27 October
The plan was set just a few weeks before: Travel to México City where my good friend from the middle of nowhere town where I grew up is living as an expat with her own vegan restaurant. Instead of just visiting this time, though, it is decided in some Facebook Messenger chat or iMessage that we will rent a car and get out of the city. Like with so many trips planned between work travel, freelance jobs and across some measure of distance, a Google Map was born along the way. As I settled in for the night prior to departure, I decided to take a glance at said Map just to see how much ground Elizabeth suggested we cover during our five days on the road. 4 states. 2374 kilometers. 34 hours.
29 October
By some miracle of late night packing, we got on the road earlier than we intended, an auspicious beginning to a very lengthy road trip. Traffic, I am told, is light by the standards of a city with 22 million people, most of whom have cars. Another bit of encouragement prior to 5:00 am: Our first stop for the day, Puebla, is actually only two hours away. Breakfast, a bit of sightseeing and my first turn behind the wheel would happen once we got up out of the lake on which the capitol has been built and into the mountains .
Puebla (85 miles)
More like three hours later, we are standing in a surprisingly French-feeling square in the town of Puebla, attempting to find café y desayuno vegano. The dust that the city is known for hasn't yet started blowing through and it's mild bordering on chilly, a shock to the system after the committed non-weather of CDMX. We make our way through a meticulous grid of tiny streets before we spot our quarry. Caffeinated and full of vegetables, the two of us acquire massive plastic tumblers of fresh fruit juice for 7 pesos each and point our rental Volkswagen to the Southeast.
Reserva de la Biosfera Selva El Ocote (480 miles)
We are now well over halfway to our stop for the night. We have been driving for just about seven hours and have covered six times the distance to Puebla from our starting point. We just passed an armored truck smoldering on the side of the road and we are 99.5% certain that the men and women with machine guns and black scarves around their faces who waved us through without paying at the last toll booth were Zapatistas. We are exhausted, but rewarded on our entrance into Chiapas with an explosion of green: the Biosphere Reserve in the Ocote Jungle.
The mountains rise up ahead and then we are surrounded by mist. We plunge down a twisting mountain road, glide across a delicate bridge strung over a glistening high-altitude lake and descend from the verdant trees as the sun sets and we find ourselves in a much more desert-like climate with each mile. Our day is nearly complete.
30 October
San Cristobal de las Casas (570 miles)
Though we made it in the night before with time to spare to find dinner, a mezcaleria and to walk around the night market, it was another early morning that really introduced us to our mid-trip base of operations. We used the first day to acquire provisions for our push onward to Palenque. Having subsisted on a lot of gas station snacks, it was decided that a stop by the mercado would be in our best interests. Forcing the Vento through the heavy pedestrian traffic when we likely could have walked: not our finest hour. That said, I'll take an open air market to Giant Eagle, Trader Joes and the rest cada día de la semana.
Oxchuc y Realizando el significado de Topes (600 miles)
Trunk and backseat fully loaded with the spoils of our market stop, we navigate northeast, out of San Cris and into the rugged mountains of Chiapas. Día de los Muertos is a few days away and all along the highway, women are stooped over collecting pine needles to be sprinkled around las ofrendas as part of the holiday's tradition. My phone suggests that it will take just under five hours to get to Palenque, our overnight destination, but there's little traffic and we naïvely begin believing we can get there in four. Spirits are high - and then we encounter it: the Zona de Topes.
«Zona de Topes» basically translates to "speedbumps" but these are unlike anything you are used to in a shopping plaza; not an inconvenience but a full on traffic halting measure. You cannot avoid the Zona de Topes. And you cannot take it at speed. Which is good to bear in mind, as they can appear not just in the small towns and villages that dot the hillsides, but also in the middle of a stretch of road marked at 60 km/h. The best you can do is hope you see the Zona coming and that your increasingly fatigued Volkswagen can slow down in time. Suffice it to say, we arrived with rattled nerves and shattered backs much closer to the five hours Google advised than the four we had dreamed.
Palenque (705 miles)
Despite our new friends, the Topes, we actually made it to Palenque and the ruins there before dark. With only 20 minutes inside the parque to spare, we snapped a few sunset tinted photos and then set about locating our Airbnb which turned out to be a very rustic and altogether charming farm not far away. We made friends with the feline host, dinner in the outdoor kitchen and certain that the bug netting over our beds was sound and then promptly passed out.
31 October
The ancient city of Palenque dates back to 226 BC and is situated in a jungle of cedar, mahogany, and sapodilla trees that seem wildly intent on reclaiming what had been until relatively recently completely hidden by them. It is also gorgeous and entirely eerie, especially early in the morning before the buses of tourists arrive and begin skittering up the slippery, mossy stairs.
Toniná (790 miles)
After a contemplative morning in the jungle at Palenque, we purchased two coconuts to drink and started back over the Topes, retracing our path through Chiapas to San Cristobal. Around midway, Elizabeth and I diverted course through the town of Ocosingo and drove a little eastward towards another set of ruins known as Toniná. Appropriately, the inhabitants of this city were best known for being at war with those of Palenque for much of their history, so it seems right to have visited the sites one right after the other.
San Cristobal de las Casas (850 miles)
Our rambling took us over mountains, past carts laden with celebration necessities like piñatas and cempasúchil flowers and ultimately back into San Cristobal de las Casas. This time, our stay would be in an Airbnb apartment for two nights. By this trip's standards, we could unpack and spread out. Our driving efforts were rewarded with a sunset traffic jam, lovely city dwelling and, eventually, great mezcal and pox stops.
1 + 2 November
By this point, staying put felt incredibly alien: Not altogether unwelcome, but certainly unusual. That aside, another trip to the mercado set us up with much needed fresh produce for the remaining days of the journey and a spin around the town netted souvenirs for friends (and ourselves, let's be honest). I discovered that my very rusty Spanish was still intelligible, at least in the context of negotiating buying an amber pin or negotiating the price of a tote bag. Elizabeth befriended a fellow vegan restaurant owner who left us in charge of his café while he ran across the street to get her several bags of fantastic coffee. These were good days to ease back into domestication. And there were no Topes, it should be noted.
Día de los Muertos is celebrated on the evening of the first, so we set out to find some festivities in San Cris. Unfortunately, rumors that Elizabeth had heard about the federal government dampening celebrations due to regional political unrest proved to be true so we settled for watching street parades, chuckling at tiny Catrinas asking us for candies and setting up our own makeshift ofrenda. The morning of the second gave us a better chance to see the decorated family graves in the nearby cemetery before pulling up stakes and heading to our final stop.
3 November
Punta Roca Partida (1165 miles)
The events of the drive in the afternoon of the second do not have much visual documentation. It rained for more than half of the way. We lost a hubcap in a field somewhere in rural Veracruz (a state where we were told to stay in the car at all costs by Elizabeth's business partner, Ros). I found said hubcap, somehow, without incident while traipsing through this field. The Airbnb host for our beachside stay had listed the property 75 km from where it was actually located. We arrived, in a torrential downpour, hours after dark and had to cart our belongings across a single plank bridge over a stream because the road from the shore had become a creek. Suffice it to say, this next morning view was absolutely well-earned and worth it.
I then proceeded to take the best hour and half nap that I've ever had in my life in that hammock.
After shaking off the sleep, I made my way down to the beach. No one else was staying in the clifftop bungalows and the fishing village had barely started to stir so it was largely just me and the feral dogs on the sand. My Health history data still shows my Watch as logging my lowest ever heart rate (32 bpm) during an hour on this shore. It was also here that I realized that it had been almost a decade since I simply allowed myself to play in the waves. Elizabeth and I hardly spoke when she arrived in mid-morning, instead enjoying friendly introspection while quietly absorbing as much "this-ness" as we possibly could. It was sublime.
CDMX, Distrito Federal (1505 miles)
We made it back to México City by 11:00 pm on the night of the third. There was still pizza being delivered, by some miracle of megalopolises, so Elizabeth placed an order after we left our now filthy Volkswagen Vento at the Enterprise office at D.F.'s airport. We deliriously ascended the stairs to her sixth floor walk up with our food in hand, unpacked our suitcases, shook sand out over the railing of the balcony and then collapsed into driving-induced comas. I had one last day to explore on the fourth and made it out to find a few final souvenirs (ceramic Calaveras swaddled in so much bubble wrap and even more delicate papeles picadores to be turned into laminated placemats) before we settled on Indian food in el Zócalo. Enjoying the cognitive dissonance of curry in México following a whirlwind tour that only barely scratched the surface of the ways of life and history in this amazing country was quite the note to go out on - and only left me itching to come back, perhaps to stay. It wasn't a relaxing vacation by any stretch, but one I will always be glad to have made.
Gracias. Hasta pronto, México.
Credits:
All photos and videos by Nick Smerker