Mexico2

By mid-June, I had made my way across Mexico and arrived in San Diego, where I met my friend Shannon, who began traveling with me from there. We descended Baja California and then drifted south through central Mexico, along the way enjoying the Sierra Madre mountains, Colonial Mexico, Mexico City, and finally, several Mayan ruins sites in the south. We had a goal to meet friends in Belize towards the end of July, so by the end we had to sacrifice visiting the Mexican Pacific coast as well as the Yucatan. Perhaps on the way home next year, we'll get to see them.

Well, back around June 11th, I made it to San Diego to meet Shannon. After saying goodbye to her friends, buying several more supplies at REI, and doing a few home improvements at her condo, Shannon and I set off South. We decided to set the tone appropriately by taking the city bus from her home to the San Diego trolley down to the Tijuana border crossing. We walked across and immediately got escorted (more accurately shoved) to a bus that would take us to our first destination of El Sauzal, on the outskirts of Ensenada – only 2 hours south of Tijuana. Our intent of this first stop was just to make that bold step over the border, and since we were leaving San Diego in the afternoon, we chose a nearby destination.

The town itself was nearly non-existent, and the dirt roads, warehouses, and the few run down hotels didn’t make the most pleasant backdrop against the beautiful ocean. But as we asked around for the hostel highly recommended by our guidebook, the locals all knew that we must be looking for Maria’s. Since it is off-season throughout Baja California, Shannon and I and a regular from San Diego were the only guests that night. In front of our room, we sat in lounge chairs and a hammock, looking across the beautiful gardens out to the ocean below – the ugly town disappears from here. Maria gave us many recommendations on our further stops in Baja and into

Mexico. She says that she opened the hostel several years ago for surfers to come down from San Diego, and she has been completely surprised by the international travelers that she has attracted to her small town, most especially since she has become recommended by name by all of the top travel guidebooks.

After Maria served us eggs a la Mexicana (scrambled with tomatoes, onions, and jalapeños), fresh fruit, and coffee for breakfast, we took a micro-bus into Ensenada, a split town on the Pacific Coast. About a mile wide and two blocks deep, there exists a pretty, landscaped cruise ship stop – complete with wide stone sidewalks, expensive shops and restaurants, relentless sales people, and plenty of English. Behind this menagerie is the hot and dirty Mexican town, with its 20 cent taco stands, endless shoe stores, and clouds of diesel pollution.

I believe that our next adventure in Ensenada was prompted by my laziness a month before. Before going more than 20 kilometers past the Mexican border, all foreigners must receive a visa, or tourist card. At the immigration office, you explain to the official what you are going to do in

Mexico, and he gives you a form that you can take to any bank and get stamped for US$20. As I traveled and studied in

Mexico, I never bothered to purchase my stamp until I was headed back towards the border. Furthermore, we technically were supposed to get Shannon’s visa before leaving the border town of Tijuana, but with the rush at the bus station, we didn’t, so when we went to the immigration office well past the border zone, the lady was already suspicious. She asked to see my card, and when she realized that I had taken a month to make my payment, it was clear that she wasn’t going to give us any slack. She said she was going to hold Shannon’s passport while we went to the bank to buy the stamp. In hindsight, I believe that one of us should have stayed with the passport, but instead, both of us went to the bank, bought the stamp, and – as you probably already guessed – the office was barred shut by the time we got back at 4:30PM

, an hour and a half before our scheduled bus departure. The lady at the tourist office explained that they often shut the office to go onto the cruise ships to process passengers. After a nervous hour long wait, the office reopened, and we made our bus.

From Esenada, we took an overnight bus through the desert to San Ignacio, about midway down Baja California. The interesting thing about this town was that we had driven for twelve hours through barren desert and popped out at a literal oasis with palm trees, coconuts, and algae-green lakes. As soon as we headed south again, the desert returned. Next stop was the hot, lazy, small town of Mulege. From here, we hitch-hiked a few more miles down to a beach called Playa Santispac. We actually ended up catching a ride from a retired American couple who run a bed-and-breakfast up the hill.

At the beach, there was an American-run restaurant, about 10 permanent RV’s, and several palm-thatched lean-tos, called palapas. We pitched our tent beneath a palapa and settled in for the night. The water could not have been more beautiful and clean. It felt perfect in the daytime heat. That evening, a pair of University of Utah fishing majors (really!) shared their day’s catch with us. But…. As night came, rather than cooling down, the heat remained, while the daytime breeze stopped. The heat in the tent was stifling, and the bugs were on the prowl outside. Then to top things off the next morning, the man who holds the key to the showers was nowhere onsite to be found, and the restaurant didn’t open until 2PM. So we hitched a ride with another American retiree and her dog on their way back to town, where we caught a bus down to the unexciting town of Loreto and the next day to Cabo San Lucas.

I was determined not to like Cabo, assuming that it was just an expensive American resort. I was completely right with my assumption and the hawkers made it much worse, but nonetheless, I enjoyed our stay there. The waves were spectacular and exhilarating to swim in. The beaches were beautiful, especially a pair of beaches reached only by boat, which split the bay and the Pacific Ocean....

After relaxing on the beach for a few days, it was time to escape the nonstop panhandling. From the moment we arrived in town, someone was attempting to sell us something – a taxi ride, Chiclets, or – during a quiet dinner one night – a condo in the Hyatt on the beach. Having been the only Westerner in town in India or Russia, I thought I had seen the worst, but this topped all. Every quarter of a block was something new. Even the tourist information centers around town were condo and excursion sales booths in disguise. The expensive resorts on the beach battled back by putting up chains around their beach chairs to force some distance between their guests and the silver jewelry, straw hat, and Henna tattoo salespeople. Even so, the sellers stood along the ropes with their goods, staring sadly at the relaxing sun bathers.

We bused back north to La Paz, where we caught a ship for a six-hour ride across the bay to mainland California. We spent one night in the industrial port city of Los Mochis and the next a couple hours north in El Fuerte, built around a 16th century fort that served as the northern-most outpost for expeditions to New Mexico, Arizona, and California. From here, we took Mexico’s only passenger service train northeast through the Sierra Madre mountain range and Copper Canyon, reaching the highlands town of Creel. At this time of year, Creel enjoys a wonderful cool climate with 70s in the daytime and cool nights – just what we needed after bearing the sizzling heat in Baja. We stayed a few nights at a great hostel, which included a comfortable bed, clean shower, breakfast, and dinner for 80 pesos, less than US$8, per person per night.

One morning, we rented bikes and a map, and joined by a teacher-turning-water-well driller, took for a 5 hour bicycle ride through an Indian reservation. The forest is inhabited by the very shy Tarahumara Indians – as much as they wanted us to buy their finely weaved pine-needle baskets, the ladies and girls would never look up at us directly. Even being this shy, their homes – one built into a cave – were open for us to come in. There were no signs and no one gave us any indication that we could enter, but looking inside, we could see that they had small tables of dolls and crafts for sale inside, so we entered.

Inside the cave home, I asked permission to take a picture, and the mother nodded yes. Afterwards, I gave her a few pesos in appreciation for opening her home for us to see. With a pig, a few chickens, and the father out plowing the corn field with his horse and an old fashioned plow, the family seemed pretty self-sufficient, supplemented by the small income brought in by the crafts made and sold by the mother and daughter.

The bike ride was through the pine forest ending at a small lake was both refreshing and exhausting, and the tidbit of culture that we got to peek in upon was fascinating.

From the highlands, we moved south, spending a few days in several 16th-17th century Spanish-constructed colonial cities. Starting from Chihuahua, we moved south through Zacatecas, Guanajuato, San Miguel de Allende, and finally to Mexico City.

This being my second time through Zacatecas, I had the opportunity to visit a few of the sites that I missed on my first pass, and Shannon and I also enjoyed a dinner with my host family from my studies here in May. One of the highlights of this return trip was the Quinta Real Hotel and Restaurant built into a disused bull-ring in the seventies. The design is ingenious and works perfectly with the bull-ring floor hosting a wedding reception on the day that we stopped in to have coffee.

Guanajuato boasts a large tourist district which includes several museums, theaters, and art galleries including the bizarre Mummy Museum. Here they display some 200 bodies exhumed from a mausoleum. They call them mummies, not because they are wrapped in white cloth, but because in the above-ground burials, the bodies never decomposed completely, many still wearing their burial clothes. They say that Mexicans have a very different perception of death than the majority of Americans. Rather than ignore and hide death, they allow it to remain in the forefront of their daily lives. This is more than evident in the diarios, or daily tabloids, that headline photos of the most gruesome deaths from around the country. My favorite part of the museum was certainly not viewing the hundreds of decomposing bodies and listening to the stories of potential murder victims or of the one they think was buried alive, but was to watch the way the families enjoyed gathering the kids in front of their favorite ghoul for a family portrait.

San Miguel de Allende was the smallest of the colonial cities that we visited and offered its own charm with pretty little hotels and a nice plaza and cafes, but somehow lacked the interest of the larger towns.

I’m not so sure that lumping Ciudad de Mexico in with the other colonial cities is appropriate. It is so big and diverse and alive that it doesn’t really have any comparisons. We only stayed for two days and one night in the city. Upon arrival to the city, we moved from the bus station to the central plaza by subway. The system connects the entire city for only 20 cents from any point to any other point. It’s easy to use and fairly clean, but with two transfers to get us to our destination, we found the crowds to be overwhelming, getting shoved and needing to shove to get ourselves and our oversized backpacks into a car. We arrived on some sort of a market day, as the streets were alive with venders shouting prices and bragging about the quality of their wares. It was truly an experience that I don’t know how to describe, but can only compare to being in New York and London, where I felt that there was so much commotion that I could never absorb everything going on around me.

The next several stops were along the so-called Ruta Maya, the Mayan path of pyramid and temple ruins. Just outside Mexico City is the giant complex of Teotihuacan with the sun and moon pyramids, said to nearly reach the heights of Egyptian pyramids. Our guide explained that one of the main differences between the Mayan and ancient Egyptian pyramids, is that those in Egypt were constructed with paths and rooms inside, while the American pyramids are generally solid.

From here, we went south to the shady town of Oaxaca (mysteriously pronounced Wha-HAH-kuh), from where I visited the ruins of Monte Alban. Here are saw my first Mayan ball court with its sloped walls, where they presumably played games with some type of a puck. The games are said to have been used to settle land and other legal disputes. Monte Alban was beautifully located on a hilltop that had been razed flat before the temple construction.

Next stop was San Cristobal with its gaudy yellow – yet attractive – church. From here, we passed through the town of Ocosingo and visited the nearby Totina ruins, which turned out to be one of the best. The site has not been excavated to nearly the extent of the others, and is therefore thousands of times less touristed. We took a peaceful horseback ride out to the ruins site and from the peak looked out over the farmlands, where the families go about their daily routines oblivious to the fact that they have a giant pyramid shadowing down on them.

Finally, we made it to Palenque, perhaps Mexico’s most famed Mayan site. Here, we camped in the jungle campgrounds for a couple of nights less than a mile to site. Having rushed through Mexico for the past couple of weeks, we only took a quick stroll through the Palenque grounds with great anticipation of the beaches of Belize!

June 16 - July 19, 2004