After a week at Jose Luis', with the chaos of all the Surfers coming and going from his home, Todd and I decided we should probably give him some space and get a hostel in the city. As everyone filtered out over Sunday and Monday we all exchanged emails, added each other on Facebook and Couchsurfing, and made very loose plans to look for each other further down the road in Central and South America. By Monday night, Todd and I returned to the hostel I spent two nights at back in January, Casa de Gladis.
Todd carries with him a little tarp like contraption called an Origami that acts as a lean-to-like tent for the both of us to feel like we have a home in. For $40 pesos each ($3.50 USD) we camped out in the back patio of the this hostel and propped up our new set up. That night we went out with some friends and I ended up running into a woman, Mercy, who I volunteered for back in January. This opened up interesting situation for the week to come.
Edelo, the art house/cultural center I volunteered at, is a large house with a kitchen and courtyard where they host art shows, drawing classes, and concerts for locals and travelers. I had remembered in Mercy's office she had a bed which I thought peculiar. When I ran into her we spoke in Spanish about her renting her apartment to me for $1,000 pesos per month ($80 USD). I told her my friend would have to be able to stay there as well, so the price went up to $1,600, but she warned me she had only one bed and a large couch.
I've noticed this is quite common in Mexico, or at least here in San Cris, to rent out your apartment for a month or two to travelers as a way to bring in extra income. My biggest observation is that Mexicans tend to be even more capitalistically minded than Americans, probably because there is far less regulation which is both great and can be a problem. Everything and anything can be for sale anywhere if you can do it. Police may hit venders up for a bribe if they are doing something particularly out there, or if a gringo is trying to set up a loose vending stall, but I think all that's factored into the costs of capital.
To continue the story, what I believed I worked out with Mercy was that Todd and I would rent her apartment from her for $1,600 pesos for four weeks. When we actually sealed the deal Todd was uncertain if he'd be staying in Mexico past two weeks, so I thought I'd worked something else out where he'd only pay two weeks with the possibility staying on for the last two weeks as well. It turns out my Spanish in these negotiations was not so good.
We loved the space. It was much closer to town than Jose Luis', it had three rooms, an outdoor space with the kitchen and bathroom each separated from the rest of the house. Our first night we made a grand dinner excited to have a kitchen and place to store bulk food, and afterward Mercy came home. We were a bit confused, but after realizing we would not have the place to ourselves figured we could still make the situation work.
Two days later over breakfast I was talking with Mercy and learned she had a friend coming in from France who would be staying there for the month of March. When I said four sounded a bit crowded she looked confused. Apparently my bad Spanish didn't convey that Todd would have the option to stay on another two weeks, but that he would only be there two and then gone. This didn't at all work for us, so by the end of the day Todd and I just decided to move out then and there. We talked with Mercy and explained the confusion in its totality and clarified how the original deal was not what we'd thought and that we'd like to give her $200 pesos from the total we paid but get the rest back and move out. It fortunately ended well.
That was the basic excitement for the weekend. He and I moved out that day with half our money refunded, the other half to be picked up Monday since it was such an abrupt change. A friend of ours, Carrie, was also coming to town from Tuxtla, the capital of Chiapas two hours away, so we set up camp in her hostel for the rest of the week.
22 February 2011
13 February 2011
Regresso a San Cristóbal
Hitching is a daunting thing both the first time you do it, then again the first time you do it in a country where you don't know anything including the language. When we discovered that a bus from Tulum to San Cristóbal, albeit back through Cancún, was only $540 pesos ($45 USD) we opted for the simplicity and speed of just spending the money and getting there.
It was an all day ride. First going two hours back up north to Cancún, because a bus directly out of Tulum would have been $748 pesos, then 19 hours south and west along the Guatemalan border back to San Cris. I met a guy sitting behind me who was returning home from Cancún, where he was looking for work, to somewhere south of Comítan.
He was a farmer who, like many indigenous farmers in Chiapas, had to abandon this trade to either go north and find work in El Norte (The United States) or, more preferably, in places much closer to home like Cancún. The down side to working in Cancún is that the primarily foreign owned hotels either will sign an employee on under the table, illegally, or have you sign a document waving your rights as a worker. Either way, you become a worker with no rights in your own country.
Once arriving back in San Cris the next day Todd and I met up with a friend of mine, Carrie, who happened to be back in town as well. We had breakfast, then met up with a guy I'd met when I was last there, Jose Luis. I met him through the website Couchsurfing.org where travelers and locals can come together to mutually benefit one another.
Jose Luis is the embodiment of the spirit behind the Couchsurfing project that is very global. He lives on the edge of the city in a collective housing arrangement owned by a guy named Olivier. There are two houses, Jose Luis rents one, Mauricio rents the other, then sublets the rooms within, but everyone on the compound contributes. There are also three horses that live in a stable in the backyard, with an organic garden for food not to far from there.
At Jose Luis' house there is a spare room that the Couchsurfers crash at. Its a beautifully rustic setting. Jose Luis' house is like a log cabin, and the guest room is strewn about with mattresses. During our days staying there we met about 19 other Couchsurfers from all over the globe; Spain, Romania, France, Argentina, England, Estonia, Denmark, other parts of Mexico, and other Americans. Over dinner, depending on who there was more of, the conversations would be in Spanish, English, or French generally.
Jose Luis is a fiesta kind of guy, so through out the week there was generally something going on. I got to take part in a surprise midnight mariachi serenade that was both beautiful and hilariously fun yelling "arriba, arriba" into the night. Another night, Normando, a guy in from Mexico City, broke out his guitar and got us all singing and playing whatever instruments we could find or make to Mexican, American, and Cuban songs. I played along rapping an empty can against a frying pan that went well with the Cuban blues rhythms.
Through out this week I got to know Jose Luis a bit as well and he turned out to have had a fascinating life that he was now retiring from. His life was well lived in high ranks of Mexican politics. He fought both with his words and with weapons at various points in his life against corruption. In the end, the government threw him in jail for several months and his response, in the loss and confusion, was to move here to San Cristóbal and invite anyone from around the world to come and be his guest. He calls it his galactic station. A center, or gathering spot, for travelers from all over to meet one another.
On the occasional night that he's spoken of his political days its been hard to witness, as its easy to see he believed in the fight and now no longer does. This is something I've seen to a much lesser extent in America through my travels there. What I saw in the States was a vestige of what I can see in Jose Luis' disappointment. America has been worked over for so long with corruption, and sedated and distracted so thoroughly with TVs, cars, and mortgage payments that there is a seemingly unrepairable complacency that nothing can be done. Obama won his presidency on this promise that something can be done, yet still has not shown it to be true.
What I've loved most about being in this Casa de Jose Luis is that he continues to profess the simple act of giving, Love, to be the only solution that makes sense to him now. He's told me numerous times that to give without expectation is all we can do to help heal the world, and I believe him.
It was an all day ride. First going two hours back up north to Cancún, because a bus directly out of Tulum would have been $748 pesos, then 19 hours south and west along the Guatemalan border back to San Cris. I met a guy sitting behind me who was returning home from Cancún, where he was looking for work, to somewhere south of Comítan.
He was a farmer who, like many indigenous farmers in Chiapas, had to abandon this trade to either go north and find work in El Norte (The United States) or, more preferably, in places much closer to home like Cancún. The down side to working in Cancún is that the primarily foreign owned hotels either will sign an employee on under the table, illegally, or have you sign a document waving your rights as a worker. Either way, you become a worker with no rights in your own country.
Once arriving back in San Cris the next day Todd and I met up with a friend of mine, Carrie, who happened to be back in town as well. We had breakfast, then met up with a guy I'd met when I was last there, Jose Luis. I met him through the website Couchsurfing.org where travelers and locals can come together to mutually benefit one another.
Jose Luis is the embodiment of the spirit behind the Couchsurfing project that is very global. He lives on the edge of the city in a collective housing arrangement owned by a guy named Olivier. There are two houses, Jose Luis rents one, Mauricio rents the other, then sublets the rooms within, but everyone on the compound contributes. There are also three horses that live in a stable in the backyard, with an organic garden for food not to far from there.
At Jose Luis' house there is a spare room that the Couchsurfers crash at. Its a beautifully rustic setting. Jose Luis' house is like a log cabin, and the guest room is strewn about with mattresses. During our days staying there we met about 19 other Couchsurfers from all over the globe; Spain, Romania, France, Argentina, England, Estonia, Denmark, other parts of Mexico, and other Americans. Over dinner, depending on who there was more of, the conversations would be in Spanish, English, or French generally.
Jose Luis is a fiesta kind of guy, so through out the week there was generally something going on. I got to take part in a surprise midnight mariachi serenade that was both beautiful and hilariously fun yelling "arriba, arriba" into the night. Another night, Normando, a guy in from Mexico City, broke out his guitar and got us all singing and playing whatever instruments we could find or make to Mexican, American, and Cuban songs. I played along rapping an empty can against a frying pan that went well with the Cuban blues rhythms.
Through out this week I got to know Jose Luis a bit as well and he turned out to have had a fascinating life that he was now retiring from. His life was well lived in high ranks of Mexican politics. He fought both with his words and with weapons at various points in his life against corruption. In the end, the government threw him in jail for several months and his response, in the loss and confusion, was to move here to San Cristóbal and invite anyone from around the world to come and be his guest. He calls it his galactic station. A center, or gathering spot, for travelers from all over to meet one another.
On the occasional night that he's spoken of his political days its been hard to witness, as its easy to see he believed in the fight and now no longer does. This is something I've seen to a much lesser extent in America through my travels there. What I saw in the States was a vestige of what I can see in Jose Luis' disappointment. America has been worked over for so long with corruption, and sedated and distracted so thoroughly with TVs, cars, and mortgage payments that there is a seemingly unrepairable complacency that nothing can be done. Obama won his presidency on this promise that something can be done, yet still has not shown it to be true.
What I've loved most about being in this Casa de Jose Luis is that he continues to profess the simple act of giving, Love, to be the only solution that makes sense to him now. He's told me numerous times that to give without expectation is all we can do to help heal the world, and I believe him.
06 February 2011
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.
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.
The Last Week of School
This final week wound down fairly uneventfully. I volunteered two more days for the Edelo Cultural Center which I started the Friday before, but I didn't really do a whole lot for them. Mercy, the woman I worked with there, decided to speak less English around me to make me practice my Spanish a bit more, which was good for me.
On Tuesday, the gang at Gael's decided to go out to a movie and invited me along. It was completely fantastic. The way "going to the movie's" works in San Cristóbal is quite different then in The States. I never saw a huge cineplex, or even a small independent theatre as we would think of them back home. Instead, all of the films I saw were projections in little rooms off of cultural centers. These centers are essentially art house hang outs that serve coffee, beer, pastries, have art shows of local artists and in general focus on art that is focused on the local culture.
The movie we saw was called ¡Viva México! and it was amazing. I highly recommend it to anyone, particularly to Americans. It was about the Zapatistas (surprise, surprise), but focused on Marcos' trip around Mexico back in 2006. His goal was to unify other small groups struggling for justice against a very corrupt government. I recommend this highly to Americans in particular because in my travels over the past several years, extensively focused in The States, it is very clear that there is a level of dissatisfaction with our own government's morality and workings that goes entirely unchallenged outside of griping and little protests that are forgotten as soon as the litter is cleaned up the next day.
The film was impressive for me mostly because of Marcos' message in it. The campaign he was heading up is called El Otro Compaña, or The Other Campaign. The film begins in LA with the Mexicans trying to scrape a living together selling food from carts on the sidewalk. They talk about what injustices happen there and is apart of a subcategory of El Otro Compaña called El Otro Otro Compaña, The Other Other Campaign. It then cuts from there to the indigenous Mayans struggling back in Chiapas. It follows Marcos from there to the Yucatan, Quintana Roo, Colima, among other places up to Mexico City.
It shows Marcos giving his speeches, which are quite inspiring, authentic, and impressive, about the nature of the government's tricks and tactics and how his beliefs coincide with whatever struggle each local group is battling. In Mexico City, he embraces the struggle of gays and lesbians and the small business owners among others. It is the small business owners who provide the climax inadvertently when a riot breaks out and the small group is able to push the police out of a neighborhood being threatened by them, Atenco. The brutality the cameras catch the police delivering when they finally blitz the area is disturbing and telling of exactly what all of these people are struggling against. If I can, I would love to send the DVD up to The States.
As it turned out, two days later I ended having drinks with the director and producer in their home. I spoke with the producer, Daniela, about touring through out the US using my former film contacts and she seemed quite interested. Around the same time I came in contact through Facebook with a man who has reopened The Bing in Springfield as a music venue, but hopes to do films soon as well. It seems a tour may come of this in the next year or so, hopefully, so keep your eyes peeled.
Also that same evening, I visited the home of my teacher, Cristian. He lives in a collective community which are quite popular in San Cristóbal. It is a very progressive and liberal city that leaves most places I've seen in America well behind it in energy conservation and environmental consciousness. They lived in buildings built with found materials, and looks like they live in a tree house. The washer for laundry was operated by an exercise bicycle that spins the tumbler as you peddle. They were working on finding ways to power all of their lights this way, and storing the excess energy in batteries.
Contrasting that I witnessed an extremely depressing sight at the edge of town the next day. I was looking for fuel for my camp stove and was reluctantly guided to a Sam's Club on the edge of town. I have been in Walmart and Sam's in America and its never cheery for me, but seeing it here was ten times more depressing. It was like witnessing the invasion of American corporatism and its beginning, or the modern day landing of Cortez. Very few people were shopping there, and everything there was junk from abroad.
I left and went a few blocks down to the large Mexican market. Mazes upon mazes, sometimes under corrugated tin rooves, sometimes out in the open air, but filled with a good local feel of people selling stuff they had. Mostly it was food they had grown, but some of it was just as cheap and plastic as what Sam's was offering, but somehow it was reassuring.
I wrapped up my week preparing to hitch out the next day and finally see what hitching in southern Mexico was really all about.
On Tuesday, the gang at Gael's decided to go out to a movie and invited me along. It was completely fantastic. The way "going to the movie's" works in San Cristóbal is quite different then in The States. I never saw a huge cineplex, or even a small independent theatre as we would think of them back home. Instead, all of the films I saw were projections in little rooms off of cultural centers. These centers are essentially art house hang outs that serve coffee, beer, pastries, have art shows of local artists and in general focus on art that is focused on the local culture.
The movie we saw was called ¡Viva México! and it was amazing. I highly recommend it to anyone, particularly to Americans. It was about the Zapatistas (surprise, surprise), but focused on Marcos' trip around Mexico back in 2006. His goal was to unify other small groups struggling for justice against a very corrupt government. I recommend this highly to Americans in particular because in my travels over the past several years, extensively focused in The States, it is very clear that there is a level of dissatisfaction with our own government's morality and workings that goes entirely unchallenged outside of griping and little protests that are forgotten as soon as the litter is cleaned up the next day.
The film was impressive for me mostly because of Marcos' message in it. The campaign he was heading up is called El Otro Compaña, or The Other Campaign. The film begins in LA with the Mexicans trying to scrape a living together selling food from carts on the sidewalk. They talk about what injustices happen there and is apart of a subcategory of El Otro Compaña called El Otro Otro Compaña, The Other Other Campaign. It then cuts from there to the indigenous Mayans struggling back in Chiapas. It follows Marcos from there to the Yucatan, Quintana Roo, Colima, among other places up to Mexico City.
It shows Marcos giving his speeches, which are quite inspiring, authentic, and impressive, about the nature of the government's tricks and tactics and how his beliefs coincide with whatever struggle each local group is battling. In Mexico City, he embraces the struggle of gays and lesbians and the small business owners among others. It is the small business owners who provide the climax inadvertently when a riot breaks out and the small group is able to push the police out of a neighborhood being threatened by them, Atenco. The brutality the cameras catch the police delivering when they finally blitz the area is disturbing and telling of exactly what all of these people are struggling against. If I can, I would love to send the DVD up to The States.
As it turned out, two days later I ended having drinks with the director and producer in their home. I spoke with the producer, Daniela, about touring through out the US using my former film contacts and she seemed quite interested. Around the same time I came in contact through Facebook with a man who has reopened The Bing in Springfield as a music venue, but hopes to do films soon as well. It seems a tour may come of this in the next year or so, hopefully, so keep your eyes peeled.
Also that same evening, I visited the home of my teacher, Cristian. He lives in a collective community which are quite popular in San Cristóbal. It is a very progressive and liberal city that leaves most places I've seen in America well behind it in energy conservation and environmental consciousness. They lived in buildings built with found materials, and looks like they live in a tree house. The washer for laundry was operated by an exercise bicycle that spins the tumbler as you peddle. They were working on finding ways to power all of their lights this way, and storing the excess energy in batteries.
Contrasting that I witnessed an extremely depressing sight at the edge of town the next day. I was looking for fuel for my camp stove and was reluctantly guided to a Sam's Club on the edge of town. I have been in Walmart and Sam's in America and its never cheery for me, but seeing it here was ten times more depressing. It was like witnessing the invasion of American corporatism and its beginning, or the modern day landing of Cortez. Very few people were shopping there, and everything there was junk from abroad.
I left and went a few blocks down to the large Mexican market. Mazes upon mazes, sometimes under corrugated tin rooves, sometimes out in the open air, but filled with a good local feel of people selling stuff they had. Mostly it was food they had grown, but some of it was just as cheap and plastic as what Sam's was offering, but somehow it was reassuring.
I wrapped up my week preparing to hitch out the next day and finally see what hitching in southern Mexico was really all about.
23 January 2011
Mi Casa Su Casa
Come Sunday last week it was already time for me to move out of the school. I spent the bulk of that afternoon just packing everything back up and talking with Jose Luis, my school's director. He lived in the room right next to mine and we hadn't really gotten to talk much since I arrived a week earlier. By the time I left it was evening and we decided we'd get together, after I secured a hostel, to have wine and talk about work possibilities for me in town.
The hostel I got was cheap but empty. $60 pesos for the night ($5 USD) with internet, but no one seemed to be there. I went back to Luis' and I learned much of his story both in business and his personal life. Turns out he'd traveled all over the US, Europe, and some of Asia. He'd had some restaurants until the Zapatista take over of San Cristóbal in '94 put him out of business. The business went under only because no one wanted to visit the city under Zapatista hands rather than the Zapatistas themselves running him off. In fact, I heard the EZLN gave the city an apology for the damage their take over was doing to local business but reminded them "this is a revolution."
He also dabbled in amber mines, land lording a little, and connecting businesses with each other, like cultural centers to his school, etc. When I first arrived in Mexico on New Years Eve someone had remarked to me about how the Mexican people were far more capitalist than Americans were. Having now moved around a bit down here, I definitely see that to be true in that sense of opportunism. People sell and market themselves for everything here. My director is a testament to that, as is my teacher, Cristian, who teaches at the school and gives tours to Zapatista villages, among other things.
This week I was much more active in getting out into the city more. I think the last week I just needed time to rest and readjust. Monday night I switched hostels to the one my friend Joce had been staying in the previous week. There I met a ton of people. It's one of those places where everyone seems to know each other, and once there's a new guy he seems to be quickly investigated and either welcomed or spit out. I, thankfully, was welcomed despite still having horrible Spanish speaking skills.
Everyone in the hostel spoke Spanish there, which was different from other places. There was a guy, Guillermo, from Argentina who had been on the road 4 years now. Xavier was from Mexico City, and just traveling down here to see if he could find work cooking. He was just sick of the size of Mexico City, 30 million people (2.5 times the size of NYC), and loved the feel and size of San Cris. Murphy was from Idaho, and my only real English speaking connection, though I didn't hang out with him much. He was a firefighter for the forests of the west coast and now that the season was over he's come down here to relax.
These folks were fascinating and great to talk to to practice my Spanish with. The two nights I spent there, though, we ended up going out to a bar called La Revolucion; a locally famous place for its music. On my second night in the hostel I ran into some Danish girls I was friends with from my school, Gael, a guy I met through the Jose Luis Bo had stayed with, and a bunch of his friends. Its a very nice feeling when you're in a new town and you're already running into friends where ever you go, but that's San Cristóbal for you. We all ended up hanging out together, and it turned out Gael had a room for me to stay at for the rest of my time in San Cris.
Wednesday was spent trying to move in to that room. Through miscommunications, and me having no understanding of how my cell phone worked, I wasn't able to get into the room until nightfall. He was very apologetic about only having a room, but no bed, which I told him was fine, but still amusing to see when he opened the door and there was literally just one chair in the entire room. It was a street facing room so it had the ever present din of traffic and people outside, which is actually a plus for me, rather than a drawback.
That night, a friend of mine from Ecuador, Enrique, was also in town with friends. We all ended up hanging out well into the night, despite my morning classes the next day. What was interesting, was around midnight or 1am we were trying to find a place someone knew of and ended up on the main drag. There were a cluster of people getting out of the place we happened to be in front of, and it took no time at all for heavily armed police in teflon vests to walk down the street showing their weapons urging us to move along.
I've been at Gael's since, with about 7 to 8 others that either live here or he's hosting. Interesting differences between American home living and Mexican home living are things like heating and what to do with used toilet paper. The pipes are so old in Mexico that you can't flush paper down the toilet like in the States. Instead, you throw it away in the trash can next to you. The water boiler also needs to be turned on to have hot water for a shower, and this is only in about half the places I've been to otherwise its a cold shower. They are also far more conscious of turning lights off when not using them to conserve energy.
Another thing missing here is heating. Like I said earlier, it gets quite cold here at night. The house I'm in has a front door that opens into an open air space beyond the street facing wall. Rooms our off it, but the main socializing space is either the kitchen indoors, or this open space area outdoors. Waking up in the morning, though, is always tough because there is no heating in the house, so the floors and air are still cold from the night. In the kitchen, its nicer in the evening because usually we've started cooking something. By then someone gets a game of cards or Dominoes going on the table and it is quickly heated with the bodies of 8 or 9 people milling about by the stove.
On Friday I volunteered working at a cultural center Luis connected me with. It is a venue for artists to show their work and mostly contained skultpures and photography. It also invited the kids selling jewelry and things on the street come in and do art for the evening with them which quickly became popular with them.
What I helped out with was an exhibition for promoting art by women. In Latin America in general there is a strong history of women being repressed. What I see a lot of in the NGOs and community oriented projects down here are that they are finally addressing this issue and bringing women up to a more fairly treated state and equal status. There's a long way to go, but progress is certainly being made.
On Saturday my Danish friends from school, Julia and Ronja, invited me to a tour of a Zapatista village lead by my teacher, Cristian. He had much to say on the woman's movement, as its an important part of the Zapatista movement as well. The Zapatista's have somewhere around a 100 or so communities that identify themselves to the government as Zapatista. Each of these communities have representatives for making laws, but in addition to having a representative for the community, there are also representatives for different age groups, races, and sexes.
I had also heard of several other movements for promoting women's rights like Cafe Feminino in Peru, which I intend to visit. The village was really interesting to see since it is literally a government developing, something I've always been fascinated with. Our passports were needed to get into the town, and we required escorts to enter the town.
One of the symbols of the a modern day Zapatistan is the ski mask they wear over their faces. They say, "until justice is done and we are free we will continue to wear our masks". They allowed us to tour their school, gathering spaces, and of course their collectives where they sell shirts they've made, calendars, and little EZLN iconography. There is also a little photo museum showing the progress of their revolution.
I was curious to know what they studied in these autonomous schools as far as history went. Much of their curriculum included the history of social movements past and present, focusing quite a bit on Che Gueverra's ideals, the Cuban Revolution, and Palestinian conflict. On one mural in town it related the EZLN with the Palestinian struggle saying they were brothers in fighting injustice.
While in town we were specifically instructed not to take pictures of people, but pictures of the murals were fine. Also, we were told that if we claimed to be a media person of any sort; photographer, film maker, journalist, etc. we would not be allowed in town. The reasoning being that they have too often been exploited by media in the past, and are very pleased to stick with their own media coverage of themselves.
That tour was pretty much all day Saturday. When I got home again the gang was rallied in the courtyard despite the growing cold. After a bit of bundling while chatting out there, we eventually migrated to the much warmer kitchen. The evening was whiled away that night playing Dominoes, baking cookies, and good old fashioned conversation.
The hostel I got was cheap but empty. $60 pesos for the night ($5 USD) with internet, but no one seemed to be there. I went back to Luis' and I learned much of his story both in business and his personal life. Turns out he'd traveled all over the US, Europe, and some of Asia. He'd had some restaurants until the Zapatista take over of San Cristóbal in '94 put him out of business. The business went under only because no one wanted to visit the city under Zapatista hands rather than the Zapatistas themselves running him off. In fact, I heard the EZLN gave the city an apology for the damage their take over was doing to local business but reminded them "this is a revolution."
He also dabbled in amber mines, land lording a little, and connecting businesses with each other, like cultural centers to his school, etc. When I first arrived in Mexico on New Years Eve someone had remarked to me about how the Mexican people were far more capitalist than Americans were. Having now moved around a bit down here, I definitely see that to be true in that sense of opportunism. People sell and market themselves for everything here. My director is a testament to that, as is my teacher, Cristian, who teaches at the school and gives tours to Zapatista villages, among other things.
This week I was much more active in getting out into the city more. I think the last week I just needed time to rest and readjust. Monday night I switched hostels to the one my friend Joce had been staying in the previous week. There I met a ton of people. It's one of those places where everyone seems to know each other, and once there's a new guy he seems to be quickly investigated and either welcomed or spit out. I, thankfully, was welcomed despite still having horrible Spanish speaking skills.
Everyone in the hostel spoke Spanish there, which was different from other places. There was a guy, Guillermo, from Argentina who had been on the road 4 years now. Xavier was from Mexico City, and just traveling down here to see if he could find work cooking. He was just sick of the size of Mexico City, 30 million people (2.5 times the size of NYC), and loved the feel and size of San Cris. Murphy was from Idaho, and my only real English speaking connection, though I didn't hang out with him much. He was a firefighter for the forests of the west coast and now that the season was over he's come down here to relax.
These folks were fascinating and great to talk to to practice my Spanish with. The two nights I spent there, though, we ended up going out to a bar called La Revolucion; a locally famous place for its music. On my second night in the hostel I ran into some Danish girls I was friends with from my school, Gael, a guy I met through the Jose Luis Bo had stayed with, and a bunch of his friends. Its a very nice feeling when you're in a new town and you're already running into friends where ever you go, but that's San Cristóbal for you. We all ended up hanging out together, and it turned out Gael had a room for me to stay at for the rest of my time in San Cris.
Wednesday was spent trying to move in to that room. Through miscommunications, and me having no understanding of how my cell phone worked, I wasn't able to get into the room until nightfall. He was very apologetic about only having a room, but no bed, which I told him was fine, but still amusing to see when he opened the door and there was literally just one chair in the entire room. It was a street facing room so it had the ever present din of traffic and people outside, which is actually a plus for me, rather than a drawback.
That night, a friend of mine from Ecuador, Enrique, was also in town with friends. We all ended up hanging out well into the night, despite my morning classes the next day. What was interesting, was around midnight or 1am we were trying to find a place someone knew of and ended up on the main drag. There were a cluster of people getting out of the place we happened to be in front of, and it took no time at all for heavily armed police in teflon vests to walk down the street showing their weapons urging us to move along.
I've been at Gael's since, with about 7 to 8 others that either live here or he's hosting. Interesting differences between American home living and Mexican home living are things like heating and what to do with used toilet paper. The pipes are so old in Mexico that you can't flush paper down the toilet like in the States. Instead, you throw it away in the trash can next to you. The water boiler also needs to be turned on to have hot water for a shower, and this is only in about half the places I've been to otherwise its a cold shower. They are also far more conscious of turning lights off when not using them to conserve energy.
Another thing missing here is heating. Like I said earlier, it gets quite cold here at night. The house I'm in has a front door that opens into an open air space beyond the street facing wall. Rooms our off it, but the main socializing space is either the kitchen indoors, or this open space area outdoors. Waking up in the morning, though, is always tough because there is no heating in the house, so the floors and air are still cold from the night. In the kitchen, its nicer in the evening because usually we've started cooking something. By then someone gets a game of cards or Dominoes going on the table and it is quickly heated with the bodies of 8 or 9 people milling about by the stove.
On Friday I volunteered working at a cultural center Luis connected me with. It is a venue for artists to show their work and mostly contained skultpures and photography. It also invited the kids selling jewelry and things on the street come in and do art for the evening with them which quickly became popular with them.
What I helped out with was an exhibition for promoting art by women. In Latin America in general there is a strong history of women being repressed. What I see a lot of in the NGOs and community oriented projects down here are that they are finally addressing this issue and bringing women up to a more fairly treated state and equal status. There's a long way to go, but progress is certainly being made.
On Saturday my Danish friends from school, Julia and Ronja, invited me to a tour of a Zapatista village lead by my teacher, Cristian. He had much to say on the woman's movement, as its an important part of the Zapatista movement as well. The Zapatista's have somewhere around a 100 or so communities that identify themselves to the government as Zapatista. Each of these communities have representatives for making laws, but in addition to having a representative for the community, there are also representatives for different age groups, races, and sexes.
I had also heard of several other movements for promoting women's rights like Cafe Feminino in Peru, which I intend to visit. The village was really interesting to see since it is literally a government developing, something I've always been fascinated with. Our passports were needed to get into the town, and we required escorts to enter the town.
One of the symbols of the a modern day Zapatistan is the ski mask they wear over their faces. They say, "until justice is done and we are free we will continue to wear our masks". They allowed us to tour their school, gathering spaces, and of course their collectives where they sell shirts they've made, calendars, and little EZLN iconography. There is also a little photo museum showing the progress of their revolution.
I was curious to know what they studied in these autonomous schools as far as history went. Much of their curriculum included the history of social movements past and present, focusing quite a bit on Che Gueverra's ideals, the Cuban Revolution, and Palestinian conflict. On one mural in town it related the EZLN with the Palestinian struggle saying they were brothers in fighting injustice.
While in town we were specifically instructed not to take pictures of people, but pictures of the murals were fine. Also, we were told that if we claimed to be a media person of any sort; photographer, film maker, journalist, etc. we would not be allowed in town. The reasoning being that they have too often been exploited by media in the past, and are very pleased to stick with their own media coverage of themselves.
That tour was pretty much all day Saturday. When I got home again the gang was rallied in the courtyard despite the growing cold. After a bit of bundling while chatting out there, we eventually migrated to the much warmer kitchen. The evening was whiled away that night playing Dominoes, baking cookies, and good old fashioned conversation.
La Primera Semana En Mi Esquela
The nights, and therefore mornings as well, are quite cold in San Cristóbal so getting out of bed in the morning took some time. The days, however, warm up quite nicely. Up in the mountains here the temperatures range from 30° during the day down to 0° at night. Of course, this is in Celsius. That translates to Fahrenheit as anywhere between 80°-85° in the day to around 30° at night.
I instantly fell in love with the city in the daylight, surrounded by the tops of high mountains in every direction and the architecture harkens back to the old Spanish colonial days. Cobbled roads, churches strewn about everywhere, and Mayans in traditional dress hawking wears in the Zócalo, or Main Square. We spent a nice lazy morning winding our way through the market place finding mango on a stick for $5 pesos, which is about 30 cents in USD. Later we were told that that was a high price due to the season.
Over this first week it would soon become quite clear to me that San Cristóbal is an extremely international and diverse town. The languages overheard in the streets ranged from English and Spanish to Tsotsil (one of the main Mayan languages), French, German, Dutch, Chinese, Indian, everything. Being a small town of about 86,000 people, I was surprised at how thick with culture the place is.
One thing that is unignorable is the abundance of Zapatista and Che Gueverra iconography there is. Chiapas is known in Mexico as a rebel state due to the Zapatista, or EZLN, movement, but the interesting thing about the EZLN is that there is no wish to over throw the government. They are an armed group that exist to keep the government out of the hair of indigenous people and enable them to retain their land for themselves. This is what draws so many internationals to this city, so it has a palpable feeling of genuine civil justice.
Bo and I spent the day in a coffee shop that was rather touristy, but it served our needs of having Wi-Fi and cheesecake. In the evening I met with the director of my school, Jose Luis, in the school/his home which has a balcony beholding an amazing view of the city and mountains behind it. I was going to stay with an all Spanish speaking family, but since the school was so gorgeous and had several rooms to rent, I changed my mind and got place there for the first week.
After some visiting and getting to know one another Bo had to meet up with the Couchsurfer she was going to be staying with, so I dropped my bag in my new room and wandered across town with her. She was staying with a kid named Jorge who was studying English to teach it, but spoke very little of it at the moment. When we got there it also turned out he wasn't feeling too well either. We visited briefly, mostly with me straining to understand what was being said, then retired quickly for the evening.
Returning to my new home I decided to check out a hostel I knew a friend of mine from Canada, Jocelyn, was staying at. I met her through Couchsurfing when looking for a sail boat to hitch to Mexico on off the US west coast somewhere. I'd put a post up for the request and Joce was the only one to respond saying she was looking too and could we share leads if either of us got one. That had been back in November, so over the following two months neither of us caught a boat, but we did swap insights we gathered along the way of cheap hostels, ease and safety of hitching in areas, etc. We talked for about an hour before I went home to rest before classes the next day.
Classes start at 9am, but are right down the stairs from my room. That morning people only spoke Spanish in the school, though they knew to be patient with us beginners as we struggled through finding words and sentence structure. Primarily, the other students were American as well, though older in their sixties or so. A British girl from London was also studying there. We all would gather in the cocina (kitchen) making coffee before heading to our one on one classes.
My teacher is a guy about my age called Cristian. The teaching gig seemed to be one of the many ways he made an income with. The class was essentially just talking in Spanish with me asking all kinds of questions like "how do you say 'hitch hiker'?" or "how do you say 'Can I catch a ride?'". Practical questions tailored just for me, and he was more than happy to answer them. My other teacher, Rosa, was the same. Although after she heard about my travels and how short amount of time I live in any one place she told me what the Mexicans call someone like me. Pata de Perro means Paw of the Dog literally, but is what Mexicans call one who wanders about all the time.
My week unfolded quickly between my classes in the morning trying to sort things out in the afternoon. That Monday night Bo switched Couchsurfing homes to a place a little further outside with a guy also called Jose Luis. He turned out to be a central figure to know in San Cristóbal as he has Surfers there all the time.
That night I learned many of the grittier words I'd need for traveling and was introduced to some good friends who I'd run into through out my time in San Cristóbal. It was from this night that later I would find free housing for myself, and would soon walk down the streets in town and run into friends almost every time I went out.
While moving around the Yucatan, Belize, and Guatemala Bo and I had tried Couchsurfing with no success, but San Cristóbal is the perfect town for this site. It emphasizes the open mindness I've found tucked away here.
After that night out with Jose Luis and his gang I wouldn't see Bo anymore. She headed back to Guadalajara the next day and we weren't able to coordinate meeting up one more time before she left. I bought a phone with a SIM card for $200 pesos ($17 USD) which will enable me to switch cards and keep my phone local when I move from one country to another.
For the most part, the rest of my week consisted of classes, wandering through the streets a little, then writing people back home, figuring out how to talk to my Mom and sister through Skype, and just resting. Learning a new language while immersed in it is a great, but exhausting, way to learn.
Over the weekend I decided I needed to get out of the city. I'd heard about Las Grutas de Rancho Nuevo which is 12km outside of town. I was curious to know about hitching back as well, so I spent the afternoon walking there. Heading out of town is the intersection going to Comitán or Tuxtla, the capital of the state. Directing traffic there was a squad or two of military soldiers pulling over cars at random to search. Later down the road I saw two truck loads of them drive off toward Comitán.
Las Grutas means the caves in Spanish. The attraction seemed to be a perfect Sunday afternoon picnicking area for the locals. When I got to the park I passed many families out for the afternoon picnicking, sliding down a giant slide that was there, and paying the $10 pesos to wander into the cave and take a look. I didn't stay long, maybe an hour. Long enough to meander through the cave and slide down the giant slide with the kids.
The thing I thought was funny about the slide was that to slide better the kids would bring up a piece of cardboard to sit on, or a crushed 2 liter bottle of soda. All around the rest of the site were little marketing stalls and ads for horseback rides. After my slide and the cave I started to walk home, and to check out hitching in Mexico. I was pleased to find after walking for maybe 5 minutes a pick up pulled over and offered to drop me in El Centro, the center of San Cristóbal.
When we got into town the driver was taking a route I thought was going out of his way, so at a red light I jumped out of the back and looked into through the window to thank him for the ride. He looked at me and yelled "El Centro!" with a big grin on his face, so I hopped back into the back. Sure enough, he turned and dropped me dead in the center of town. Again, I leaned in the window to thank him, and this time tried to give him $5 pesos, but he refused it and waved me on with a big grin.
In this first week here, I quickly came to love the town and I would find I hadn't even gotten into it yet. Mostly I spent the week eating out in restaurants because the food is so filling and cheap. My average meal out was around $30 pesos ($2.50 USD). I saw two movies in cultural centers that are strewn about everywhere in town, one in Tsotsil with Spanish subtitles, and another (thankfully) in Spanish with English subtitles. Both of these movies, and it seems every other movie being shown here at the cultural centers are either about the Zapatistas or Che.
Over this first week, just getting around town, hanging out with friends, and living here my Spanish improved immensely. I even ventured to apply for a job working in a coffee shop, thought that was probably a little over zealous of me. My teacher introduced me to a collective group working on teaching the neighborhood about environmental energy technology which was open for me to volunteer at. This sort of progressive interest is quite common here in San Cris. Its one of the things I really love about the city. Its very historical and quaint, yet it almost seems because of that it has an easier time going directly to new forms of energy rather than weeding through getting out the modern way of doing things.
I instantly fell in love with the city in the daylight, surrounded by the tops of high mountains in every direction and the architecture harkens back to the old Spanish colonial days. Cobbled roads, churches strewn about everywhere, and Mayans in traditional dress hawking wears in the Zócalo, or Main Square. We spent a nice lazy morning winding our way through the market place finding mango on a stick for $5 pesos, which is about 30 cents in USD. Later we were told that that was a high price due to the season.
Over this first week it would soon become quite clear to me that San Cristóbal is an extremely international and diverse town. The languages overheard in the streets ranged from English and Spanish to Tsotsil (one of the main Mayan languages), French, German, Dutch, Chinese, Indian, everything. Being a small town of about 86,000 people, I was surprised at how thick with culture the place is.
One thing that is unignorable is the abundance of Zapatista and Che Gueverra iconography there is. Chiapas is known in Mexico as a rebel state due to the Zapatista, or EZLN, movement, but the interesting thing about the EZLN is that there is no wish to over throw the government. They are an armed group that exist to keep the government out of the hair of indigenous people and enable them to retain their land for themselves. This is what draws so many internationals to this city, so it has a palpable feeling of genuine civil justice.
Bo and I spent the day in a coffee shop that was rather touristy, but it served our needs of having Wi-Fi and cheesecake. In the evening I met with the director of my school, Jose Luis, in the school/his home which has a balcony beholding an amazing view of the city and mountains behind it. I was going to stay with an all Spanish speaking family, but since the school was so gorgeous and had several rooms to rent, I changed my mind and got place there for the first week.
After some visiting and getting to know one another Bo had to meet up with the Couchsurfer she was going to be staying with, so I dropped my bag in my new room and wandered across town with her. She was staying with a kid named Jorge who was studying English to teach it, but spoke very little of it at the moment. When we got there it also turned out he wasn't feeling too well either. We visited briefly, mostly with me straining to understand what was being said, then retired quickly for the evening.
Returning to my new home I decided to check out a hostel I knew a friend of mine from Canada, Jocelyn, was staying at. I met her through Couchsurfing when looking for a sail boat to hitch to Mexico on off the US west coast somewhere. I'd put a post up for the request and Joce was the only one to respond saying she was looking too and could we share leads if either of us got one. That had been back in November, so over the following two months neither of us caught a boat, but we did swap insights we gathered along the way of cheap hostels, ease and safety of hitching in areas, etc. We talked for about an hour before I went home to rest before classes the next day.
Classes start at 9am, but are right down the stairs from my room. That morning people only spoke Spanish in the school, though they knew to be patient with us beginners as we struggled through finding words and sentence structure. Primarily, the other students were American as well, though older in their sixties or so. A British girl from London was also studying there. We all would gather in the cocina (kitchen) making coffee before heading to our one on one classes.
My teacher is a guy about my age called Cristian. The teaching gig seemed to be one of the many ways he made an income with. The class was essentially just talking in Spanish with me asking all kinds of questions like "how do you say 'hitch hiker'?" or "how do you say 'Can I catch a ride?'". Practical questions tailored just for me, and he was more than happy to answer them. My other teacher, Rosa, was the same. Although after she heard about my travels and how short amount of time I live in any one place she told me what the Mexicans call someone like me. Pata de Perro means Paw of the Dog literally, but is what Mexicans call one who wanders about all the time.
My week unfolded quickly between my classes in the morning trying to sort things out in the afternoon. That Monday night Bo switched Couchsurfing homes to a place a little further outside with a guy also called Jose Luis. He turned out to be a central figure to know in San Cristóbal as he has Surfers there all the time.
That night I learned many of the grittier words I'd need for traveling and was introduced to some good friends who I'd run into through out my time in San Cristóbal. It was from this night that later I would find free housing for myself, and would soon walk down the streets in town and run into friends almost every time I went out.
While moving around the Yucatan, Belize, and Guatemala Bo and I had tried Couchsurfing with no success, but San Cristóbal is the perfect town for this site. It emphasizes the open mindness I've found tucked away here.
After that night out with Jose Luis and his gang I wouldn't see Bo anymore. She headed back to Guadalajara the next day and we weren't able to coordinate meeting up one more time before she left. I bought a phone with a SIM card for $200 pesos ($17 USD) which will enable me to switch cards and keep my phone local when I move from one country to another.
For the most part, the rest of my week consisted of classes, wandering through the streets a little, then writing people back home, figuring out how to talk to my Mom and sister through Skype, and just resting. Learning a new language while immersed in it is a great, but exhausting, way to learn.
Over the weekend I decided I needed to get out of the city. I'd heard about Las Grutas de Rancho Nuevo which is 12km outside of town. I was curious to know about hitching back as well, so I spent the afternoon walking there. Heading out of town is the intersection going to Comitán or Tuxtla, the capital of the state. Directing traffic there was a squad or two of military soldiers pulling over cars at random to search. Later down the road I saw two truck loads of them drive off toward Comitán.
Las Grutas means the caves in Spanish. The attraction seemed to be a perfect Sunday afternoon picnicking area for the locals. When I got to the park I passed many families out for the afternoon picnicking, sliding down a giant slide that was there, and paying the $10 pesos to wander into the cave and take a look. I didn't stay long, maybe an hour. Long enough to meander through the cave and slide down the giant slide with the kids.
The thing I thought was funny about the slide was that to slide better the kids would bring up a piece of cardboard to sit on, or a crushed 2 liter bottle of soda. All around the rest of the site were little marketing stalls and ads for horseback rides. After my slide and the cave I started to walk home, and to check out hitching in Mexico. I was pleased to find after walking for maybe 5 minutes a pick up pulled over and offered to drop me in El Centro, the center of San Cristóbal.
When we got into town the driver was taking a route I thought was going out of his way, so at a red light I jumped out of the back and looked into through the window to thank him for the ride. He looked at me and yelled "El Centro!" with a big grin on his face, so I hopped back into the back. Sure enough, he turned and dropped me dead in the center of town. Again, I leaned in the window to thank him, and this time tried to give him $5 pesos, but he refused it and waved me on with a big grin.
In this first week here, I quickly came to love the town and I would find I hadn't even gotten into it yet. Mostly I spent the week eating out in restaurants because the food is so filling and cheap. My average meal out was around $30 pesos ($2.50 USD). I saw two movies in cultural centers that are strewn about everywhere in town, one in Tsotsil with Spanish subtitles, and another (thankfully) in Spanish with English subtitles. Both of these movies, and it seems every other movie being shown here at the cultural centers are either about the Zapatistas or Che.
Over this first week, just getting around town, hanging out with friends, and living here my Spanish improved immensely. I even ventured to apply for a job working in a coffee shop, thought that was probably a little over zealous of me. My teacher introduced me to a collective group working on teaching the neighborhood about environmental energy technology which was open for me to volunteer at. This sort of progressive interest is quite common here in San Cris. Its one of the things I really love about the city. Its very historical and quaint, yet it almost seems because of that it has an easier time going directly to new forms of energy rather than weeding through getting out the modern way of doing things.
15 January 2011
The Beginning of a New Year
On my last real night in the States I was treated to a healthy surprise. I had contacted my Aunt Sandy to see if I could get a visit in with her, my uncle and cousin for my last night only to find that my cousin Amy, and her wife, Corrin, happened to be in the area and happened to be staying that one night at Sandy's as well before heading back to Massachusetts. These sorts of gifts, as I like to call them, have been quite common, though completely unexpected every time, and its that mystery of how life works that I've been following for the previous 21 months.
I have a whole other website dedicated to talking about those experiences and my thoughts on them, this one, however, exists solely because of this random goodbye family night with kin I see far and few between of. Amy, Corrin, Sandy, and my other cousin Jen (Sandy's daughter) are all teachers. This entire side of my family, my Dad's side, is pretty much composed of teachers. My Dad is a retired teacher, his wife is a teacher, Amy mother, my aunt, is a teacher, as well as my grandmother, Nana, who was a teacher.
That said, during this visit we got to talking about my travels and upcoming excursion into Central and South America. Amy, apparently, had been teaching vocabulary to her class a few months earlier and used me as an example of defining the word "nomad" which then piqued the classes interest in her having a personal tie to one and have since been asking about my whereabouts. While discussing this over dinner Amy asked if I wouldn't mind writing about my experiences down south and so this blog was conceived. I'll warn you now, if this three paragraph opening hasn't done it already, I can be quite long winded.
My actual last night in the States was spent on airplanes and in airports. The ticket I'd bought was dirt cheap, but because of it I had to fly through the night from San Francisco to Phoenix, AZ to Charlotte, NC finally arriving in Cancún, Quintana Roo, Mexico the next morning. I managed to be on the ground in 4 time zones within 12 hours to finally roll to a stop at 10am Central Time.
Cancún is within 2° latitude of Hawaii so when I got off the plane, still wearing my long pants, warm shirt, and winter jacket from San Francisco I started sweating immediately. I hadn't eaten either and couldn't change clothes until after I'd gone through customs, so while waiting in line I worried that my sweaty shaking hands with no return ticket home would send me straight back to the US. On the contrary, the customs man didn't even so much as look at me, much less ask me anything about why I was entering his country, for how long, or what my intentions were there.
Once through, I toted my pack to the restroom, changed into summer clothes for the 90° weather and caught a bus to my hostel. I was surprised to find everyone speaking English. I also hadn't changed out my dollars for pesos, but from the bus to the lady that ran the hostel, no one had any qualms about taking US money.
I got a top bunk in a dorm room of about 12 beds and started to settle in. Having been trying to get to Mexico for the past year and three months it was a bit overwhelming to now actually be there. It was New Years Eve as well, so amid my thoughts of just wanting to settle in and relax, I also wanted to figure out where the best place would be to ring in the New Year.
Almost immediately I ended up chatting with a guy, Sam, who was in from Saudi Arabia. He was talking about heading down to a town an hour south of Cancún called Playa del Carmen. I'd heard something about that place from a girl I knew, but hadn't met face to face yet, through Couchsurfing when checking email in one of my various airports the previous night. She too had said she'd be in Playa for the fiesta. About an hour after talking with Sam about it I met another girl, Jess, from Australia who also said she was thinking about it.
It sounded like the place to be so I asked her if she'd mind if a tagged along. A Dutch guy, Gert, joined us as well and soon the three of us were busing down for the night. Having spent many miles traversing the US and UK by bus I was amazed at how cheap but comfortable it was. $42 pesos ($2.50 US) to go an hour south, and it was a luxury liner.
We three strangers quickly got to know each other on this adventure. None of us knew what we were doing, but easily found ourselves chatting on the beach and wandering through the crowds for the night. This would set a great precedent for the next week. Around 5am we decided it was time to head back to our hostel in Cancún. The next day Jess headed off to another island for a few days and I meandered about town after reserving another night in the hostel.
I had no plans, no idea of what to do or where to go. All I knew was that I had school to go to in a week and a half in San Cristóbal, about 13 hours bus ride away, to learn Spanish, but my first week in Mexico was wide open. I ended up staying four nights in Cancún looking around and meeting people, mostly at the hostel. My camera busted on the beach my third day in, but other than that I was having a great time unwinding and figuring out where to go next.
With everyone speaking English it was easy to get by in the resort town, but I did get chances to practice my terrible high school Spanish. One day, on the beach, I talked for an hour with a girl from Guadalajara who spoke no English. Later that night I ended up spending another hour or so talking with a journalist from Buenos Aires coming back from Monterrey, Mexico where he was doing a story for six months on the cartel violence up there. He too spoke little to no English, but was extremely patient with my Spanish.
My amazement over those first four five days in Cancún was the people I met from every corner of the world. The journalist from Argentina, to playing cards with guys from Saudi Arabia, South Africa, and Finland. I had a few beers with a doctor from Nepal, and met a British girl, Bo, who had just gotten back from a week in Cuba who decided to join me on a trip to Belize.
Bo and I clicked fairly quickly. She would be my travel companion for this first full week down south. She was doing a semester abroad in Guadalajara and was traveling around with a friend for the six week vacation they got for winter break. Her friend returned to England for the last three weeks so Bo had just been left to herself when I met her. We both showed an interest in Belize, so I invited her along.
The next day we caught a bus to Chetumal, the border town on the Mexican side between Mexico and Belize. Having lived in Guadalajara for the past five months she was fairly fluent in the language which was both good and bad for me. It allowed me to cheat and simply have her be my translator when buying tickets, ordering meals, or generally getting anything done while still in Mexico.
When we arrived in Chetumal it was around 7pm and the next bus to Belize City didn't leave until 7am the next morning. We were sort of prepared for this, and had looked into traveler reviews on the internet about how safe it was to sleep in the bus station. Everyone said it was fine, so we paid 5 pesos each to a lady at one of the shops in the station to watch our bags while we went out to get some road food at a grocery store down the way.
When we got back we set up our sleeping bags on the floor and I introduced Bo to a game I got back in Texas, Before the Wind (aka The Pirate Game) which is perfect for traveling for both portability and there are no words on the cards that could create language barriers. She loved it. We played three times before going to sleep.
Bright and early we got our tickets and were on the little chicken bus heading to the border. We'd lost our luxury liners and were now riding in a van that sat about 30 with all the bags crammed in the last seats. I loved it despite having some baggage poking me in the back the whole way, but Bo was less than impressed.
At the border we had learned there was a departure fee to leave the country. One thing to learn while traveling around in these parts is that you have to know what's going on, no one will tell you like they will in the States or Europe. When I'd gotten off my plane five days earlier I was given a Tourist Card which I had no idea what to do with. Thankfully I'm a bit of a hoarder, ironically, and just stuck it in my passport. Had I not done that and just thrown it away I would have been facing a $50 US fine plus the $200 peso fee to leave the country.
Most of us on the bus crossed through just fine, however, a girl from Spain who was traveling with two others didn't make it. As we drove over the bridge into Belize we watched as she walked back to Chetumal alone while her other two friends continued on with us.
Then there was entering Belize, on the other side of the river. Again, most of us got through, but not all. The little Guatemalan lady ahead of me for customs apparently had an expired passport. It turned out she was the bus drivers aunt, and although he tried to pull some sway with the customs agent she could not get through. It was a bit strange pulling away from the border knowing that it was quite possible to be turned away and have to figure out what to do next if that happened.
Belize City was a bustling little town straight out of the old Popeye movie in the '80s. The history of the town was that it was literally a safe haven for the real pirates of the Caribbean two or three hundred years earlier. By the looks of it not much had changed. When looking at hostels to stay at everything I'd read was to get off the mainland and go to the islands, so that was precisely what we did.
There was a Dutch couple on our bus who had as much of an idea of what they were doing as Bo and I did, which is to say we had vague notions but no real clue. We two pairs ended up following each other, as if not really ready to commit to teaming up, but following the same track and consulting each other on what the other had found. This helped in the way of finding a water taxi to the islands, where to convert our pesos to Belize dollars, once on the island where to find a cheap place to stay, and finally, around night time, we ran into each other at the bar on the beach.
We never did end up hanging out together, but we did eventually concede that we were each others spies for gathering information on what to do. They led us to a nice place to eat for cheap and we lead them to a good cheap hotel on the beach.
Belize, however, was expensive, for us broke backpackers, no matter how you put it. The Belize dollar is worth half the US dollar, but all the prices are doubled so the value is exactly the same. Back in Mexico, the peso is 12 times the dollar, but the value of what you actually pay is relatively less than what it would be in the States. The island we went to, Caye Caulker, was beautiful, but not beautiful enough to drain our money there. After one night we caught a water taxi back to the mainland and decided to bus to Flores in Guatemala.
This bus ride would prove to be another example of having to know what you're doing when crossing a border. While at Caye Caulker we looked up if there were departure fees for Belize, which there are. It was $30BZ plus another $7.50BZ for some environmental thing. Thankfully I had a bunch of pesos on me as well, because when we got to the Guatemalan border we found out it was 40 Quetzales (or 40Q) to get in.
Swarming the bus when we hit the border were all kinds of folks with fancy badges and dangling name cards to look official who were toting wads of cash. Bo and I had no idea what was going on as they told us about needing Quetzales to pay the fee to get in, and they were more than willing to change out our cash for us. The bus driver was a bit annoyed at me because I had to get up on the roof where our bags were stored this time to get at my money. Feeling rushed I pulled out $300 pesos and just changed it right there with this random border guy. I had no idea what the real exchange rate was and just figured I'd go for it.
The fee to enter turned out to only be 20Q and the rate I got from the change guy turned out to be half what he gave me. Lesson learned. As soon as we got on the internet again I made a point of writing down all the exchange rates to every currency in the area against the dollar. We also looked up which countries had entrance and exit fees, of which it turned out only Mexico, Belize, and Guatemala did. Way to hit the good ones while unprepared.
Flores, however, was gorgeous. With our brief run in with getting scammed behind us we set ourselves up in a gorgeous hostel called Mis Amigos. For the rough equivalent of $3 US each we got ourselves a spot on the floor in the common area or a hammock if we wanted it. Inside it was an open topped place with trees and fauna flourishing everywhere. There was tin roofing over where we slept, but otherwise you could look up at the stars.
It was bustling with backpackers from all over and we even ran into the Spanish girl who had been turned away in Chetumal with her friends again. The place reminded me of Rick's Cafe from Casablanca, one of my favorite movies. Bo and I decided to spend two nights there, and spent the day in between walking around the town.
Flores is actually an island in a lake that has been connected by a road to the mainland through the city of Santa Elena. The island, however, is a quaint little town that has retained its colonial look. Cobbled streets winding up and down a hill in the center and in between old buildings. We wandered around in the beginning of the day then nestled into a coffee shop by the water to play The Pirate Game some more for the afternoon.
By now Bo and I had been traveling together for about four days and I was needing to head back to Mexico for my classes. Part of the reason we went to Flores was because it was on the way to San Cristóbal in Chiapas, the southernmost state in Mexico, and the poorest. Bo still had several weeks before her school started back up again, but she also had a boyfriend she was missing back in Guadalajara. Up until this second night in Flores she was debating traveling around more to Antigua, Guatemala City, and possibly Honduras, or going home and spending her last few vacation weeks with her boif (as she called him).
That night, I booked my ticket to Palenque which would connect me to San Cristóbal, and an hour later she booked one to go with me. It left at 5am the next morning, so we both did our best to retire early for the night. When morning did come we stumbled onto the bus, threw our bags on the roof and tried to sleep through the rest of the morning.
Despite having not gotten much sleep the night before I couldn't pass out. The first hour was in the dark, but after the sun rose I couldn't keep my eyes off the landscape. In the early hours mist hung about ten feet off the ground through the jungle surrounding us. Later as it burned off by the sun these sharp hills emerged like those you'd see in National Geographic.
Around noon we got to a strange customs building to cross the border. It was strange because it was off the road a little which seemed like if we were driving our own car we could have sped right passed it. The money changers were there in force again, but this time we had come prepared with the Quetzales to pay the customs man with. As it turned out we were no where near the Mexican border.
Instead of crossing a border after paying our departure fee we were driven to a river. We all unloaded from the bus, gathered our packs, and headed down to the shore. A kid of about five or six pulled a long boat with a thatched roof around to where we were standing and on we went. Bo and I were fortunate enough to get on last so we had front row seats as we went down the river to where the Mexican border actually was.
It was a beautiful ride that was maybe a little under an hour. All along the shores were women and children doing laundry in the river. Bo had her camera so we swapped turns taking pictures of the jungle mountains around us, the thatched homes tucked away in the hills, and the folks along the shore.
Once we got out, another bus loaded us up, we went through customs, and headed off toward Palenque. While in that border town, to Bo's great annoyance, we were hit up for one more fee. It had something to do with the environment and was only $15 pesos ($1.10 US) but to Bo it was the principal that they were just taxing us to tax us and for no other reason.
The bus ride north through Chiapas was very different than the ride down the eastern Yucatan coast in Quintana Roo a few days earlier. Chiapas is known mostly for being the home of the Zapatistas, a revolutionary group in favor of the indigenous Mayans and retaining rights to their land. Along the roads the military presence was quite noticeable. Every now and again we'd pass fortified checkpoints, and at one point passed a convoy of supply trucks that were flanked front and back with trucks filled with heavily armed soldiers.
Something else Bo and I had come across in our research to get to San Cristóbal from Palenque was that taking a night bus was highly inadvisable. We read a thread online from this past August of a man warning that his bus had been robbed going through the mountains there, and that this was a common occurrence. People responding to his post talked about how it was quite frequent for pick up trucks to block the road so the bus stops, then, at knife point, will raid the passengers inside for cash or valuables. Back in Cancún, I'd also heard that it was bad enough that buses would travel in convoys of 10 or so with police escorts.
This had us rattled a bit, but, of course, when we got into Palenque and found out the next bus left at 5pm and would get in at 10pm we bought tickets anyway fully aware but with no second thought. The man with the posting had said he left San Cristóbal at 7pm, likely getting in to Palenque around midnight, and the dangers were said to be highest between Ocosingo (a halfway point between the two) and Palenque. We consoled ourselves in thinking by the time we got through Ocosingo it'd still be relatively early in the evening and not late enough to try bus banditry.
Who knows? The main point is that we got through just fine. There was no bus convoy and we were never robbed. I wouldn't say the danger isn't still there, but we were fine. Arriving high up in the mountains at 10pm, though, we were treated to a change in climate.
San Cristóbal is 2,140 meters above sea level, which is about 6,500 feet more or less. We went from shorts and t-shirts to winter coats and long pants. We also had no ideas about any hostels or where to go. It was Saturday night, and it wouldn't be until the following evening that my school would put me up with a family for the three weeks I'd be studying there. Wandering toward the center of town, however, we quickly discovered that San Cristóbal has no shortage of inexpensive, good hostels.
We booked ourselves a place in the heart of the tiny city of 86,000 people for a mere $70 pesos a piece (just under $6 US). The town spoke to me right away with its colonial look and high mix of locals and backpackers. Despite our exhaustion from the days travels we still wandered the cobbled streets and got some dinner before retiring for the night.
This was the end of my initial wander about south of the border. The next day, Sunday, I would need to meet up with the director of my school and start diving into my studies. Bo decided she would soon be heading back to Guadalajara, so I'd be losing my travel companion and translator as well. However, roaming through those three countries for my first week out of the US with Bo was definitely needed to unwind my brain and ready it to suck in a new language.
I have a whole other website dedicated to talking about those experiences and my thoughts on them, this one, however, exists solely because of this random goodbye family night with kin I see far and few between of. Amy, Corrin, Sandy, and my other cousin Jen (Sandy's daughter) are all teachers. This entire side of my family, my Dad's side, is pretty much composed of teachers. My Dad is a retired teacher, his wife is a teacher, Amy mother, my aunt, is a teacher, as well as my grandmother, Nana, who was a teacher.
That said, during this visit we got to talking about my travels and upcoming excursion into Central and South America. Amy, apparently, had been teaching vocabulary to her class a few months earlier and used me as an example of defining the word "nomad" which then piqued the classes interest in her having a personal tie to one and have since been asking about my whereabouts. While discussing this over dinner Amy asked if I wouldn't mind writing about my experiences down south and so this blog was conceived. I'll warn you now, if this three paragraph opening hasn't done it already, I can be quite long winded.
My actual last night in the States was spent on airplanes and in airports. The ticket I'd bought was dirt cheap, but because of it I had to fly through the night from San Francisco to Phoenix, AZ to Charlotte, NC finally arriving in Cancún, Quintana Roo, Mexico the next morning. I managed to be on the ground in 4 time zones within 12 hours to finally roll to a stop at 10am Central Time.
Cancún is within 2° latitude of Hawaii so when I got off the plane, still wearing my long pants, warm shirt, and winter jacket from San Francisco I started sweating immediately. I hadn't eaten either and couldn't change clothes until after I'd gone through customs, so while waiting in line I worried that my sweaty shaking hands with no return ticket home would send me straight back to the US. On the contrary, the customs man didn't even so much as look at me, much less ask me anything about why I was entering his country, for how long, or what my intentions were there.
Once through, I toted my pack to the restroom, changed into summer clothes for the 90° weather and caught a bus to my hostel. I was surprised to find everyone speaking English. I also hadn't changed out my dollars for pesos, but from the bus to the lady that ran the hostel, no one had any qualms about taking US money.
I got a top bunk in a dorm room of about 12 beds and started to settle in. Having been trying to get to Mexico for the past year and three months it was a bit overwhelming to now actually be there. It was New Years Eve as well, so amid my thoughts of just wanting to settle in and relax, I also wanted to figure out where the best place would be to ring in the New Year.
Almost immediately I ended up chatting with a guy, Sam, who was in from Saudi Arabia. He was talking about heading down to a town an hour south of Cancún called Playa del Carmen. I'd heard something about that place from a girl I knew, but hadn't met face to face yet, through Couchsurfing when checking email in one of my various airports the previous night. She too had said she'd be in Playa for the fiesta. About an hour after talking with Sam about it I met another girl, Jess, from Australia who also said she was thinking about it.
It sounded like the place to be so I asked her if she'd mind if a tagged along. A Dutch guy, Gert, joined us as well and soon the three of us were busing down for the night. Having spent many miles traversing the US and UK by bus I was amazed at how cheap but comfortable it was. $42 pesos ($2.50 US) to go an hour south, and it was a luxury liner.
We three strangers quickly got to know each other on this adventure. None of us knew what we were doing, but easily found ourselves chatting on the beach and wandering through the crowds for the night. This would set a great precedent for the next week. Around 5am we decided it was time to head back to our hostel in Cancún. The next day Jess headed off to another island for a few days and I meandered about town after reserving another night in the hostel.
I had no plans, no idea of what to do or where to go. All I knew was that I had school to go to in a week and a half in San Cristóbal, about 13 hours bus ride away, to learn Spanish, but my first week in Mexico was wide open. I ended up staying four nights in Cancún looking around and meeting people, mostly at the hostel. My camera busted on the beach my third day in, but other than that I was having a great time unwinding and figuring out where to go next.
With everyone speaking English it was easy to get by in the resort town, but I did get chances to practice my terrible high school Spanish. One day, on the beach, I talked for an hour with a girl from Guadalajara who spoke no English. Later that night I ended up spending another hour or so talking with a journalist from Buenos Aires coming back from Monterrey, Mexico where he was doing a story for six months on the cartel violence up there. He too spoke little to no English, but was extremely patient with my Spanish.
My amazement over those first four five days in Cancún was the people I met from every corner of the world. The journalist from Argentina, to playing cards with guys from Saudi Arabia, South Africa, and Finland. I had a few beers with a doctor from Nepal, and met a British girl, Bo, who had just gotten back from a week in Cuba who decided to join me on a trip to Belize.
Bo and I clicked fairly quickly. She would be my travel companion for this first full week down south. She was doing a semester abroad in Guadalajara and was traveling around with a friend for the six week vacation they got for winter break. Her friend returned to England for the last three weeks so Bo had just been left to herself when I met her. We both showed an interest in Belize, so I invited her along.
The next day we caught a bus to Chetumal, the border town on the Mexican side between Mexico and Belize. Having lived in Guadalajara for the past five months she was fairly fluent in the language which was both good and bad for me. It allowed me to cheat and simply have her be my translator when buying tickets, ordering meals, or generally getting anything done while still in Mexico.
When we arrived in Chetumal it was around 7pm and the next bus to Belize City didn't leave until 7am the next morning. We were sort of prepared for this, and had looked into traveler reviews on the internet about how safe it was to sleep in the bus station. Everyone said it was fine, so we paid 5 pesos each to a lady at one of the shops in the station to watch our bags while we went out to get some road food at a grocery store down the way.
When we got back we set up our sleeping bags on the floor and I introduced Bo to a game I got back in Texas, Before the Wind (aka The Pirate Game) which is perfect for traveling for both portability and there are no words on the cards that could create language barriers. She loved it. We played three times before going to sleep.
Bright and early we got our tickets and were on the little chicken bus heading to the border. We'd lost our luxury liners and were now riding in a van that sat about 30 with all the bags crammed in the last seats. I loved it despite having some baggage poking me in the back the whole way, but Bo was less than impressed.
At the border we had learned there was a departure fee to leave the country. One thing to learn while traveling around in these parts is that you have to know what's going on, no one will tell you like they will in the States or Europe. When I'd gotten off my plane five days earlier I was given a Tourist Card which I had no idea what to do with. Thankfully I'm a bit of a hoarder, ironically, and just stuck it in my passport. Had I not done that and just thrown it away I would have been facing a $50 US fine plus the $200 peso fee to leave the country.
Most of us on the bus crossed through just fine, however, a girl from Spain who was traveling with two others didn't make it. As we drove over the bridge into Belize we watched as she walked back to Chetumal alone while her other two friends continued on with us.
Then there was entering Belize, on the other side of the river. Again, most of us got through, but not all. The little Guatemalan lady ahead of me for customs apparently had an expired passport. It turned out she was the bus drivers aunt, and although he tried to pull some sway with the customs agent she could not get through. It was a bit strange pulling away from the border knowing that it was quite possible to be turned away and have to figure out what to do next if that happened.
Belize City was a bustling little town straight out of the old Popeye movie in the '80s. The history of the town was that it was literally a safe haven for the real pirates of the Caribbean two or three hundred years earlier. By the looks of it not much had changed. When looking at hostels to stay at everything I'd read was to get off the mainland and go to the islands, so that was precisely what we did.
There was a Dutch couple on our bus who had as much of an idea of what they were doing as Bo and I did, which is to say we had vague notions but no real clue. We two pairs ended up following each other, as if not really ready to commit to teaming up, but following the same track and consulting each other on what the other had found. This helped in the way of finding a water taxi to the islands, where to convert our pesos to Belize dollars, once on the island where to find a cheap place to stay, and finally, around night time, we ran into each other at the bar on the beach.
We never did end up hanging out together, but we did eventually concede that we were each others spies for gathering information on what to do. They led us to a nice place to eat for cheap and we lead them to a good cheap hotel on the beach.
Belize, however, was expensive, for us broke backpackers, no matter how you put it. The Belize dollar is worth half the US dollar, but all the prices are doubled so the value is exactly the same. Back in Mexico, the peso is 12 times the dollar, but the value of what you actually pay is relatively less than what it would be in the States. The island we went to, Caye Caulker, was beautiful, but not beautiful enough to drain our money there. After one night we caught a water taxi back to the mainland and decided to bus to Flores in Guatemala.
This bus ride would prove to be another example of having to know what you're doing when crossing a border. While at Caye Caulker we looked up if there were departure fees for Belize, which there are. It was $30BZ plus another $7.50BZ for some environmental thing. Thankfully I had a bunch of pesos on me as well, because when we got to the Guatemalan border we found out it was 40 Quetzales (or 40Q) to get in.
Swarming the bus when we hit the border were all kinds of folks with fancy badges and dangling name cards to look official who were toting wads of cash. Bo and I had no idea what was going on as they told us about needing Quetzales to pay the fee to get in, and they were more than willing to change out our cash for us. The bus driver was a bit annoyed at me because I had to get up on the roof where our bags were stored this time to get at my money. Feeling rushed I pulled out $300 pesos and just changed it right there with this random border guy. I had no idea what the real exchange rate was and just figured I'd go for it.
The fee to enter turned out to only be 20Q and the rate I got from the change guy turned out to be half what he gave me. Lesson learned. As soon as we got on the internet again I made a point of writing down all the exchange rates to every currency in the area against the dollar. We also looked up which countries had entrance and exit fees, of which it turned out only Mexico, Belize, and Guatemala did. Way to hit the good ones while unprepared.
Flores, however, was gorgeous. With our brief run in with getting scammed behind us we set ourselves up in a gorgeous hostel called Mis Amigos. For the rough equivalent of $3 US each we got ourselves a spot on the floor in the common area or a hammock if we wanted it. Inside it was an open topped place with trees and fauna flourishing everywhere. There was tin roofing over where we slept, but otherwise you could look up at the stars.
It was bustling with backpackers from all over and we even ran into the Spanish girl who had been turned away in Chetumal with her friends again. The place reminded me of Rick's Cafe from Casablanca, one of my favorite movies. Bo and I decided to spend two nights there, and spent the day in between walking around the town.
Flores is actually an island in a lake that has been connected by a road to the mainland through the city of Santa Elena. The island, however, is a quaint little town that has retained its colonial look. Cobbled streets winding up and down a hill in the center and in between old buildings. We wandered around in the beginning of the day then nestled into a coffee shop by the water to play The Pirate Game some more for the afternoon.
By now Bo and I had been traveling together for about four days and I was needing to head back to Mexico for my classes. Part of the reason we went to Flores was because it was on the way to San Cristóbal in Chiapas, the southernmost state in Mexico, and the poorest. Bo still had several weeks before her school started back up again, but she also had a boyfriend she was missing back in Guadalajara. Up until this second night in Flores she was debating traveling around more to Antigua, Guatemala City, and possibly Honduras, or going home and spending her last few vacation weeks with her boif (as she called him).
That night, I booked my ticket to Palenque which would connect me to San Cristóbal, and an hour later she booked one to go with me. It left at 5am the next morning, so we both did our best to retire early for the night. When morning did come we stumbled onto the bus, threw our bags on the roof and tried to sleep through the rest of the morning.
Despite having not gotten much sleep the night before I couldn't pass out. The first hour was in the dark, but after the sun rose I couldn't keep my eyes off the landscape. In the early hours mist hung about ten feet off the ground through the jungle surrounding us. Later as it burned off by the sun these sharp hills emerged like those you'd see in National Geographic.
Around noon we got to a strange customs building to cross the border. It was strange because it was off the road a little which seemed like if we were driving our own car we could have sped right passed it. The money changers were there in force again, but this time we had come prepared with the Quetzales to pay the customs man with. As it turned out we were no where near the Mexican border.
Instead of crossing a border after paying our departure fee we were driven to a river. We all unloaded from the bus, gathered our packs, and headed down to the shore. A kid of about five or six pulled a long boat with a thatched roof around to where we were standing and on we went. Bo and I were fortunate enough to get on last so we had front row seats as we went down the river to where the Mexican border actually was.
It was a beautiful ride that was maybe a little under an hour. All along the shores were women and children doing laundry in the river. Bo had her camera so we swapped turns taking pictures of the jungle mountains around us, the thatched homes tucked away in the hills, and the folks along the shore.
Once we got out, another bus loaded us up, we went through customs, and headed off toward Palenque. While in that border town, to Bo's great annoyance, we were hit up for one more fee. It had something to do with the environment and was only $15 pesos ($1.10 US) but to Bo it was the principal that they were just taxing us to tax us and for no other reason.
The bus ride north through Chiapas was very different than the ride down the eastern Yucatan coast in Quintana Roo a few days earlier. Chiapas is known mostly for being the home of the Zapatistas, a revolutionary group in favor of the indigenous Mayans and retaining rights to their land. Along the roads the military presence was quite noticeable. Every now and again we'd pass fortified checkpoints, and at one point passed a convoy of supply trucks that were flanked front and back with trucks filled with heavily armed soldiers.
Something else Bo and I had come across in our research to get to San Cristóbal from Palenque was that taking a night bus was highly inadvisable. We read a thread online from this past August of a man warning that his bus had been robbed going through the mountains there, and that this was a common occurrence. People responding to his post talked about how it was quite frequent for pick up trucks to block the road so the bus stops, then, at knife point, will raid the passengers inside for cash or valuables. Back in Cancún, I'd also heard that it was bad enough that buses would travel in convoys of 10 or so with police escorts.
This had us rattled a bit, but, of course, when we got into Palenque and found out the next bus left at 5pm and would get in at 10pm we bought tickets anyway fully aware but with no second thought. The man with the posting had said he left San Cristóbal at 7pm, likely getting in to Palenque around midnight, and the dangers were said to be highest between Ocosingo (a halfway point between the two) and Palenque. We consoled ourselves in thinking by the time we got through Ocosingo it'd still be relatively early in the evening and not late enough to try bus banditry.
Who knows? The main point is that we got through just fine. There was no bus convoy and we were never robbed. I wouldn't say the danger isn't still there, but we were fine. Arriving high up in the mountains at 10pm, though, we were treated to a change in climate.
San Cristóbal is 2,140 meters above sea level, which is about 6,500 feet more or less. We went from shorts and t-shirts to winter coats and long pants. We also had no ideas about any hostels or where to go. It was Saturday night, and it wouldn't be until the following evening that my school would put me up with a family for the three weeks I'd be studying there. Wandering toward the center of town, however, we quickly discovered that San Cristóbal has no shortage of inexpensive, good hostels.
We booked ourselves a place in the heart of the tiny city of 86,000 people for a mere $70 pesos a piece (just under $6 US). The town spoke to me right away with its colonial look and high mix of locals and backpackers. Despite our exhaustion from the days travels we still wandered the cobbled streets and got some dinner before retiring for the night.
This was the end of my initial wander about south of the border. The next day, Sunday, I would need to meet up with the director of my school and start diving into my studies. Bo decided she would soon be heading back to Guadalajara, so I'd be losing my travel companion and translator as well. However, roaming through those three countries for my first week out of the US with Bo was definitely needed to unwind my brain and ready it to suck in a new language.
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