The Run to Guatemala
Having burned up my six-month Mexican visa but still having a couple of months commitments here in Oaxaca and in the state of Guerrero to the east, plus a plan to spend a month or two in Chiapas, I was compelled to make a quick run into and back from Guatemala for the purpose of obtaining a new one. My plan was to ride three days to Guatemala and three days back. Part of the delight of an open-ended adventure such as I am enjoying is that one doesn’t have to stick to ones plans. I found both San Cristobal de las Cases in Chiapas and Quetzaltenango, Guatemala, too interesting to simply over-night in, so I stayed a day in each. However, I got on a roll coming back and made that part of the trip in two days, rather than the planned three.
As was made obvious by my post from San Cristobal ("Oh my gawd!"), I found the mountain air of this lovely city quite intoxicating. Indeed, it is, in the words of a muchacho who filled my gas tank, "precioso." But, getting there was, indeed, half the fun. I was reminded every day of this ride of what a wonderful way to travel is motorcycling. You smell all the smells (the wood cooking fires, the fresh mown hay, the stables); feel all the little micro climate changes as you go in and of the shade, up and down the mountains, through the river valleys; you have that sustained little adrenaline rush as you dance your two-wheeled partner through the twists and turns of a mountain road, and at every stop you experience the friendly curiosity afforded people doing strange things. Coming down out of the mountains to the coastal city of Juchitan I ran into high winds, adding that extra little dose of excitement. I get a real kick out of riding in a gusty wind. Many riders do not, but I have found that by keeping the speed up and letting the bike have its head, it will do most of the work of leaning back and forth to hold a line.
The great fear--my great fear, at least--in riding mountain roads in Latin America, is meeting a truck or bus coming around a corner on the wrong side of the road. These guys drive very aggressively and firmly believe in the maxim that might makes right. As it happens, however, in several thousands of miles on such roads, I have only encountered this once and it happened on the road to Juchitan. A very large truck traveling considerably too fast had swung wide on a downhill corner and was half in my lane. I do not know how I could have avoided becoming a hood ornament had I been in a car, but, with a quick change of line, there was plenty of room for me to get around him on my motorcycle.
Juchitan
A small fishing and farming village, Juchitan is rather well known among anthropologists who ply their trade in Mexico for the facts that: 1) the women there are assertive and have a great influence on the social and commercial life of the community; 2) it is quite accepting of homosexual male transvestites and reportedly has an unusually large number of them (called muxes), and 3) it is was governed successfully, so they say, for a decade or so by a very leftist coalition (COCEI). Juchitan is frequently characterized as matriarchal but I do not believe this is true. The study I read on the subject, said it is just a lot less patriarchal than the rest of Mexico. My brother Ken reports, however, that when he was doing his hippie thing in this part of the world, he was forced to forego buying eggs (huevos) because the market women would always remark, loudly, "oh, the gringo doesn’t have any huevos," meaning that part of the male anatomy when generates sperm.
When COCEI won its first election the state governor (of the dominant PRI party) simply annulled the election and appointed a PRI mayor. When COCEI clearly won the next election also, this gambit seemed too blatant to repeat and it was allowed to rule. As it happens, PRI claims to have won the recent election. COCEI’s appeal to the (still PRI) Governor was, predictably, dismissed. Representatives are now camped in front of the federal Congress demanding the election be annulled.
Juchitan is rather off the tourist-beaten path. I like that, but it does mean doing without a good cup of morning coffee. Highlights of my brief overnight stay were touring the museum in the Casa de la Cultura (mostly pottery from pre-Hispanic times) as a Mozart piano concerto was being played over the speaker system, then emerging to hear an old Cat Stevens song being played on someone’s car radio (two of my favorites back to back), poking through the many blocks of street vendors, and buying a cooked Robalo (my favorite local fish variety) from the row of fish vendors all shouting for my attention. The country boy in me delighted at seeing a real-life farm implement and supply store, with a large green John Deere tractor and baby chicks for sale. Somewhere, I am sure, there was a blacksmith shop, but I didn’t find it.
San Cristobal de las Casas
The ride back up into the mountains to San Cristobal was as delightful as the journey down to Juchitan. If I have seen prettier country, I do not recall it. How I would love to be able to show it to you, but I have learned that, with my limited photographic skills and my little digital camera, nature shots never really
capture what I am seeing. I was sufficiently fascinated by a church at the top of a very steep hill above a little country village and by the very long flight of steps leading up to it to give it a "shot". Another visual highlight of this trip was observing campesinos from another village at the foot of a long mountain road coasting rough-hewn little wagons loaded with firewood down into town. Very clever, I thought.
San Cristobal turned out to be bigger and much more upscale--with lots of tourists--than I had expected. I had no idea that Chiapas, only associated in my mind with the famous Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN), was a major tourist destination. But, after browsing a beautiful tourist brochure, I can see why it is. The state abounds in natural wonders--lovely rivers, water falls, lakes, and forests in the mountain, and the dramatically different tropics of the coastal region. It also has some magnificent Mayan ruins (e.g., Pelenque and Tenam Puente). I am certainly looking forward to for an extended stay.
As always, in Latin America, the architectural highlights of San Cristobal were the cathedrals.
Back in Guatemala, at last
I had thought to make a one-day ride to from San Cristobal to Huehuetenango in Guatemala but at the border crossing it was pointed out to me that I had not paid the $18 tourist tax on my six-month visa. It seems the $18 I paid upon entry only covered the fee for importing my motorcycle. It being too late to get back to the last major town (Comitan) in time to find a Banamex open and pay this fee that day, I was forced to spend the night in Comitan. That being the case, I decided to head straight for Quetzaltenango the next day, it being further south and putting me closer for the run back to Oaxaca. I fretted a bit about what sort of hotel I had checked into in Comitan, even more seedy than usual, when I noticed the admonition to always use condoms on the wall of my room and heard young guys and girls giggling giddily in the neighboring room. Happily, my night was uneventful, the young folks heading off into the night before my bedtime and, as far as I could tell, never returning.
The busy border crossing into Guatemala the next day was wonderfully uneventful, quick and cheap. For reasons I do not understand, the Guatemala side of a border crossing seems always to be filled with a several block long crush of pedestrians, vehicles and vendors. Certainly not for the claustrophobic, but I rather enjoy the struggle of squeezing my way through this colorful gauntlet.
I instantly felt myself in different world from Mexico, even though Chiapas is heavily populated with the same quite handsome, in my eyes, Mayan population. Perhaps the most immediately obvious difference was that most Guatemalans drive too slowly whereas most Mexicans drive too fast. I also had the sense almost immediately that people were poorer, thought I cannot say exactly why. Another quickly discernable difference is that in Guatemala there are even more buses and they are always jammed full of people. There are also lots of trucks, big and small, with their cargo space jammed full of people. This is not sitting-down jamming I speak of. This is standing up, people hanging over the railings jamming. And everywhere you see lots of small people carrying very big loads. One little old woman was carrying a bundle of logs on her head that I would have struggled to carry in my arms. I should note that many people whom I perceived to be "old" may well have been considerably younger than myself. I think the life of a peasant wears one out much more quickly than does a comfortable middle class existence such as mine.
The ride to Quetzaltenango--which the locals usually call Xela (pronounced chayla), one of the many Mayan names the town has had over its years--provided yet another day of beautiful mountain-road riding. The route commenced through valleys filled with patches of crops and grazing animals and surrounded by clumpy mountains. When I stopped to stretch in one small town, two seemingly elderly ladies, accompanied by two little girls, passed by. None were wearing shoes, nor, did it appear, had they ever done so. As the road slowly wound its way up higher it passed through a step, beautiful river valley.
Finally, as I approached Xela, the road descended back into more open farming valleys. There was a wonderful vista at one point, looking down into a valley through trees that framed a little church. You have to look closely to see it in the picture, however.
For the first time I encountered some rather rough road. There were several stretches of potholely pavement and others of gravel. My enjoyment of these somewhat more challenging riding conditions was rather dampened by concern about damaging my newly acquired laptop computer. With potholes, one must ride at a speed sufficiently slow to enable the avoidance of, at least, the big ones. On gravel, going slowly is not always the answer to a smooth ride. There is a speed that lets one rather skim over the bumpy surface. I was happy to discover, at the end of the day, that I had succeeded in keeping the bumps and shakes below whatever threshold it is that would damage the little Thinkpad.
Quetzaltenango (Xela)
I did not find Xela a very pretty city. The old cathedral, which appeared to me to be the most interesting building in town, was completely obscured from the front view by two newer additions, the one on the left in the photograph, seeming to be merely a façade.
Only from the back could you see the old building and then only the top and a narrow vertical slice as commercial buildings have enveloped it.
The Zócolo was pretty but encircled by dense, noisy, smoky traffic. Clearly the town center would be a much more attractive place to gather if traffic could be banned, as it is in many Mexican cities, but given the narrowness of the surrounding streets, this seems impossible.
Despite these negative comments, I certainly believe Xela merits a visit. It’s numerous Spanish language schools offer exceptional opportunities to learn about the local culture and volunteer in community service projects as well as to learn a new language. One 3-member consortium of schools (Hermandad Educativa, http://www.hermandad.com) particularly interests me. In its Escuela de la Montana "students live among the Mayan campesinos who earn poverty wages harvesting coffee on the large plantations. . . . Country living with organic gardens, a medicinal plant garden, a fish pond and incredible natural beautiful just outside Quetzaltenango." The gracious owner of the hotel in which I stayed gave very appealing descriptions of the hot springs at Fuentes Georginas, nearby artisan marketplaces and vistas for admiring the four volcanoes nearby, among the numerous attractions.
With my one-day stay, I did not feel I had time for such countryside explorations but I did observe an amazing religious parade. Of course, having been raised in the relative austerity of small town Methodism, I am easily amazed by Catholic pageantry.
In this case, as I was walking by a relatively small temple rather distant from the town square, I observed a gathering of 30-40 fellows dressed in beautiful, purple velvet robes and hats. Shortly, another group of similar size, in black robes and quite differently and curiously styled hats paraded into the area in front of the temple. They were soon joined by yet a third group (with yet different hats) and, then, a fourth. Meanwhile a small group of women in traditional ethnic dress and little girls in party dresses joined in the assembling parade. Shortly the sounds of a brass band emerged from the church itself. Finally, there emerged from within a large hand-carried float of Jesus with his cross, looking down on several disciples. This was no chicken-wire and paper maché affair, but, rather, beautifully carved wood. Some forty or so guys carried it on their shoulders, swaying back and forth as they moved along. Over a period of well over an hour the parade made its way down to and around the Zócolo, before regressing. I have no idea what the occasion (November 11) was.
I frequently find myself, on this adventure through Latin America, enchanted by the little children. Part of the enchantment is simply that they are so cute, particularly the girls in their ethnic dress, as they peddle their Chicklets, woven ankle bracelets and carved bookmarks. The poorest of them are often what we would have called in my youth, ragamuffins, and in a perverse way, cutely so. Those of you who have seen the stage plays of "Oliver" or "Annie" may recognize this phenomenon. It is embarrassingly easy for me to forget that these children are so cutely selling stuff and doing other grownup work because their families cannot afford for them to be in school. In Xela I observed a young fellow with his two, more or less eight-year-old daughters, peddling brooms and dustpans door to door. These little girls (twins, I think) were beautiful, with their baseball hats turned backwards and their arms full of colorful brooms. But, their little faces looked very dusty (and this was early in the morning) and their expressions were sadly sober and businesslike. I desperately wanted to get their picture but in my reluctance to treat them like a spectacle I hesitated and, as I tried to convince myself it would be ok to ask if I offered to pay for the privilege, they were gone.
Re-entry
The compelling reason for this hasty sojourn was to get a new Mexican visa. I am happy to report, despite the stories I had heard from several people that the Mexican border officials were giving out only two-week visa to persons entering from Guatemala to make life hard for international human rights observers in Chiapas, I had no trouble getting another for six months. Perhaps this shows the wisdom of my strategy of returning along the coast route, away from the "troubles" in the mountainous parts of the state. The tropical coastal area is quite pretty, but rather hot and quite buggy. I was happy when I passed back through Juchitan and headed back up the mountains to Oaxaca.
Tomorrow (November 17), I head west through the mountains to Chilpancingo, Guerrero.