OAXACA
SEPTEMBER 1974
Dear Doris,
Finally had my fill of idleness and solitude. I packed up my little bag and hitchhiked a ride about 50 km south to Pochutla where the road goes inland to the capital, Oaxaca. I couldn’t get a ride out that day, so I spent the night right there by the side of the road on the outskirts of the town. I was surprised to wake up in the middle of the night to find the whole town was converted into one huge carnival fiesta with a ferris wheel and brass bands and what seemed like every drunk farmer in the state of Oaxaca with his family. I had a good time drinking with a bunch of traveling carnies and crazy Mexican flim-flam aritists. I stayed up all night with them and drank too much Mezcal, which is made from maguay cactus and sold by old ladies in gasoline tins and gourd bowls and coconut shells, costs like a half a dollar a liter and has definite hallucinogenic qualities, though by the time you’e had enough to really trip on, you’re too drunk to even notice, at least I was.
The next morning I picked myself up off the little cot I’d rented on someone’s porch, and with a splitting head, I started walking along the road leading back out of town. Finally a truck stopped. After convincing the driver I wasn’t carrying any mota (grass), cuz the federal cops are known to confiscate a vehicle if just one passenger has even a joint, the driver said he was going all the way to the capital and I could ride up on top. Some of the travelers I’d talked to in Escondido had told me not to take that ride as it’s over 12 hours along hairpin mountain curves on a bumpy dirt road and just too much to endure.
” Take the plane” they advised me. ”It only takes an hour and costs like ten bucks”.
Those well intentioned more well-heeled travelers didn’t know that ten bucks would be enough money for me to live on for a week, so I just ignored them and took the road trip despite their warnings. I clutched for dear life to the rack on the top as the truck sped off into the jungle and then suddenly started barreling straight up the side of a mountain till I was way up in the clouds. Within an hour, I was totally frozen and the road was curving like something out of dante’s inferno and not even wide enough for two vehicles to pass. I was just beginning to think about that possibility as the truck sped around a serpentine curve overlooking a 1000 ft precipice into the foggy cold darkness below, when the notion suddenly hit me, like a little voice telling me, ”just sit back and relax, you’ll make it.” And then I relaxed and looked around from the top of the truck and that’s when I saw it: the most beautiful awesome panoramic view I’ve ever seen in my life! Behind me, the ocean streached out as far and blue as infinity, and I could swear I saw the earth’s curve from up there. Up ahead, the road wound off crazily around another twist in the mountain, still climbing. Off to one side there was a giant rock cliff leading up the mountainside, and on the other side another cliff dropping down 5 thousand feet, straight down to this huge bottomless pit — and no guard rail! But above me there was the bluest sky with the kind of clouds you only see from airplane windows, so I just lay back again and looked up at the clouds and tried not to think of death. All in all, it was a most enjoyable ride. I made it here in the capital around 1am and set right out to find the cheapest hotel I could find near the gigantic open-air marketplace.
It seems like half of Mexico gathers in the Oaxaca marketplace on Saturdays to bargain, sell, trade, buy, barter, steal, look and generally engage in every form of commerce known to man. I sold a cheap little camera I’d brought with me and never used to a local hustler in the market for 5 times more than I paid for it in the States. With the money, I bought myself a new handmade hand tooled little leather traveling bag to replace my plastic valise, the one Grandma left in the garage, which was coming apart at the seams after traveling all the way across Mexico. My new traveling bag would cost a fortune up there in LA, so for a 5 dollar camera, I got a beautiful hundred dollar hand-tooled leather satchel. Since my travel bag is my only home now, it seemed like an important purchase. There’s so much beautiful stuff to buy here in Oaxaca, but I have to content myself with looking. Even if I had any money to buy stuff, where the hell would I put it?
Only a small part of the huge marketplace is handmade crafts though. The rest of the commerce occupies all these big old buildings, each one like a full city-block long, and on Saturdays, when the Indians come to town from their little pueblos all around the capital, they just lay all their goods down on the ground anywhere they can, and it all spills out onto the streets all around the indoor markets and tents until the whole place is so thick with people and all kinds of stuff that it could take you 20 min to walk a block. People are yelling and shouting and hawking and pushing and shoving and cursing and it’s completely impossible to pass without shoving or knocking someone down and walking right over their body as they curse and smack your ankles with their fists and your foot descends unwittingly on somebody’s face and then some bigger guy comes along and shoves you aside, and you barely manage to keep from falling into a big pile of sparkling red tomatos that some old lady has placed at that exact spot, only squishing one or two with your elbow as you fall, and she curses and calls you a son of a cow, and her raspy curses fade off in the distance as you’re carried off by the surging crowd of moving bodies. It felt like I was in one of those ant farms or something. Crazy. Somehow out of this whole unruly mess, the people of Oaxaca are paid and fed and supplied with clothing and food and all sorts of necessary items for another week.
I found the cheapest hotel right in the middle of this whole crazy marketplace, and I’ve been entertaining myself there ever since. The hotel itself is pretty comfortable, especially for only costing like 25 cents a night, but when I got here there was no private bathroom and they had a whole bunch of hogs living in the public shower stalls. My room had a huge crack in the thin wooden wall with a panoramic view into the next room where fat naked mexicans did unspeakable things. I finally asked for a room with a private bath for another 10 cents, cuz of the animals in the showers. Now it’s another one of those deals where you have to sit on the john to shower, but it’s better than standing up in a shower with a bunch of huge pigs.
Speaking of pigs, I’ve never seen so much stuff to eat in one place as this market. The food is very cheap here too, even cheaper than cooking myself, so I’ve eaten very well the whole time I’ve been here. You can get three big black bumpy avocados and some nice red tomatos and a bunch of limes and cilentro, enough to make a big bowl of guacamole for less than a peso and you can eat it with your lunch at one of the lunch counters serving delicious hot homemade meals. One whole section of the market right by my hotel is like 40 or 50 of these little restaurant stalls all shoved together under a big long tent, and you can get two big chiles rellenos stuffed with meat, cheese, or chicken in a delicious sauce with rice and beans, and eat that with your peso’s worth of guacamole and it’s enough of a meal to fill you for the whole day, all for only about 40 cents. Oaxaca’s a fine place, especially for such a big town, a city really. I wish everyplace was so abundant, especially when I walk into some little off the road fly speck on the map and see a million flies all fighting over two half-rotten tomatos and a brown wad of limp lettuce for the price of three of these good restaruant meals here.
Well, things are different everywhere I go, but everyplace has its own special appeal and charm for me.
Love always,
J
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Thanks. I’m a sucker for this stuff.