Volunteering at Loma Linda

I just made it back home to VT, after a long day of travelling from Mexico to Portland, a few job interviews in the Pacific Northwest, 10 fantastic days in Seattle with Ana, 5 days in New York with Tom (a friend from Vassar) and Oscar (a friend from Guadalajara), and a long, green train ride through Connecticut and Massachussets.  Phew!  I´m starting a new chapter now, trying to focus on being here mentally and soaking up all that´s great about being home — the food, the outdoors, and most of all being around people who´ve known me my whole life.  It´s comforting, and I hope that feeling doesn´t turn into claustraphobia, and the itching of the ever-present travel bug, too soon!  This will be my last entry (from this trip, at least); thanks so much for reading and for sharing your thoughts and comments over the last 10 months.  And, most of all, keep in touch!

-Dylan

I just got back from a hike through the Guatemalan selva at dusk.  Me and Moses, my trusty guide, hacked our way through a disused trail (in all honesty Moses did all of the hacking), past a city of various colored and sized plants and vines, to make it to the local watefall before night fell.  Wet, misty, muddy, rain-foresty…we finally climbed back on to the established trail as the crickets (I think) started whining and the sky went from dark periwinkle to satiny purple.

I´ve been here in Loma Linda, a tiny town of 1,200 3 hours and two buses from Xela, since Monday afternoon.  Tropical storm Alex has been dumping rain since I got here, and today was the first break in the action, long enough for us to venture out for a quick hike and make it back in time for dinner.  I´m staying in a little hotelito the town´s newly organized tourism/development organization built last year, and taking all my meals at Rosalia´s house, with her four brothers, parents, and multiple (maybe 6?) kids.  Wonderful mayhem!  Beans at every meal, eggs with two out of every three, but the super-sweet, steaming coffee and the fantastic company more than make up for the lack of culinary variety.  I got to watch Rosalia´s two-year old daughter catapult herself across the room and back into the arms of a slightly older daughter on a swing they improvised and hung from one of the ceiling beams today. Also, Rosalia´s  incredibly sweet, very puckered mother still giggles when someone brings up the fact that I put too much chile on my veggies at lunch two days ago, and went quiet and sour-faced for ten minutes until the pain subsided.

I came here to get a glimpse into rural life in Guatemala, to see how the other half lives here, away from the smoke-burping buses, cobbled streets, and coffee shops of Xela, where I´d been taking Spanish classes for the previous two weeks.  Since I got off the chicken bus at the bottom of Loma Linda´s long sloping street in the Monday afternoon rain, I´ve been so astounded, and humbled, by the incredible warmth and generosity of the people here.  Generosity isn´t even the right word…generosity is something you show towards a stranger.  Pascual and Rosa, the husband and wife leaders of the development committee, Rosalina, Moses, and everyone else I´ve spent more than 5 minutes talking to has treated me like a member of their family, invited me up for more super-sweet coffee or an afternoon snack, or to come by and watch a world cup match.

My first night here, Rosa and I talked for what seemed like hours after dinner, and she told me about all the other tourist/volunteers that have spent a few days, weeks, or even months here.  She remembers all their names, and funny stories about each of them, and talks about them like children who´ve left the house to go make their way in the world.  She told me that I should come down to their house to visit whenever I want, without knocking, and that I could ask them for absolutely anything I needed; that I was now a member of the family. I know this is going to sound weird in writing, but I almost broke down into tears in the face of her incredible warmth, and ended up giving her a good, long hug.

Something we miss traveling, maybe without realizing it, is being part of a family, of belonging somewhere,of having a place where people are happy to see you.  Or having somewhere you can go, and someone who willlook after you if you have a problem or just a bad day.  I know it sounds crazy, but I feel like I have that here, and I just rolled in two days ago!  It fills some fundamental need that goes unmet on the road, fills a part of you that doesn´t get filled up after months of hanging out and meeting interesting new people from around the world or visiting ancient and beautiful places.  It´s something we often reject when we do have it, to get a little indepence from our folks, to live in a more exciting place or to go to that college that´s perfect for us, but so far away we only visit home during vacations.  It may be a cliché to say that Americans tend to not value their family as much as people from other cultures, but there really is something lost when we live our lives in the pursuit of careers, or adventures, rather than in enjoying and cultivating the warmth and sense of belonging that comes with staying home (most of my Mexican friends don´t understand why I wanted to go to college 5 hours from home, and much less why I´m planning to move to the West Coast this fall).  Sometimes, it takes going to the other end of the hemisphere to realize what you´re missing back in the States, and I think I´m going to live  my life differently back home because of it.

Note:  Loma Linda´s ecotourism program, run by Pascual, Rosa, Moses, and other community members, is an important source of revenue for the town.  Volunteers contribute in a variety of ways, from teaching English at the local school to helping renovate their small eco-tourist hostel and harvest coffee.  If you´re in or near Xela and want a unique experience off the tourist trail, please consider getting in touch with these great folks and scheduling a visit!

You can visit the new facebook page for more information and photos, e-mail (checked once a week) or call Pascual (from Guatemala) at 57.246.035 or 49.962.110 , or e-mail or call Eleazar, who lives in Xela and is happy to meet to share more information about Loma Linda and schedule a visit, at 40.010.101 or 43.452.253 (Eleazer speaks a bit of english, too).  Loma Linda is about 3.5 hours from Xela by chicken bus, and you can stay for a day or two, or a month or two!

Volcano-hopping: Tajumulco and San Pedro

I´ve had an eventful few weeks.  Made it from San Cristóbal de las Casas in Mexico to Xela, Guatemala.  Stayed there for three weeks with a wonderful family and brushed up my Spanish at a local language school.  Also, did a killer sunrise hike to the top of the highest point in Central America, el Vulcan Tajumulco, with Quetzaltrekkers, and awesome non-profit that organizes hikes and treks all over Guatemala..  We hiked up to a base camp the first day, spent a rainy and cold night in our tents there, and then summited at 4am…definitely a thrill, and a highlight from Guatemala so far.

I´m now in San Pedro La Laguna, in Lago Atitlán.  I was using the internet at a coffee shop yesterday, and some guys came in to organize a trip to the top of Volcán San Pedro, overlooking the lake, the following morning at 4am.  I decided to hop in with them. We woke up to a warm, clear, dark early morning today, knocked off two hours of steady, tough climbing (one of the toughest hikes I´ve ever done!) and made it to the top just after sunrise (and just before the morning mist rolled in).  The hike was muddy, with mini-landslides and downed trees in a few parts of the trail from recent rains.  The view was absolutely amazing while it lasted…pretty much a straight look down at the whole lake and the surrounding volcanoes!  It felt like being in an airplane, like floating above the whole lake on a tiny outcropping of rock.   I think it´s gonna be tough to go back to east-coast hiking when I´m home!

Getting high outside Mexico City

Last weekend, I was the highest I´ve ever been in my life.  La Malinche (a.k.a Matlalcuéyetl, Matlalcueitl and Malintzin) is a huge dormant volcano in Puebla and Tlaxacala states, east of Mexico City.  The summit´s 14,641 ft—almost exactly half as tall as Everest—and very pointy.

Me, Kisiev, and his friend (now my friend!) Daniel bussed down to Puebla, where we met Miguel(ito) and Iris.  Spent the night at Miguel´s mom´s house and then rocked la Malinche the next day.  Slippery, loose-rock -strewn, steep slope for the last few miles (and hours)…fun, and definitely worth the altitude sickness!

Spent the next few days hanging out in and around Puebla with the banda…Miguel´s mom fed us some great meals, including a breakfast feast of chiliquiles con pollo and pirrian, sort of spicy, light orange mole type dish.  Also got to visit Miguel`s god-mother`s homemade temescal (traditional steam room), where we steamed the soreness out of our post-Malinche muscles, rubbed ourselves with salt and honey, received expert (and spine-cracking) massages from his godmother, and chatted about politics.  Lush! (sorry for stealing your word, Andy).

Then, a few days convalescing in my hostel in DF, a few days staying with Daniel and his parents in southern Mexico City, and back to the mountains!  Dan, Kies, and I bussed down to Tepotzlán, a gorgeous little colonial town with a street market filled with excellent food.

Fried fish, long, veggie-stuffed quesadillas made with tortillas from blue corn, and super-refreshing micheladas (beer with lime juice and tons of spicy chili powder on the rim of the glass…too bad i was on antibiotics the whole time, so didn´t down one on my own).

Also, Tepoz is surrounded by cliffy mountains, and there´s a cool, old stone temple halfway up one of them.  So, we hiked up to the temple, farted around a bit, and then continued scaling up to the top of the mountain.

Fun times with the banda, and once again, a sad goodbye as I continued on to San Cristóbal de Las Casas.

Journey to the Bottom of the Continent

Just rolled into Mexico City (after a 20 hour bus ride from Chihuahua), and I wanna get out and explore!   Still, got to get this off my chest before the next adventure—hiking a volcano with my friend Kisiev this Saturday (still don´t know which one) .

So, I spent the last week at the bottom of the deepest canyon system in North America, the Barranca del Cobre (a.k.a ¨ The Copper Canyon¨…apparently Spanish Conquistadors overzealously mistook pale green vegetation for copper lining the canyon´s walls.)  I met Cici and Vincent, a Belgian couple on a month-long tour of Mexico, on the awesome Ferrocarril del Barranca del Cobre…a pretty impressive train that runs along the canyon and stops at a number of tiny villages perched along the rim.

From Bahuichivo (one such village), we took an aging converted American school bus, piloted by our fearless captain Eugenio, down the twisting, narrow road to the canyon floor (see video on upper right). We were all getting over some stomach issues, so the ride was an exercise in, well, self-restraint, so to speak. Luckily, I was scared sh&t-less.

Spent four relaaaaaaxing days at a sorta home-made ecohomestead/hostel in Urique on the canyon floor called Entre Amigos.  Composting toilets (stocked with Mother Earth catalogs from the 70´s), solar-heated hot water, and papaya, mango, and grapefruit trees abounded! Also, right by the river…key for chilling out after day hikes in the hot canyon.

Keith, the owner wasn´t there, but I still got to take tortilla-making lessons from Maruca, a family friend and employee who was watching over the place. A lady in town (who loaned me a bag of flour when the abarrotes were all out) said I learned from the best. They were definitely delicious, and Maruca definitely got a kick out of the lumpy, mishapen tortilla freaks that emerged from my first few attempts (pictured below is one of the less-freaky tortilla freaks).

Some great day hikes to isolated indigenous communities on the canyon floor, and then a less-freaky bus ride back up and a train to Creel.

There, me and the Belgians rented bikes for the day and pedalled through a series of valleys with interesting rock formations (the Valley of the Frogs, the Valley of the Mushrooms, and the Valley of the Monks, which was (no joke) actually originally called Valley of the Erect Penises by its indigenous inhabitants, because…well, you´ll see).

Then, burnt crispy from the all-day bike ride, I said goodbye to the Vincent and Cici and bussed it up to Chihuahua with Daniel, a German army vet, Antonio, a diction and Literature instructor from Mexico City, and Francesca, a French business consultant. Chihuahua was kind of a rough town, although not without its jokes. Me and Daniel were assailed (in a repeat of earlier events in Guadalajara) but camera-phone bearing schoolgirls while taking a tour of a historical mural at the Palacio de Gobierno. We finally escaped and finished our tour, only to be whistled at by the prostitutes (at least one of who sounded, but didn´t look like, a dude) stalking the streets outside the run-down guesthouse where we were staying.

Later, me and Daniel had a great time at a dive cantina populated by two puckered old guys with canes, three surly waitresses, and another prostitute who kept checking out the window for clients. The jukebox was banging out Norteño love ballads for the first few shots of tequila, but then suddenly ran out of credit and went silent.    Seizing the opportunity, I flipped through the catalog of discs and found treasure: Creedence Clearwater Revival´s Greatest Hits. So, I put on Bad Moon Rising, not sure if we´d be kicked out, and went back to my bar stool while the song loaded.

Then the familiar tune burst out of the speakers at full volume, and to everyone´s surprise, one of the seniors put down his cane and started dancing this great unselfconscious kind of salsa dance, arms upraised and fingers snapping, sashaying around the bar floor. We all of course started clapping and yelling ¨EY EY EY EY¨ (like they do here), and I rushed over to the jukebox to keep the tunes flowing. A half-hour later, after great success with more Creedence and some Daddy Yankee (he loved ¨Gasolina¨), we slapped on some Cumbia (good dancin´music) and all got out on the floor.   Good times!

Hostel-bound here in Mexico City for now, due to surprise streetfood poisoning, but stoked for the upcoming volano summiting!

The Streets Part II: The Noble Tamale

Tamale from a Oaxacan abuela. She traded us a bag of red salsa for half of my pb & j sandwich.

For folks here because of the East Montpelier Signpost article, here´s a direct link to the cross-continent bus trip story:  Bus-a-thon 2010.

OK, maybe calling a tamale “noble“ is an exaggeration. But they are irresistable, inscrutably hidden away in their corn-husk wrappings like a steamed, juicy Christmas present.  It is, I hear, foolish to attempt to make them on your own except under the strict supervision of a tamale expert.  The fact that they`re nearly always served up by craggy, hunched, tongs-wielding abuelas who preside over their steaming, stainless-steel tamale tubs like magicians conjuring something stupendous from an overturned hat, only adds to the tamale mystique.  They`re all the more impressive because they fit perfectly in your hand, can be munched on without utensils, and can be had for one of the 10 peso coins that seem to multiply in my pocket during the course of the day.

Of course, tamales are only the princes (or princesses) of a street-food kingdom that encompasses the entire pocked-asphalt expanse of Guadalajara, from St. Andres to Zapopan.  Also presiding in court are a million variations of tacos in puffy flour tortillas, crunchy fried corn tortillas, or steamed as “tacos al vapor.“ They`re filled with juicy chopped steak, picante chorizo, and meat from parts of animal anatomy that I`ve never heard of before, even in English.  Everything from the rotating kebob-style pork in tacos “ al pastor“ to the stewed, tangy lamb or fish stew in tacos cazuelas, the “lengua,“ “cabeza,“ and “cerebro“ tacos (which need no introduction), to my personal favorite, chicharron (tacos stuffed with fried pork skins), gets stuffed between two tortillas, piled with chopped onions and cilantro, and handed out 24/7 at puestos, taquerias, and cocinas economicas around the city.  (Check out a great guide to Mexican street tacos by Karen Graber here).

Street food is a huge part of what makes life in Mexico so vibrant, and is going to be a huge part of what I miss when I come back home.  Food here is both sacred and carnal; sacred in the sense that tourist-oriented theme restaurants are thought of as not only ridiculous and expensive, but as betrayal of nationally adored dishes, and a rejection of the generational cooking know-how curated by moms and grandmas across the country.   It seems that everyone gets real pleasure out of the food they eat, and that the men and women cooking up tacos and tortas at Guadalajara`s thousands of street food stands are hugely proud of their food.

I think this is something a lot of us crave, but never really experience, in the U.S.  When I was interning in D.C. last summer,  my co-workers (and most of my friends) were absolutely obsessed with sandwiches from PotBelly, classier version of Subway.  Lines snaked around the block every day as people spent their lunch hour waiting in line for a sandwich of packaged meat and bulk-order bread, served up by an assembly line of gum-chewing, blasé employees.  They eat it not because it gives real pleasure but because it`s something to crave in a city, and a country, that thinks of food either as fuel for your body, or worse, as untouchable avante-garde art.  In Mexico, food is a life-long love affair.  Deliciousness, and people unselfconsciously enjoying it, is all around you, all the time. It adds a dimension to life that I think I`ve always missed back home without realizing it.

OK, enough musing for now! Here are some photos of my favorite Mexican street food, and the home-cooking inspired by it! Provecho!

Springtime in Guadalajara

Things are getting beautiful here.  Trees of all different colors are sprouting all over the place…at least it feels that way, since I never paid them much attention before they were bright purple or yellow.  Baking hot at mid-day, but warm breezes all night.  Deep purple sunsets.  Ants diligently at work dismantling leaves from the highest branches of the tree in front of our apartment and trucking them the millions of ant-miles down the trunk and into the hole in the tile under our front steps.

Had a great visit with Sam; we`ve known each other since we were talking about Warcraft in the back of Eric Weis`s 7th-grade algebra class.  There`s something really cool about being with someone you know really well in an environment that`s completely foreign to your relationship…like two kids from central Vermont hanging out in Guadalajara, Mexico.  It`s calming, in a way…kind of reassures you that, even though you may only know a few people here and don`t understand half of what everyone says, you`re a real person, with a history and a home town.

Anyways, Ana`s coming to visit this week.  Stoked for that!  And in the meantime, here are some photos I took over the last few weeks when spring started happening.

Giving Gracias on the Border

I was looking through some old stuff on my computer, and found my application for the fellowship that brought me here last year.  It reminded me why I`m here, and why learning Spanish is both a huge opportunity and responsibility.

When I first decided to learn Spanish, it was because I wanted to say “thank you.” I had arrived, sleeping bag in hand, at Blanca’s door just moments earlier.  I would be staying in the cinder-block house of this family of maquiladora workers in Nogales, Mexico, as part of a trip for a college course on the U.S./Mexico border, and I couldn’t even say thank you.  I had, of course, said gracias as Blanca, the mother of the household, began serving dinner that first night, but that garbled attempt seemed inadequate coming from a privileged American student who had literally just been airlifted into the lives of this struggling Mexican family.

I still remember the pregnant silence that descended over the table arrayed with bean stew, meats, homemade tortillas and guacamole; so many conflicting emotions and thoughts roiled in my head, but I was deaf and mute, unable to communicate with my hosts.  Unable, that is, until Blanca’s sister Carmen joined us.

Carmen could speak some English, and upon learning I was in Nogales to learn about the border, she began recounting painful stories of migrants attempting to flee poverty and hunger in Mexico.  She told me of children drowning in the moat-like canals lining the border as they tried to cross with their parents, of old women being abducted and robbed by smugglers, then left to die in the swaths of desert engulfing much of the border, and of cesarean sections performed with kitchen knives in Chiapan homes due to the lack of basic health services in rural Mexico.  She told me that Carlos, her son, had lived in the U.S. since age two, but was expelled by the INS just after being accepted to a visual arts school when he was 18; he now earns less than two-hundred dollars each month driving a forklift at a landfill in Nogales.  She told me it was too painful for her to go to the side of town where a twenty-foot corrugated metal wall separates it from Nogales, Arizona, and by the silent watchfulness of the rest of the family, I could tell she was speaking for them, too.

As the meal ended, Carmen, in tears now, thanked me for coming to Nogales and listening to her stories.  Sick to my stomach and on the verge of tears myself, I found some small piece of redemption in her gratitude.  Blanca’s family had given me so much and I had so little to offer in return, but maybe, for an American to travel to Mexico, to listen to the humanizing, heart-breaking stories of the people many Americans dismiss as “illegals,” was an offering in its own right.

you can see the border wall bisecting the neighborhood in the background

Bus-a-thon 2010: Vermont to Guadalajara

Being such a big advocate of responsible travel, I decided to try taking the most carbon-efficient mode of travel to get back to GDL from Vermont after xmas: long-distance bus.  More than anything, I wanted to prove that it`s doable, if not enjoyable. I was tired of the hypocritical dissonance between my climate idealism and my penchant for flying.  And, admittedly, I didn`t want to wuss out on my former roommate Andy`s challenge to travel the 3,000 miles by  bus.  So off I went!

I cheated from the start, taking a train from Montpelier to New York City to save a few bucks and 5 hours.   After 3 great days catching up with friends in NYC (thanks for the futon Fergy!), I woke up at 4am on a freezing Thursday morning to make it to the Port Authority terminal for my 6am bus.  Got my ticket, an accordion of perforated glossy sheets for each of the stops on the my trip.  It read like a band`s reunion tour through the south: New York, Washington, Richmond, Raleigh, Winston Salem, Charlotte, Duncan, Atlanta, Birmingham, Jackson, Monroe, Shreveport, Dallas, San Antonio, Laredo, and finally Nuevo Laredo and Monterrey, Mexico.

The next week and half was a bumpy ride of travel highs and lows. There was a great conversation with a young Iraq vet-turned pacifist on the bus from San Antonio to Nuevo Laredo. There was the anxiety-inducing run from the bus station to my hostel in the freezing early-morning darkness  of Zacatecas, a city I`d never visited, using only a  hand-drawn, un-labeled map I`d picked up at another hostel and a bumpy commuter bus.  There was the quiet wonder of hiking lone in the mountains in Chinpinque park, outside Monterrey.

But there were there were also the drivers`terse, early-morning wake up calls blasting from scratchy loudspeakers as we rolled into depressed Southern towns in our fluorescent-lit, jam-packed buses.  The physical discomfort of days without a shower, or real food.   There were the desperate-looking riders waiting, sleeping, or sometimes just swaying in place in shabby greyhound terminals.  And there was the sobering moment when I crossed the border into Mexico with just my passport and a signature, while hundreds of people die every year trying to do the exact same thing, but in the other direction, in the surrounding deserts.

Coming back to Guadalajara was like coming home after a long trip.  The warmth of rekindling memories and friendships from last year was great.  But the let-down of not being on the road anymore, of not being in motion, in emotional and geographic flux, made me feel idle and impatient.  Living life on such a wide emotional spectrum is addictive.   Even if you`ve just spent a whole week on cramped buses and dirty terminals,  sometimes coming home can be the most uncomfortable part of traveling.

Checkpoints in the Jungle P2.

The next day was the leg we´d been waiting for, and debating, for days: the Carretara Fronteriza. Four hundred kilometers of jungle-skirting two-lane highway, thick with military checkpoints, howler monkeys, and indigenous communities.  We waded through dense, bright green jungle yesterday, but now we were cruising past rolling green hills, distant blue mountains, and small farm plots fenced in by trees.  Small towns materialized, bordered by rows of  abarotes (mom and pop convenience stores) and pick-up truck fruit vendors, as we curved through the fecund landscape.

We stopped for a swim and lunch break at El Chiflón, a huge waterfall that pours turqouise green water into a brisk river.  Disapointingly, the zip line that crosses the river just under the waterfall was closed for repairs…I got butterflies just looking at the thin cable stretching across the turbulent water.

Five more hours of driving (with one brief pause to let a monkey cross the road in front of us) brought us to Yaxchilan, one of the least-accesible and infrequently visited Mayan ruins in Mexico.  After inadvertently landing the the middle of, and carefully extricating ourselves from, a heated dispute between the local taxi drivers and boat operators, we hopped on a narrow, long lancha and motored off.

We had been flying down the Ucumacinta river for about forty-five minutes, skirting the border between Guatemala and Mexico, before the grandmother (pictured above, first row, left, loving life) of the Mexican family that shared our boat gasped and raised her arm straight out towards the shore.  Slowly, swatches of beige stone emerged from the dense green forest.  Then crumbling, pocked structures.  We passed two nearly-hidden buildings before swinging towards the sandy shore.

Walking into the park was like a weird dream…deadly quiet, except for occasional outburtsts from territorial howler monkeys, and nearly deserted.  We hurried ahead of the others from our boat so we could be alone in the ruins.  Joking to break the tension and quiet, we tramped along a vague, vine-laden path until a huge, mossy stone box came into view, blocking the path.  We sidled up, and found a pitch-dark opening in the box.  A doorway, of sorts, with warm, wet-smelling air pouring throught it.

We crept through with baited breath, cringing as we realized that the small squeeks just above our heads were a pair of  tiny slumbering bats heads.  Soon, the the darkness slowly abated and we emerged on a large platform, with a grassy lawn infront of us, the river bank to our left, and a steep hill on our right.

Crumbling stone structures stretched across the lawn; we recognized pelota courts, temples, houses, and staircases crawled up the hillside to our left.  We spent a few hours exploring the ruins, taking side-paths to smaller plazas and structures hidden deeper in the jungle.  I felt a deep sense of awe, and also nervous excitement…it felt like we´d stumbled upon a hidden city, whose inhabitants were watching us from the dark recesses of their abandoned buildings.  The constant roaring of the howler monkeys only added to the Indiana-Jones feeling.  An unforgettable experience.

We left at dusk as the attendants were closing the park, and hoofed it another few hours to Palenque, rolling into town exhausted from the drive and the adrenaline rush.  The final score: 400 kilometers, 1 huge waterfall, six full-car searches by Mexican soldiers at checkpoints, one hidden ruins, and too many peanut butter sandwiches to count.  The next day we toured touristy, but impressive Palenque.  Then goodbyes, an overnight bus to Cancun, and a flight home for Christmas!

Checkpoints in the Jungle P.1

One note to start:  As I`m publishing this post, more is becoming known about the situation on the ground in Haiti, and the death count from the recent earthquake may be in the tens of thousands.  Here`s a list of aid organizations working on the recovery effort; please take a few minutes to send some help their way.

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I´m sitting at the computer terminal in my hostel in Zacatecas, listening to the rain patter on the dark, cobbled streets outside.  I´ve traveled almost three thousand miles in the last week, from wintery Vermont to rainy central Mexico, by bus and train.  I´m tired, and pretty dirty, and recovering from a cold, but I´m on such a huge traveler´s high that it doesn´t matter.  But, before we go there, I´ve got some catching up to do.  The story of the last leg of my roadtrip across Mexico with my housemates, Andy and Temoc, remains untold!

Beginning the last leg of our roadtrip across mexico, we ditched Oaxaca with heavy hearts, and decided to get some distance.  We drove through the whole day, and part of the night, arriving at San Cristòbal de las Casas around 2am.  The road was amazing, full of extreme bends and cliff-side views of an absolutely epic, mountainous landscape.  We passed dirt hillsides forested with cacti, and vast plains shrouded by layer upon layer of blue-purple mountains on the horizon.

After three days in mountainous San Cristobal we launched ourselves into the jungles along the Guatemalan border, camping and driving our way across the Carreta Fronteriza, a road running 400k along the Mexican-Guatemalan border.  Some claim the road was built solely to facilitate the Mexican military´s control over the region in their efforts to restrict the movements of the Zapatista rebels in the bordering Lacondon jungle.  Either way, it was lush, green, wet, misty jungle throughout.

We camped one night in the Lagunas Montebellos national park, a collection of five placid, forested lakes just on the Mexican side of the border.  Our little lakeside campsite was run by a large family, who also had a rustic restaurant on-site and ran tours of the region.  We´d barely pulled our stuff out of the car before Carlos and Jonaton, two pint-sized cousins, ran over, arms flailing, to ask us where we were from, and what our names were.    They helped us build a nice fire, and we spent the evening chatting, fixing them peanut butter and bimbo (i.e. wonder bread) sandwiches, and telling ghost stories.  Heartwarming!

That night, I feasted on a spiny, mean-looking fish at the family´s restaurant; apparently, it was caught in the lake next to our campsite just a few hours earlier.  Looked kinda like a pirhanna…I´m glad it was already dead by the time I dealt with it.  Despite the outward appearence, it was tender.

The rest of our trip in Chiapas will be in an upcoming post.

One final note, though.  As I`m writing this, more is becoming known about the situation on the ground in Haiti, and the death count from the recent earthquake may be in the tens of thousands.  Here`s a list of aid organizations working on the recovery effort; please take a few minutes to send some help their way.