Two Bags and a Tent

On Camping, Adventure, Diego Rivera, and More Ramblings

2010-03-31T09:54:00.000-07:00

"¿Dónde podemos acampar por gratis?"

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.

What Do Hitchhiking, Hockey and Real Estate Have in Common?

2010-03-30T17:06:00.001-07:00

Answer: they put location, location and location before anything else.

Real estate realtors will tell you the location of any given mortgage means more than anything else. A shack by the ocean in California will cost more than a two-and-half bathroom house in middle of Nebraska. The lot on a corner of a busy intersection will surely overprice a place of the same size down a street. Brawn and speed might mean something in hockey, but it is the brains that trumps all. Wayne Gretzky wasn't the biggest, the fastest, or even the strongest, but he knew when and where the right positioning would be. His psychic-like anticipation earned him the most points in the history of hockey, by a wide margin of 900 points to the second-highest scorer. Just because he knew where and when to put himself.

In hitchhiking, the same rule applies. You will NEVER be picked up within a city. It's impossible, even with hundreds of them passing by every hour. Put yourself by a dirt road in the countryside with a car coming by every 10 minutes, and you have a wonderful chance of hitching one up. They are less preoccupied with the need of keeping the traffic moving, and you will look awfully lonely out there. Situate yourself next to a tope (a speed bump that reaches epic proportions) and your chance goes even higher, as vehicles will have to slow down anyway. Get eye contact with them, and you've almost got them reined in.

Before this trip, there was absolutely no experience with hitchhiking between us. After 100 days, we've been in 80 different cars driven by strangers, taking us to all sorts of places, sometimes at their own discretion or destination. We had butterflies in our stomaches when we first started hitchhiking outside Cancun, heading for Tulum, and for a long time we loved the feeling of seeing a car pull over, a hand waving us over from the window. Hitchhiking was much easier and more fun than we thought it would be, and we enjoyed meeting people and getting more intimate with the locals, and sometimes their food and hospitality whenever they invited us to their homes. It was truly the best manner of traveling we've attempted, and the motherly worries and misgivings about the dangers of hitchhiking seemed ridiculous. But by now, we've been spoiled. We actually expect a car to pull over shortly whenever we hitchhike, and if there isn't any within 30 minutes, we get disappointed and frustrated, cursing at the drivers for being greedy (what a thing to say for us parasites!). And when they do, we don't get the same feeling of joy unless the wait was long. But those failures have taught us to be better hitchhikers, to improve our percentages of getting a ride (and patience).

Once, outside a small industrial town with a wonderful name of Ocozocoautla in Chiapas, 40 km away from the nearest city (Tuxtla Gutierrez), we were on the shoulder of a two-lane autopista (freeway). The distance from the next city was good for hitchhiking, not too close - get within 10km and it becomes exponentially harder after that. We put ourselves by a place where drivers could pull over on a gravel parking lot. It seemed like an ideal place to thumb. But nobody picked us up for two hours... just an hour is too, too long. We became nonplussed and a little angry, wondering what the hell was wrong with that place. Finally a pick-up truck pulled us over, and we hopped onto the bed. The ride lasted only a kilometer and we were dropped off at a crossroads with the entrance to Ocozocoautla going one way... We positioned ourselves on the corner by the road to Tuxtla - and was instantly picked up by a box truck. Only if we had walked one kilometer further (we had already walked about 3 km to find a good spot), we would've had a much easier time. The problem was that the majority of the cars that came by were heading to Ocozocoautla or the other way in the intersection. By inserting ourselves on the other side of the intersection, the vehicles were filtered, and any cars going our way were certainly going to Tuxtla, not Ocozocoautla. Just so you know. Location.

Another thing about hitchhiking is the patterns in the type of vehicles and the drivers. Most of the time, it's pick-up trucks driven by male Mexicans without any passengers. Sometimes if the cab is full, we will have to climb onto the bed and ride with the wind splashing our heads. On hot days, it's a bliss to feel the contrast of the cooling effect of high-speed winds and the scorching Mexican sun. But we have to warm ourselves under our hoodies and sleeves whenever it's overcast or late afternoon, and brace ourselves for the ubiquitous topes that launches you from your seat like an ejection button in a fighter plane. While it's fun to ride on the back of a truck, it's a nice change of pace to find yourself in a air-conditioned, roomy SUV or van. A few times we had to put our huge backpacks on our laps, craning our heads to see the road, a bag sticking halfway outside the window.

Some drivers are garrulous, some are silent as a lamb. Some are histronic, gesticulating big and wide, some limit themselves to a nod or a shake of the head. Some laugh out loud, some remain tight-lipped. Communication is not a factor for us, despite our deafness. In fact, we consider it more challenging to be vegetarians in Mexico than to be deaf travelers there, attributing it to the readiness of the Mexicans to expect communicative barriers as soon they see that we're gringos. A hearing person inept in Spanish is no better than a mute traveler. But it does become more of a factor when we find ourselves trying to engage with an illiterate.

We feel as if a world have been unfolded before us when we hitchhike - we see the people upclose and catch a glimpse of their daily lives, and for an instant become a part of them. Tourists who visit the ruins and luxuriate in the hotels remain divided from the natives and locals, remain outsiders. We are certainly outsiders without a doubt, our white skin and backpacks conspicious like a sore thumb, but there is a level of intimacy with the culture and the people that we don't get anywhere else outside hitchhiking.

goofing off while waiting for a car

"here truckie, here truckie"

RESPECT THE SIGNALS

on back of a box truck, in Yucatan

The Hospitality Club. Free Membership.

2010-03-30T13:24:00.000-07:00

"My greetings, stranger. Welcome to our feast. Eat first – and then do tell us what you seek." -Telemachus to Athena, Odyssey by Homer

For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in. (Matthew 25:35)

Odysseus and Jesus Christ were both wanderers and peripatetic heroes, but they relied on the kindness of the strangers for food, shelter and warmth. Ancient Greeks would not talk to any stranger who appeared on their doorstep before feeding him, clothing him, and bathing him first, for the stranger could have been the thundering Zeus or the cunning Athena, who was disguised as a common woman when she was greeted by Odysseus' son Telemachus. Even though Jesus could perform miracles and feed five thousand mouths, he needed neighborly hosts to allow him a place to sleep during his journeys throughout Galilee, until he was persecuted severely by the Romans, who considered him an unwelcome and disruptive intruder.

We are far from being a prophet like Christ or a brave and shrewd warrior like Odysseus, but we have seen ourselves fed and pampered with so much solicitious attentiveness by the Mexicans throughout our 3-month hitchhiking trip in the southeasternmost part of the country, that the very meaning of 'adventure' have been threatened. Oftentimes, we have felt it was too easy to travel with those well-meaning, amiable mestizos who would let us sleep in their houses or eat their eggs without a second thought.

We looked and felt like hapless and lost travelers with wondering, hopeful eyes when we arrived in Cancun, our first stop, our bags heavy by overpacking. Overconfident, we eventually lost our way to a house we arranged through couchsurfing, and we had to ask somebody where the house of the address we had was located. It was already dark, and we were in a seedy and improvished part of the outskirts, well away from the glamorous Zona Hotelera where so many drunken stories forgotten by freshmen had transpired every spring. A mexicano told us we were way off the mark, but he took us on a taxi ride and guided us to the spot. Our host would not arrive until midnight, but that time we were well-fed with our first tamales of the trip and got another place to stay when a family chattering on their porch saw us (again, we must have looked so helpless...) and invited us in, and eventually entreated us to be their guest for a week. Just like that, we had a place and food for an entire week.

The extended family dining in the backyard.

"What's in it for them?", a cynic might ask. True, we are largely "parasites," as Che Guevara identified himself in his diary as he traveled northwards from Argentina, smooching off hospitable Chileans and other indigenous peoples of South and Central America, until he arrived in Guatemala and transformed himself into a revolutionary leader. Why would anyone give us anything who have almost nothing to give back? Perhaps they hope that they will make friends and have a place to stay in our homes whenever they travel there, but most Mexicans do not travel except to visit their relatives or to "coyote" across the border for opportunities in United States. Money simply does not permit them; traveling is still a largely white privilege. Perhaps they hope for some money in return, but many of them often offer money or food to us. Perhaps they are simply inspired by us, wanting to hear stories of our travels and imagining vicarious thrills. Perhaps it aggrandizes their egos to help some pitiable deaf-mutes. Whatever it is, I do not feel they expect anything from us in return - the only thing that motivates them, I believe, is their simple moral instinct, to help us. Every time we get a ride, or receive something given in goodwill (is such a pure thing possible?), our faith in humanity, to use a clichéd phrase, rises. It was the same hospitality that made Che feel indebted to the poor peoples in Latin America that he swore to help them.

As it have been said countless times, the media gives us a distorted view of the world, yet we cannot separate our perspective from the media's if it is the only perspective we know. The only way to individualize and enrich your point of view is to go and see, then digest and think. The media is not the dangerous thing, it is the uninformed, unexperienced, and uncritical mind that is the meance. Everyday our understanding and perspective of the world have been shattered, re-built, and re-shattered. Not all of us are good, but there are more of them than you might think.

Again, we are not heroes or protagonists on a meaningful journey with an end, who attain a dramatic, climactic epiphany. We are just two young adults striken with wanderlust and amusing ourselves with new, strange sights and perpetual motion. But we have been impressed by the "kindness of strangers" that goes back to Homeric and biblical eras, enough to make us stop and muse. We do not know how well the other countries will treat us, but we are eager to find out.

A casa in Isla Aguada, a fishing community lodged between a lagoon and the Gulf.

Typical house in Mexico - cement blocks, unadorned, glassless windows. Casa of a man who picked us up without us ever raising our thumbs.

Summary

2010-01-01T15:06:00.000-08:00

MEXICO (December 21, 2009)

Day 1- Cancun, Centro. Met a deaf peddler. Slept in a hostel.

Day 2- Cancun, camped on a playa. Tented on the third floor of an abandoned building on the beach.

Day 3- Cancun, camped on a playa. Security officer busted our tent, moved onto the beach. Read books under the hot sun.

Day 4- Cancun, camped on a playa. Read more books.

Day 5- Cancun, camped on a playa. Christmas Day. Windsurfers flock to the beach.

Day 6- Outskirts of Cancun (Villas Otoch Paraiso), with a family. Got lost looking for a house, received help from a stranger, ended up in another stranger's home with his wife and two sons.

Day 7- Villas Otoch Paraiso, outskirts of Cancun. Went to the beach with the Cob-Hernandez family.

Day 8- Villas Otoch Paraiso, outskirts of Cancun.

Day 9- Villas Otoch Paraiso, outskirts of Cancun.

Day 10- Villas Otoch Paraiso, outskirts of Cancun.

Day 11- Villas Otoch Paraiso, outskirts of Cancun. Stayed in an apartment of Jose Luis, a couchsurfer. New Year's fiesta with the Cob-Hernandez family.

Day 12- Outskirts of Cancun, with Jose Luis, a couchsurfer

Day 13- En route to Tulum

Day 14- Tulum, camped on a playa. Saw mayan ruins.

Day 15- Tulum, camped on a playa. Snorkeling in world's 2nd largest coral reef

Day 16- Tulum, camped on a playa.

Day 17- En route to Chichen Itza. Stopped at Coba to see ruins. Camped in Piste.

Day 18- Piste, saw Chichen Itza ruins, one of 7 modern wonders of the world

Day 19- En route to Merida, couchsurfing

Day 20- Merida

Day 21-´"Domingo en Merida." Danced salsa to bands playing in the plaza with hundreds of other people

Day 22- En route to Celestun, through small pueblos

Day 23- Pink flamingoes in Celestun. On the road to Uman, saw ruins in Oxkintok, ate in a casa of a mayan family in Maxcanu, slept in a small town 35 kilometers outside Campeche

Day 24- Went through Campeche. Camped in an indoor basketball arena in Champoton

Day 25- Ciudad del Carmen. Met deaf peddlers, stayed in one of their shacks

Day 26- Ciudad del Carmen

Day 27- Ciudad del Carmen. Birthday fiesta for a deaf local. Plenty of Sol and drama.

Day 28- Isla Aguada. Small fishing town sandwiched between Gulf of Mexico and Laguna de Terminos.

Day 29- Got invited to eat at four different houses on way to the state of Tabasco, before settling down in Jalpa de Mendez, 45 kilometers north of Villahermosa

Day 30- Couchsurfing in Jalpa de Mendez

Day 31- Jalpa de Mendez

Day 32- Villahermosa

Day 33- Veracruz. Intended for Oaxaca, ended up 450 kilometers off-course in the coastal city of Veracruz.

Day 34- Boca del Rio. A playa next door to Veracruz.

Day 35- En route to Oaxaca, town-hopping. A ride through hell, disguised as a mountain range. Found repose in a casa in northern part of Oaxaca de Juarez, the state capital.

Day 36- Oaxaca. Lost camera, made a preliminary visit to the city centro, bought a new camera, lost it right away. Hole in the plastic bag.

Day 37- Oaxaca. Went and saw Monte Alban ruins, on the spine of the mountains, with Laurent, a fellow couchsurfer from Montreal. Found original camera, much to our gaiety.

Day 38- Oaxaca. Intensive visit, tasted the food in the culinary capital of Mexico, marveled upon the old churches, museums and the markets. Watched the oaxaqueños dance in the night at the Zocalo, the main square.

Day 39- Oaxaca

Day 40-70- Working in a farm/zoo north of Oaxaca. Fed and watered animals (including but not limited to: a fox , chickens, a peacock, two monkeys, an dancing ostrich and his punching bag of an emu, a horse and a stubborn ass, geese hell-bent on defending their territory, and 9 crazy dogs), cleaned up their dung, made adobe out of horse manure, grew vegetables and herbs in the garden which went straight to our kitchen. Retrieved eggs from the chickens' nests for our daily consumption. Slept in an abandoned bus in the farthest end of the farm. During an off day, we went to a ruins in Mitla, and swam in the springs at the top of a mountain, overlooking a rock formation that looks like a frozen cascade, goes by the name of Hierve al Agua, probably the most beautiful place in Mexico that we have witnessed. Saw the arguably largest tree in the world, weighted at over 600,000 tons, in a town 10 km east of Oaxaca, 'El Tule.'

Day 71- Traversed across the mountains east of Oaxaca to El Coyul, a dirty little pueblo covered with sand a few km off the coast of Pacific. Stayed there with relatives of somebody we met in Ciudad del Carmen.

Day 72- El Coyul. Leala became a play doll for the children of the family we are staying with. Martin became ill, a first on this trip.

Day 73- El Coyul.

Day 74- Mazunte, 100 kilometers west of Coyul. Hippie-type beach town. Pitched our tent in a secluded cove, watched the sun fall and get swallowed by the ocean on a spotlessly blue sky.

Day 75- Mazunte

Day 76- Mazunte

Day 77- Playa de San Agustin, Bahias de Huatulco. Snorkeling in reefs

Day 78- Playa de San Agustin

Day 79- El Coyul. Returned to the casa of the familia for our stuff.

Day 80- Left the state of Oaxaca to Chiapas, the southernmost Mexican state. The landscape changes into ranching lands and low mountains, and everything becomes bigger like the American West. Camped by a sporting plaza near Ocozoautla.

Day 81- San Cristobal, Chiapas. Difficult day hitchhiking. Three tips to prospective hitchhikers: location, location and location, just like real estate. Passed by the capital, Tuxtla Gutierrez. At San Cristobal, had no place to sleep, were saved by a last-minute couchsurfing request, stayed at a 'hostel' for gratis.

Day 82- San Cristobal. Explored the city, rich with history and culture.

Day 83- San Cristobal. Live band and aerial acrobatics (by a "curtain climber") at a bar.

Day 84- San Cristobal and Chamula, a neighboring town famous for its iniegenous peoples and market. Did not like its 'hustlers,' kids panhandling and men and women hustling and peddling.

Day 85- Palenque. Headed north of San Cristobal, entered the Lacandon Jungle. Territory of the Zapatistas. Camped by a 'comedor' (cheap eatery) at a crossroads.

Day 86- Palenque, Misol-Ha. Visited the Palenque ruins, which are tucked inside the jungle. Went back south a couple dozen kms to the waterfall Misol-Ha, the locale of the 'Predator' flick. Camped there.

Day 87- Misol-Ha

Day 88- Ocosingo. Broke camp at Misol-Ha, went south to 'the entrance to the Lacandon,' Ocosingo. Slept at a homeless shelter by a church.

Day 89- Laguna Miramar. Rode a 6-hour truck drive through the jungle to a poblado, Emiliano Zapata, hiked 7 kilometers to the secluded Laguna Miramar, where motorized vehicles are prohibited from getting within 1km of it. The Zapatistas lived in the villages on the 'otro lado de la laguna' (other side).

Day 90- Laguna Miramar, Emiliano Zapata. Enjoyed the scenery and the water at the Laguna until the afternoon, then went back to Emiliano Zapata and camped there for the night.

Day 91- Cuauhtemoc. 6-hour ride back to Ocosingo, hitchhiked 200km south to Cuauhtemoc. Martin drove about 60km for a sleepy driver who picked us up. Driving in Mexico at night is different from in United States, and more dangerous, on the account of the topes, monster speed bumps.

GUATEMALA (March 22, 2010)

Day 92- Crossed the border. Literally hitchhiked across. Were at awe of the majestic precipices of the lush highlands of western Guatemala as we rode south-east. Stayed at a couchsurfer's place in Huehuetenango, a city of 44 thousand.

Day 93- Huehue. Toured the city.

Day 94- Huehue. Played poker with the host and his friends. Mexico and Guatemala have proved our assumptions and prejudgments wrong and wrong again and again with their good intentions.

Day 95- Huehue. Became a little sick with diarrhea.

Day 96- Huehue. Saw the procession for Holy Thursday at the city centro. About a dozen men carried a float of Jesus Christ heaving his cross around the city. Behind them, women carried the float of the pentient and weeping Virgin Mary ("Guadalupe").

Day 97- Antigua. Easy day hitchhiking, stayed at a mansion (relatively speaking).

Day 98- Antigua, Palm Sunday. Witnessed the beginning of the 12-hour procession, when nearly an hundred men clad in purple vestments carried the 7,000 lb float of Jesus and other saints emerged from a church's entrance. Martin nearly fainted due to dehydration from diarrhea. Toured the city, a beautiful place even with tourists crowding the plazas. Antigua was the national capital until earthquakes and volcanoes rendered the place unsafe for politics in mid-18th century. The cobbled streets and antiquated, bright-hued houses go well with the sunlight. There are volcanoes in sight to the south and north.

Day 99- Antigua, Guatemala City. Day trip to Guatemala City with Julio, a deaf Chapin (Guatemalans call themselves Chapines). Visited a deaf association, learned more about the deaf in Guate.

Day 100- Antigua

Day 101- Antigua, Cerro de la Cruz

Day 102- Antigua

Day 103 to 128- Guatemala City

Day 129- Panajachel

Day 130- Panajachel

Day 131- Panajachel

Day 132- Santiago Atitlan

Day 133- Panajachel

Day 134- Panajachel

Day 135- Panajachel

Day 136- Coban

Day 137- Lanquin

Day 138- A vivero near Tikal

Day 139- Tikal, El Peten

BELICE (May 9, 2010)

Day 140- St. Ignacio, Belice

Day 141- Caye Caulker

Day 142- Caye Caulker. Scuba diving in Great Blue Hole

Day 143- Hopkins

Day 144- Hopkins

GUATEMALA II (May 14, 2010)

Day 145- Rio Dulce

Day 146- Guatemala City

Day 147- Guatemala City

EL SALVADOR (May 17, 2010)

Day 148- Santa Ana

Day 149- Santa Tecla

Day 150- Santa Tecla/San Salvador

Day 151- Joya de Ceren

Day 152- Suchitoto

Day 153- Santa Tecla

Day 154- Alegria

Day 155- Perquin

HONDURAS (May 25, 2010)

Day 156- Comayagua, Honduras

Day 157- Tela

Day 158- Bonito Oriental

Day 159- San Pedro Sula

Day 160- Tegucigalpa

Day 161- Tegus

Day 162- Tegus

Day 163- Tegus

Day 164- Tegus

Day 165- Tegus

Day 166- Tegus
Day 156-