SAN CRISTOBAL
OCTOBER 1974
Dear Doris,
I got the itch again, so I left Oaxaca and hitched a ride south about halfway to the Isthmus of Tehuantepec where all the women were exceptionally tall and wore long colorful gowns like gypsy princesses. It was very late when I got there. I was still several miles from the main town where the truck driver dropped me off. I was just walking along the road looking for a good place to lay my blanket down and sleep for the night when a bus came along. It was the first vehicle I’d seen since I got there and it just stopped. I told the driver to go ahead cuz I didnt have enough money for the bus, but he just smiled and shook his finger at me and said it was ok, that I could ride for free. I offered to ride on top with the crates and luggage but he wouldn’t hear of it. He even offered to buy me dinner when we got to the capitol and he wouldnt take no for an answer.
The busses in Mexico look like old broken down 1950’s schoolbusses with big racks on top packed with all kind of luggage, livestock and even passengers when the bus gets too crowded inside. It’s pretty common to have to squeeze onto a bus with like 200 people, plus another 50 on top or hanging from the rear standing on the bumper sometimes when it’s really full, and then you look up and see the sign above the driver saying CAPACIDAD 55 PASSENGEROS. These cross-country busses will stop anywhere along the road for anyone who wants a ride and puts their hand out. The drivers compensate for all the time they lose stopping for passengers by driving those beat-up old crates like they were race cars, disregarding the most basic principals of common sense or sanity even, pulling all sorts of suicidal kamikaze road maneuvers, like passing slow trucks at blind curves at breakneck speed along a stretch of highway called the Spinoza del Diablo (the devil’s backbone). The Mexican busdriver seems to conduct himself with an air of distinguished calm, reminiscent of a airline pilot or something. These cross country Mexican bus drivers are very respected and even have their own copilots, usually young boys who shift gears for them or steer the bus around the most perilous curves at absurd speeds while the driver casually lights a cigarette as if he was sitting at home or in a cantina. Needless to say, Mexicans have tremendous faith in God — especially their bus drivers.
In a village outside Tehuantepec, I spent the night in a jail cell. Often in small towns where there’s no hotel, travelers are kindly permitted to spend the night in municipal buildings in exchange for a few kind words to the mayor or his wife. I slept rather fitfully because the cell door stayed open all night. When I saw the ‘Jefe de Policia’, the Chief of Police, the next morning, he was a wasted old boozer who looked more like a janitor than any kind of an authority. I summised that my ”cell” probably hadn’t been used other than for him and his cronies to crash in for many years. I left Tehuantepec and woke up shivering on the back of a truck. I arrived freezing to San Cristobal de Las Casas in the middle of the night, where I am now. When I’d left that morning, the temperature had been a pleasent 90 in tropical sun. Now here I was walking the empty midnight streets of this place high up in the mountains. I couldn’t wrap enough blankets around me to keep warm, but luckily I found the best hotel in town (the cheapest) where the temperature in the room rose to about 10 degrees above freezing. All in all, not a bad deal for less than a dollar for the night, especially because I could avail myself freely of the fantastic steam baths with hot and cold showers right across a sleepy courtyard from my room. San Cristobal is a marvelous city not far from Mexico’s southern border with Guatemala, hidden snugly in a high valley way up in the mountains. Very clean and quiet and old-worldy. The population is 80% Indians here, and a guy told me the town was named after Las Casas, a fanatical monk who who was famous for his appeals to the King of Spain on behalf of the indians who, to this day, are treated like animals by the gentry. All the houses here are solidly built with red tile roofs, a very old town with many beautiful old churches scattered around from when the church was really really rich , as opposed to just filthy rich as it is today. Overall, the place seems more like a Swiss village high in the Alps than someplace in the south of Mexico. A very nice place.
Love
J
can’t get enougha this stuff.
…that’s what she said hehe…