On the Road in 1980, Part 4

Playa Las Monjitas, a few kilometers up the coast from Acapulco

In Mexico City, I had been making plans to head southeast toward Oaxaca City on my way to Guatemala, but at the student hostel, I learned of another hostel near Acapulco owned by the same company. So I decided to take a detour due south to the coast, “Goin’ to Acapulco.”[1] The hitch started off well: a bus took me to the outskirts of that vast metropolis,[2] and one short ride put me in pinewood mountains and blue skies, out from under the city’s heavy smog. On a lovely Sunday in early March, the highway was packed with traffic: a ragtag cavalcade of cars filled with families escaping the city and parking at random spots alongside the road for picnics. 

I got a ride from three UNAM[3] students from Michoacán, out for a joyride. We stopped along the way to smoke some mota, and then drove to Cuernavaca, a city of narrow streets decked out in a bright palette of purple, red, orange, and yellow flowers – the vines of jacaranda, bougainvillea, madreselva, llamarada,[4] poinsettia. Cringing in the backseat as my newfound friends trolled the streets and whistled at the chicas, I asked them to drop me off at the market so I could buy some provisions and tactfully bid them goodbye. I hiked into the hills outside the city and camped there, sleeping soundly after the previous night’s spirited partying in Mexico City. 

The next morning I got a ride from Cuernavaca to Acapulco (nearly 300 kilometers) with three Hare Krishnas – an Argentinean husband, his Californian wife, and their Venzuelan friend – vibrant in their saffron robes. We followed the nerve-wracking hairpin turns of the mountain roads while listening to cassette tapes of Indian ragas, calming ourselves to the meditative sounds of the stringed instruments, flutes, and drums. We stopped for lunch and later for a swim at some cascadas near Xolapa, arriving in Acapulco in the heat of the afternoon. A six-kilometer bus ride up the coast on the Carretera Pie de la Cuesta brought me to the student hostel.

It was a fiercely beautiful place – built into and out of rock on a high cliff overlooking the Pacific surf crashing on a narrow beach accessible only by means of a steep trail. A system of interconnected grottos comprised the hostel’s living and sleeping quarters. I moved my sleeping bag out under the moon and stars, where it was cooler and more refreshing, waking at sunrise, another day along the way.

That first night, only three others were staying there – two Swedish men and Susanna, a smart and strikingly vivacious Italiana from Bologna. We all went into Acapulco the next day to lounge on the beaches and buy food at the market to make a huge salad for dinner back at the hostel, a Pacific sunset serving as our backdrop. Later, three German guys and two Mexicanas arrived and joined our cozy group. We asked the hostel owners for permission to use the kitchen facilities, and on Wednesday night we collaborated to make a grand meal of grilled huachinango, rice, fruit salad, tuna salad, and palomas.[5]

I returned to Acapulco on Thursday with Susanna and Analuisa, another Italiana who had just arrived, to walk around the city and buy some necessities. The three of us shared the leftover rice and fruit salad for dinner. I left Acapulco the next day, stifling some pangs of regret about saying goodbye to Susanna, who had taken ill but was in good hands with Analuisa. I headed down the coast toward the beach towns of Oaxaca. Traffic was sparse but I was able to catch rides in the back of cargo trucks, arriving at the Río Quetzala, near the Guerrero–Oaxaca border, late in the day. I swam in the warm, broad, shallow river, washing off the dust of the road, and camped nearby. The next day, another cargo truck ride that would’ve taken me to Puerto Escondido went awry. When the driver stopped to give a dump truck a push start, he ruptured his radiator and bent his fan. Patching up the engine in the midday heat, he got it running, but I somehow got left with the dump truck and its bad carburetor. After failing to help get that engine working, I apologized to the driver, cut my losses, and caught a ride from a passing camper with Colorado plates.

Puerto Escondido was overrun with young gringos brazenly flaunting Mexican mores with their open nudity and pot-smoking, while Federales patrolled certain sections of the beach in an attempt to defend those mores. One look at the campground and I headed far down the beach to camp on my own. Lugging my backpack and walking barefoot on the sand, I badly stubbed the middle toe on my right foot on a rock. I awoke the next morning to a throbbing toe and a wave of loneliness and tristeza, thinking of those far away – Susanna in Acapulco, Theresa in Santa Cruz, Pat and Sierra in Iowa City. Always the challenge of traveling: “Wherever I have gone, the blues are all the same.” But I went into town for lunch, found a sunny table in the market and enjoyed a plate of pescado. The señora brought out a large mango – beautiful in its skin of green, yellow, and red – and offered it to me: “Seis pesos.” What a pleasure! And like that, I was back in the moment.

I moved down the coast to Puerto Ángel and its quiet and pristine Playa de Zipolite. Many hippie gringos there too, but more respectful of the culture and people of Mexico. I shared a palm-thatched-roof cabaña with Oscar from Mexico City, un hombre simpatico who shared his little stash of mota with me. I finally got hit with Montezuma’s Revenge, virtually unavoidable as one rubs shoulders with the bacteria of México. I felt bloated and had some diarrhea – not terrible, but I was in no mood to go anywhere. I fasted from solids all day, and the señora of the cabañas brought me a pot of té de manzanilla,[6] which was so sweet and helpful.

The next day I felt well enough to move on. I broke my fast with a bowl of sopa de avena[7] in the Puerto Ángel market as I waited for the bus to Ciudad de Oaxaca. I was looking forward to the change of pace and hoping mail would be awaiting me at the Oaxaca post office’s lista de correos.[8] I started thinking about where to spend Semana Santa,[9] perhaps in Guatemala, as I looked out on the cozy sun-drenched bay of Puerto Ángel. This from my travel journal:

Many hours on the bus

to escape the heat of the coast

climbing the Sierra Madres

over rutted dirt roads

twisting higher through verdant forests

tall bodies of pine shading our way

aroma of coffee beans drying

the bus a parade of cracked brown faces

diesel pulling us through the clouds

its thin roar following

Other side of the mountain

we stop for dinner

in a pueblo on the edge of

the dusty high plains of Oaxaca

last breath of twilight

the bus half-empties

into a quiet side street

where the roasting of cacao beans

pervades the night air

and a blind man slowly boards

smiling evenly into his darkness

plays harmonica

his song drifting out the windows

into the Mexicano night

a babe softly sobbing

mama hushing it

all else silent

He serenades our dreams

bittersweet as raw chocolate

while night slips its arm around the town

and shuffles the length of the bus

clinking his cup of pesos

Footnotes:

[1] Jim James of My Morning Jacket sings Dylan’s song, from Todd Haynes’s film I’m Not There.

[2] Mexico City is now the fifth largest city in the world.

[3] Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, one of the most prestigious schools in Latin America.

[4] Madreselva: honeysuckle. Llamarada: trumpet vine.

[5] Huachinango: Pacific red snapper, a popular and delicious food fish. Palomas: tequila, Jarritos grapefruit soda, & lime.

[6] Chamomile tea.

[7] Oatmeal.

[8] General delivery.

[9] Holy Week, the week leading up to Easter.