Mexico
VI: Melaque to Puerto Escondido
(or, over a few days we travel half the country!)
11/29/06 – 12/01/06
Map, general: http://www.ontheroadin.com/pacificcoast/pacificsouth/southernpacific.htm
Map,
Puerto Escondido: http://www.tomzap.com/map-esco.html
(there are really no
photos from this time, but we put up some more from the end of our Melaque stay and some pictures from Puerto Escondido are
up, but maybe you want to wait for that update to see them? Up to you….
http://www.flickr.com/photos/scrappymoduinne/sets/72157594313508543/
)
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Well we had a hard time making it out of Melaque. Just as it began to grow on is, it then began
to feel like a sort of trap. One of the
problems was we had made some friends.
On the road it’s hard to leave friends.
It’s like a good meal while traveling - you stuff yourself, not knowing
when the next eats may come. The first
set of friends were our taco stand folks.
Flavio (who for some reason I called Sualio in my last update) and his son Jonanthan. Every night we found ourselves down at the
plaza, hanging out on his white plastic chairs, drinking his agua fresca (made with fresh
Jamaica: http://www.gourmetsleuth.com/jamaica.htm
), and meeting which ever of his friends was there at the time. And of course we’d eat tacos.
Our second set were a couple from Vancouver, Canada, Hiroshi and Riko. Everyday it
seemed we would bump into them at one place or another. Some sort of fate at work. On our last night in town we spent a great
dinner on the beach with them, sucking down beers and talking about Chomsky, seafood, meditation, relationships, and the world.
Besides a surreal evening at a beach-side Italian (!) restaurant where we
were the only non Italians (and only sober ones), most of the rest of time in Melaque we were navigating the Mexican postal process. We had a bunch of extra clothes, books,
notebooks, and misc. items that we wanted to get rid of. Besides some other business (like some very,
very late wedding thanks you notes to finish…yes, we’re so damn guilty), this
was why we had stopped in this town in the first place. When we first rolled up to the post office
(which like so many places in Mexico served its dual purpose of home and store/service
– the post master’s bed in the corner, his daughter doing her homework on the
side table) we were told that we needed to find our own boxes, our own tape,
and our own blank paper for covering the box.
Okay. So off to find some
boxes. After searching we find a grocery
market that is willing to spare some (nothing is thrown out in Mexico, so
finding an empty cardboard box that nobody has already given a second life is
rare). By then the post office is closed
for the day (3pm).
The next morning we head to the paper store. We bring our supplies to the post office in
the afternoon. We are assured that we
have the proper items and we’re given a crash course on proper wrapping and
taping. The postal master winds an
entire roll of tape around our biggest box.
He is literally sweating with the effort. An hour later (it’s past closing time by now)
he weighs the boxes and gives us the price.
1,027 pesos for the one big box.
We freak out. That’s not even the
other packages and letters. We tell him:
no way! With the grace and patience of a
saint he doesn’t swear and chase us down the street with his scissors. He just wipes the sweat off his brow, puts
his finished roll of tape down and kindly tells us that we’d be better off with
several small boxes than one big one. So
we pay for another night at the hotel.
The next morning we sit in the courtyard of the post office and spend an
hour or so assembling our boxes and wrapping them. The price is still insane. Almost 50 dollars in US money for our boxes,
letters, and other packages. But it’s a
third of what they wanted the first time.
Wow. A whole bunch of my stuff I
just left with the woman at our hotel.
It just wasn’t worth sending home.
We finally caught the bus out of Melaque (after
discovering the best ham and cheese croissants we’ve ever had), on the 29th. We still couldn’t find a good razor, stove
alcohol, or Christina’s contacts solution.
The second class bus was more comfortable than the first class one we
took in Guadalajara. A nice breeze, soft
music in the background. We watched in
amazement as the whole highway from Melaque to Manzanillo had a shoulder.
We had finally given up on the road, and then it gives us what we want.
Manzanillo is really big. In the bus station a woman approaches and
tells us in English that we’re crazy to be biking. In between blessing us she also says she
can’t wait until Friday (Dec. 1st) when the new president will swoop
in to put down all the trouble makers in Oaxaca. “It’s only a very small amount of people,
paid for by the man who lost the presidential election.” Her vast understatement (there were over
10,000 people in the streets on the 25th before the PFP and
plainclothesmen brought the smackdown through state
sanctioned terrorism) and ignorance were outstanding. It’s also the prevalent view among the
middle-class.
But no time for arguments in the big city, we’re here on a mission. We need stove fuel, contacts solution, and a
razor! We find a cool looking public
library. We find roads too dangerous to
ride. We find a megastore
that except for the name, looks just like a Wallmart. We find many cold, unfriendly people (in fact
I actually shove a woman at one point after she refuses to move out of the way
after looking straight at me – I am amazed at myself but still feel justified –
it was past her or fall into busy rush hour traffic with a fully loaded
bicycle). We find tacos al pastor again!
We find a revolutionary library and social center (run by CROC - The Revolutionary
Confederation of Workers and Peasants - Confederación
Revolucionaria de Obreros y
Campesinos). But
we don’t find what we need. It did feel
really good though, to ride again, even if it was for short spurts on
terrifying roads. We head back to the
bus station. Our plan is to get to the Oaxacan coast where we will wait from word from Eric Larson
about whether it’s okay to come up to Oaxaca
city. It’s too late in the evening to
begin hitching, and we sure as hell don’t want to stay in Manzanillo,
so we decide to bus it again.
The bus and bike dance is one we’re getting sick of. And it’s just started. The deal is that the bus drivers of the first
and second class busses (who are totally insane drivers, and so far to our
experience, usually plain damn pricks – the smug arrogance and confidence of
commercial airline pilots and the machismo of rock stars) are aloud to fleece
the passenger with a bicycle for some extra cash. The bus company is completely aware of and in
cahoots with this practices despite that fact that the driver just pockets the
money for himself. In some places it’s
not the driver, but the head baggage handler who makes the call. It’s not an issue of room, there’s plenty of
it. It’s not an issue of extra labor, we
help load the bikes if not do it all ourselves.
Our bus driver in Manzanillo wants us to pay
200 extra pesos for the bikes. Christina
tells him that the same bus line in Guadalajara only charged us 100 extra pesos
for both bikes. He talks it over with the
baggage man. They come back with an
offer of 160 pesos. We talk it
over. If we don’t take this bus we have
to wait until 3:30am for the next bus on a different bus line. We go over to that counter (all the different
lines have their counters together, like rent a cars in a US airport) and ask
how much they’ll charge for the bikes.
“probably nothing” we’re told. We
tell the first line no thanks and settle down to wait. More out of spite for their attitudes and
laughing and talking about us. We can’t
believe that the company is willing to lose two paying customers because the
driver can’t get his bike bribe. About
15 minutes after the first bus is supposed to leave, just as Christina
predicts, the driver returns and says: “We have a six percent discount for you
on the ticket price.” With the discount
it’s cheaper than the second bus, and we end up paying less than we would have
with no bikes. The crazy thing is
though, the discount means the company gets less money - the driver still gets
the same bribe. We just shake our heads
as the bus runs through the hot coastal night.
We wake up in the morning in Acapulco.
Famous Acapulco. The night on the
bus had been miserable because not only was it freezing (as all busses are),
but we forgot to bring food. Our only
distraction was we got to watch Gone in Sixty Seconds in English! Acapulco makes Manzanillo
look tiny. The cliffs hide shacks and
million dollars homes alike. The ocean
crashes violently below. There would
have been no way we could have ridden into this city on bikes. The bus constantly scrapped the side of tree
branches and was almost always riding off the side of the road. But people do it. Or so we’ve heard. We haven’t met these mythical folks yet.
We don’t really want to stop here, but we still need to find at least
Christina’s eye solution because she’s all out and we really can’t go on
without it. We are also in desperate
need of a guidebook to Central America in English. Just beside the bus station we find a retired
dentist who offers to watch our bikes as we head into town. He claims to own the entire apartment complex
that sits between the canal and the bus station. We pull the bikes into his tiny apartment and
say hello to his wife. He shows us his
high-school yearbook which has some yellow newspaper clippings tucked inside
describing his youthful trip to the USA to study English. He’s forgotten it all now. But he’s proud. And super kind in that way that only old men
can be.
The bus station, like in most cities, is nowhere near the plaza. We wander around the local’s central shopping
district, trying to find some food. The
streets are packed with people, taxis, buses, and dogs. The sidewalks
overflowing with people, fruit, fish, dry goods, buses, and dogs. Not a gringo for miles around. They all take taxis to the beaches, hotels,
and plaza. People aren’t outwardly mean,
but they sure aren’t friendly. Half an
hour, lost, and about to faint from the sounds, smells (for C. as least), and
our hunger we fall into the only taco place we can find. The place is sketchy as hell. A large butcher hook in the ceiling in front
of the bathrooms. Nobody eating
there. Heavy rubber tablecloths. Christina comments that it reminds her for
some reason of the movie Brazil. We
order tacos. There doesn’t seem to be
choice of what kind. Christina takes one
bite and turns to me: “I can’t eat these.
What kind of meat is that?” I
have no idea, but I’m so famished that I eat all 5 of mine, and 4 of hers. With enough lime and salsa picante, it didn’t matter.
But it did later. I felt
disgusting. They were the worst tacos
ever. The worst food I’d ever eaten in
my life. I am still amazed that I didn’t
end up seriously ill. That’s what two
days of hunger did to me. I’ve gone for much longer without food and I understand
the power of that empty hole. I
understand how people can steal, rob, kill, even eat one another to fill
it. But I swore before the mighty
Pacific Ocean that no matter what, I would cut my own belly out before
returning to that taco joint.
All day and no luck. From here to
there. Nobody can give directions in
this country for shit! Oh go that way a
bit and maybe turn there or not. But it
doesn’t matter that the directions are bunk because when we finally get to our
destination, hot, sweaty, and tired, what we want is not there. As we tromp all over this enormous town, and
the sun sinks lower, we realize we should give up and head out. Christina has found some eye solution that
will work. Not great, but okay. It will have to do. Books in English are not to be found –
chasing ghosts. One last tip gives us
the name of a paper store that may have books.
We get lost trying to find it.
Christina climbs up a steep side street to ask at the small window of a
store. The woman points vaguely in the
way we’ve come. I turn to lean on a wall
and look out over the city. Suddenly the
woman yells out, Christina screams, and I turn to look. All I see is
Christina’s head at pavement level. I am
horrified and deeply confused for an instant.
Where is her body?! It has fallen
down a wide open hole in the sidewalk!
In Mexico they even have a word for this! Ginormos.
The woman from the store, her daughter, and I all rush over to pull her
out. She can’t move her leg and her
ankle has in seconds swollen up 3 times its size. Christina’s not really talking and so I’m
trying to navigate the language as we all figure out what the hell to do. We check.
Nothing is broken. Nothing
gushing blood. Two older gringo tourists
stop and stand smiling. “How long have
you been in Mexico” they ask, implying that any stupid fool who’s been here
long enough doesn’t walk into hole. I
shoot them daggers with my eyes and turn back to Christina’s pain. They continue. “Where are you from” “Where are you going” “blahh,
blahhh” Idiots.
Can’t you see we’re in crisis mode here?
Take your condescending rich tourist bullshit somewhere else!
Once we realize that the hospital is not necessary, the women take
Christina into their home/store where they’d been eating lunch. They put aside their food and take to nursing
Christina. Ice is wrapped in towel. Salve is found from the backroom. As the daughter rubs it into her ankle,
Christina asks: “what is that?” They
just answer: “from the pueblo”. Ah. The daughter is studying to be a
teacher. We talk and look over the
injured. The daughter continues to rub
the salve into Christina’s ankle and surrounding area. I am hypnotized by her slow, patient,
purposeful rubbing that goes on and on.
She is not just putting on some cream, she is healing the flesh, the
muscle, the bones. Christina, when
finally confident she can hobble, wants to find the paper store still! Damn stubborn woman! We slowly, very slowly, make our way down the
street. Christina cannot walk on her
foot, but she’ll be damned if she doesn’t check this last store. Ah and yes, get some ice-cream.
The paper store has no books at all, forget ones in English. We get our ice-cream. It’s stale.
Damn this town sucks. We get a
bus. Take it to the bus station. It’s the wrong bus station. There are 3 of them! We get a taxi and sit for 40 minutes in
traffic. I ask the driver what he thinks
about the President who will take control in 1 day. He answers: “more of the same.” That seems to be the prevalent view among the
working-class.
Finally we are on a bus out.
Another overnight ride. We will
go to Puerto Escondido and stay for a few days.
Wait for word from Eric, and wait for Christina to heal. There’s no way she can bike, and there’s no
way we can even try hitching with her like this. Puerto Escondido is supposed to be a pretty
cool town. The chief baggage handler
wants 200 pesos for the bikes. Here we
go. Christina tells him no way. The same company only wanted 100 yesterday
she says. Tough shit he says. She asks to speak to the manager of the
station. This guy talks to the baggage
handler. They come to an agreement but
everyone is pissed off. When the bus
finally comes at 11pm, the driver wants 200.
No we tell him, the guy in there agreed to 100. The driver was the biggest prick yet. He said he didn’t care what they said. They weren’t here. He was.
He wanted 200. No way, we
said. We made to take the bikes off the
bus. Just give it to me, give me 100 he
barked at Christina. We paid our bike
bribe, glad to have stood strong again, but afraid now of our extremely angry
driver. He talked shit about us all
night to others on and off the bus. God
knows what he was saying.
Every time we want to make gross generalizations about a place, every
time we get down, discouraged, and angry about the way people treat us we
remember the dentist, the store owner’s daughter with her salve, some stranger
on a curbside. Though these experiences
in the large cities are one in every hundred, the good ones are so full, so
glowing, so wonderful that they infinitely outweigh their opposites. And when we think about it, it’s the same in
NYC, or any other urban center we’ve ever been to.
It turns December 1st while we’re on the bus. A new month.
A new President of Mexico. A new
era? I try to find some news on my
little radio. Nothing. A little after midnight I wake up to find the
bus stopped. We are in a small
town. The driver is standing outside a
small restaurant talking to a police officer and watching a television. Some suit and tie is on TV. I can’t make him out. But I can tell it has to do with the new
President. He gets back on the bus and
drives a few blocks and stops again. We
are outside a gas station. There is a
truck full of police with large caliber weapons. It looks like they are loading them. A man in plainclothes with a large white
towel on his head sits on a milk crate with a machine gun. The bus just idles there. People stir in their sleep. The men with the guns wait. The bus waits. For what?
Finally we leave and I fall back asleep.
Christina wakes me at dawn to look out the bus window. “I counted 24” she says, pointing at the
military trucks of armaments and men passing us. Going the other direction. Hopefully far away from us, far away from all
of us. The sun rises on Puerto
Escondido.