Travelling By The Moon

Copyright (c) Will Kemp 1996

For reproduction rights see copyright notice

June - Mexico

*** The 1st - Taxco to San Cristobal ***

I was sick all that week. The fever went, but i had serious diarrhea and felt really weak and tired. However, i had to go back to D.F., or Distrito Federal, as Mexico City's often known, to pick up my travellers cheques and sort out my visa. I went on Thursday afternoon, so i could stay in a hotel that night and i wouldn't have to catch the early bus in the morning.

Of course, when i went back to the immigration department with a wad of travellers cheques, they didn't even really want to see them! They gave me another sixty days, which is what i asked for, without any fuss. I stayed another night in D.F. and then caught the bus back to San Cristobal so i'd be there in time for the next dialogue.

Fortunately the bus had a working toilet, as i spent the entire journey shitting!

I got to San Cristobal early on Sunday morning. There was no-one in the house when i arrived, but over the next couple of days, Sonsoles arrived back from Zipolite, Ana arrived back from the forest and Jabi and Joserra arrived back from Guatemala, after meeting Chabi,a friend of theirs from Bilbao, in Honduras or El Salvador or somewhere. Alvaro and Raúl showed up too, the day before the dialogue was due to start. Our group was together again and we were all ready for the next session in Larrainzar.

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*** The 7th - San Cristobal to San Andres Larrainzar ***

The dialogue started on Wednesday, the 7th of June and i went to Larrainzar that afternoon. The others weren't going to go till later on, but i didn't want to hang around in San Cristobal, as i didn't have anything to do there and i was feeling a little bit bored with the place. I was still sick and not really in the mood to go and spend a few days in the uncomfortable surroundings that we would be living in in Larrainzar, but i wanted to be there anyway, even if i wasn't going to be much good for anything.

I met Mariana at Conpaz, also waiting to get transport out to Larrainzar. I'd met her briefly just after the last dialogue, but hadn't seen her since then. She comes from Mexico City, but she'd been living in London for the past few years, mostly in the same part of London as i'd always lived when i'd been there. We probably even knew some of the same people.

We ended up catching a bus that left from the Zócalo a couple of hours later. On the way out of San Cristobal, the bus was held up for a while as one of the convoys, taking EZLN delegates to Larrainzar sped past. It seemed weird that we were going to get there after the Zapatistas.

So it was back to Larrainzar and back to the noisy, dirty, dusty market building. Back to the disgusting toilets and the shortage of water. It had been alright last time, but this time i was hardly in a fit state to appreciate it!

I haven't really got much to say about those five days of the dialogue. I wasn't really capable of doing very much - not that there was very much to do, anyway, as the other people who'd been there last time weren't interested in doing a round the clock watch like we'd done before, which i thought was really slack, and the people who hadn't been there before didn't really have much idea what to do either. But i spent a lot of the time lying down, mainly asleep, in the market. I couldn't really eat anything except fruit and nuts, without feeling sick and i generally felt weak and depressed.

The whole thing had lost it's novelty for me as well - now it just seemed like a really pointless circus, which we'd somehow been drawn into by the indisputable necessity to help protect it's main players. But which seemed a complete farce and a waste of time and energy. Part of my feeling about the event was due to my physical state, but part of it was something that i'd begun to feel towards the end of the last one. I was fully in support of the EZLN's aims and intentions, but i just had this overwhelming depressing feeling that they've been forced forced into a situation where they can't possibly win and are in serious danger of somehow becoming "institutionalized" into the overall mexican system. I use the expression "institutionalized" because the ruling party in the mexican one-party system is called the Institutional Revolutionary Party. The revolution has become institutionalized completely in Mexico and avoiding going the same way is going to be one of the harder parts of the struggle for the EZLN.

That's not to say that i think any of the delagates at those dialogues, or anyone else involved with the Zapatista Army is in any way intentionally heading in that direction, or will even be willingly drawn there, but somehow the Mexican system seems to have some subtle, but incredibly strong mechanisms for absorbing dissent. As, of course, do all systems that don't slaughter the population by the thousands at the first sign of it. But one revoltion has already been succesfully institutionalized this century, and reduced to a string of meaningless phrases. Maybe another one won't be quite so hard. I hope i'm wrong. We'll see.

Whatever. I was quite glad when the whole thing was over.

We got back to San Cristobal at dawn on the Monday morning. It was cold and i was looking forward to getting to the beach, where i intended to go in a day or so. I really wanted to get down out of the mountains. The altitude wasn't doing me any good. I liked it, but i wasn't used to living quite so high up. I'd spent quite a lot of time at close to a thousand metres in north Queensland, but there's a lot of difference between that and over two thousand. Anyway, i was totally sick of the cold. It would be hot and humid on the coast - the sort of climate that suits me perfectly. I decided i'd go to the coast of Chiapas the next day.

That night there was a party in the house, as Ana was off back to Canada in a day or two. Needless to say i wasn't in the mood! However, i spent a couple of hours in the party before going back to bed.

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*** The 13th - San Cristobal to Puerto Arista ***

Early next morning i got up and went. A whole group of people were going out to one of the "encampamientos", or encampments, in the forest, and i called in at CONAI on the way to the bus station to say goodbye to everyone. They were all there waiting to get their accreditation, so they could stay in the encampment. And then i left San Cristobal.

It was sad in a way, because i knew it would be a long time before i'd be back there again, and i really liked San Cristobal. But at the same time, i was glad to be leaving. Glad to be going to the coast. Glad to be getting away from all the people for a while.

I was going to spend a couple of weeks by the beach and then go to D.F., where i should have somewhere to stay while i help some people set up a modem and an internet connection. I was looking forward to getting back to work on that stuff, it had been a long time. In fact, that was really the only reason why i was doing this now. I had decided to go to Cuba and try and get a cheap flight from there to Europe - as flights from Mexico are ridiculously expensive. But i changed my mind when this possibility came up. If i spent a couple of weeks in D.F., i could get my mum to buy me a cheap ticket in London and send it over to me by courier.

*-*-*

The journey to Puerto Arista took all day. First i had to get a bus to Tuxtla Gutierrez, the capital of Chiapas, eighty five kilometres west and fifteen hundred metres below San Cristobal. Then from there it was about three hours on another bus to Tonalá, which is on the coastal plain.

From Tonalá, it's about another half hour or so in a local bus. Not far south of town, the road turns off and runs perpendicular to the coast. Behind you are the dark blue shapes of the Sierra Madre mountain range, which runs parallel to the coast here, about twenty five kilometres inland. Between the mountains and the coast, there's a flat coastal plain which seems to be good fertile agricltural land. In the bus on that road, with the montains behind us and the coast in front, i had a sudden overwhelming feeling of home. The smell of the air, the climate and the overall feeling of the place reminded me so much of the area around Mullumbimby in northern New South Wales, where i lived for a while and where i often spend time now and then. It was strange in a way, as Mullum is quite a different lattitude to this and the equivalent latitude in Australia would be two thousand kilometres north of there, but it just felt so much like it. I smiled. I was happy. I felt comfortable at last.

The bus arrived in Puerto Arista just as it was getting dark. It stopped in a deserted street, which was obviously the main street of this small town. I fact, it turned out to be the only street. I put my hat on, hung my bag over one shoulder, my bedroll over the other and walked down a laneway onto the beach.

The sun had gone down and the last of the light was fading fast. I wandered slowly along the beach, which was lined with restaurants and guesthouses - but the friendly, low key, thatched roof sort of places, not the intimidating, efficient, prison-like ones of Playa Del Carmen and Cancún. A couple of kids called to me and i walked over to where they were standing, as i couldn't catch what they were saying above the noise of the waves. They were just about the only other people on the beach. They were asking me if i was looking for somewhere to stay and took me over to have a look at a room. It was a reasonable price and quite an OK room, but there was building work going on in the front of the guest house, and i really didn't feel like staying in the middle of a building site, so i wandered on.

After a while, i found a place that offered me a room for twenty five pesos a night, which was reasonably cheap - and it would want to be for what i got for it! The place was built out of concrete, which was crumbling badly, the way it does when it's built with salty water - the reinforcing steel was showing in a lot of places and was well rusty! The whole place was damp and mouldy. But that's the tropics in the wet season, you can't avoid it anywhere, unless you imprison yourself in a sealed room with airconditioning. And then you might as well be dead anyway - you're already in your tomb! The bathroom and toilet weren't far away, but they were more of the same. The toilets had to be flushed with with a bucket which you filled up from a tank outside and the doors didn't close properly beause the frame had rotted. And when i looked in the long, crumbling, three-person shower room, there were two gigantic toads in there, enjoying the dark, cool dampness - they were about twice the size of a large fist. All in all, it felt like home!

Fortunately there was a fan in my room. It was rusty from the salty air and a bit on the dodgy side, but it worked. It was the only way to keep the mosquitoes off me in the night. I don't like fans, and i particularly don't like them running all night, but the mosquitoes here were pretty heavy-duty. If i tried to sleep without the fan on, i'd be eaten alive and come up in itchy, painful lumps all over me forehead and other sensitive places. A mosquito net would have been nice.

The place was run by an old woman, who i took a liking to. Her and her old man spent most of the day lying in a hammock. There were some younger people around, but i never quite worked out what the relationships were. I was the only person staying in the place at that time - in fact, i was almost the only visitor staying in the whole town! However, that would be normal at that time of year, all tropical holiday resorts have a low period in the wet season.

The town itself was just a small country town. It didn't seem as if the fact that there was a beach just a block away from the main street, with restaurants and hotels on it, had any effect on the place. It must have, of course, but it wasn't noticeable. There was no sign of any of the commercialisation that you get in the sort of place where international tourists go - so presumably most of the visitors there were mexican.

One day, i passed a pig wandering down the main street, snorting agitatedly, unconcerned and unmolested. Round the corner, there was a chicken in the middle of a side road. Nobody else took the slightest bit of notice.

I never went in the water at Puerto Arista. I'm not completely sure why. Partly, i hate swimming on beaches where i have to wear clothes - it pisses me off intensely. But also, somehow, i just didn't feel like swimming at that place. Another thing that put me off was that there was a very dodgy-looking yellow scum on the water out where the waves were breaking and it certainly didn't look natural. This place is pretty close to Tuxtla, which is an industrial town, i don't know if that's got anything to do with it or not, but i didn't fancy swimming in whatever it was that was yellow, either!

I stayed there for four days - or rather, for four nights. And then i just had to get out of there. No particular reason, i was just getting sick of it. There wasn't much choice of things to eat, as there were no visitors in the place and most places didn't seem to have any food. There was also a total lack of change of any sort in the town, which meant that every time you wanted to pay for something it was a major drama. I don't know why there was absolutely no change, but i assume it was because there was absolutely no money in the town at all. Everyone must live on credit for the low season or something, and then pay it back through the good seasons and then have nothing left to live on in the next low season... I dunno!

Also, it was getting close to the solstice and i wanted to be somewhere else for that. This seemed like a dismal, dead place to spend the solstice, even though i liked it in a way and was happy to be there for a few days. It was just time to move on. I decided to go back to Zipolite. It was on the way to DF and it seemed like the best bet.

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*** The 17th - Puerto Arista to Zipolite ***

I left Puerto Arista on Saturday morning. It took me about twelve hours and seven buses to get where i wanted to be. I arrived in Pochutla at about sevenish in the evening, which was just in time to catch the last bus from there to Zipolite, where i arrived not long after dark. I did quite well really, considering i met someone a few days later who took nearly twenty four hours to get from Puerto Arista to Zipolite the day before i did it. He didn't know where he was going and got told he had to go via Oaxaca, which is at least a couple of hundred kilometres out of the way. He would have only taken four buses though!

I went back to the Posada del Tiburón and the Italians told me they were going in a couple of days. Their lease had run out and they were going to move to somewhere else up the beach. They didn't know where yet. But i could stay a couple of nights, then the place was closing.

I ended up staying there three nights and then i moved into the posada next door. I was in a bit of a quandary really, as to what to do. It crossed my mind to try and find a room, as i cant sleep in a hammock and sleeping on the sand, i wasn't likely to get as good a night's sleep as i felt i needed. However, i didn't in the end. In fact, more or less as soon as i arrived in Zipolite i began to get better.

Unfortunately, i fucked up. I should have got myself a room. Although i didn't realise it till later, what i really needed was some space to myself. This was something i hadn't had for a very long time really, and staying in the place next door to Tiburón, which was much more crowded, was the last thing i needed really.

I spent one night there and decided i had to get out. Unfortunately this translated itself in my head into having to get out of Zipolite and i went. I jumped on the bus to Pochutla, not really knowing where i was headed, and then decided i was going to Puerto Escondido, which was about an hour up the coast. It was still in the right direction - or so i thought at the time - and it seemed like the last likely place in that direction that didn't mean i'd have to go through Acapulco again.

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*** The 21st - Zipolite to Puerto Escondido ***

I ended up on the bus between Pochutla and Puerto Escondido at the exact time of the solstice - which is the southern hemisphere new year. I guess that must have some significance, but i'm buggered if i know what!

There was nothing particularly inspiring about Puerto Escondido, but it was somewhere to be - and i had to be somewhere! It was reasonably pleasant, although no doubt in the high season it would be far too crowded for me. There were a few too many seppos around for my liking ("seppo"'s australian rhyming slang for yank - it's short for "septic tank"...) but it was ok.

I found a place to stay, along the beach away from town. It was a reasonable sized hut, with a concrete floor, a bathroom and even a gas cooker! It was across the road from the beach and it was relatively cheap, although it was more than i really wanted to pay for a bed for the night, but it wasn't too bad. However, it was very dusty and there was a lot of mould in the air, which made it a bit unpleasant at first, till i'd aired it out a bit. And at night the mosquitoes were horrific. Normally they don't bother me too much, but there they were a real problem. I even went to the extreme of buying mosquito coils. They looked like the asian ones, but they weren't - they were some nasty american chemical fake, made in Mexico, but undoubtedly by an american chemical company. And they didn't work. Not at all. The mosquitoes didn't give a shit. I've never known the asian ones not to work well, but not this synthetic chemical shite. And for certain they would have been much more toxic than the asian ones... I dunno, it's beyond me!

I slung up the hammock which i'd bought in Zipolite a couple of days before and spent most of the time lying in that and reading. It was a nice change to sleep in a bed though.

I stayed there three nights. It wasn't a bad place, but i couldn't stand the mosquitoes and the mould - which was giving me an allergic reaction. And anyway, i just wanted a change of scenery. I got a room in a hotel up in the town, a little way from the beach, which was five pesos a night cheaper, but wasn't plagued by mosquitoes or mould and was generally more comfortable. The only thing it lacked was somewhere to hang the hammock. I missed that.

During this time, the sickness that had more or less gone away came back again, not so bad, but still a real drag. I got diarrhoea and began to feel spaced out and weak again. I was almost beyond caring though, it had been going on for so long i'd more or less got used to it. I should probably have done something about it, but i hate doctors - i don't trust them or their poxy chemicals - and i reckoned it would go away eventually, everything always does.

I got a bit sick of hanging around, but i had a fair bit of writing that i wanted to do. However, it was a real drag to have to write it all out by hand, knowing that i'd have to type it up later. I really wished i'd brought my portable computer with me instead of mailing it from Darwin to Britain. Then i could have written straight into it and saved a lot of work. It actually prevented me writing a lot of the stuff i wanted to write.

I never used to be able to write direct onto a computer, although i've always been able to write straight onto a typewriter. But not long before i left Melbourne, i picked up a second hand, rather beaten up old notebook computer and i found i could write really easily directly onto that. I don't know why it was, maybe because i could move it around and put it in a position where i felt comfortable enough to write, or, more likely, it was because it hadn't got a great big, ugly and radioactive television-like screen staring at me while i write and also the keyboards on big computers are really horrible. But it saved so much work and it made me really reluctant to do it any other way - knowing i could be doing it so much more easily. Oh well, i haven't got it...

I was waiting for the new moon. Partly because the person i had to meet up with wouldn't be back in Mexico city much before then, and partly because i wanted to wait for the new moon and go to Mexico at that time.

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*** The 27th - Puerto Escondido to Mexico ***

At last it came round and i caught the bus over the night of the new moon. The bus went all the way back to Pochutla, which was a bit of a drag, as i'd thought i was getting closer by going to Puerto Escondido. But never mind, at least i was on the move.

Mexico first thing in the morning was fairly cool, but not as cold as it had been two months ago, on that morning of the new moon before last when i'd arrived there the first time. Then, i'd arrived at the airport and this time i ended up there too for some reason. The bus station that i arrived at wasn't one of the main ones, but a small one, about halfway between the airport and TAPO, the main bus station on that side of town. I walked off to find the nearest metro station, which was Aeropuerto. I didnt realise that this wasn't actually the station that was at the airport, but was down the road a fair distance, and i ended up at the airport which was a much longer walk. The metro station at the passenger area of the airport's called "Terminal Aerea" (or air terminal)...

Anyway, i had to hang around for a while until it was late enough to phone people without waking them up and i wandered around the airport a bit. It was weird in a way, being back here, unintentionally on another new moon morning. Or at least i thought it was at the time. It was a bit like a flashback.

I eventually got to speak to the person who'd said i'd have somewhere to stay in Mexico, but there were problems. In a few days it would probably be ok, but not right now. Shit! I really didn't need any more aimless wandering and hanging around.

I'd travelled forty thousand kilometres in the last six months and half of that had been on buses, trains and ferries. Twenty thousand kilometres is what i normally travel in one year within Australia - up and down the east coast. Twenty thousand in six months was pretty heavy going for me. I was sick of it and i was sick of being homeless. I was sick of writing this shit in exercise books - i wanted to sit down and write it on a computer and get it organized. I had work to do on the computer net and i wasn't doing it. I had writing to do and i wasn't doing it. In fact, i wasn't doing anything that i really wanted to be doing. I'd had enough!

I got the metro into the centre of town and began to look for travel agents. I needed to suss out tickets out of here somehow anyway, but it was also beginning to occur to me to just jump on a plane and go to London. The more i thought about it, the more i felt like doing it, despite the fact that it was incredibly expensive to buy air tickets in this country. The best price i managed to find was nine hundred U.S. dollars, for a trip that's half the distance of the flight from Malaysia to here, which only cost six hundred. However, in the end i just thought fuck it! I'm going!

It was a real drag having to pay out so much for an air ticket, but then i thought i normally manage to get good deals and i've done a lot of cheap flying, so once won't be so bad. Anyway, when it's time to go, it's time to go... I booked onto a flight for the next day. Direct to London, so i wouldn't have to suffer the bullshit of the gringo government's stupid power games.

*-*-*

*** The 29th - Mexico City to London ***

The next day i went out and bought a litre of the cheapest tequila i could find and then took my bags out to the airport, so i didn't have to cart them around the rest of the day, or take them on the metro in the aternoon, when it would have been more crowded.

Then i went to the vegie restaurant Yug which is in the expensive and wanky Zona Rosa. I thought i'd go mental and spend a bit of money on an expensive veggie meal just for the novelty of it. It cost twenty seven pesos and i basically had refried beans, rice, a little bit of salad and some veggie soup - what would cost about six of seven pesos in the sort of places i normally eat! Oh well, i just wasted nine hundred dollars on a flight!

I spent me last sixty five pesos on a couple of books about Chiapas and went to the airport.

When i checked in, they told me i had to pay departure tax - either seventy five pesos or twelve yankee dollars. Fuck, the travel agent could have told me! And they don't accept travellers cheques. However, after a fair bit of fucking around, i changed a fifty dollar cheque for forty nine dollars in cash and paid with that. It was better than ending up with a pocket full of pesos, which i'd have to change into pounds.

I was really pissed off because there was no form of immigration control whatsoever. After all that fucking around and the shit it caused me getting my fucking visa extended!!!

In the departure lounge, i saw a woman who i was sure was someone i knew from Taxco - a friend of Gretchen's. It was her voice that attracted my attention first. but i wasn't really sure and i was hesitant about going up to her and asking her. I'm always so conscious of how many fuckwit men use that line as a pickup attempt: "Hello, haven't i seen you somewhere before???" and it makes it hard for me to approach a woman in that situation.

Anyway, then i saw someone else i knew - but i was sure this time. It was Monique, who i'd met at Zipolite and who'd travelled with us to San Cristobal. She was talking to two other people who'd also been at Zipolite and were on the same bus to San Cristobal. She'd just bumped into them by chance there too!

Then the woman i thought i knew from Taxco recognized me and waved. Her name's Annabel and she was who i thought she was. This is beginning to get weird! I went over to talk to her and spotted someone else who'd been at Zipolite, the big austrian fuckwit with the fully tattooed back, who thinks he's too cool for the normal tourist scum!

Well, it's new moon, but still, it's pretty amazing that all these people i know are getting on the same plane as me! Dominique and Annabel have both met other people they know too - it's obviously one of those major cosmic convergences! It feels like a really good sign...

*-*-*

My overall feelings about Mexico, didn't really come clear till after i left. That country affected me very strongly, emotionally and spiritually, in ways that i really find it impossible to put a finger on. One day, maybe it will all make sense, but right now, it's just an unclear, but powerful emotional feeling.

In some ways i really loved Mexico. And in some ways, or maybe at some times, i really hated it. I really liked Chiapas, in particular. In fact, this was the only part of Mexico that i could say i did really like. Mexico city was alright, but to me it was so much like London, it didn't really even count. I don't like big, polluted cities much anyway. I don't like London for that reason and i didn't like Mexico for that reason. But San Cristobal was another story altogether. I could probably live quite happily there - for a while, at least - if it wasn't so fucking cold!

The biggest problem i had in Mexico was that i never found anywhere where i was really comfortable. I enjoyed being in San Cristobal, but i just can't handle cold any more. I enjoyed the climate at the coast, but i was bored by the foreigners and the dull tourist lifestyle. I never found anywhere that combined the hot and humid climate of the coast with the cultural and political aspects of San Cristobal. I'm sure such a place must exist - probably not actually on the coast, but in the low lying areas of Chiapas - but i don't know where it is. One day maybe, i'll find it. Then, i think, i might find it much harder to leave Mexico!

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