Fun and Wet Sneakers in the Sierra Gordo

After my multiple encounters with the Mexican highway police the day before, my desire when leaving San Miguel de Allende was to head for the remote wilderness on back roads.  Fortunately, this was already my plan.

My final sightseeing fling in Mexico, before I make a straight line for the border, is to explore the lush forestland of San Luis Potósi, home of mountains, waterfalls, and exotic wildlife.  So I set out for the town of Jalpan, in the heart of the National Park called the “Reserva de la Biosfera Sierra Gordo.” 

Jalpan is reached by a single road that winds into the mountains.  To get to it, however, entailed jumping back on Highway 56 for a short leg southward.  So spooked was I about that highway, that setting out on it (especially southward, i.e., back TOWARDS it) caused my heart to pound and my breath to get short.  In fact after a few moments I pulled over, grabbed my cellphone, looked at the map, and forced Google to choose a connecting route on secondary roads.  My theory was the smaller the road, the less likely it was to have highway patrols.  As soon as I was off Highway 56 I felt much safer.

It also led to a more interesting drive.  My one-lane connecting road ran through industrial farmland, past huge agribusinesses with their own rail lines, fields full of cows, horses grazing at roadside, a massive cowboy event that shut down the road to let a string of pickup trucks file out in a cloud of dust: a side of Mexico I hadn’t seen.  It’s funny: normally driving my yellow Miata through that sort of milieu would have made me nervous.  Now, as long as I saw no highway patrols, everyone was my friend.

Eventually the connecting road connected, to the even smaller road to Jalpan, and I headed up out of the flatlands and into the switchbacks.  At this point I felt safe enough to actually put the top down and enjoy the swing and swoop through the amazing green dorsals that began to rise and plunge around me under a blue sky.  My wounded Miata behaved wonderfully, as did I, considering it was the day after a road accident.  To be fair it was 20-mph swooping, as not only were the switchbacks that tight, but on the one-lane road I was frequently in a traffic jam, held up behind a grinding truck.  That was fine; when I got tired of the company I simply seized a pullout, stretched my legs, enjoyed the country air, then drove on in pleasant privacy (at least until I caught the tail of the traffic jam again).  The sun, the miles of forested mountains breathing around me, the vistas into hazy V-cut distances, all soothed my soul.

Jalpan is a cute little town in the middle of the “Reserva:” a pretty square with an old church and a couple of clean, cobbled streets with shops and restaurants.  After eating a late lunch of chicken fajitas at my Posada Mexico restaurant (where I’m staying, in a room off a dormitory-style hall in the back), I walked into the square to try to book a wilderness tour for the next day—the thing to do in the Reserva.

The tour companies had little kiosks on the square.  At first I struck out, as the company I spoke to didn’t have enough people to make a trip.  But in the morning after writing my blog post, when I wandered into the square wondering what to do, I found a different tour kiosk whose blue-shirted people were loading up their van and ready to set out on a waterfall tour in five minutes!  I jumped aboard.

It was a great fun day.  The tour went to the El Chuveje waterfall and the Puente de Dios ravine, two spots where the water pouring through these lush steep forests steps out in dramatic abandon in the privacy of hidden grottoes deep in the woods.  Though exposed now to the tourist trade their privacy is only slightly impaired: they’re hard to find, both accessed down bumpy, twisty dirt roads off the main road, followed by hikes on well-maintained trails.  There were six of us in the group, led by a nice-looking young guide with heavy dark curls and a scraggly dark beard, and I was the only English speaker, but everyone was friendly. 

It was a day when I really missed my camera; I used my cellphone—which takes terrible photos, almost unsalvageable even in post-processing—and otherwise tried to take the advice of Paul Theroux and Henry Miller and collect my impressions the old-fashioned way.  That began with the drive high up through the Sierra Gordo mountains, whose huge peaks and deep valleys were set exactly as far apart as great waves on the sea, though scaled enormously greater and carpeted in nubbly green treetops even up their sheerest sides.

El Chuveje was the more polite display, and even the more formally staged.  The hike led along the rushing stream of grey-green water, to a spot in the woods where a series of placid descending pools have been created with artificial berms.  With a brown grotto of trails on each side, romantic arched bridges spanning the stream, and huge trees lifting their dappled trunks from the water’s edge to a hang a ceiling of innumerable flecks of green and gold above, it looked rather like a movie set, but was no less charming for that.

A little further on was the Chuveje waterfall itself, a white plunge in the rough shape of a musical clef down smooth-bellied stone and serifs of diverging spray.  We lingered at the roaring green pool for a while.

The second attraction, the Puente de Dios, was a much more immersive affair—literally.  This trail followed its stream into a severe-sided ravine, and several times switched sides, necessitating fording the waters.  At first I tried to keep my sneakers dry, holding them up as I waded knee-deep on flat submerged rocks, but after a few of these I gave in, put them back on, and got delightfully wet in the cool mineral-blue surge of mountain water alongside all the other tourists. 

Our second guide helps one of our group ford the stream.

This is about how deep I got wet.

The path through the ravine became ever more dramatic, sometimes ascending on ladders through holes in the wet overhanging rock, sometimes following a catwalk along one wall of a cut so steep it seemed an interior space, like a room in a house given over to the thunder and green light of passing waters.  It ended in a surrealist vision of a cave: here the stream had cut a twenty-foot-high archway through a mass of overhanging rock and greenery, under which one could wade shin-deep, but there must have been water above too, because from the roof of the archway jets of it poured down, channeled through weird stone tunnels like inverted fumaroles.  The effect of waterfalls inside a cave was as if massive kitchen faucets were emptying into a covered sink. 

In short, by the end of the day I was bruised, sunburned, and soaked from my thighs down—a fabulous trip.

The Strangest Day of My Life

I’m not sure how to write about this day; I’m not even 100% sure how to understand it.  It was either the worst day of my life, or perhaps the luckiest.  Two days later, sitting at my B&B in the mountain town of Jalpan, I’m still shocky over it. 

By the time Friday, August 18, was done, I had almost lost my passport, been shaken down by Mexico cops not once but twice, and been in a car accident on the highway.  I should say immediately that I’m unhurt, and my Miata is still driving fine, though its rear end is bashed in.  And then, to cap off the day, I recovered my license plate that had been stolen over a month ago.

I’ll start with the latter, just to explain why I was trying to get to San Miguel de Allende in the first place.  My license plate, you’ll recall, was stolen back in June on my visit there.  I had a spare plate, which I’ve been driving with since, but of course it doesn’t have my tags.  Well, weeks later, and miles onward, I was telling the story to someone who lives in Mexico, who said that the plate was likely “stolen”—by the police!  They do that when they issue parking tickets, to make sure you come and pay.  I emailed my contact in San Miguel, Shelley Cohee; she went down to the police station, and sure enough, they had my plate.  In short, she got it out of hock, and we set up a meeting on Friday for me to repay her and get it back.

It’s a short drive from Coyoacán to San Miguel de Allende—at least normally.  My meeting with Shelley was at noon, so I got ready to leave Hostal Cuija at 6:30 am.  Fortunately the hostel was almost empty, and I had the six-bunk room to myself, so I could turn on the light and pack everything up.  Then I set out in the morning darkness.

The first thing that happened was the GPS on my new cellphone suddenly went wonky.  I was using Google Maps Navigation to get me through the maze of Mexico City to the highway, and suddenly it had no idea where I was.  I managed to get to the highway by staring at the little map on the screen and pulling over several times to peer at street names in the dark, as the morning traffic thickened and honked around me.  Finally I was headed North on the artery as the sun rose.

I was about an hour into the drive, on the outskirts of Mexico City, when the first cops pulled me over, two of them on motorcycles.  It turned out I had completely forgotten Mexico City’s arcane driving restrictions, which prohibits cars from driving on certain days of the week based on their license plate number.  The cops informed me that I was in violation: Friday was a no-drive day for me, at least between 5:00 am and 11:00 am. 

I was trying to explain the situation to them when I went to show them my identification.  And that’s when I realized I’d left the little neck-string bag with my passport under my pillow at the hostel.

In a weird way it took the cops pulling me over to save me from a worse situation.  And I’m sure that my face of absolute horror and panic helped convince them of my helpless sincerity and need to return immediately to my hotel.  They did shake me down, taking pretty much all the cash on me, after which one led me on his motorcycle through the streets necessary for a U-Turn, and I headed back into Mexico City.  Now it was full rush hour, the highway a solid ribbon of shining cars into the city in the distance.  As we proceeded inch by inch I had plenty of time to offer every prayer that I could think of that my passport bag would be there under the pillow, and envision every nightmare scenario—all of them fully deserved—in which it wouldn’t.

By the time I got back to Hostal Cuija my bladder was bursting, but I ran in straight to the bunkroom and lifted the pillow.  There was my bag, right where I had left it.

It was 9:30.  I explained to the amused staff as best I could what had happened, emailed Shelley to reschedule our meeting, replenished my cash at the local ATM down the street, and then waited out the time in the hostel common room until 11:00 when I could legally drive.  The couch was so comfortable, I really didn’t want to go.  But off I went, faulty GPS and all.

The second shakedown was on the highway, well on the way to San Miguel, thin traffic moving fast, and was worse.  This pair was in a cop car, and after parking well behind me on the shoulder leaned in my window to genially tell me that not only was I speeding (I was actually going slower than most traffic) but I was still in violation of my no-drive day (it was well after 11:00).  At first they wanted a fine of $1,500 US dollars.  “No dollars!” I said.  They then settled on $3,100 pesos, which I also didn’t have.  We went back and forth on this for a while; they had all the patience in the world.  The cop, his gun handle showing, then suggested that he get in my passenger seat and accompany me to an ATM.  I pretended not to understand, then explained quite honestly that I couldn’t clear the passenger seat because my trunk was full. 

I realize that in that situation you’re supposed to volunteer to go to the station with them, at which point they usually settle.  But in my shaken state this didn’t occur to me.  I was trying to offer what I had, less the money I would need for tolls to complete my drive, which I couldn’t calculate, and the lead cop was simply shaking his head with a smile.  We were at an impasse, and they were prepared to drag it out as long as necessary. 

Out of nowhere came a shriek of tires.  A little white car spun out of control at high speed on the highway, skidded spinning onto the shoulder, struck the parked cop car, and rebounded off coming backwards right at me from behind.  I had a glimpse of one cop pulling his partner bodily out of the way, and then BAM, my Miata was struck a vicious punch from behind.

There was a moment of confusion that unfolded into an uncertain span of time.  The white car sat a few feet behind mine, its rear end mangled, steaming.  Two Mexicans got out, slightly bloodied, and leaned on the guardrail silently.  I turned off my engine, got out, and surveyed my yellow Miata’s crushed rear bumper and left taillight with an expression of sheer disbelief.  The cops were off a ways, on the phone and directing traffic.  I tried to ask if the Mexicans were all right, but they paid me no attention.  We all stood around on the roadside in the hot day.  Eventually the lead cop came back, his hard smile replaced by a face open and wondering, and signed to me that he had made a call and I was free to go. 

I didn’t need to be signed twice.  Cautiously I started up my Miata and eased her forward.  She seemed to be driving, so I pulled away onto the highway.  Gears worked, brakes worked, power windows worked, there was no wobble.  She was running fine.  After a few miles I leaned over and popped my passenger side mirror back into position.  And continued slowly on.

I was in terror of further cops, especially if it was in fact still my no-drive day.  Several times I looked hard at roadside hotels in little truck-stop villages along the highway, thinking to pull off, but I continued on.  And I got the rest of the way to San Miguel de Allende doing 45 to 50 mph in the right lane. 

I was glad I’d been in the town before.  With my scattershot GPS it took me a while to find my hostel, but navigating those crazy streets barely wide enough for a car, rumbling over the rocky cobblestones and dodging pedestrians, didn’t faze me in the least.  I even remembered which streets were where.  And within a few minutes I was checked into my hostel, and my wounded Miata was parked in a secure off-street garage nearby. 

At 5:00 pm, then, there I was: sitting with a beer at a patio table of a charming and familiar restaurant, in the golden light of a San Miguel de Allende evening, waiting for Shelley.  She soon appeared, with a friend of hers from Boston in tow, and we all went next door to the magnificent estate home where she works.  For a couple of hours we strolled the gorgeous rooms and grounds of the mansion (Kathy was getting the tour), deep in conversation about everything under the sun, ending up on the roof garden at sunset where the cypress trees framed the dome and pink church spire next door and the high view over the valley showed distant skirts of rain turning patches of gold by the light.  And somewhere in the middle Shelley opened an office drawer and I got back my original Washington State license plate with the tags still valid through December.

The smashed rear bumper did not interfere with my screwing it back into place.

Like I say, I don’t know how to parse that day.  I’m alive.  I’m not in jail.  My car still runs.  I have my passport on me.  I’m traumatized, but I did know enough to offer many thanks of gratitude to Shelley, despite the mist of surreality attending everything around me, and I didn’t fail to offer a few in other directions as well. 

My bashed Miata...with its license plate back!

Back to Coyoacan

My blog has fallen a couple of days behind, but such is my pace now that I’m on the move again that I’m several towns and adventures behind.  Tonight I’m in the mountain town of Jalpan, within the National Park known as the “Reserva de la Biosphera Sierra Gorda”; I’ve got a private room on kind of a dormitory hall in back of a restaurant (courtesy of AirBnb), with two beds, bare walls, and doors to a little balcony that I’ve opened to try to cut the sweltering heat now that the sun has set.  A thunderstorm has just passed off, leaving my floor wet where the rain blew in under the closed balcony doors; the air is still hot and humid.  This is the thick green wilderness region of San Luis Potosí.  Tomorrow I’m hoping to explore some of the Sierra Gorda; the next day I plan to visit the mysterious jungle art gallery of Las Pozas nearby.

So how did I get here?

First, let me catch up with some general thoughts and plans.  Since leaving Zipolite on the Northward turnaround I feel happier and happier with my decision.  I have an immediate goal: I’ve successfully signed up for the “Algonkian Novel Writer’s Retreat,” in Sterling, Virginia (just across the river from Rockville, MD), from Sept. 12-17, where I’ll be putting my unpublished novel’s feet to the fire of professional criticism.  The retreat cost about half of what it would have to ship my car across the Darien Gap.  To me it feels like the better investment, which tells you something about where my heart lies as well as the riptide of future financial reality asserting itself to reverse the momentum of the dream.  Driving North I feel on solider ground.

I’m also effectively commencing a whole new road trip, as I have a little over four weeks to get to Eastern Virginia.  Hence my pace upward from Oaxaca.  My plan is to swing through Monterrey, cross into the USA at Laredo sometime next week, and then, as I mentioned in an earlier post, explore my way East through the Mid-Atlantic States, the Blue Ridge Parkway, etc.

And I’m off!  From Acapulco, my next stop was back at Mexico City.  The drive up from the coast wound over mountains that were an exercise in changing shades of green.  Near the ocean the vegetation was so thick that the hills seemed to boil with it, but as we got higher the trees changed to a thin-trunked species with all the leaves at the top, so that hillsides looked like scalps of thinning hair.  Later were meadow-green mountains studded with gigantic boulders like necklaces of chunky jewelry.  Then of course came the urban sprawl and traffic of Mexico City, and I pulled right back into the friendly garage at good old Hostal Cuija in Coyoacan, where I had spent a month.  The staff all welcomed me and I felt right at home.

I was in Mexico City for two reasons, neither of which panned out.  I was checking at Hostal Cuija to see if my driver’s license (snail-mailed by Washington State DOL on July 18) had arrived; the staff was supposed to call me if it had, but I figured I’d check for sure.  Nope, still not there.  I was also thinking that maybe I could find a camera repair store.  At first I thought I’d struck gold, as a Google search pinpointed one right in Coyoacan.  But after a nice walk down gorgeous Avenue Sosa to find it, they didn’t repair cameras after all. 

So I just enjoyed a day in lovely Coyoacan.  It was strange to be back on streets that I knew so well, walking slowly and a bit light-headedly from the altitude.  I sat down at my favorite coffeehouse, Café Negro, to catch up on email, and ordered my usual latté and cinnamon roll; for lunch I had the good tuna panini sandwich at Café del Barrio with their wall of dozens of toy action figures; I strolled up to the local supermarket and bought fresh fruit to make a fruit salad back at the hostel kitchen where I knew where all the bowls and plates were.  I spoke to an Australian traveller at the hostel who had just come in, and was able to recommend good places in the city to see Frida Khalo works.

It was hard to believe I wouldn’t be staying a week or more.  But after one day I was saying goodbye to the staff and getting them to open their garage door for me.  I was back on the road. 

And it would be a road day like none other.  But that’s a subject for another post.

Ack-Upulco

Two books I’ve read recently have advised travelling without a camera, books as different as “The Old Patagonia Express” by Paul Theroux and “The Air-Conditioned Nightmare” by Henry Miller.  Both writers seem to prefer trusting their own eyes and memory to gather impressions.  Well, since my camera died, I will try to emulate them, at least until I get the hang of taking pictures with my iPad.

I spent one night in Acapulco on my way North -- fabled Acapulco!  I chose a big city because it was easy to find a cheap hotel, and because I needed to buy a new cellphone; the glamour of the name meant little to me.  My guidebook said the city’s glory days had passed, but that didn’t daunt me; the same was true of Mazatlan which I’d found charming in its retro seaside decay.

Acapulco, however, on a first and brief impression, struck me as a bloated old whore of a city, sprawled in her mottled cellulite across a divan in a wrinkled dress, smoking cigarettes and stubbing butts on the floor as she regales you in a scratchy voice broken by coughs of days gone by.  The route to my hotel in the Old Town took me around the ring of the great bay, through an endless march of sad, boxy, run-down department stores, in chaotic taxi-choked traffic filling the air with a steady cacophony of honking horns.  Long police buildings and warehouse-like institutes blocked a view of the water, the gaps giving glimpses of dozens of speedboats moored on a light chop.  Above and around the city the green mountains were half consumed in ugly pink-and-white stone buildings like a spreading fungal growth up their sides.  When I found my hotel the area in front was quadruple-parked in vans, police cars, taxis, and other cars; I had to swing wide and take a side street down a slummy block of road construction and gaping iron-grilled storefronts to find a parking garage.  It was a sweltering ninety degrees in thick humidity as I walked back under an arcade where armed policemen stood alongside homeless people sleeping in the corner.

My hotel, the Hotel Oviedo, was shown on the web as a grand historic building, a big rambling affair on the corner with terraces and awnings, and to its credit it was easy to spot at a distance (not having a cellphone I was navigating old style, with paper maps).  But though I recognized it, I felt like I was seeing its faded photograph in an album whose plastic covering bore coffee rings and smudged cigarette ashes.  The high-ceilinged lobby halls were dim and dirty, with locked gates at the far ends; a jerky elevator took me to the top floor where an outdoor hall surrounded an interior courtyard of monotonously repeating doors at each level, at the bottom of which was a strange trash of discarded advertising cloths with huge letters.  But the room had that most magical of amenities: an air conditioner!

Full disclosure: it had been an eight-hour drive with my sneakers still wet (well, I can’t work the clutch in flip-flops); I hadn’t had lunch and I had a splitting headache.  In short, I’m sure Acapulco has more to offer—somewhere.  What it offered me, waiting for my oven-stuffy room to cool down while I downed aspirin and wondered WHERE I might find a Sanborn’s store to buy a new cellphone, was a look out the parted curtains, to see a giant lard-colored slab of a windowless building across the street—with a Sanborn’s logo.

So I spent my scant evening hours in Acapulco buying my new cellphone, having dinner in a nearby plaza (where a madly amplified voice was trying energetically to sell something in Spanish, not good for my headache), and going to bed in my mercifully cooled room.  All in all the evening was a perfect success!

But my favorite part of Acapulco was the Maxi Tunel, a mile-long, ruler-straight, modern and well-lit highway tunnel that shoots one on a slight upward angle out of the center of town.  It felt like the old whore’s spotless ivory cigarette holder.

The Rogue Wave of Puerto Escondido

Puerto Escondido was supposed to be just a stopover, a little coast city a couple of hours up the shore road through the jungle from Zipolite, to put me in range of the bigger drive the next day.  But having checked into the hostel early, found a cheap lunch on the city streets far inland, and whiled away some hours, I figured I’d walk down to the beach in the evening light.  It was a long walk, and I’d certainly had my surfeit of beach evenings in Zipolite, but Puerto Escondido’s was supposed to be a favorite spot for surfers, and I’d yet to bag any surfing photos. 

In fact, this was a beach of a different order.  Here’s a shot to set the scene:

The Playa Zicatela runs the entire arc out to the far headland, a distance of a little under two miles, all in a smooth toe-tactile slope of golden sand.  As with all beaches it was fronted by various little restaurants on the dry sand at the back with tables set out under umbrellas, and in the other direction were, sure enough, a few dots of surfers bobbing far out at sea.  And the waves coming in under them were simply monstrous. 

The sheer walls of water arising to loft their expectant bodies high into the sky above the beach were on a vertical scale that water shouldn’t be able to assume.  And indeed in that moment the water looked unnatural, a stretched iridescent emerald painted with tan veins of spouted-up sand like the opening neck of an enormous angry cobra, on whose hood expectant fleas were proposing to ride.  Of course the fleas had to be in the correct position, which they mostly weren’t, but it was mesmerizing enough just to watch such cobras strike, still far out from the beach, in hissing, cutting, straight or side-biting stoops to transform wholly into explosions of foam, criss-crossing each other and tossing festive spouts of spray as they tangled in a deep soapy surge up the long slope against the undermining suction of their predecessors.

 I didn’t evny the surfers just setting out, who had to fight through them.

In the end some of the patient fleas teasing the erratic wrath of the ocean were in the correct place, and at long last I got me some surfer shots, albeit at the furthest murky range of my zoom lens.  And yes, I’m posting two version of the same shot below—surfing happens fast and I only snapped a few.

As I’ve hinted, my delightful hours at Playa Zicatela were spent with one eye glued to my viewfinder.  And therein lay my doom.

I was, of course, stationed far back from the water, up on the dry sand at the back of the beach; nevertheless there were times when the foamy smother of monstrous snakes at the water’s edge resolved too easily and a remnant wave would dart deeper inland, as if making one last push with a flick of its tongue.  Twice I had to suddenly snatch up my sneakers, resting at my feet, and backpedal hastily out of the way. 

I was positioned, then, just about as far back as the restaurant tables when the rogue wave hit.  I had just enough notice to snatch my sneakers and see in a split second of regret that I was going to get my ankles and pant legs wet, when the water struck.  And it did so with no intention of stopping at my ankles; suddenly I was belt-deep in delicious warm water, and the unstopppable push was such that it knocked me down.

I was up again in an instant, soaked from my T-shirt neck down, with time to brace myself and feel the backwash dig ankle-deep hollows around my bare feet underwater, seeing the wave swirl even around the legs of the tables, dragging the hanging tablecloths, starting female diners up from their plates with their long dresses soaked dark.  In the next instant it was gone, skittering strangely back over the sand in a thin percolating mud like a million brown insects running toward the sea.

For a brief giggly moment I took stock of my clothes, as drenched as if I’d been pushed into a swimming pool, and my precious sneakers, still in my hand, now heavy with salt water and sand.  Then it occurred to me to check my camera.

Dead.

And then it occurred to me to check my cellphone, in the back pocket of my pants.

Dead.

And so concludes the cautionary tale of the rogue wave of Puerto Escondido.  Beware, O man of electronics, when trying to waylay monsters made of salt water!  I took a taxi back to my hostel (it was too far to walk in squishy shoes) and on the advice of some folks there put my camera and phone in bags of rice overnight.  Alas, to no avail. 

The next day, in Acapulco, I bought a new cellphone (the second new cellphone of this trip).  But as for my precious Canon T6i DSLR, well, I will try to find a camera repair store on my way through Mexico City,  but this post may well contain the last photos it ever took.  I can’t remember whether I bought the warranty, but if I did the stores that would honor it are in the USA and the paperwork is in Seattle.

At least it died in the line of duty.  It got me some surfer photos.