Todd's Arrival

Saturday I packed up all my things, said my goodbyes and thanks to everyone in the house, and set off toward the northern edge of town by around 1pm. Thus far, I had only hitched once a short hop coming back from Las Grutas 12 km away, so it was a 5 minute ride. Then I had offered $5 pesos to the guy as a thanks and he turned me down. I was a bit nervous to head back down the exact same road I had gone down the weekend before to the Zapatista village and then beyond deep into the Selva Negra mountains.

I bought a really bad map for $90 pesos and stood on the side of the road with my thumb out. The first car that stopped offered to take me to Villahermosa, Tabasco for $1,000 pesos. I told him no, especially since the bus only wanted around $600. The next one to stop was a dump truck heading... somewhere. I couldn't tell because his Spanish was so fast and my map was so bad.

He drove me a good 20 minutes up hill then turned right and dropped me off at the corner in a village somewhere with a smile and thumbs up. I crossed the street and threw my thumb out again. A footbridge crossed over the road, and on it were four Mexican teenaged guys who took a fancy to me. As I stood there trying to flag a ride they eventually came down and started talking with me. That day would be a great test for my Spanish. I could tell when they asked where I was from, but after that I was struggling through the conversation, which was sparse anyway.

Mostly they just stood, very close, staring at me. I had remembered reading in some tourist thing saying that Mexicans had a cultural habit of standing closer than other westerners are used to, so I was trying to remember that. However, it is a bit intimidating, especially when they give up on talking but stand there anyway. I kept my smile, and didn't entirely feel threatened, but was definitely being wary. I brokenly tried to make friendly conversation, but it was a great struggle, and part of their silence may have been trying to make sense of the words I put together. Soon enough, however, a ride came along and I "mucho gusto"-ed them, making a point to shake each of their hands, then left.

We spoke only a little in the beginning of that next ride. They were a couple coming back from San Cristóbal to Larrainzar, which turned out to be a very small town, but big enough to be on my map. When we arrived they said some things to me I couldn't interpret, but had stopped and I got out thanking them. I gathered I was in an area where a colectivo, a small local bus, picked people up. I didn't want to pay, of course, so I began walking out of town with my thumb out.

A mere 400 meters down the road some construction workers called out to me and, luckily, I was able to understand and talk to them. From what I gathered they were saying I wouldn't be able to walk the roads and had to take a colectivo or carro, which is a cab. I headed back and made broken small talk with some of the others milling about waiting for a cab to show up.

One guy offered for me to ride out in the back of his pick up for $40 pesos. I told him I had heard it would be $25 and he basically insinuated I could wait longer then. After a half an hour or so, and the guys finding something funny about my boots that I never figured out, I found a cab to go two hours north for $18 pesos. Sure I was squished in the back seat with two others, but I was happy.

After missing my stop and going another half hour in the wrong direction I began catching rides in a series of pickups. This was my favorite because I could just sit in the back, wind in my hair, eating my peanuts, and watch the mountains drift by. They are a completely stunning range. The pickups were also hilarious to ride in too. One I rode in I was sitting on bags of something with another guy going to work who had also hitched. Hitching is well accepted mode of transportation in Mexico, though occasionally I picked up on some resentment that I was doing it as an American. American, loosely translated in Mexican Spanish means person with money.

My fortune climaxed toward the end of the day when a long haul trucker, Alejandro, heading to Mexico City picked me up. My route, should you care to Google it, was to go from San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas, to Villahermosa, Tabasco, to Ciudad del Carmen, Campeche, to Mérida, Yucatán, finally to Cancún, Quintana Roo where I would pick up my friend Todd from the airport that Tuesday afternoon. Alejandro drove me a good six or seven hours through the Selva Negros which was really fun, but probably only for someone like me.

The road through the mountains had a hairpin turn quite literally almost every 300 meters. On top of that, the road is a two lane (one each way), it often turns to dirt suddenly, if it isn't dirt there are potholes the size of tires to small cars, and inside half of those turns one lane has been washed out by rain. Alejandro never slowed down. The man was an artist with that rig using the full width of the road over both lanes. Another drastic difference here from America was that no one on the road seemed to mind this. It was sort of an automotive ballet going two ways at high speed.

At one point we reached a vista that was spectacular when we came close to the edge of the range. Below us opened up into a valley where thick fog had rolled in. The mountains are all quite sheer, drastically rising up to rounded points, then falling off just as suddenly, so at the end it simply ends. As far as the eye could see was a sea of clouds that looked very much like the edge of the world. We kept saying to each other, "es loco, es el fin del mundo" (Its crazy, its the end of the world). To complete the beauty the sun was slowly sinking into the clouds as night moved in.

As the sun descended, so did we, and almost simultaneously the sun and us fully engulfed ourselves in the clouds, and suddenly the world became murky and dark all at once. We drove on until Teapa, Tabasco where Alejandro decided to buy me dinner and sleep in his truck for the night.

The next morning I found out he wasn't going any further that day. We had run into his uncle and I think he had to unload some of his load. Perhaps it was also his way of telling me to move on now since he very well may have been tired struggling talking to me in Spanish. I made it to Villahermosa a little ways north in no time, however. This day would illustrate just how generous, opposing my suspicion, the Mexican people are.

I was dropped off at the southern edge of town and walked toward the center. I asked a man at some point if the cathedral spire I could see was where the center was. He said it was close and that he would take me there. In my broken Spanish I told him that wasn't necessary, but he insisted, and I started suspecting when we got there I would be charged for the tour.

We went on and on toward the cathedral as he told me history around the town that we'd pass and started asking if I was hungry or thirsty. Of course I was, but I was already worried about one con-debt I may have accidentally accrued. Eventually, I conceded to having a drink of Horchata with him, which is a shake style drink made of rice, cinnamon, and some sort of sugar. Its a favorite down here. This was when I realized exactly how wrong about him I was.

Enrique insisted on buying my a drink. He then persisted to see how else he could help me out as we sat and chatted. We parted ways after a bit exchanging emails and it wouldn't be more than ten minutes later that another guy, Angel, oddly enough, offered to help me find the highway. We talked in English, as he was an English teacher, and soon he offered to buy me tacos. In fact, he didn't offer, he just told me he was going to. Then he gave me an impromptu tour of the little area we were in and apologized for not being able to let me go back to his place to eat, shower, and possibly sleep. We too exchanged emails and Facebook information.

Angel had guided me toward the highway, but sadly I took a wrong turn and spent some time trying to figure my right way out for a bit. When I finally did I caught a ride with a man and his two sons, one of whom was learning English. I improved my Spanish some while he improved his English with me, while also getting a ride exactly to the right spot I needed to be in. I got a taste of what I sound like to others when they dropped me off and all three of them said "my name is Enrique", "my name is Julio", "my name is Oscar".

Walking out of town there was a giant line of traffic, so cars were passing slowly. A colectivo passed me and asked how far I was heading. He spoke perfect English, which took me a second to register being in Spanish speaking mode, and when he told me it'd be $20 pesos to go an hour or so north I took him up on it. Turned out he was a Mexican who moved to LA as an infant, so he considered himself American. He was back visiting relatives and drove the colectivo for free for them while he was there.

I think he was really excited to have an American, but more an English speaker, in his colectivo because we chatted the whole way up. I have to say, I was quite excited to speak some English again as well. About half way there he told me he wasn't going to charge me for the ride. When he dropped me off he slipped $20 pesos in my hand when we shook hands saying he wanted to help me along my way. I couldn't believe he paid me the fare I was going to pay him when I got out. I thanked him purfusely then bid him farewell.

An older couple gave me a ride the rest of the way to Ciudad del Carmen, Campeche and went out of their way to drive me as close to the other side of town as they could to help me out. Its quite a large town, so after several times of me insisting this was too much they finally agreed and dropped me off. The sun had set by then, so I walked a good hour or two trying to find a place I could camp out. As things started getting a bit more industrial, and more stealth camping friendly, I had gotten hungry, so I thought I'd walk until I found a taqueria or something, then bed down after dinner.

I walked on and on looking for something, and eyeballing the woods in different abandoned areas to sack out in, until a pick up wheeled around and pulled up next to me. Again, the window came down and perfect American accented English came out of it. Again, it took me a second to realize I fully understood everything the guy said to me clearly. He was a guy from Baja California and he offered to let me crash at his place.

Oscar makes his money pulling oil from the Gulf of Mexico and has a gorgeous house at the end of the island right on the ocean. He also is a Couchsurfer and was currently hosting a British deep sea diver who also works on rigs while he travels the world. Oscar took the three of us out to a grand taco dinner then we talked well into the night until I had to get some sleep.

In conversation, he found out I was looking to get to Cancún, which is 700 km from there, by Tuesday afternoon to meet Todd, and he was quite concerned I wouldn't make it. He agreed then to drop me off at a good spot where I could hitch out from in the morning. The next morning, I jumped in his Hummer with him and his kid around 7:30am. He dropped his kid off at school in town, then bought me a coffee and told me he was going to give me $600 pesos and drop me at the bus station. He was convinced, and concerned, that I wouldn't make it to Cancún in time.

I could not believe the level of generosity. I even tried buying his coffee as a small thanks, and he wouldn't hear of it. At the bus station he even chipped in another $20 pesos, and soon I was on a first class bus for 13 hours to Cancún.

First class is exquisitely first class down here. The bus system in the US is a very sorry excuse for a bus system, which is why I find it ironic that people think of Mexican and Central American buses as strange primitive places where chickens and pigs roam freely. This is far from the truth. Instead, its more like flying, but your on the ground. Movies are always playing that you can plug a head set into to listen to. The seats are wide with plenty of leg room and go way back so you can sleep well. On this particular bus, there had been coffee and tea with hot water, sugar, powdered milk, and stirrers to doctor it up. High class.

I nestled into Cancún that night at a different hostel than where I'd stayed a month earlier and made friends with a Canadian guy who was a bit red neck-ish, and spoke of the backward ways of Mexico. I met with Todd the next afternoon as scheduled and we had a good night out that night in celebration of his arrival. While out, we made friends with a Mexican guy who was depressed about losing his ex-wife so we let him talk it out with us over drinks.

We stayed in Cancún for quite a few days, while Todd acclimated to Mexican life. I was anxious to leave, and get back to cheaper Chiapas, but I also was okay with allowing myself a bit of celebration for the week. After a few days we took a bus down to Tulum. On the bus we randomly ran across a traveler friend of mine, Enrique, from Ecuador who was also heading to Tulum. We arrived Thursday evening and set ourselves up in a hostel. Enrique went to his Couchsurfing host, and we fell back into backpacker culture.

Over the next few days we enjoyed the beaches, ruins, and the folks staying at the hostel, but for the most part didn't look much into the town itself. Every day we have said we'll likely leave the next, and now its Sunday evening, which is our fourth night here.

We planned to leave today with a woman from Finland who wanted company hitching to Belize, but when we met up it turned out her Tourist Visa card had expired a month earlier, which would mean she'd be in big trouble if she tried to and needed to visit her lawyer in Cancún to fix the situation. Todd and I decided we'd get a big meal tonight from the market and hitch out tomorrow back to San Cristóbal. We shall see.