Tripping through Oaxaca y Chiapas

Posted On April 7, 2021

7 de Marzo

It was hard to leave the comforts of Oaxaca de Juarez, and the airbnb, but we got plans.

San Jose del Pacifico was awesome. The town is known for its shrooms. They’re used mostly for religious ceremonies and mental health reasons. But, the story goes, an Americana or Englishman had stayed with the tribes there for a few months. Eventually, after gaining their trust, they invited him to participate in the ceremony.

Naturally, he wrote a book about it.

Word is, Jimi Hindrix, John Lennon, and others started flocking to Huanua (sp?), which is a nearby puebla. Over the years, this town and those surrounding it have become a local stop between Oaxaca City and the coast at Puerto Escondido – indeed that’s how we found out about this place was from a local. It goes without saying that it’s also a must-stop for psychedelic/mushroom enthusiasts. Indeed, these are about the only people who know of San Jose.

Anyway, we pulled up to this “little drug adobe,” as a friend called it, and I was thinking of how to go about asking for some shrooms, when we were asked what we wanted. I figured the most straight-forward answer was the way to go, “We’re looking for mushrooms. Psychedlic ones.”

Unfortunately, they were all out. I figured this was a possibility, as the rainy season had been over for months now. But fear not! They had gummies. What was in the gummies? We had no idea. We assume it was some LSD concoction. Because “What kind of world are we living in if you can’t trust a stranger giving you drugs?” – To quote comedian Jessa Reed in her episode of “This is Not Happening”

The Puenta Del Sol cabana cost $900MX, the acid-gummy for two cost $600MX. We took only half our gummies, but that was enough.

Tripping is always so different depending on the environment. Tripping while walking around downtown Monterey, CA, for example, really just blew my mind. The sights were just so magnificent and the colors just so vibrant. Everything was just so beautiful and perfect (for me – Nick was on the ground in the middle of a park).

Meanwhile, here it was mostly an inward journey. We were in a beautiful spot, but we couldn’t really walk around. So, instead of connecting with the outside world and being thankful for such an intense appreciation for it, I was facing my frustrations with the Absurd, as Camus would say. I was dealing with my feelings of inadequacy and insignificance – with being a helpless human incapable of changing the world in any significant way.

Mexico is a constant slap in the face of how privileged and lucky we are. And every day it seems to weigh on me more and more.

Life isn’t fair. It isn’t equal. It isn’t just or compassionate. It just is. Nature doesn’t discriminate between those who pick up litter and those who throw it. There’s no good or bad about it. And there’s nothing we can do about it. It’s just one of those things that we have to learn and relearn and relearn and relearn how to accept.

I think what happened is that because we’re doing vanlife, I don’t know what my “purpose” is. I might have explained this a few months ago (or maybe I just thought about it), but it hit harder in Mexico.

Our society puts value on what a person does. One of the first questions we ask when meeting people is, “What do you do for a living?”

It’s woven into our language, “I am a teacher, a doctor, a lawyer, etc.” Our jobs define us and our worth to society. We value people based on what they do. And so, our jobs are what give us purpose.

Not doing anything, not contributing to society, and relying on my husband’s retirement is the exact opposite of how we’re taught to find purpose.

Add to that a constant display of poverty, while you’re living high after having done nothing to deserve the means to do it other than marry a man 26 years your senior who was going to retire before you’ve managed anything with your life.

What the hell was I doing traveling in a van in Mexico?

I couldn’t stop thinking that I needed to be in school, working towards my degree in Veterinary Science; I needed to be working; I needed to be doing something. It isn’t fair that I was born to an upper-middle class couple and got to go to college and met another middle class man that eventually afforded me the ability to travel in a van, while 90% of these people are working every.single.day doing the same fucking, mindless shit over and over, juggling in front of stoplights, asking people at restaurants to buy their things, cooking the same tostadas and tacos. Relentlessly. Because what other choice do they have?

It isn’t fair that they have to work so hard, and for what? Do they get to enjoy their lives? Do they get to relax? And how often? What’s the point in all their work if they get to enjoy only 10, 20, 30% of their time in this world?

And listen. It is depressing being here. But woe is fucking me. Oh, poor little rich white girl feels bad about her privilege.
Do you know what’s just as pointless as life, suffering, and injustice? Crying over it.
Sitting here in agony over your own thoughts is the most pointless things you could be doing with your time.

Life isn’t fair. It isn’t right or just. It just is.
Were you not the one who just stated this fact?
Expecting more is deceiving yourself.
So just stop being a child and enjoy what other people don’t have the luck to enjoy. Because you are lucky enough to have it. You are lucky enough that you get to travel. Being a self-centered cry baby isn’t going to balance the weights.
Find purpose in something other than what your brainwashed mind thinks it needs in order to have purpose. And fucking enjoy it. You self-centered, egotistical dickhead. Fuck!

And that was basically what I needed. A smack across the face from myself.
It certainly pulled me out of my slump.

The rest of the trip concerned matters that I kept putting on the backburner. I thought a lot about my family. I thought long and hard about my place in my family and where I want that to be.

I thought about my dad and step-mom. I wondered for hours about politics, how to communicate efficiently, what’s right and wrong, and where I stood in that line (my dad and step-mom are Trump supporters, and Nick and I are pretty far left leaning).

I came to the realization that family weren’t people you could divulge your whole self to, as that usually gets around to others and what was once yours is now the whole family’s. Plus, any complaint you have about one person would just be used as ammo against them later. Don’t get me wrong, family is still valuable as a source of love and friendship. But at some point, the web becomes too messy.

That’s why people need friends outside their family. Naturally, that led my thoughts toward Clayvon and Miriam, whom I hadn’t talked to in too long, and what relationship I wanted with them.

Intermittently, I wondered where Nick was, in his head. And I remarked to him how funny it was that no matter how often we think we’re on the same page, we never are. We’re always criss-crossing each other’s paths, desperately trying to align with one another. Yet, it’s such an impossible goal because we’re two different people. Such is the life of any couple, I suppose.

We talked about how it’s wild that people who speak the same language still can’t communicate adequately with one another. But then we remarked, as Ludwig Wittgenstein has, that words are simply inadequate in themselves.

When one uses a word, a context that nobody else could know is behind them: that person’s background, feelings, beliefs, thoughts, and expectations are all in a single line of information that’s being used with the superficial idea that the person receiving it will understand. Meanwhile, the person receiving it is receiving it with their own understanding of these words formed by their own background, feelings, beliefs, thoughts, and expectations. From the moment sound escapes your mouth, you’ve failed to communicate.

So, it’s no wonder that people who speak the same language can’t communicate when it’s a constant state of miscommunications.

Maybe the friends that we make are the people who most adequately understand our miscommunications, as meager as that it.

We talked about the stars for a while, about how wild star clusters are and, “Do you see that reddish looking one over there? That’s called Taurus, the eye of the bull. And that fuzzy spot is a cluster. If I were to get my binoculars right now and look at it, it wouldn’t be a star at all but a whole mess of them. Isn’t that crazy?” I agreed. It is crazy.

I came to a lot of conclusions and a lot of questions that night, staring at the fire or into the trees. None of them were really profound or interesting.

Minus the few times we’d talk, I’d often turn my head to Nick and wonder. Not wanting to interrupt whatever pensive state he might be in, whatever inward journey he was on. I’d just watch him for a moment and try to figure it out before turning back to wonder about something else.

The next morning left us exhausted and foggy-brained. But it also left me lighter.

Puerto Escondido was a 4-hr haul thru the Oaxaca highlands, but seems totes chill. Like Todos Santos, the beach seems surfer-centric, but that’s cool too. Karyssa is still excited to have so many Americans around, which is funny considering just two months ago she was complaining about how American-ized the cities of Mexico were.

We just ate fresh shrimp and fish and now are boondocking in between two hotels just south of town. It’s an iOverlander site, but who knows how recently it’s been verified. Wish us luck!
Last night we slept on the beach just south of the town, with our back doors wide open and new bug-netting hung. It was a throwback to Baja Sur for sure, although it was one of the hotter nights we’ve had.

We’re debating heading north for the summer. We’re not sure we can handle the heat. But, we’ll see what happens.

March 9 – After sleeping for 13 or so hours, I (Karyssa again) finally woke up around 8:30 or 9. We headed to a nearby, and calmer, beach, Puerto Angelito, to snorkel. It’s popular with Mexican families, but there were a few other gringos there. We had to leave the dogs with one of the daughters of the parking areas (a shaded lot next to their house). And she tied them up to a tree! I was like, “Doh!” I mean, I’ve done that. But it felt worse when someone else did it. Plus, I was within their eyesight the whole time they were tied up. So, we kinda rushed through the snorkeling.

It was fun regardless. The fish were stunning, as always. The colors of them will never cease to amaze me. Fish are just so frigging vibrant and so amazing to watch. I’d go into detail about each one that I found remarkable and their behaviors, but it’d be boring for anyone who isn’t me. Admittedly, it’d probably be boring for future me too.
/end my turn

A stark lesson in Mexican poverty was provided by a window-washer when we were recently stopped at a red-light. Our windshield was filthy, so we didn’t waive this 20-year away. The light was about to change back to green by the time he found us, and we tried to waive him off half way through the job, but he persisted with his spray-bottle and wiper. When we gave him thirty pesos–which is an inflationary amount (just over $1 US)–he nearly died! He was crying and holding the coins to his chest and looking after us as if we were saints.

The government occasionally tries to regulate these red-light entrepreneurs, but usually only around elections, and never for long. The fire-breathers of MXDF were banned outright, however, as the gasoline was killing them slowly!

10 de Marzo and we’re sitting with some fellow vanlifers, Brommies Lee and Willow, who we met last night. It’s much calmer tonight, with each set of people tending to their phones, books, and computers. It reminded me to catch up on the blog, so here we are.

There are four vans here, and there were five yesterday. We didn’t get much time to hang out with the fifth van, but it’s been nice to just hang out. There’s a couple here from Britain, a man from Switzerland, and a younger guy from San Francisco. The fifth van is from Germany.

Not much has been happening since our trip in San Jose. We’ve mostly been spending our days snorkeling when it gets too hot and then sleeping or reading. To be honest, it’s been a relief just getting back to nature and staying away (for the most part) from the cities and shopping, where people are constantly trying to keep your attention with the hopes of us buying something. Our attention seems to always be in demand.

11 de Marzo. We’re camping at La Puesta del Sol on the sides of Laguna Manialtepec, 30 mins north of Puerto Escondido, and currently awaiting the bioluminescent tour. A tip of the hat to Willow, the Brighton van-lifer who advised us on the shower here at La Puenta del Sol, where the purchase of a $1200MX two-hour and personal boat-ride for two also gets you a camping/parking spot for the night right by the lake.

We saw Olive Ridley turtle hatchlings being released today, before we made it to Manialtepec. They were incredibly adorable.

It was rather surprising to see them struggle so much with getting to the water. You’d think they’d be better equipped, considering how much they need to get there. For example, they’d be crawling towards the ocean when the waves would come in, sweep them up, and drop them off farther up to where they had originally started. And they’d just start crawling back towards the water again.

One in particular seemed to have the worst luck and was constantly being washed back up on shore after having made it so close to the water. It got toppled over more times than I can count. One of the volunteers kept flipping it back over on its stomach, so it could continue. Eventually, he scooped the little one up and carried him 3/4 the way to the water and STILL it got swept up into the waves and back on the shore.

The birds were flying all around us, waiting, we assumed, for us to leave the turtles so they could have a snack.

At some point, a shark liver washed up on shore (at least that’s what one of the volunteers called it).

It was pretty wild. I had just read an article about great whites being “scared” of orcas. The article said that if an orca so much as passes through the shark’s hunting grounds, the apex predator won’t come back for up to a year. One reason suggested for this was that orcas have a habit of attacking great whites, tearing out their livers, and leaving their corpses behind.

Orcas are fucking bad.ass. my friend (side note, they’re also not whales, rather they’re dolphins). Also, they’re like my third favorite animal and first favorite marine animal.

Anyway, eventually the little turtle that struggled made it. But we don’t have many hopes for its future, tbh. Baby turtles odds of survival to adulthood are extremely low, something like 1%, and this little one doesn’t seem too lucky.

On the other hand, getting to the sea is half the battle.

That’s why the eggs all hatch at the same time, you know, to increase their chances of survival. Birds wait around for them to hatch and then start picking them off. But, if you hatch all at the same time, it’s harder for birds to get you. Still, once you get in the water you still have to worry about fish. It’s a struggle.

The bioluminescence is currently at about 80%, apparently, but it blew our minds regardless. We lucked out because the moon was almost new, and the rainfall of late was low, and thus the saline water of this brackish, mangrove-lined lagoon was full of plankton.

It was pretty wild jumping into the water and watching the areas surrounding my hands and feet glowing blue. “They’re like the stars of the ocean.” Nick chuckled at the simile and made some offhand comment about me being a star of the ocean.

We were also shown the birds and iguanas that hang out around the lake, along with the flying fish. It amazed me at how alive the lake was even when dark. And then, later, Nick got pinched by a crab as he stuck his hand into a bucket full of them.

Found a strange looking bird too, check it out

Our night was a sweltering bug-bite infested one, but the 12th found us roaming south along the Oaxacan coast towards the newly developed Huatalco coastline. We stopped for a bit in beautiful Mazunte; good lord its coves and off-shore islets are breath-taking.

It seemed too soon to stop, and its streets were a tight fit for the van, so we moved on to infamous Zipolite, nudist hippie commune that was already spoken of in hushed tones when Nick was here some thirty five years ago. While there are some boutiques here now that surely weren’t then, it’s still the funkiest town imaginable, with cosmo cafes charging $360 for desayunos and ramshackle hotels down dirt-roads in the jungle charging $1250MX.

We’re lucky we can afford a room, as this heat is getting to be bit much. A kid offered to sell us weed within minutes of leaving the van. There are a few nudists on the beach, but all older men, but hey it’s early, and freaking hot, ninety-six as I write this. We’re thinking the mountains of Chiapas will give us a break, but the Yucatan is going to be a struggle. Canada and Alaska are calling us, truth be told.

This place is pretty wild. I’ve never seen so many speedo’s and so many naked people. The clothed to nude population is probably 10:1, but it’s still strange. Every time I see someone naked I feel like I’ve done something wrong and should apologize for my behavior. That’s the Catholic I was raised as coming out… or just the bizarrely conservative American view, who struggles with nudity and sex in media, but is totally cool with people getting blown to bits.

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Anyway, this place is like the movies. Varying races, ages, and body types with all the different expressions of style. The vibe is chill, if ever there was one. No one seems to be in a hurry to go anywhere, and nobody seems to mind anyone. And everyone seems to know everyone. I can’t count how many times someone in one group of friends would see someone in a different group and go over to say hi and mingle for a while. Then another person would recognize someone from another group. Over and over.

It is a small town. So, I suppose that shouldn’t be too surprising. Still, somehow there is a “wandering” vibe. As if the people here are just sun-soaking, surf-chasing wanders. I don’t know how else to describe it. It’s interesting. I guess that’s all I can really say. It’s weird. It’s funky. And I digg it.

We wandered down the coast to Puerto Angel and snorkeled for a bit in a popular little cove on the outskirts of town and saw a Xolotol, which is our first time having seen one. Karyssa was pretty excited about it.

Later, we continued south to the Bahias de Huatalco, a government- planned series of resorts along a once-isolated stretch of coast next to a Parque Nacional. It’s beautiful and well-managed, despite being labeled oddly, with signs pointing to Sector G, Sector H, etc. We got the cheapest room we could find near La Crucecit, the only sizable town in the area, after being screwed over by an Airbnb owner who double-booked a room.

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It is now the 14th. We’re currently in a lame but appreciated Airbnb in Juchitan, within the isthmus of Mexico–you know, that narrow part of the country that seems to strangle the Yucatan and Chiapas?–but today was fairly awesome. We hiked to an isolated cove–Bahia Organ or Organo.

It’s accessible only by boat or by hiking 1k from the road to Bahia Maguey, and snorkeled all by ourselves, even if the jellies dragged down our viz. Karyssa spotted a white-nosed coati on the walk there. A self-identifying indigenous grandpa made our acquaintance, as did his cute grandson with whom Karyssa shared a hermit crab and her joy. Frida got rolled by a wave and stung by a wasp, while one text from Molly amounts to heroin in Nick’s arm. We be missing fam so much.

Drove the curvaceous Hwy 200 south towards the massive oil field and refinery at Salina Cruz, but got off for comida (lunch) at Concepcion Bamba or “La Bamba” a surreal surfers’ beach, where we ate local “boca negra” (black mouth?) a very bony white fish and shrimp at the aptly named Blue Rock restaurant, for $260 pesos, or $12.50US including a bottle of agua, and then trusted Airbnb to here, which is famous for its Xexes, “tranvestish” hombres, pero nosotros no sabemos (but we don’t know).

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03/15 is when we mexicanos recognize Benito Juarez’s birthday, and we should recognize the first non-European, in fact, a Oaxiqueno, to serve as Mexico’s president. If you need an inspiring bio, his is it.

Mira, chicas y chicos: Nosotros estamos en Chiapas! (Look, y’all: We’re in Chiapas!)

Boondocked lakeside by a small restaurant popular on iOverlander that is in a kind of town park outside of the tiny town of Rosendo Salazar. It’s north of Tapanatepec and south of Cintalapa if that helps. LOL. Free, though we did buy comida (as usual).

This whole area is still recovering from a huge “sismo” or earthquake in 2017, including this restaurant so we tipped extra for the restoration.

We’re in Rosendo Salazar, which is 2 hours from Tuxtla Gutierrez, and then a couple more from San Cristobal de las Casas, our next major destination, though we are likely to get distracted between here and there, as Chiapas is already showing off.

There are beautiful birds and flowers here, including a small brown duck with lime-green/lemon primaries, a tiny rose of sharon-ish thing, and even the mangoes are being harvested here, even if by hand. It is amazing how verdant and agro-productive southern MX is, or at least appears to be. The daily markets certainly testify.

Then again, we just saw a pair of fishermen circle the lakeshore just offshore in a tiny skiff while slapping the water with a thirty-foot-long stick or cane of some sort and then circling back to net the apparently stunned fish, which must be tiny, right? Others walk into the lake up to their waist and sling a baited hook, no rod or reel, mind you, a few feet away only to retrieve it and try again. My point isn’t to say that these odd (to me, anyway) and local practices could and should be more “productive” –they should be sustainably productive, I suppose, but what that means beyond “not sacrificing the interests of future generations of chiapequenos” which is impossibly broad, but in any case, fuck, why did we take the last of our acid while entombed in the van??? ((permission to freak out granted)). My point, FUCK, is merely that “productive” should be understood in relative terms. FUUUCK!!

OK, Listen, Linda. We’re over the hallucinogenics for now (HA!), and we apologize for the weirdness. If we had peeps to talk to, then maybe we wouldn’t feel so strange, but we’re gonna drive on, and feed the beast that is you, you fucking fuck. JK, ok Conrad.

We felt the pressure to take the last of our acid because, according to iOverlander, there’s an inspection in the next town.

This trip – for me, now Karyssa – was a focus on a problem I struggle with in ethics, in general. I’ll spare you the details and will simply summarize it.

Basically, what it surmounts to is an inability to comprehend contradictions, basically. Simply put, “A is a banana; A is not a banana.” “Killing is bad; killing is good.” The most clear cut example I can give is when the US killed Osama Bin Laden. A lot of people cheered and celebrated. This is in contradiction to their own values. When Bin Laden attacked our people and our land, we got angry at him. Yet, when we killed him and his people, we were happy. These reactions are contradictory and frustrate me because they make no sense and seem dishonest. If people were honestly upset that he had killed so many people, then how does it make sense to be happy when we too kill his people? Perhaps it is a necessary action; I would be willing to concede that. But the celebration of it is the issue.

Then, another issue I have is with the confidence with which people believe in their own moral values. When someone states, with no hesitation, that if you don’t agree with them, you can’t be friends or when someone states that if you don’t agree with them, you’re an idiot or ignorant or that you’re no true x (feminist, democrat, republican, believer in freedom, American, etc.), then it boils me for two reasons.

1) Have you even wondered if you’re wrong? Have you given the consideration that perhaps there is another argument here? Have you even tried to understand the other side of the argument? Have you looked up the statistics? Have you compared other articles and theories? I’m willing to bet the answer is no, you haven’t. So how do you even know if what you’re saying is true?

And 2) Do you know what it would mean to be a true x or an idiot, even? What exactly is your definition there? Or do you not think that is just a lazy way of dismissing an argument you know little about? Have you considered why the other person or side or whatever believes what they believe? Have you given them the benefit of the doubt and tried to understand them?

And if not, then are you not inherently contradicting your own perceived values? How have you not thought this through before speaking? And if you haven’t done any of these, then does your hate or your anger or your moral superiority not come from a superficial and arbitrary place? One of which says, “I just don’t like that you believe y; therefore you’re an idiot or not a true x.” Are these not just tiny ways to make yourself feel better than those around you? To make yourself seem bigger? Because you’re a true x or because you’re woke or because you believe in absolute freedom?

So, the important part of the trip was not the above thoughts – those were only background information. The important part is the part I struggle with the absolute most:

What right do I have to have to talk? After all, are my beliefs not also flawed and full of contradictions? In real world application, do I not also make judgements and hold moral superiority, despite the fact that there is no reason for it? Are the above thoughts not such an example of my own perceived moral superiority – that of withholding judgement, while judging those who do not?

And is my argument not flawed in such a way that no advancement or progression of any rights could be hoped for? What would society be if we all just assumed we knew nothing (while also assuming that we know enough to know that much – i.e. yet another contradiction)? Could you not ever take a stand? Could you not ever say that slavery is wrong, that femicide is wrong, that rape is wrong, that the Holocaust was wrong, that destroying the planet is wrong? And what point is there in that? Somewhere along the line, you do have to say “this is not okay.”

Currently, the only conclusion I can come to is that morality and ethics are not and cannot be based in logic and reason. However, if this is the case, then I am back to my original question of how do you then say, “I am right; and you are wrong”? And the argument repeats itself.

I honestly just don’t get it. Not before the trip and not after. The trip did provide me with the indifference of losing myself so that I was able to write it all down, for the first time. Normally, I give up trying to explain it because I get lost in the circularity.

But I think the bulk of my frustrations just comes from people not listening to each other and not even trying to understand people who don’t agree with them. How does anyone ever expect to learn from or to teach anyone anything if they’re not willing to ask, “Why? Why do you believe x? Why is this source prioritized over that source? Why is that your conclusion?”

To be fair, I don’t really ask these questions with anyone other than Google and conservative news sources/think tanks. So, that’s something to work on for sure.

I believe I will never be satisfied with ethics.
But, I’ll keep trying. >.< Maybe I just need more psychedelics. Ha! Just kiddingggg!

We’ve made it to San Cristobal de Las Casas; at over 7000′ it’s cool and beautiful. Because we’re so near the equator the days are long all year long, perfect conditions for growing flowers (and veg) all year long, so the markets are colorful and fragrant.

The city is teeming with vacationers and van-lifers, and we met a really cool Chihuahan couple at a “posheria”–a bar that sells posh, pronounced pox, a local sort of spirit made out of fermented sugar cane–and they want to host us at their house up north. Then we met Vinco, a van-lifer from Argentina, a loud but affable and well-traveled yankee from Tampa. We splurged on an airbnb near el centro for a couple of days.

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I’m really enjoying the 9th edition (!) of Michael Coe and Stephen Houston’s “The Maya” and it’s updating my wee comprehension of this amazing place and its people. They report, among other things, that among the Maya slightly crossed eyes were held in high esteem, and that parents tried to induce them by hanging small beads over the noses of their ninos! This was just one example of the bodily modifications they mastered.

Big picture, however: Olmec settlements along the Veracruz coastline grew rich enough to support a culture (a pictographic language and rain-god, essentially); this influenced Mayan settlements south and west beyond Guatemala, and north into the Yucatan and Belize. They exploded, in the period from about 500 BCE to 1000 AD, and went on to trade with Toltec and Teotihuacan-cum-Aztec peoples from central Mexico at their peak around 900 AD.

They collapsed before the Spanish could claim credit for their assimilation/annihilation. But like the Native Americans of the US, they persist. While about 400,000 Mayas (those who speak one of several Mayan languages) live in MX today, some 4 million live in Guatemala. (I remember President Clinton formally apologizing for the role the US played in the genocide of Maya there.)

Clever Karyssa set up a VPN for us, and we enjoyed “Nomadland.” Nick swung by the NaBalom Institute, at which he attended a ten-day philosophy conference focused on the cognitive maps of local indigenous waay back in 1995, and which he stumbled upon as a student some decades years before then!

We eventually felt fattened enough by San Cristobal’s pan and chocolat to confront the poorer and more sketch parts of Chiapas and el pais (the country), and thus we rode the shitty road 6000′ down to fairly lame Ocosingo. The roads wouldn’t be so awful if it wasn’t for the 3.5 million topes (think speedbumps) and the children holding ropes across the road every .02 feet in efforts to get you to stop long enough for them to sell you something. We have a rule of not buying from children, so as to not encourage the efforts of child labor.

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Anyway we took this drive in the rain, the first we’ve felt in months. Nick recalls teachers from here telling him, at the NaBalom conference, of hundreds killed by the Mexican army, flying US-supplied jets, strafing the Zapatista rebel. However, all we saw today was a roadside cross.

The ruins at Tonina (ruins nearby) are apparently covid-closed, which is a shame, as Coe and Houston point out its historical importance, but we found a beautiful campground, a set of casitas and a bano called Kayab nearby for $100MX.

Marz 20 Update: as Nick approached the “gate” at Tonina on foot, a local enrepreneur approached and said that there was a way to see the plaza of las ruinas, but only by carro, at $500MX per carro. Let’s see.

Que Padre: Tonina is cool, even if we had to keep our distance and let Manuel, our guia, narrate the place from a nearby parking-lot. He lived in the pueblo just over the hill and had worked there for twenty-six years, including during some of the excavation, which is ongoing.

Palenque is close, though Aqua Azul is closer and our expectations of both are high.

After Tonina, we finished the half-built highway, after having been stopped several times for construction, which is actually refreshing, as Chiapas’s infrastructure has been neglected for decades.

Aqua Azul was more like aqua moreno, given the recent rains, but the most memorable aspect of our visit was buscar a Frida, which included 1/2 dozen men and even more ninas.

Ahora, we’re sitting in the van, in the rain, in the parking lot of Mayabell camp grounds, about a click from the Zona Archaeologica, which we’ll attempt in the am. We talked to an Austrian couple who made it seem seamless. We looked for monkeys for a short while, before the rain discouraged us.

We hired an official guide, Victor, to show us Palenque and it was easily worth the $170US for two-and-one-half hours. He didn’t come through on the monkeys, but he did take us “beyond the rope” to let us climb under an arch in a domestic part of the site, which is massive and remains mostly un-earthed. The largest pyramid and hill on the site remains completely buried in jungle, with huge ceiba trees–sacred to the Mayans as passages to the underworld–as well as mahogany and red cedar.

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At its height in the classic period of Mayan civilization, from 200BCE to 900AD, Palenque housed 50,000 souls, and traded from Honduras to Veracruz, and fought with most everyone in the neighborhood. It’s one of half-a-dozen “ceremonial” cities discovered thus far, and easily the most dramatic; according to Coe and Houston, who say that if one can only see one Mayan site, this should be it.

Nick realizes how lucky he was to stumble upon this place when he was in between high-school and college, as the development of site and city have not added to its charm, but then again, he didn’t have a Victor then, and didn’t really know what he was looking at. But he got to see the grave of Pakal the Great, at the base of the Temple of the Inscriptions, which we can’t even climb on due to covid, the mauseleum having been closed some twenty years ago.

Pakal commisioned this temple for his own dissolution, and the remarkable limestone cover-stone was the source of the silly theory that extraterrestrial beings built this place, as if you should turn it sideways, PK appears to be piloting an aircraft. His sons and perhaps grandsons are represented in other stucco low-relief renderings here, as are some matrilineal lines of power.

Then we were given a behind the scenes tour, which we appreciated of what these ruins look like before their excavated.

Today, 03/21, being a Sunday, the place was mobbed, and we had our first “collectivo” experience in leaving. A Russian tourist and his young daughter gave us a ride up to the site from the ticket-stand some 3k away. The collectivo bus cost us 20 peasos each. Victor even shared some Mayan, or Chol, expressions, and not only with us, but with some of the vendors in the park. He proudly owned his Indian ancestry, which is great to hear, as most have been working hard to disown theirs, and for obvious reasons.

We’re also learning a little of the apartheid state that is Mexico, and of the exploitation of the Mayans throughout central america. In his 2007 novel that doesn’t read like fiction, “A Faraway Country: along a Mayan highway,” Frank Hilaire talks of the continuing trade in Mayan girls, describing San Cristobal as a powder-keg that’s due to explode, and as a source for criminal elements that would just as readily head north than deal with the continuing injustices here. It’s a bleak assessment, and one hopes an out-of-date one!

In general, we’re getting hot, and need to beef-up the AC capacities of the van, or move north. The Yucatan and gulf-coast just seem like an Airbnb or hotel-room trap, so we’re re-thinking our plans, again.

Today, a Monday, and the Zona Archaeologica was much calmer. We took a walk in the forest with a Tseltal local kid, who was kind enough to find us a howler monkey, just hanging out high above the side of the road…

…as well as some fresh sacred hongos (mushrooms) and to instruct us in great detail on their consumption. The funniest aspect of a very funny trip, in hindsight, involved our procurement of said shrooms.

Because our teachers were so open about psychedelics, with no shame in sight–in addition to the fact that some random dude asked us here yesterday if we wanted some–we naively thought we could openly and loudly ask to buy some “hongos.”

Fortunately, a guide who didn’t proffer his name took us aside and gently told us to STFU. If we ambled about for five minutes, used the bano, ate some tacos, then he would see what he could do. $500MX later, we were handed two small baggies of freshly-picked and honey-soaked He told us to talk to the trees, and maybe even to Pakal the Great, lol. He comes from a village just past the ruins, where a shaman holds regular sweats with locals and tourists on top of a hill. When Covid first forced the closure of Palenque, he had to “go north” to find work, for eight months. We tipped him well.

The trip was a hard one for me (now, momentarily, Karyssa). I’ve never been knocked on my ass by psychedelics before, and this did me in. We both decided to take half of what the recommended dose was, and I ended up taking even less than that.

Of course, it was fun in the beginning. We decided to hike into the woods and search for some ruins that weren’t in the park. With the beauty of nature surrounding us, I was in bliss.

I was really soaking up the opportunity to appreciate the trees, the creek, the rocks, the leaves, the everything.

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But by the time we got back to the campsite, I was starting to worry. I couldn’t understand sensations I was feeling or if I was feeling anything at all. I’m used to touching back down to reality every so often, but I couldn’t even grasp it for a second.

We headed to the pool to cool our heads, and I think this is when I started really freaking out. There were other people there, so while trying to act normal, I’d dip my head into the water. But I could not, for the life of me, handle the shock of the cold and the contradiction of the temperature of the water and the heat I felt from my own head that felt like it was frying.

We left after a while (and after a child climbed on the back of a chair and fell it over, slamming her face onto the concrete – at which I realized how desperately I wanted to just make some contact with reality, as I could not tell what the severity of the situation was).

I almost leapt for joy at the site of the van, our home.

But if I thought laying down was going to help, I was wrong. I could see my neurons firing in every possible portion of my brain. And I was convinced that I was going to have a seizure or my brain was going to burst or my eyes were going to pop out of my head.

Once I put some music on though, I was able to calm down and remind myself that being on psychedelics simply enhances whatever feelings you have, to include fear. My amygdala was only in hyperdrive.

The rest of the trip was relatively calm. Normally I’m pretty bummed by the realization that I’m coming down. But this time, it was such a relief.

Though, I do feel like I discovered something important about how I function. But I’m not ready to say fully what discovery that was. Mostly because I don’t know how to articulate it.

Nick, on the other hand, seemed pretty relaxed and copesetic to me.

The Mayabell campground, our home for the last three nights, is literally next to the Palenque AZ, so close that we thought we could walk through the jungle to see some half-excavated structures, such as the Queen’s Bano (?). It was 400m away, max, and yet we never got close, such is the density of the jungle hereabouts.

And now the campground is chock-full-of-travelers, including a Czech chica, a Freiburghian couple in a 30-year-old Mercedes van built for the military, one solo Brit dude, a couple from Silicon Valley, a beautiful French family, whose nina took a nasty fall today by the pool (pobrecita), a friendly pair of Austrians left for San Cristobal yesterday.

We’ll be turning around soon, starting the journey back north to cooler temps (we hope). Until next time.