“It is hard to stay mad when there is so much beauty in the world.” – Lester Burnham
Bus Station Adventures:
Two days in Villahermosa was enough for me to check out the local bike shops and see the city in all of its cultural and ecological diversity. Next stop: San Cristobal De Las Casas, a city in Chiapas which I visited 15 years earlier and absolutely fell in love with. I promised my mother I would take busses through any region that locals warned me was dangerous, so I booked a bus trip (7-hour) for later that afternoon. It is important to note, that I did NOT want to take a bus and I REALLY wanted to continue my journey by bicycle. In fact, while wandering around Palenque and Villahermosa I made a point to ask as many people as possible their opinion on my personal safety biking through Chiapas.
I was hoping that I would get a disparity of opinions, with a disproportionate amount (or at least 51%) telling me that I had nothing to worry about. It was a numbers game and by asking enough people I was hoping I could later say that I did my due diligence, gathered all the necessary data, and the good citizens of Mexico assured me (and hopefully my mother) that I would be safe. It turns out that the good people of Mexico unanimously (almost) agreed that it would be in my best interest to take a bus to my next destination.
On the day I was scheduled to leave, I arrived at the station 1.5 hours early. I dismantled my bicycle and all of my travel luggage and then tightly packed it all, except my guitar, in one large 100-liter duffel bag. I sat down near the boarding entrance and anxiously awaited the arrival of my bus….and waited….and waited…and waited. After 3 hours of sitting and nervously waiting, the security guard got curious about me and my unique variety of personal effects. When I showed him my ticket, a look of genuine remorse came over his face. He politely notified me that, unfortunately, my bus had already come and left without me. He assured me that an announcement had been made over the PA system, but due to my limited Spanish proficiency, I had missed it. Mexican Jesus take the wheel…
Here is the part of the story where I lost my shit and acted like a complete embarrassment of a privileged north American tourist. If there was a travel award for unfocused rage and adult temper tantrums, I would have earned a gold medal. This is not the first time I’ve completely embarrassed myself while traveling, but for some reason this situation caught me off guard – I even surprised myself. The manager at the bus station was very kind and incredibly helpful. She offered to put me on a midnight bus that would be leaving in 7 hours. 7 hours???!!! I was about to accept her counteroffer – meaning, wait it out, take a nap on the station floor and, take the midnight bus – but the very thought of spending one more minute in that bus station made me physically sick. It was in this moment of stress and turbulence that a feeling of complete serenity came over me. I had a moment of clarity. It was one of those eye-opening moments where you learn something deeply fascinating about yourself and you are forever changed.
For as long as I have been backpacking I have been suffering from an identity complex as a traveler. I wanted the world to know that I was a bohemian hippy vagabond, transcending comfort and first world priorities in efforts to achieve enlightenment through minimalist world exploration. I had an axe to grind and an egomaniacal personal narrative to uphold. I felt like if I wasn’t profoundly struggling on a shoestring budget and enduring daily hardships, then I wasn’t a true backpacker. Like the artists and creative geniuses who feel as though they must continually be in a state of agony and torture in order to feel like they are fully expressing themselves, there is a similar category of traveler.
They are minimalist backpackers who refuse to shower, who live on a budget of $15/day (or less), exclusively eat street food scraps and sleep in $4/night hostels while selling handmade jewelry on the beach. Like emotionally unstable writers, heroin addicted musicians and suicidal actors/artists who cut their ears off, this type of traveler feels as though if the experience isn’t rugged and difficult – if they’re not malnourished and dehydrated – then they aren’t doing it correctly. I have been this type of traveler on more than one of my adventures and this was my identity crisis.
I have slept in bug infested beds, taken less-than-comfortable 3rd class trains in countries like India and China and gotten sick on budget food not ideal for human consumption. All of this suffering was done in the name of my hunger for adventure, the Kerouac-esque poetry of travel and the experience of being alive. Sometimes I was truthfully on a shoestring budget, but many other times I had more than enough discretionary funds to invest in a comfortable bed and adequate nutrition.
As I sat there in the bus station contemplating the complexity of my situation, I came to the peaceful reality that I was fortunate to have an adequate travel budget and that translated into having options. My adequate travel budget would allow me to return to my hotel, get a good night’s sleep and take a bus the following day. My options included a good meal, purified water, fresh fruit, beer and coffee. I am lucky to come from where I do. I have an advantage in life. I was proving nothing to anyone by intentionally suffering.
So, I returned to my hotel and received a warm greeting from my friend and concierge Gabriel. I read a little, wrote a good portion of this blog post and played some guitar. In the black comedy-drama American Beauty, Lester Burnham said, “it’s hard to stay mad when there is so much beauty in the world”. I found myself relating deeply to this quote and before drifting off to sleep that night I said a quiet prayer of gratitude to the omnipresent ocean of divine love that surrounds all of us – and of course to Mexican Jesus. I thanked the universe for every last second of every last day of my pathetic little life. If you don’t know what I am talking about, don’t worry, you will someday.
Next Stop: San Cristobal De Las Casas, Chiapas
In a previous post (week 3) I explained that I will soon be turning my travel stories into a book entitled, IF I AM MISSING OR DEAD: A LOVE STORY ABOUT TRAVEL. It will not just be a travel memoir, but an actual love story where I will explain the precise chemical reactions that international travel set off in my brain and body putting me in a nearly euphoric state: as if blissfully in love. I choose this style of narrative, because when I am lost in the world and completely outside of my element, I feel truly alive. It’s as if travel is my beloved and I am in relentless and passionate pursuit. It is when I am submersed in different cultures, languages and landscapes that I am enamored with the entirety of life and all of my surroundings.
Just like when one finds themselves teetering between lovesick and infatuation, I feel illuminated and chosen. Travel allows me to revisit my child-like sense of wonder, making me forget the ugly side of life. I discover a smile I didn’t know I had, I uncover a feeling that I didn’t know existed in me, I forget about man’s inhumanity to man. I experience stirrings, longings, fantasies, delusions and projections. It’s through adventure and uncertainly that I see and feel who I really am. It is here that I experience myself the most.
So, thanks to my 7-hour bus trip, I found myself back in San Cristobal, alive with the excitement of this magically ornate, and slightly crumbling, old colonial town. The first time I visited San Cristobal was in 2006. I had been living and working in Costa Rica for the previous two years and I decided to make the journey back to Milwaukee by land travel. I slowly traversed the countries of Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala and Mexico through a combination of hitchhiking, busses, bicycle taxis, walking and every other mode of creative transport which carried me incrementally northbound. San Cristobal is located in the south of Mexico in the state of Chiapas and, at the time, I had been obsessed with the Zapatista revolution, so it was clearly one of my targeted destinations.
For those unfamiliar with the Zapatistas (short for Zapatista Army of National Liberation or EZLN), they are a political and militant group made up of mainly indigenous people, but also have some supporters in other areas of Mexico and internationally. The group takes its name from Emiliano Zapata, the agrarian revolutionary and commander during the Mexican Revolution. Small armed militant groups of indigenous called Guerrilleros had been forming in defiance of the Mexican government since the 1970s. Indigenous people have been marginalized and treated poorly in Mexico since Spain colonized the region some 500 years ago.
Exploitation, disease, extreme poverty, enslavement and malnutrition have affected and devastated indigenous communities in Mexico and other areas of the Americas. In 1991 the Mexican government removed an article from the 1917 revolutionary constitution which protected indigenous lands from sale or privatization. This meant that native farmers risked losing what remaining land they had, and, that multinational corporations (mostly from the US) could potentially move in and misuse the land for cheap imports. The EZLN officially declared war on the Mexican state on January 1, 1994 to protest NAFTA’s implementation. The goal of the EZLN was to regain control of local resources, specifically land, and return it to the indigenous.
I had been following the Zapatista Revolution since I became an “activisty” college kid in 1998 and had always hoped to visit the region one day. In college I had attended rallies in solidarity of the Zapatistas, I had signed petitions on campus, attended human rights protest and I even wore a t-shirt that donned the gun-toting mask-wearing leader of the revolution; Subcomandante Marcos (Spanish for Sub-commander). When I first planned my backpacking trip south of the border in 2005, my parents specifically asked me – knowing at the time that I was obsessed with leftist politics and human rights activism – not to join any counter-military revolutions during my time in or around Central America. Looking back, I’m not sure if they asked me this because of my apparent intolerance for political injustice, or for the painful reality that they knew I would make a lousy revolutionary insurgent.
If I had to be perfectly honest I don’t think my parents were too far off. My family is well aware that I am quite absent minded and often completely oblivious to my surroundings. I can be naively optimistic when it comes to meeting new people, and despite being an emotional and sensitive child, as an adult I have an unhealthy lack of fear of certain situations. I am incredibly forgetful, I lose things easily, I love talking to strangers and I’ve been told I smile too much. (“I didn’t even notice your firearm or the swastika tattooed on your neck, because I was too busy admiring your beautiful T-shirt. What’s your favorite color? Wanna be best friends? Are you free for lunch?”).
I am certain that my family was worried that if I tried to join the resistance in any war-torn country I may get shot while trying to bring the enemy a peace offering of peanut butter sandwiches in efforts to make a truce. I recall once being reprimanded by my little league coach in the middle of an inning for consoling and encouraging the other team’s batters who struck out. It was clear to most who knew me that I lacked the blood-thirsty killer instinct a 7-year-old benchwarmer is supposed to possess in order to excel at the game of adolescent’s baseball. And so it goes for guerilla warfare. Perhaps adolescent’s baseball and militant revolution aren’t that dissimilar.
San Cristobal 15 years later was just as magical as I remember it. The city is considered the cultural capital of Chiapas. It has a picturesque Spanish colonial layout with roofs covered in red clay tile, wrought iron balconies adorned with flowers and narrow cobblestone roads. It has the feel of a small town even though it has 186,000 inhabitants. The indigenous population of San Cristobal are ultimately what create it’s charm. They are mostly made up of Mayan descendants called the Tzotzils and Tzeltals, and they can be found everywhere making and selling intricate hand-woven textiles, amber jewelry and ceramics. They have faces and a skin color so unique and beautiful that you want to stare – not in a lurking or voyeuristic sense – but out of complete appreciation. The streets and many plazas of San Cristobal are fully alive with these beautiful locals in the form of street musicians, food vendors and artists selling a wide variety of beautiful handy crafts.
One of the things I loved most while walking the streets of San Cristobal was hearing the chatter and laughter of people in a completely indiscernible language. The locals speak an indigenous language which is one of the last remaining derivatives of the Mayan languages. When I am are traveling I hear all sorts of international languages spoken, but seldom ones I don’t recognize. They echo from the airport terminals, bus stations and hotel lobbies. Most of the time I have a vague idea what language I am hearing, or at least which continent the language is coming from. Slavik? Romance language? Germanic? Japanese? Korean?
Indigenous languages are a song all of their own. When I have been anywhere in the world and I hear an indigenous dialect, I am filled with fascination and wonder. I want to know how old it is and for how long it has been preserved? Is it a written language as well as spoken? How easy is it to learn? What kind of dirty words are there? Often times I find these ancient languages so beautiful and soothing to the ears that the speakers could be telling filthy jokes about pedophilia and I wouldn’t know the difference. I just want to lay my head in their lap and assume that every salable is part of a series of love sonnets.
So here, in this small mountain city, I fell in love with the city and the state of Chiapas all over again. The language, the people, the landscape, the churches and even the crumbling and colorful architecture. I was happy to airbrush all of its imperfections, as you do when you’re in love, and place it back on a pedestal the way I remembered it 15 years earlier. In my eyes it had hardly changed. There were a few more cafes, restaurants and artisanal boutiques selling organic chocolate, coffee and local spirits…but the essence, the heartbeat, was still there.
I found an amazing hostel near the historic center called Casa Del Paco which was owned and operated by a local family. They were incredibly accommodating and welcomed both international travelers as well as local students and transitional workers. As a result, a large portion of the guests were from Mexico which gave the place a really fun local flair. This is unique since many backpacker hostels are full of international travelers, but void of locals. You can spend an entire month in some international hostels and never have the opportunity to interact with someone from that country. Casa Del Paco felt like more of a homestay then a guesthouse. In the evenings and on the weekends the eclectic combination of travelers would gather in the commons area and play music, sing loudly, drink heavily and laugh heartily. Some of the most fun celebrations I have ever attended were here with these fine people who considered this hostel a temporary home.
I spent my first few days in San Cristobal searching the city for bike shops. The cobblestone roads which add so much to the beauty and charm of the city are a nightmare for biking. As it goes with life, some of the things that make life so rich and memorable are also the things that pop our tires. All things have a shadow side and most of our balconies are also our dingy basements, right? I had to fight for transportation rights in San Cristobal. Most of the city center is strictly one-ways and there is hardly enough room for cars to squeeze down the narrow streets much less room for a leisurely cyclist. San Cristobal does not have much of a community of bike riders so the drivers are a bit impatient and unafraid to drive dangerously close to you as they pass. I found a few bike shops which were able to help me with a tune-up and fix my broken spokes, however, none of them were able to help me with the front rack I was looking for.
I intended on staying in San Cristobal for 3-4 days, but ended up staying for two weeks. It is a high elevation city, so during the day it was pleasantly warm, but at night it was brisk – like an autumn evening in Wisconsin. During the day I did yoga, practiced guitar and made progress on my book. I would usually take a few hours break each day to walk around and visit old churches, check out cool markets and stop into unique cafes and coffee shops.
At night I would wander the streets in search of handmade tamales and live music. The exciting thing about San Cristobal is that there were more outdoor street musicians than there were indoor performances, so I never ran out of entertainment. Many of the plazas which were sleepy during the day, came alive at night with indigenous folks selling hot drinks, food and crafts. The bright colors and delicious smells alone could keep someone entertained for hours.
Stay tuned: It was nice to get off the bike for a week, but after the previous 5 weeks of cycling and camping, it was hard to sit still. During my second week in Chiapas I cycled out of the city and into the mountains nearly every day in search of indigenous villages, waterfalls, caves, canyons, hiking trails and high elevation beautiful views.
