A grunt and a nod directed to a place behind us. We would bivouac there for the night. There, on the hard cement platform beside the road. Two barrels on their sides, lying derelictly. Across the road, sloppy graffiti on a white billboard reads: "MUERO A LA CAPITALISMO. VIVE EL EZLN." Zapatista territory. Night had already fallen. We were tired from several kilometers of walking out of San Cristobal and enduring bumpy rides on trucks. We pitched our tent with quiet dexterity, having nearly 3 months of practice. The swarthy, scruffy man who permitted us to sleep on his property outside his comedor disappeared into his household, and three children hopped around our tent with flashlights (one illuminated a busty woman in a bikini), peering inside curiously, as we struggled to get comfortable inside with the solid cement beneath us. I flicked the sides of the tent several times to scare them off as if they were tiresome flies, but that only made them flinch and laugh. At length, their mother told them to come inside and leave us alone. Carlights swept through our tents as they passed on the crossroads a few meters away. They will be less bothersome later on, we hoped. Here we are: sleeping outside somebody's restaurant-slash-home on the fringe of a jungle in Palenque, with a faint odor of dog urine and oil in the moist air.
Earlier that day, we left behind a comfortable mattress and our own room in a casa in San Cristobal, having no idea where we would sleep that night. We had already discovered that with a tent you can sleep just about anywhere, and we had no qualms or fears about going to a random place and finding a place to camp. The Mexicans were very forthcoming with help whenever we asked them where we could sleep. In Champoton, a middle-sized city in the western coast of the Yucatan Peninsula, we walked into a police station and asked them where we could camp for free. Of course you don't sleep in the middle of the city, but we thought we could sleep on one of its beaches, and would feel better about it if we had the police's advice. A police officer introduced us to the police commissioner, a professional-looking man in dress pants and a light blue shirt. He asked us for our passports and, with our names, quickly typed up an official government letter, signed and stamped, permitting us to sleep on an indoor basketball court on the other side of the city. A police officer drove me there and after some gesturing back and forth, we knew where to find the bathroom and food, and we parted ways. We sat inside the arena, watched some games being played by local teams, and when the gameskeeper locked the doors, we camped right on the middle of the court.
We can't say we expected anything like this, sleeping on a court with a government writ legalizing our temporary residence, or by a fairly major intersection. We've slept in differnt sorts of places, mostly beaches. Back of a police station, behind a immigration building on the border, on a field in the middle of a sleepy town, under a palapa in another town of which we never knew the name. We have been accustomed to not knowing where we will sleep the next night. The element of the unexpected naturally adds to the adventure.
But 'adventure'? Throughout our travels, we have seen much foreign to our eyes. However, we are beseiged by reminders that we were not the first ones, or the second, or even the hundredth traveler to behold the sight. The simple presence of a hostel in a small town is enough, the minibuses packed with tourists swerving on the roads worse. Even the most down-to-earth camping site with tons of hippies is too revealing. Moreover, the sight of another gringo is horrifying, ugly - not so much because of the aesthetic quality that it defiles (like a white oil blot on a Diego Rivera fresco mural), but because it reminds us of ourselves, what we really are to the latinos, travelers reaping the privileges won by their forefathers, gazing upon them as if through a glass menagerie.
Everything have been made too easy because of people who went there before us, who advertised these locations to the world for them (and us) to flock. All of the trails have been well-beaten, it seems impossible to find anything new. There will be no more Magellans, no more Marco Polos, no more Pizarros who had no maps or antecedents to rely on. Yet, I believe, there will always be men and women who search for new, unknown frontiers to plumb their inner depths, just like mountaineers who risk their lives to climb Mount Everst or K2, or to duplicate Ernest Shackleton's perilous trips to South Pole. Albert Camus said,
What gives value to travel is fear. It is the fact that at a certain moment, when we are so far from our own country we are seized by a vague fear, and an instinctive desire to go back to the protection of old habits. This is the most obvious benefit of travel. At that moment we are feverish but also porous, so that the slightest touch makes us quiver to the depths of our being. We come across a cascade of light, and there is eternity. This is why we should not say that we travel for pleasure.
Do we feel fear? Sometimes, but not so much. The Mexicans have made us feel very comfortable and at home in their country, being wonderful hosts. Though we might not be at continual peril despite camping at unknown places everyday, we are nevertheless enjoying our time, but our understanding of what constitutes as 'adventure' has been humbled.
