Monday, February 06, 2006
I better bang this out before it gets blocked by work, play, and daily life.
Saturday was an excellent day. I got up early, took a taxi about ten minutes to Metro Mixcoac and met my Mexican climbing friends. We all piled into their old Ford Van and set off north. Our destination was Aculco, 115 KM towards Queretaro and every pothole we hit reminded us that the van had no shock absorbers. I actually felt the axle or whatever it is called hit the frame of the vehicle a couple of times. My viva Mexico experience was just beginning….
First of all, two of the people that were supposed to go with us hadn’t ‘eaten breakfast yet,’ so they were going to catch up with us somewhere up the road. Two other people decided to drive their own vehicle. Crawling up the road somewhere near KM 80, our driver, Ary called the missing parties. One was on the way. The other had had an accident in Mexico City. They ran their H3 Hummer into a Volkswagen Bug and were waiting for the police. We gave them directions to the town near the climbing area.
KM 115 appeared and the exit. We pulled off to the side of the road to wait for the other group and zoom, they went roaring past. Because we waved, they recognized us and pulled off the freeway a quarter of a mile in front of us. Mexican Freeways are not quite like those in the USA. If you miss an exit, there rarely is a handy cloverleaf up the road to turn around. So, like all Mexicans, the two people who had driven past us merely backed up a quarter of a mile on the freeway. Cars kept whizzing past at 120 KPH, but slowly and carefully, the two people whose names elude me, made it back to the exit and followed us to a small town called Aculco.
Aculco was really cool. Cobble stoned streets and a beautiful colonial plaza greeted us. We had agreed to wait for the car crash couple here, so we wandered around, bought cheese, ate tacos and drank coke for a good half hour. Finally, the Hummer showed up complete with a large scratch down the driver’s side. I felt sorry for the Volkswagen. We laughed, because this H3 was a different color from the Hummer that they had driven two weeks ago. I guess both the husband and wife have one. Another half hour later, we finally left towards the canyon.
On the way out of town, a large traffic jam occurred when a large gas truck, a chicken truck going one way and a tiny Nissan Tsuru moving the opposite direction all battled for position between parked cars on the narrow street. No one could move and soon there were ten cars lined up in either direction. Stuck. Nacho, from our van, got out and started telling cars to back up. He had to go down to the very end of the row of cars. People started swearing at him as if it was his fault that the traffic jam occurred and grudgingly began to reverse themselves. Finally traffic started moving again and we were on our way to the canyon. It was 12 PM.
The day of climbing was nice. Most memorable was a very poor family that sits in the parking lot on top of the canyon where we climbed. Nacho and Ary have been here enough times that they have in a sense adopted the lady and her nine children. Every time they come, they bring clothes, food, Band-Aids and antibiotics. Two of the children followed us around all day. In return, Dominga prepared quesadillas and nopales, prickly pear leaves, at the end of the day and we ate and ate. I wondered how hygienic her kitchen was, but I figured that good will would win out against bacteria and smiled as I gobbled down her delicious tortillas.
It was now dark, 7:30 PM, and my adventure was just beginning. I had planned on meeting my folks at their rented house in San Miguel de Allende, one hundred and fifty kilometers north. The climbing van dropped me off at 8PM at a random intersection in the middle of the countryside of Mexico State. A group of taxi drivers informed me that the next bus to Queretaro, midway to San Miguel, would pass by at 8:30. I sat there in the night, looking at the stars, the moon and chatted with a taxi driver who had just returned from working in Chicago. He left with a fare and I looked at my watch. 8:22. I asked another taxi driver how long the bus would take to get me to Queretaro.
“Two hours,” he replied.
“Two hours?” I thought. We couldn’t be more than sixty miles.
“But,” the taxi driver added, “this bus stops in all the little villages. I can take you to a bus station or to the freeway toll booth for 100 pesos.”
I was a little short of cash, but I was tired, and so I agreed to go. 100 pesos and twenty five minutes later, the man stopped at the freeway toll station. I had tried to convince him to take me to the next village’s bus station about ten minutes down the road, but he insisted it would be easy to get a bus to take me in to Queretaro from here.
It was now 8:50PM. I stood on the side of the freeway with my backpack and tried to get busses to stop. After leaving the toll booth, most busses headed for the far left lane trying to speed up as fast as possible. I walked to the toll operator. He told me to go up
the road 100 yards; there was a food stand there. I walked to the food stand. Several long distance busses stopped. One, heading for Tijuana, offered to pick me up, but he was going the wrong way. The rest treated me like I was infectious. The luxury busses have strict laws about picking up passengers, but some drivers do anyways.
After quite awhile, I walked back to the toll operator. He told me it was against the law for busses to pick up people right at the toll booth, but he would try to help me. It was now around 9:30. Bus after bus driver shook his finger at me and at the toll driver. My heart was sinking. I should have been almost to San Miguel by now, and I was still at least two hours away. I was exhausted and starting to get scared. Long distance truck drivers leered down at me, a shaggy haired gringo in the middle of the night at a toll booth in the middle of nowhere, in the state of Mexico. I’ve read enough newspapers to know that truck drivers have been blamed for gruesome killings in Mexico, the remains spread graphically across the front pages of tabloids. But, I was desperate enough that I found myself wishing I could climb into the cab of semi and go.
Suddenly, a man yelled at me from his Ford pickup truck “Get in, guero.”
A woman sat beside him, so I figured he must be fairly harmless. I was tired, scared, and alone. So, I thanked the toll operator for helping me, opened the pickup door, and with a “Buenas noches” that I hope didn’t sound as worried as I felt, threw my backpack in and sat down.
He was headed to Leon, Guanajuato, and three hours away. He wouldn’t get there until well after midnight. He offered me a cigarette. I told him I don’t smoke. So, he told me there was some Bacardi under the seat if I wanted to drink instead. I laughed as best I could and told him I was just really tired and had to get to Queretaro so I could then take a bus to San Miguel de Allende.
Conversation was not bad. It would have been better if I could have relaxed and if I wasn’t so tired. He was a simple guy, off of a ranch, that had two Ford dealerships. One was in Mexico State and another in Leon, Guanajuato. They were five hours apart, so he drove this freeway a couple times a week to keep things running.
He was really a kind man. As we neared Queretaro, he told me he would take me all the way to the bus station. He dropped me off and I walked into the station looking for transportation to San Miguel de Allende. It was 10:20PM and I was spent, physically and emotionally. The lady behind the ticket counter told me that the next bus wouldn’t leave until 1 AM and it would take 1 hour 20 minutes.
Resignedly, I first went to the bathroom and looked at my red eyes while I scrubbed a days worth of rock climbing dirt and blood from my hands. I marveled that here I was in Central Mexico, in the middle of the night by myself, I had just hitchhiked on a highway leading from Mexico City, and I wasn’t worried. I was just tired. Leaving the restroom, I walked over to the authorized taxi stand and bought a ticket for downtown Queretaro. I would find a cheap hotel for the night and meet up with my folks in the morning. Disappointment reigned.
As I explained to the taxi driver that I didn’t care where I went as long as it was cheap and clean and that I had tried to get to San Miguel to see my parents but things had gone wrong and I had left my house at 8 AM and now it was 10:45 and I was beat, he started to argue with me.
“Why are you going to go downtown and spend a minimum of 320 pesos for a place to stay? Then, you have to have breakfast and then a taxi back to the station in the morning and then a bus to San Miguel in the morning. You should be going tonight!”
“I can’t,” I told him. “The next bus leaves at 1AM and I’m too tired.”
“Listen,” he said. “For 300 pesos, I will take you.”
Thirty bucks for a taxi ride seems like so much money here in Mexico. But, the man had a point. I would spend that much or more to go sleep in a little flea bitten hotel room.
“San Miguel is 80 KM away. I can have you sleeping at your parents place in 45 minutes.”
While I debated it, we drove by a group of transvestite prostitutes. Trying to see if they were male or female, I stared hard at them and found myself thinking they were actually pretty attractive. One of them opened her (his?) mouth and flashed its tongue at me. That sealed my decision.
“Take me to San Miguel for 270 pesos,” I said. “And are those women or men?”
“Those are dudes!” The driver laughed. And we sped off at 120 KPH on a Mexican country road at 11:15 PM on a Saturday night.
As we arrived to San Miguel, I called my parents to have my dad try to describe how to get to their house.
“Ojo de Agua 29,” was about all he could say. “I don’t know the name of the colonia and it’s too hard to explain. It’s on the hill as you come into town.”
The taxi driver was not impressed, so we stopped at an Oxxo station to see if the attendant could help us. When the driver asked “Ojo de Agua,” the man got a pained look on his face and sighed. He launched into something that sounded more like a confession at mass than directions to someone’s house.
“You’ll go down this road,” he moaned “and then you’ll find a little alleyway. It’s called the alley of Acero. It’s really bad,” he apologized, “so bad, you won’t know where you are. It looks like it’s not even used. Keep going, even though it’s ugly. You are going to pass one alley. Don’t take it. I don’t know if cars can even use it. Just keep going.” I thought the man was going to burst forth in tears as he added, “then there is another alleyway. It’s too small for cars as well. Just continue on. You’ll come to a small plaza, but I don’t know if people even sit in it. There are roads going out in every direction. Just keep going where you were going and soon you will be going downhill again.” His face creased into a painful grimace and he continued on, “There is a field on your right. I don’t know if it is a field. I don’t even know if you could walk into it. It’s desolate, abandoned. You are going to think you are lost. Don’t worry; you are on the right road. Just continue past this lonely place and you will then be on Ojo de Agua.”
The taxi driver thanked him as best as he could, but his tone of voice betrayed him. As we stepped outside, I told the driver that I didn’t understand a thing the man had said. “Neither do I,” the taxi man replied. And off we went. Soon, we found ourselves on a small alleyway that sure enough said Alleyway of Acero. It was indeed rough. We continued down and passed one, then two alleyways that no cars could ever go up. The cobblestones rattled our taxi and then we found ourselves in a plaza where no one was sitting. Off to one side, someone was cleaning up their hot dog cart. The taxi driver asked him for Ojo de Agua and it was straight ahead, down a winding cobbled road. We passed an abandoned field on our right and sure enough, there was my parent’s place, Ojo de Agua 29.
The taxi driver smiled in satisfaction as my parents came to the door and I paid him his 270 pesos. A good evening economically for him, a new street in a new town discovered, and I was finally at my destination.
It was 12 AM. I had left Mexico City at 8 AM, stopped climbing at 6:30 PM and been left by the side of the road at 8PM. I was ready for bed. It was yet another Viva Mexico day.
pieces more, traversed out of the chimney and onto the face. I placed two micro cams as I inched my way up to the very top, my rear end hanging out over an enormous amount of air. As I reached over the summit, a rock broke off in my hand, but I switched my weight quickly so I wouldn't fall, and I tagged the summit. I belayed Nacho up and we looked over the city, the forest, and the quickly lowering sun. We decided that last pitch was another 5.10B.
