English. Tom Clancy is like Doritos -- no nutrition whatsoever, but damn, does it ever taste good going down. Also, they did my laundry for 4 bucks, had tons of cold Caguamas (Mexican for a "40" of beer) and cheap eats, cool nooks to hang out in, movies and a VCR, and lots of interesting people hanging out. One of my first friends there was Anja, a German woman who I hung out with quite a bit and the next day we saw the ruins of Monte Alban together, had a lovely time. The ruins were very cool, way up on a hill with a great view so they could defend their city, ball courts where the losers of the game would get their heads wacked off like a slice of salami, and lots of guys walking around in cowboy hats selling little artifacts that they had just dug up in their corn field that day (right buddy, what about the "Hecho in Mexico" sticker?).

I met a cool bartender from Tahoe City named Nate, and along with a cool girl from Argentina named Andrea, we made the hour-long bus trip for Nate to buy a rug to a village called Santa Ana del Valle. Unfortunately, we arrived at siesta time, so everything was closed, but Andrea exuded charisma and sunshine, and before Nate and I knew it, we were inside someone�s fenced yard and she was talking our way into an amazing demonstration of local weaving techniques. We awoke our host from his nap, but he and his wife were amazingly cool, especially since Andrea was fluent and totally charming to boot. He invited us in, strung up his loom, explained the whole process, showed us raw wool and the huge buckets for boiling water and adding the natural dye, and the little white cactus eating insects which when squeezed, emit a dark red blood that is dried to produce a prized dye called cochineal. Amazing turquoise and orange dyes were gathered extracted from mosses gathered high in the mountains that cradled the town. Both Nate and I were kicking ourselves for not knowing Spanish better, because it was incredibly obvious from our short time here with Andrea how much more we would be able to experience in Mexico if we could talk more naturally with the people.

Unfortunately, our kind host didn�t have any rugs ready, so after chatting awhile longer, we mosied on. The town had lots of turkeys and chickens and dogs and it was really cool to hear the native language Zapotec being spoken in the streets and to banter in Spanish with some local drunks. After a few more blocks, we were invited in by another weaver to see his work. This gentleman worked alongside his four brothers, much the way his father and father�s father had. He showed us some tapetes (rugs or wall hangings) that were 80 years old but looked fresh off the loom. After seeing lots of average looking stuff, he brought out his personal stash. Nate loved one in deep cochineal purple that looked like a menorah with birds on it, and I was enchanted by another incredible one that had a little cabin in the foreground with a dog, a cactus, and dreamy mountains rising up behind. Mine had taken this master weaver two full weeks to make, and his bottom line price for these was 50 dollars each. I hadn�t intended to buy a rug, but I loved this and would dream about it if I didn�t buy it, so out came the cash. I felt especially happy since this was the first thing I had bought for my new home upon returning to the states, and I really loved giving the profits to the maker instead of to a middle man. Nate�s most visual memory of the experience, other than the lovely rug, was taking a leak in the open pit bathroom out back as the turkeys and chickens picked corns out of the human poops laid out before him in some sort of obscene buffet for the local poultry. Grotesque my friends, yes, but life is in your face here. Eat your hearts out fellow meat eaters :)

We watched the sun go down over the purple mountains behind the town as we played a pickup game of basketball with a developmentally delayed boy who was unable to speak in words but far made up for it with what his radiant smile told us. He was lovely, and a fine shot too. If we would have had a few more minutes, he and I would have kicked Nate and Andrea�s asses, I�m sure of it. Simple pleasures in a lovely country. The people of Mexico are the best.

On Wednesday, I went out for breakfast to my favorite little juice bar in the market, and a woman came up to me and said she was staying in the same hostel and wanted to know if I�d show her around. Her name was Kat, and she was visibly very nervous and rattled, as it was her first day here and she was a bit lost. As time went on though, it became clear that she was a very unwell woman, deep in a depression and suffering from anorexia. I just tried to chill her out, sat with her in the park, said things like, doesn�t the sun feel nice, just relax, everyone is great here, it�s very safe, etc. She was trying to convert me to Jesus after awhile though, and the conversation was fairly dark on her end...she was oppressive and was subtly picking on me, saying stuff like you just don�t know Jesus then, and...really, you can�t seriously believe that can you? After an hour of this, I had had enough, and said, well, it�s been nice talking to you, have a nice day (read = there is a short pier over there that you might enjoy taking a long long walk on). She said, what�s wrong, am I BORING to you or something? Um...it�s not that, I just feel a little uncomfortable and have some things I need to do. You can�t leave me, I haven�t a clue where I am. OK, no problem, I�ll be happy to walk you back to the hostel. As I was walking her back, she was talking erratically about going up into the mountains to find a friend of hers, but she didn�t know the address and didn�t know if she could stay here and coming to Mexico was a big mistake. The last I saw of her, she was slinging on her pack and bailing from the hostel, even though I know she had already paid for the night. Ick, some people you just can�t help. I tried to scrape her horrible shadow off me for the rest of the day. She was the second anorexic woman I had met in Oaxaca, and I was very glad to back in the sun by myself, sipping OJ and whistling a little tune. The rest of the day was spent taking in the incredible Iglesia de Santa Domingo with it�s ornate gold work and craftsmanship, and the Museo de las Culturas de Oaxaca, some of the pieces on display here being more interesting than those in the museum in Mexico City.

Zipolite

On Thursday, I was itching to move again. I had met some incredible people in Oaxaca, but I still had a lot of ground to cover before meeting my dad in Costa Rica for a week on January 12. It was kind of a coin toss between taking the all night 12 hour bus ride to San Cristobal de las Casas, or head to the fabled Oaxacan Coast. In the end, chilling at the beach sounded more appealing, so on Thursday morning, I stumbled over to the second class bus station to see for myself why these buses were half the price of first class. At the sandwich shop on the way there, the cute little lady tried to set me up with her daughter, giving me her business card as I left...she was sweet. Well, I bought my 6 dollar ticket for the 7 hour ride, and the bus showed up an hour late...second class buses have arbitrary time schedules. Another interesting thing happened right off that I�ve never seen before. Guys are always climbing aboard the bus selling food or crazy miracle cures. It is usually something like Dr. Wanker�s Medicinal Linament, good for everything from constipation to arthritis. Before giving their sales pitch, they walk down the bus and hand out a few bottles so you can read the label before deciding to (not) buy. These guys have an impeccable memory for how many of these they have handed out, and I�ve even seen some people jokingly hide these products in the past, only to be scoldingly asked for the return of the bottle or payment in full. For some reason, this guy totally forgot that he had handed a bottle to the gentleman next to me, so when he got off the bus and the door closed, my seatmate and I both puzzled if this was some new sales technique where he would jump back on the bus later or if he had genuinely forgotten about it. Turns out that he had indeed forgotten, and I truly hope that my seatmate realizes all of the miracle cures promised on the label.

The ride from Oaxaca to the coast is like crossing from Reno to Sacramento over the Sierras on a rutted, washed out, two lane, mostly-paved road. The streams and villages are incredible, but by the end, I had to seriously restrain myself from eating the entire bottle of Doctor Wanker�s Medicinal Linament to see if it was good for nausea. Just when I couldn�t take it anymore, we arrived in the bombed out town of Pochutla. I caught a 15 peso collectivo taxi to the beach town of Zipolite, checked into a place, and after a few beers, I was good to go. In the morning, I tried some fishing and surveyed the beach. It is a two kilometer stretch of sand between two headlands. Dreamy blue water, amazing rock formations with arches...palapas up and down the beach. It looked like heaven. I migrated to the far end of the beach to a 10 dollar cabana at a lovely place called Lo Cosmico. I was meeting people right away, and a great guy from Ireland named Kenneth was the first person to start introducing me to the Canada Connection, starting with Erin, Sara, Bill, and later Frank. We had breakfast at a lovely all you can eat buffet for $3.50, and chatting came easily with these folks. Kenneth lives in a little village in Galway where he has to cycle a few miles to the store. He is into the healing arts and massage, which started after he was paralyzed on one side after a fluke stroke when he was 20. Full recovery was slow, but when he was well again, he spent 3 months living in the jungle in Goa, India, most of the time not really needing clothes. The animals came to trust him and he even had a snake crawl over him one day. He told me some really cool stuff about how he realized how the nature around him was exactly the same as what was inside him, and he kept pointing at a spot near his solar plexus as being the center of this energy. He heard a word over there that he liked, Shankar, and this is what he called this spot inside. On his return to Ireland, he was delighted to learn that Shankara in the ancient Irish language means Old Friend. He is a great guy with a heart of gold and I really enjoyed talking with him. He had made the whole trip from Ireland, across the US, and down through Mexico on the Green Tortoise hippie love bus with only a school-sized back pack. I hope to do the same thing on my next trip. Most of the shit I have with me is extraneous I�ve decided. Partially because of my talk with Kenneth, I later that day did a visualization exercise to kind of extract once and for all the bad feelings I was having from the breakup. I had had quite a few beers, was chilling by myself, and just imagined pushing all the bad feelings out my mouth. It was pretty weird and powerful, but all the bad feelings crawled out of my mouth in the imaginary form of a slippery black snake. Make what you wish of it, but it seemed to work, and I felt better.

The third night I checked into Shambalah where all the Canadians were staying. It is a 30 year old hippie commune at the end of the beach, the oldest place there, they even used to have their own pokerchip type Shambalah currency at one time. Now, it is just a relaxed place to stay...my tiny room was only 4 bucks a night. I met my friend Canadian friend Roshini ( means Light in Hindi) there. Her parents are from India, and she is a crazy, free-spirited thing with a nose ring and sort of a dark-complected Ani DiFranco look to her. We ended up hanging out a lot, she gave me lessons in yoga and meditative breathing, swam naked (Zipolite is clothing optional), watched frantic schools of minnows jump out of the water with crazy snapping teeth cutting up the water below them, had great meals at the Alchimista, went on hikes, and generally just had a great time for the rest of my stay there.

It is rumored that Zipolite is a beach where the indigenous people came when they were ready to die. They would just walk out into the water and let the currents take them away. This part is hard to explain unless you have been there, but Zipolite feels like a magical place that is somehow removed from reality by a spell or something. The scene in the Wizard of Oz comes to mind with the beautiful field of poppies drugging Dorothy into a magical stupor. Time just seems to slip away here, and you almost feel drugged at times. The currents and waves are deadly, and many people drown here. It is just a beach with lots of memories and swirling energies...everyone feels it to some degree, but some people lose it here.

Ryan was one of the Canadian guys who came down to hang out and party. After a few days, and possibly too much weed and mezcal, he walked up to the owner of the place he was staying at and said, I can see the way you�ve been looking at people, this place is evil and you are the evil emperor, I know what you are up to, and I�m keeping my eye on you. The owner said, what, are you taking your meds? Obviously if Ryan ever had he wasn�t now, and he went missing that day without any of is gear. According to Roshini, he is one of the coolest guys you�d ever want to meet, and she was worried sick about him after sharing a room with him and some other guys for a week. He never showed back up for the nine days that I was there. A few days later, a Mexican guy showed up and started babbling incoherently after a few days, and started doing weird stuff like jerking off in front of everyone on the beach until the police came and carted him away, having to release him after one day because supposedly they had nothing they could charge him with. Another night, a kind of Kurt Cobain with a beer gut looking guy from what I suppose was the States showed up in front of Shambalah one night, took one of the torch lights by the path out of the ground, and started flinging the burning oil all over the place screaming �Basta! (Enough!) repeatedly in Spanish. Then he took this crazy looking ninja pocket knife with one of those red laser pointer things on it and threw it through some poor terrified Australians� cabana window. This was all unbeknownst to Roshini and me until hours later, but we saw him a short time after this at a bonfire at one of the bars further down the beach. He gave me some very scary looks, was throwing sand at people, jumping crazily at the fire, convulsing, and basically just trying to intimidate people. Roshini decided to blow him off, but he seemed scary to me, so I walked off a safe distance where I could watch him. The highlight was when he did a maniacal interpretetive dance to that classic rock tune with the words, LA Woman....City at Night...tearing off his pants, running into and out of the ocean, flipping me off, doing back flips, I was very quietly giggling without letting him see me, but was freaked out at the same time. I was really glad that I gave him a wide berth when I found out later about the knife incident. I don�t know what it is about Zipolite, but there is definitely a very strong energy there. If you are in a good place in your head, you will love it, if you are a bit imbalanced, you may want to try visiting Cleveland Ohio or some other innocuous destination. Just my two cents.

So many other great things happened during my nine days at the beach that it�s hard to mention them all. It was the first place I had really felt really at home, I definitely knew I could stay there for months at some point. One night, Roshini and I split two amazing bottles of Mexican Cabernet by a bonfire and toasted her friend Eamon who is currently sailing around the world. At night, it was always amusing to wake up to the rats in the ceiling, rat shit was always raining down from the reed mat tacked up above me, one time getting me right in the eye. Other times, I watched amazing meteorites fall, saw the Southern Cross, hiked to private beaches with crazy arches and caves and emerald green water, played guitar and sang for hours by the campfire with new friends, or just chilled at the Shambalah cafe. After nine days though, I decided that if I was ever going to get to Costa Rica I needed to start moving again. Roshini was heading to San Cristobal de las Casas and Palenque too, so we decided to head out together.

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