Puxmetacan, Oaxaca to La Mixtequita, Oaxaca
I toss and turn, the night too warm for anything beyond the clothes that I wear to keep the mosquitoes off of me. The town comes alive with the rising of the sun, its rays piercing the clouds that fill the valley and buffet the mountains. A rooster’s talons click on the zinc roof as it struts and crows. An orange trees blooms and stirs outside the window; hummingbirds dart and stab the pungent pistils. I somnambulistically descend a foottrail down the steep mountainside to buy fruit from a woman’s living room. Here a man teaches me how to greet in Mixe, phonetically it is pronounced ‘mi-gep-ay.’
‘Puro Mixe.’ He repeats over and over again with a smile on his face.
We disrupt some festivities as we leave town, parting the crowd as we walk our bikes through. After giving a brief speech thanking everyone for their hospitality, I awkwardly wait for the tickertape to rain down upon us before realizing that it is Sunday and the stock market is closed.
I sound like a dumb infant as I leave town, perpetually saying the same word over and over again. Mi-gep-ay! Everyone loves it though. We begin a general descent, with frequent interspersed climbs. The jungle is thick and the air stagnant. I dodge treacherous patches of marble sized rocks with Damien on my side doing the same, leading to several near disastrous incidents as we race into turns. Several pickup trucks loaded with passengers pass, dozens of eyes inquisitively fixed upon us from the bed.
The forest filled with strange bird calls and rustling bushes gives way to land co-opted for cattle. The approach of civilization is always apparent. I eat bananas, mangos, mandarins, guayabas, peanuts and chocolate as the next town remains ever elusive. It doesn’t exist on our map, only as a rumor. I ride in a ravenous haze in the early afternoon.
For Sale: Semen and Insemination.
Restaurant and Supermarket.
Pens. Spring. Ice.
Then I hit pavement and give out a loud whoop and pump my fist as a few bewildered locals timidly gaze from the back of a truck. The pavement is so smooth, so easy…so unsatisfying. We limp into a roadside restaurant where I collapse into a chair and sip on a glass of agua de tamarindo.
‘Hey man, what’s up man?’ I hear in heavily accented, drunkenly slurred English. Fuck. I wince and slowly turn my head towards a nearby table.
‘Hey, how’s it going?’ I slowly respond.
‘Yo man, you from the United States?’ I am convinced that most immigrants learn their English from early 1990’s action films. Maybe Scarface?
‘Yeah….from Utah.’ He doesn’t pick up on my exasperation.
‘Oh yeah, Utah! I was a drug dealer in Indianapolis for four years. Mucho cocaina man. Haha!’ He is glassy eyed, stoned drunk. I hope this stops soon.
‘….until they deported me for no papers. I am going to go back soon. Fuck them man! I have fucking money man, those are my fucking papers! Hahaha!’ Would an immigrant to any other country than America proudly tell a citizen that they came there illegally, dealt drugs for a living, got deported and plan to return? How am I supposed to respond to this? I don’t say anything.
‘How much do you make man?’ He asks aggressively, his bloodshot eyes bulging forth.
‘Not much.’
‘How much does that fucking bici cost man?’
‘Enough.’ Damien and I try to maintain a steady conversation amongst ourselves to put an end to this.
‘See you later man! Hahaha!’ He stumbles out the door and hops into the driver’s seat of his taxi.
The waitress intentionally overcharges us. Trucks thunder past, vexing my delicate senses with dust. Children stare vacantly at a television. These people are materially richer than the people in the mountains, but infinitely poorer in another way. I want to go back to the mountains.
We arrive in La Mixtequita at dusk, interrupting a futbol game as we ride up. I ask about a place to stay and am told to talk to the police who are on duty for the night. We ride down the road to a restaurant with a hilarious old lady, her drunk illterate son, a 3.5 kilo rooster and a drunk midget who insists on speaking in English that I cannot understand. We stay for a while in good company. The head of the local police hears about our arrival and comes over to talk, offering us permission to stay in the town’s municipal building.
We stop to get snacks and a girl disappears for a moment before returning carrying her five year old sister who is fighting in terror.
‘They aren’t going to eat you!’ She declares amidst laughter, holding her sister out towards us before setting her down. She takes off running.
Nobody ever arrives to open the municipal building for us, so we sleep behind it, under a metal roof.
La Mixtequita, Oaxaca to Palomares, Oaxaca
A cow bellows in the corral attached to the municipal building long before first light. A group of men are already working on a pickup truck and howling in laughter. As we pack up they come over to talk. We quickly move from our trip to more pressing matters.
‘Haha… Look at the Australian’s bike, he is so poor that he cannot afford disc brakes!’
‘Why didn’t you bring down a white girl? You know? A little thing.’ He makes an obscene gesture with his hands that is appears to be universal amongst Latin American men.
‘You should come to San Juan Mazatlan in the mountains, where we are from. There are waterfalls and beautiful mountains and lots of wildlife. We caught a baby tiger up there the other day.’ He says casually.
‘A tiger?’ I play it cool as well.
‘Yeah, a baby jaguar.’ He holds his palm about 30cm off the ground to show me the size of the cat.
‘How did you catch it”‘
‘Oh we used a trap. Do you want to buy it?’
‘How much do you want for it?’
‘One hundred dollars. It’s cheap. There is a guy coming down here from Chicago to take a look at it in the next few days.’
‘Oh….’ This jaguar is as good as dead and I cannot think of a way to change this outcome. In the next few weeks I tell several government officials and police officers about this exchange. Here is a typical conversation:
‘That is definitely illegal.’
‘Is there anything you can do about it?’
‘Oh, well somebody should. It isn’t my job though.’
We ride 20km of rolling hills into Palomares. We cross paths with the chief of police from La Mixtequita at a restaurant with a few friends. One of them lived in America for a while, so we have a fruitful dialogue about cocaine, banging white girls, getting drunk and eating at buffets. Somehow in the course of all of this he managed to get a DUI and was deported.
‘You guys want to buy some cocaine? Only one hundred pesos.’ He leers at us.
‘No. I am trying to lead a healthy life.’ I try to tactfully decline amidst rising frustration with conversations like this.
Cocaine and jaguars. Welcome to the Isthmus.
Palomares, Oaxaca to Poblado Doce/La Horqueta, Veracruz
One of Damien’s tires looks like it has leprosy with several sores and missing chunks. There is nowhere to get a spare that will not cost us several days, so we switch the front tire with the back and hope for the best. We stock up on supplies before heading out into the unknown. The entrance into the Ishtmus of Tehuantepec is called La Boca del Monte or The Mouth of the Wild. The road on my map is shown as nothing but dirt as it snakes through several small towns named Poblado 1-14 or Population 1-14. There is nothing in this region on our maps other than what lies along this small road until one reaches one of the two coasts.
The road stays paved as we pass through the final frontier town that bustles with activity from the natural resource exploitation beyond. I receive varying and conflicting answers regarding the road ahead, but almost universally we are told that we should turn around and head to the coast. The air is filled with a miasma of decaying organic matter, cow shit and dead animals. Development?
We continue on a concrete road through pasture. Where is the adventure and rugged country? The swarthy savages clothed in loincloths that jump out of trees onto animals backs to stab them to death? The jaguars barking at us? The monkeys flinging shit at us?
What is it like to live in a town called Population 2? There is a sign out front built out of scrap metal with the village name spray painted over rust. Orange trees overburdened with fruit line the road.
We cross into Veracruz and are questioned by curious assault rifle wielding police. I keep my answers concise and we are sent on our way. The jungle slowly thickens, swollen beautiful rivers whisper to us from below bridges. In Plan de Arroyo we are flagged down by a local and I stop in confusion. He points at some vibrant orange and green iguanas tanning their scales in the sun. The town’s name either translates to River Plan or Gutter Plan, I prefer Gutter Plan.
We resupply in one of the populations between 5-8. Our map shows a town called Las Carolinas where we plan to spend the night and resupply on water. We are tired from the heat and the day loses its luster. We ride hard through interminable rows of rubber trees. The remote mountains of the Chimalapas lie to our right as we pass their flanks. I flag down a truck in frustration, the driver never having heard of a town called Las Carolinas. Over the clang of the diesel engine he tells us that we are only a few kilometers out from La Horqueta/Poblado Doce. We cross paths with a man on horseback a bit later who directs us to keep riding a bit further, town invisible in the incipient darkness. 117km later.
I ask for a place to stay at a small store, a woman who’s mouth has corners perpetually downturned into a frown offers to rent us her son’s room for the night. We spend an hour laying out all of our different maps on a concrete slab in front of the store for dozens of locals that encircle us under a dangling, dim lightbulb. I talk about our trip, waiting for the woman to show us to our room.
We eventually carry all of our gear through the living room, the rest of the family quietly taking stock of us. I quickly head out back and bath myself with bucketloads of water. We pass the evening chatting with the family about our trip and the area before cooking dinner on my small stove out back. They give us cilantro, oranges, chiles and plantains to add to our dinner. Our evening here is incredible, despite the matriarch’s defect of frowning at all of my jokes. The walls of the house are lined with dozens of photos of frowning family members. I want to make a joke about this, but I know how it will be received.
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