Second Helping of Kumquats

Volume 4

Back to Mexico

For the last kumquat in the bowl

The end of the journey

December 2006

By Gay A. Wright

A complete album of pictures of the trip are

On my website : www.cmyfarm.com

As the space in this journal is limiting

Video CD is available on my website

Visiting

Chetumal to Mexico City

Christmas in Mexico City

Homeward bound to Reynosa then Houston

Chetumal

We arrived in Chetumal at 5 p.m. It was already dark when we reached the ADO bus station. I had to wrangle my eight bags into the bus station and get in line to buy my ticket to Villahermosa. When I bought the ticket I had to drag the whole load down a set of steps to the waiting room and luggage loading dock. I only had 30 minutes to get this done. Not even time to get anything to eat. After boarding the bus I sat next to a man until we reached Xpujil, where he got off and a lady and small girl took his place. What a strain to have two in the seat next to me. She got off the bus at Escarcega and I was glad to have both seats to lie down on until we arrived in Villahermosa at 3 a.m.

So now it was Friday December 15 and I sat in the waiting room of the Vllahermosa bus station and had to wait for two hours before the ticket lady could sell me a ticket to Mexico City. They wouldn’t take my credit card and I didn’t have enough pesos for the fare. I had American money, but they wouldn’t take it. I managed to find out where there was an ATM machine and drew out a hundred dollars in pesos to last me to Mexico City. I was back to the old plan of trying to communicate with hand signals and a limited amount of Spanish words.

While I waited I tried to eat the cheesecake I bought in Belize and it was so terrible I just threw it in the trash. I bought a ham and cheese sandwich, juice and water. I went back to the ticket counter when it was after five-fifteen and she finally remembered that I wanted a ticket. She was flustered and helped me get my ticket and bags on the bus with five minutes to spare. The bus was packed.

I woke up in the morning when the bus was approaching the super courta highway that goes between Veracruz and Puelba. It was a bright sunny day, what a pleasant surprise to say the least. We took that and rode along the highway until we briefly stopped to eat. The place we stopped had a buffet style lunch counter and the food looked terrible. I asked for a ham and cheese sandwich, but they couldn’t make one. I bought some snacks and boarded the bus and waited. We drove all day until we branched off just outside of Puelba and turned north to Mexico City. We climbed the mountain range and passed the volcano Popotecepatal. I recognized it at once and confirmed it with another passenger and asked him if it was indeed the volcano and it was. The volcano was majestic and covered with a mantel of snow. I was able to get some shots of part of the outskirts of Puelba from the bus window before we turned on the highway to Mexico City. Picture of that is on the left. It didn’t take long to reach the TAPO bus station and pulled in about 5.p.m. It was a twelve-hour trip from Villahermosa and was 28 hours since I left San Ignacio. That made 40 hours of back to back bussing. I found a porter to haul my bags on a cart to the taxi departure booth. It took awhile to figure out I was suppose to stand in line and present my taxi ticket to a man in a booth. After I did that it was only a few minutes before I was placed in a taxi along with my rack of bags and was driven to the Mexico City Hostel in the historical district of Mexico City. The hostel that I had a reservation for was located on a street one block off the Zocalo on the left side of the Cathedral. It only showed a narrow door on the street side but once inside it opened into a lobby with 12- foot ceilings or higher. It had 4 stories above the ground floor. After walking up three flights of steps I settled into a huge room with 4 beds. I had rented a private room and so I had three beds extra. I had to walk around the corner to get to the bathroom. It, too, was huge and had at least a dozen showers and half dozen toilets and sinks. I was pretty zonked, but starved. I went out to find something to eat. I had to settle on a restaurant two blocks down the street and had tortilla soup and salad. I had a hard time eating as my congestion was returning. I had frozen on the bus, miscalculating my need for my shawl since I didn’t need it in Belize. Now I was six thousand feet higher and it was cold.

I tried to walk around the Zocalo and found the Azteca dancers preforming, but I would wait until morning to give them the pictures I brought for them. I was too tired to do anything else so I turned in for the night.

Christmas in Mexico City

December 16, Saturday was sunny and bright. The hostel served breakfast of scrambled eggs, toast, and fruit. It was the best I had in the last few weeks. It was cold and I pulled out the shawl and went outside. People were walking around the streets with jackets, scarves and fur boots. It wasn’t long before the sun warmed up to a nice day. I located a couple of the Azteca dancers and gave them the pictures I took two years ago. They seemed delighted. I had a couple left over, but no one recognized the people. I went to Temple Major and took photos of everything I could see in the museum. They were doing a lot of restoration at the site again and had a number of the statues covered with tarps. I was glad I was able to photo them two years ago. They also had a featured exhibit of an archaeological dig at El Cajon in Halisco state.

When I left the museum, I found a display set up that showed the history of Chocolate. They had books, documents, and samples of pods, beans and bars that could be purchased. I bought a half dozen for 90 cents. It was interesting.

I walked around the square some more but was tired so I went and rested for a couple of hours. When I got up I went in search of a restaurant again. I found a Vips a couple blocks from the Zocalo. I wasn’t bad, at least filling. They just can’t seem to make Jello right. It was rubbery on the bottom. The Zocalo had a concert playing Christmas music. I walked around and looked at the people. There was quite a crowd there by then. I knew something was going to be going on as it was after dark by then. There were decorations hanging on the buildings and a huge piñata suspended in the square. There was a stage all set up and on the edge of the square there were people dressed up like a Christmas pageant of the manger scene that were getting ready for a performance. Soon a lady started to announce something. When she was done speaking all the lights blazed into the night lighting the Christmas decorations on the buildings and the central piñata. It was beautiful. I was just in time for the official lighting of the Christmas season. I was delighted and looked in awe from one light display to another. The Christmas pageant started with the characters filing on stage and standing around the manger. It started with an angel sliding down a wire from a high platform and landed in front of Mary and Joseph. After a woman sang a lovely song, they let the crowd file on stage and look at the characters close up. I was really tired after that and was coughing pretty badly from getting re-chilled on the bus. I went back to the hostel and dosed myself with the medicine I brought with me. The night was really noisy as there was a huge party right below my room in the kitchen area, where a group of student guests were whooping it up and playing music real loud.

Dec 17 Sunday, I drug myself out of bed feeling really rummy. I had to wait until 10 a.m. before a money exchange opened for business. When it did, I was able to change some money into pesos. From there I walked around the Zocalo again and watched the Azteca dancers set up for the day. The shamans were busy blessing people with sage, smoking out the bad vibs and bringing in the good harmonic resonance for the New Year. I felt like I could use some, but just stood down wind of the smoking sage and let it waft over me, breathing in the blessed goodness. I finally found the Azteca lady I had a picture of. I showed it to a young boy at her booth and he said she was his grandmother. When she was done talking to some people I showed her the picture and she held it to her breast and laughed. She was delighted.

I went from there to the metro subway that runs under the city and bought tickets to go to the museum of Archaeology in Chapoltepec Park. I got off at the stop thinking I could walk across the highway to the museum, but the roads had no sidewalks and I had to catch a bus. The bus went directly to the museum, so it was a good thing. My head was reeling in a fog. I arrived about 11 am. I started at one end of the museum and worked my way from room to room taking pictures of everything I saw. About 12:30 I went to the museum restaurant and had the nine-course buffet. I took pictures of all the dishes they featured that day. Feeling as rocky as I was, the lunch didn’t taste as good as I remembered from two years ago. I couldn’t each much, but enjoyed what I could get down. I returned to the museum and took more pictures. I have no idea of what pictures went with what room. I just hope I can piece it together in time. I left the museum after buying a book at the bookstore in their gift shop. It was a complete edition of photos of the exhibits. I wanted one two years ago, but they hadn’t one published. So now I had reference material to match up with my photos. It was real pricey as books go, being 75.00 American. But it was huge and thick and all I could do to stuff it in my bag on top of everything else I was dragging home.

I bussed back to the Hidalgo Street stop about 2:30 p.m., got off and took the metro back to the Zocalo. I really enjoyed the metro. I had two tickets left and knowing I would not use them, I picked out an elderly lady and her daughter that were walking to the exit ahead of me and gave the tickets to them. They were surprised but were happy. I came up out of the steps to the underground tunnel into the light of the afternoon in the Zacalo. I was swallowed up instantly by a parade making its way around the square. I managed to stumble into a man, or rather he approached me when he saw me filming the parade and explained it was the Annual Christmas Fiesta where people from surrounding Mexican states come and represent their state with historical figured costumes from their district. Each state had a different kind of costume that related to a past event in Colonial Mexico history. Many portrayed men with mustaches and hats supported on masks. Most all of the participants were masked in some fashion. I could not get a grip on what the costumes meant, not being familiar with colonial history of Mexico, but they were colorful, bizarre and superb. Some were pretty funny. There were a number of bands in between the marching people. Many had ankle bells that jingled when they stamped their feet, many had some sort of instrument that made noise when they shook or beat it with their hands. The ladies were dressed in beautiful dresses with their hair braided with ribbons. They danced with grace and smiled at everyone. When I took pictures they clowned for the camera. It was fun and I was delighted to be able to see the parade. Even if the parade was winding down I still was able to see about a dozen different groups.

As soon as the parade continued past the Zolaco the Azteca dancers took up the slack and began their dances in earnest. There were about ten different groups of them on the plaza. I managed to find some friends of the men in the rest of the pictures I had with me and gave the pictures to them to be delivered. I will never know if they found their way, but I am fairly sure they did.

The government had chased all the food and craft vendors off the Zocalo and now the only ones using it were the dancers. If you wanted to find something to eat you had to go down a side street to find eats, or junky imported items. The only other display on the plaza was a tent waving a red flag with a star and sickle on it, that had all sorts of books and communist material displayed. That was spooky, seeing authors we take as the enemy being flaunted in the middle of Mexico City. It wasn’t so far out of the normal as Mexico had ties with communist governments in the 1920’s.

By the time the afternoon was waning I was getting pretty tired. I was still coughing so I called it a day and went to the hostel. I went to bed and stayed there for 12 hours. In the morning, which would have been Monday, the 18^th of December I had the lady at the desk reserve a bus ticket for me. She was able to do it by phone saving me a trip up to the Norte bus station to buy one. The bus wasn’t to leave until 4 p.m. so I had most of the day to left of browse around. The morning was cold again and walking along the side streets where the sun had not been able to penetrate it seemed colder. I looked at all the vendors setting up for the day. They had clothing, Xmas goods, junk toys, cosmetics, videos and all sorts of other stuff sitting on tables in the middle of the streets for blocks around. The traffic was limited to foot in some places. Canopies of blue plastic covered the booths and it reminded me of El Ceibo in Guatemala only on a higher-class status, if you could call it that. At least in was not in the mud. I walked back to the plaza and watched the dancers again setting up for the day.

I was so sick I didn’t buy anything or couldn’t make it to another museum. Besides it was Monday and most of them are closed. I gave up on seeing anything else and sort of wandered around aimlessly.

I noticed the night before that the flag was flying after dark. I tried to ask someone about it but to no avail. I don’t know if they didn’t have the flag ceremony any more or if it was temporarily suspended for the Christmas season. I thought that was a loss, as I really enjoyed the lowering of the flag and the pomp and ceremony that I was able to film two years ago.

I went back to the hostel and had to get my bags down the three flights of stairs to the lobby. It took me an hour I was so weak I had to rest in between bags. Finally two of the girls that worked at the hostel came to my rescue and brought down the last two bags. I had them sitting by the lobby door ready for the taxi ride to the bus station. I was sitting at a table in the lobby when a strange man sat down across from me. We chatted a few minutes. He had another man come and talk to him. Their conversation was even stranger. It is hard to explain, but he seemed to be driven by a super superior ego complex. He told me he was a minister in a church and was helping missionary youth to do their work. He seemed to be pretty hard on the young man he was speaking to, but explained he was strengthening his character. Ok, whatever.

He also asked if I was ok. I told him I had caught a chill in Tikal and the congestion had settled in my chest. He then told me he had been a paramedic in the war and knew what I needed for an expectorant. Since I was unable to buy the same kind I found in Belize he told me he would walk up to the drug store with me and help me purchase some. He may have been strange but he was helpful and kind. The Universe provides in strange ways and I was able to recognize when it came my way and took him up on his helpful offer.

I bid him goodbye on the drug store corner and walked back by another block to see some different things. They had food vendors everywhere. They were set up on the sidewalks all up and down the streets. There were more today and on the weekend. Some had big appliance size metal food stands, some were small propane powered single stovetop burners and some were fruit vendors. They had the shoeshine stands and newspaper stands that also sold sodas and snacks. I had asked the strange man on our walk to the drug store what the women were selling that were cooking a hard brown cake on the fire. He told me it was called a ‘hurache’, which translates into hard sole of the shoe. It is made from corn like a tortilla, but is thicker, hard and crunchy. They top it with veggies and meat. I saw many people eating them, but not for me. I also saw women with tiny propane stoves rolling out tortillas on a miniature breadboard with a tiny rolling pen. I am not sure what they were making. There were other places to eat, restaurants behind narrow doorways, Chinese and Mexican fare for some. I found a pasteria, or pastry shop. I had a hard time buying the fancy cakes, but finally figured out how they worked the plan and the lady wrapped up four for my trip. I wanted them put in a plastic box, but I got a cardboard wrapped with paper and tied with a string. I ate on them on the way home but found them to not flavorful and bland. That was sad as I was expecting the sweetness of fine French pastry and it didn’t happen. I took my last look at the streets of Mexico City around the Zocalo and went back to the hostel to collect my bags and have the hostel call me a taxi. I asked her if it was a safe taxi and she assured me it was one that the hostel uses all the time and was safe. I left for the bus station at 2:30 p.m. I found a porter to take my bags to the ticket line and even though the line was long it only took a short time to buy my ticket. Here again I had to show my visa and pick up my reserved ticket. They took the baggage right there at the ticket counter and all I had to do was go through the doors to the waiting area for the bus. I tipped the porter 4.00 as he was patient and was very helpful. I wasn’t sure I would understand the loudspeaker announcement when the bus would leave so I stood by the entrance gate for an hour. When it was time the ticket lady sitting by the gate motioned for me to come through it and board the bus for Reynosa. I had a front row seat. I could see out the front window and get a good look at the scenery on the way out of Mexico City. I expected the bus to head north, but instead it went east to Poza Rica. I took pictures of the scenery going out of Mexico City, the houses, the busses, traffic, the metro, and finally the open fields and plains of the countryside.

When the sun sat behind the mountains I faded off to sleep rocking with the undulations of the bus motion. When we crested the top of the mountain range and headed down the gulf side the bus shifted its rhythm and I woke up. It was about midnight and the fog was so thick it was really hard to see even a car length ahead. We snaked down the mountain in a steady stream of traffic until we reached Poza Rica. It sure was slow going. Just outside Poza Rica the Federalizes stopped the bus and when they boarded they ordered all the men to get off the bus to be searched. That was spooky. The women that accompanied the men got up and looked cautiously out the windows to see what was going on regarding the fate of their men. Each one was searched when it was over they were allowed to reenter the bus. I managed to get an explanation from the man sitting next to me. He didn’t speak well, but he said it was for drugs and guns. I could understand that much. That was the only time that kind of search was made although there were times the busses were stopped and searched.

We stopped in Tuxpan at 3 a.m. I had been through this plan on the last trip and knew it was the place the bus fills up with gas. I bought another ham and cheese sandwich. We only made a brief stop once more until we reached Reynosa at 10 a.m. I had to buy my ticket on the Valley Transit line that went to McAllen, but the ticket salesman at the bus station said I could buy the ticket all the way to Houston. I used the rest of my pesos for the ticket, kicking in the balance with American money.

Dec 19. All of us passengers going to the US stood on the Reynosa bus station loading dock and waited for the bus to come. I was getting nervous because the ticket said the bus left at 1 p.m. for Houston. It had been 18 hours from Mexico City and the day’s weather was semi fair, at least it wasn’t raining. We waited for 30 minutes. When the bus came it did not have a baggage compartment to put the bags in, so I had to try and put them inside the bus, up the three steps to the seat area. With all the other people crowding on the bus, if felt like I was being stampeded in an animal rush. Finally a couple of ladies help drag the bags into the seat area after I shoved the bags up the steps. What an ordeal.

Then we stopped at the International Bridge. We all had to get out with our bags and walk through the customs building. Of course I was the last off the bus and strapped the bags to the extra set of wheels I carried. The line was long and the bags got heavier with each step. I had my passport checked again and was asked if I had anything to declare. He shouldn’t have tempted me, but I resisted any smart remarks and told him no. Then we had to exit the building and walk another several blocks to meet up with the bus and reload our bags for the drive to McAllen. Finally a lady helped me wheel one of my bags. Again, help came from ladies, as men never offered. I would have to remember to do the taxi routine the next time as the bus routine was even worse than when I had to do the very same thing between Belize and Mexico. All the rest of the passengers that were on the bus had boarded another bus to McAllen and the only passenger left when I reached the bus stop was the other man who had a huge bag heavier than mine. We noticed a bus with a baggage compartment waiting and he asked the driver if he was going to the bus station in McAllen. He said yes, so we shoved our things in the baggage compartment on the back of the bus. We made it to the depot just as the bus to Houston was pulling in next to it. I had just time enough to take my bags off and put them on the Houston bus. No luggage man to help. If I had not bought my ticket it Reynosa I would have missed the bus. Not time even for a bite to eat or a phone call to my friend Linda to tell her that the bus would be arriving in Houston at 8 p.m. and not 3 p.m. that I estimated. We pulled out in less than five minutes and were Houston bound.

I noticed a young girl about 6 or 7 with her mother sitting behind me. I got out my change purse and counted out the peso coins I had left. There was about two dollars worth. I gathered them up in my hand and gave them to the girl. She was shy and her mother thanked me. I peeked once behind me and saw her counting the coins. It made me feel good.

The only time we stopped was about 4 p.m. and I bought a lunch and soda. The last time I had eaten was 12 hours prior and my stomach was meeting my backbone. We reached the Houston bus station at 8 p.m. on the dot. Making the trip from Mexico City a 28-hour trip. I was able to phone Linda from a cell phone that belonged to one of the bus employees. She was in a panic and was just about to storm the Embassy looking for me. After the initial panic mode settled down we dropped off her friend that came with her and went to her house. I was so tired I was about ready to drop.

On Dec 20, we loaded some stuff on her truck and reached my place about 4 p.m. It was good to be home even though I was still sick as a dog. The cough persisted for about a week, but by Christmas it was pretty well over it and my New Years it was gone.

Postscript: When I arrived in the Yucatan in November I was told the fighting in Oaxaca was raging over an issue between the governor and the University students and teachers. It was not a good place to be. By the time I reached Mexico City it was over, but I was not well enough to want to change my plans and make a side trip there.

Two years ago I vowed I would never to make another trip. But it wasn’t long before the call came again last year. With the language barrier and the muddy conditions the trip was tiresome. I missed Copan and Quirigua, most of the Archaeological sites in the Peten area of Guatemala and some in Belize.

Now that I am rested and am seeing more clearly I think I would go back to see what I missed. The call is strong and my thoughts rest on the lovely people I befriended who owned the lovely lodges, B&B’s and hotels I stayed among others I met along the way and in the unexplored places deep in the jungle. The counties were friendly and kind and strived to show visitors a slice of life beyond our American normal. I have edited four thousand pictures and posted on my web site as of Mar 07, 2007. So, now that you have finished the journal see the complete picture albums that await you on my web site www.cmyfarm.com. All the albums I have posted on webshots.com and my web site total over 8500. Please visit and enjoy them all.

Thanks for journeying with me.