We're going fast trying to get to Guatemala for our Spanish lessons. Our map (which we got at the place we bought our Mexico insurance, Sanborn's in McAllen, Texas) is pretty good. It shows most of the roads we need and we don't have to guess too much. My favorite towns are the ones that aren't on it.
We're passing through beautiful little mountain towns like Papantla and Ozuluama - they're tucked in the hills away from the highway. The roads are really narow and the buildings aren't set back at all, so you feel like you're going through little canyons. All the houses are built of cinder blocks mortared together and then painted really bright colors - but they must put another layer of mortar on top because you can't see the brick outlines. All the houses are small and very square, kind of lego-like. The shops are mixed in. They're mostly doorless - well, they don't have front walls either. They're cubes with one side open to the street. I think they have metal grates to pull down at night. The streets open out onto small squares with park benches and lots of people milling around. Panantla had a big basketball court with ahuge stone relief carving as its back wall, in the same style as the pyramid decorations at El Tajin, the ruins we visited. The towns are just so *pretty* - there's a lot of attention paid to aesthetics.
We must be travelling a little off the beaten path, too, because we're getting lots of stares. Today we stopped at a small market to buy a 20L jug of purified water to put in the van's tank (cheap at 20 pesos, or $2 - a coke was 8 pesos). A kid of about 8 was working there and ran off to get change for us. He must have told his friend there were gringos at the counter, because next thing another kid appeared, and he just stared and stared at us. His mouth wasn't hanging open but just about!! I said 'Que tal?' (what's up?) and his eyes just about fell out of his head. When we were pouring the water into the van, Douglas heard him telling his friends 'and then she said ¿Que tal?' and giggling like mad. Douglas thinks they're staring at my hair, but I think they're staring at his crazy sunglasses.
Everything suddenly got very tropical, too. Once we left the hills, we got into orange and sugar country, and it smells like it! Most trucks that go by are either full of oranges or stacked with sugar cane. I have some pictures, but we haven't managed to organize getting them onto the web yet. Soon. We stopped at a stand to buy some oranges, and I think we got charged a gringo tax. We got 4 oranges and a couple of bananas, and asked how much. She said 10, with a little lift of her eyebrow. I already had a 10 peso coin out ($1), so I handed it over, and this sly grin spread across her face like she'd just overcharged us by a lot. I guess I{ll bargain next time.
Here's a picture of a truck loaded with sugarcane:
Rules for animals are different, here, too. Dogs roam wherever they like, even well-kept ones with collars. They always look like they're going somewhere, too, like they have an errand to run. Hroses are thethered on the verge of the road, munching grass. All the farm animals look pretty happy in their sunny little fields.
*next day*
We're in San Cristobal de las Casas, now, and is it ever charming!!
We got stopped by another police officer on the way, in a small town in the Tuxtla mtns just south of Catemaco. A few cops had set up shop in the middle of the highway, and one whistled us over to the roadside. They all had machine guns and WWII era pistols. He wanted to see ID, know where we were going, etc. And then he asked for a soda!! Too bad we didn't know how to say 'we're smelly hippies and we don't drink soda'. We said we only had coffee, and then he wanted to make us one! Our end of the conversation probably sounded something like this 'sorry I do be, spanish no good, coffee?' We hesitated long enough that he let us go, luckily. Though it might have been fun to make coffee for all the cops in the middle of the highway. He wasn't menacing, like the cop in Tampico - he was pretty smily. I think he was just curious.
Later in the day, driving through a big town, all the traffic got diverted slightly from the highway to go through a police checkpoint. There was a big sign saying 'if they ask you for money, call this number'
And to give you a picture of what the driving is like here - imagine you're passing a big slow truck on a narrow highway. Then someone passes you, while you're passing the truck! and there's someone coming the other way in the oncoming lane! hours and hours of this, while mopeds with 5 people on them join the stream of traffic in totally chaotic ways.
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