Saturday 13 June, 2009
Things didn't start out quite so dire. A two day trek in the Sierra Norte, the lush green mountain range north of Oaxaca City, sounded like a great way to see some out-of-the-way Zapotec Indian villages and get some mountain air. My companion and I managed to con two Dutch girls and an Italian into joining us, promising them fun times and clean lungs, something a little different. Perhaps alarm bells should have started ringing when the Dutch girls said that they had never hiked before. Ever. Not even a little bit.
The first morning dawned bright and clear and by some miracle of the gods the five of us squeezed into a taxi and arrived at the bus terminal on time. We crowded into a teeny cramped minibus and off we went. It was 8am, Oaxaca was beginning to stir for the day, and it was not yet hot. Some mercenary had locked the gates of the terminal and was demanding that the bus driver pay him twelve pesos to be let out. The driver responded with a stream of imaginative invective, the only publishable word of which was "cabrón", and the gates were opened without trouble or payment.
In fits and starts over two hours we jerked our way up to the village of Cuajimoloyas, our starting point for the trek and entry to the Pueblos Mancomunados. Seven of these eight remote Zapotec villages have for centuries banded together to pool the natural resources of their 290 square kilometre territory, which includes vast oak and pine forests, and they share all profits. They also run an ecotourism program that offers accommodations to travellers as well as walking, horseback riding and mountain biking along over one hundred kilometres of tracks and trails, part of which we were going to hike over the next two days.
We check in to the Tourist Information Office in Cuajimoloyas, one of the higher villages, which sits at about 3000 metres. Starting here means the trail will be mostly downhill, something that we all agreed was very acceptable. We are supposed to leave at 10am, and watch two other groups leave for the same trek. We wait. And we wait. Occasionally a truck bringing supplies to the villages trundles up the gravel main street, and a donkey brays. We see some chickens scratching in the dirt. The village is mostly a collection of shacks and partially-built brick buildings with supporting rods protruding from the roof, awaiting the funds to add second or third stories. There is a definite bite in the air, which will make the walking - if we ever get going - very pleasant. Finally, after over an hour, our picnic lunch arrives along with our guide, Margarita, and off we go.
The Pueblos Mancomunados are linked both by road and mountain trail, but for the first hour or so we find ourselves trotting down a pine-scented road through the forest. It should be gorgeous and rural, the air full of twittering birds, but instead this part of the forest has been dedicated to logging. The buzz and whine of a chainsaw is our soundtrack. Not quite the picturesque forest hike I had imagined. Although there are a few cows sitting around, munching on grass. "This isn't too bad," Veronique says. "I don't mind this at all!" Don't speak too soon, sister.
Margarita is shy and doesn't say much but the woman can hike in rubber sandals, is extremely knowledgeable about local flora and fauna and periodically points out different flowers and herbs, lets us smell them, and lists their medicinal uses. Being lazy, I wrote nothing down and have no examples to offer. Ooops. Suffice it to say they were pretty.
We suddenly diverge from the road and (thankfully) away from the whir of chainsaws and up a steep unmarked forest track. Now this is more like it... We have reached the halfway handover point. Our second guide, Manuel, is from Latuvi village, where we will be sleeping that night, and has arrived to take us the rest of the way. Oaxaca state is one of Mexico's poorest, and has the highest concentration of indigenous people in the whole country, being around twenty-five percent of the population, mostly of Zapotec and Mixtec Indian descent. For many of them, Spanish is a second language. It is a testament to the poverty of the area that we five are only paying twenty (Australian) dollars total for the day's guides, half to Margarita and half to Manuel. This is considered a fair daily wage for four or five hours' hiking for each of them, and in the high season they take groups several times a week.
Typically, as we sit for the first time in three hours to have lunch, it begins to rain. We have, of course, chosen to trek in one of Mexico's wettest areas in its wettest month. I expected this and whip out my $5 Kathmandu poncho that has saved me on more than one wet miserable hike - poncho, you have officially paid for yourself! Susie has a rain jacket and the others and our guide have nothing. My sandwich gets soggy so I wolf it down and we take off, not even fully getting to appreciate the valley lookout as the fog rolls in. This is all part of the fun!
Ten minutes later, the rain is pounding down so heavily that we can barely speak to one another, and the clay path has become treacherously slippery. Our shoes squelch with water and the others are soaked through to the skin. Chips of ice ricochet off our heads. My hands are wet and painfully cold and my pants are drenched and heavy with water. Susie's leather boots are full of mud and we can barely see. Not fun.
The rain finally stops as we settle into a small clearing and take advantage of a patch of sun. The boys begin wringing out their shirts as we all sit on a log in a row like lizards, basking in the warmth. Manuel is very chatty and fills us in on the history of the villages and the cooperative. He is Latuvi-born and raised. He shows us plants used for healing burns and a delicious mint-like herb that is brewed as a restorative, and collects trash left along the track by less ecologically-minded hikers. We are all trotting along and coming alive, when, an hour or so later, it begins to pour. Again. This is not the misty rain of earlier but rather golfball-sized drops.
No longer impressed and no longer laughing, we make a run for a log house two hundred metres away. We duck under an awning and watch the rain thunder down. We are, it appears, at a trout farm-cum-restaurant-cum-ge
We follow her into a small brick room, one corner of which is dominated by a huge open brick oven. We huddle up against it ecstatically, squabbling for the warmest spots. Our host has bundled her baby up on her back and serves us the sweetest most delectably minty tea in all the world. Manuel had showed us where the plant grows further up in the forest. I have three bowls of tea and we chomp on some fire-browned tortillas to get our strength up for the final slog. Total cost? 60 cents each. We overpay.
We're faced with the final hour or so of our first day's trek and getting up is hard. "We can go the long way or the short way," Manuel offers, and we choose the shortcut. This involves scrambling up a track off the main road and trying not to slip in the mud as we scale the hillside. "That woman down there has five children and this is how they walk to school in Latuvi!" Manuel says cheerfully. It's an hour and a half each way. We stumble uphill more and more slowly... and then the first corrugated iron shack of Latuvi village comes into sight. Up and up and up the hill we go for another half an hour and finally collapse at the peak, where our cabañas are located.
Susie has enormous blisters, Veronique's knee is painfully swollen, and the boys are drenched from the rain. But we're finally here. Our cabañas have hammocks, and a terrace with a spectacular view of the valley. It is unbelieveably green and lush and the sun has already set behind the hill, casting everything in a dusky light. We yank off our shoes and sprawl on the patio, squealing like little girls when we see fat, shiny, brown-backed horned beetles scurring towards us. We realise that if they overbalance and tip onto their backs they can't right themselves and just lay there, feebly waving their legs in the air. This is more entertaining than it should be.
After an incredible hot shower, beetles and all, we have a quick and uninspiring dinner of quesadillas before crashing. Our rooms have fireplaces and we have paid extra for wood. The fireplaces are small and recessed into the wall and the trick is to build a fire far out enough that it warms the room without all the heat disappearing up the chimney, but without the flaming logs falling out onto the floor and incinerating us all. We succeed and fall fast asleep.
Day Two began early, at 6am mountain time. (The Sierra Norte does not recognize daylight savings which created much confusion for us when we needed to work out whether our 1pm bus back was on mountain time or Oaxaca time... a ridiculously too-difficult thing). Thanks to the low expectations created by dinner, our Mexican scrambled eggs and fruit salad breakfast was amazing and appropriately energy-giving for the day ahead.
The first hour or two of the morning is perfect trekking weather - along a cool, damp forest path past small fields of crops and a running stream. We have descended almost one thousand metres and the forest here is wetter and more tropical than the previous day's. Our guide is the eighteen year old son of our minty tea host, and brother of Mexico's cutest baby. We are walking north from Latuvi to a village called San Juan de Lachatao, along a canyon trail that follows a pre-Hispanic path that once connected the central valleys of Oaxaca with the Gulf of Mexico. The walking is mostly flat, punctuated by water breaks by the stream, and I suspect it is this which lulls us into a false sense of security.
Our guides tell us that we are only an hour or so from the end and it will be a gentle uphill climb. Lies. The first part is gorgeous, though, so we don't really notice the ascent. We pass along what looks like a fairy trail bedecked with hanging mosses and bromeliads. However, then comes over an hour of hard upwards slog along a red dirt trail with little to no protection from the sun, which is fierce.
It is with significant gratitude that we stumble into a cool underground bar at Lachatao village and beg for cold Coronas. We have forty-five minutes until the one and only daily bus leaves - plenty of time. Except for one thing. We're not actually in Lachatao village. and the colectivo that is supposed to take us there in time for the bus isn't running due to roadworks, which our guides didn't know, not being from this village. And just when we were putting our feet up...
We gulp down our beers and set off along a "shortcut" that should take half an hour at most. I begin to have reservations when we plunge off the road onto a narrow track barely wide enough for a person to pass. We walk along, our arms and legs getting scratched up by espina and other spikes and bristles. This Mexican scrub is hostile. After an hour or so of this my reservation is upgraded to alarm when our guide confesses that he's never taken this path and isn't even sure that it leads to the right place. Uh oh. We're all getting sunburnt and poor Veronique is struggling, her knee swollen and painful. Susie has changed into thongs, her blisters toe-sized and bleeding. We have long ago missed the bus and haven't really thought ahead to how we're going to get home; we don't care.
Thankfully, the wombat trail finally widens out and leads us down onto the highway. We stagger into San Juan de Lachatao like refugees and make for the one shop within sight. The doors are locked and three local women are sitting out front gossiping; I can't even imagine what they thought as we loomed towards them. However, they are nothing if not businesswomen - the doors are opened, we are plied with cool drinks, and then we collapse on the footpath outside (blissfully in the shade) to wait for some kind of transport to come by.
A green truck not unlike a paddy wagon rattles up and I beg the driver to take us to Oaxaca. It is about two hours away, and he normally only services the mountain area. However, he is enterprising. "280 pesos for all of you," he declares. This comes to $4 each. Deal. We leap into the back, despite our guides' protesting for us to take the comfortable interior seats, since this is part of the fun. There are two narrow metal benches running along each side and we pile in. It's all fun and games as we rumble down the dirt road, only to stop at the nearest corner for an interminably long time. In the back our leg room is made exponentially less as we are joined by several sacks of grain, a duffle bag, and a sack containing a live trussed turkey. We name him Turkey Juan. Things are going well - we are enjoying the ride, the breeze in our hair, and the mountain view... right up until poor Turkey Juan loses his nerve and urinates into his bag. It leaks out onto the floor and creeps towards our bags.
A few minutes later we pull into an entertainment quarter with locked gates. We drive in to find THREE swimming pools, hammocks, swing sets and a slide that actually hangs over a pool. Where was THIS when we needed it... and why is nobody here? We have to wait for our driver to feed someone's fish, and we slip into hammocks to wait. The mountain range rises around us and it is so quiet that all we can hear is birdsong. No logging. No traffic.
After two hours on winding mountain roads, overtaking logging trucks on blind corners, ascending almost a kilometre and getting as cold as we were hot before, we finally arrive on the outskirts of Oaxaca. And the trip ends as it began - with a mercenary demand for more money as the driver who promised to drive us to the city leaves us on the side of the road, wanting an exorbitant 210 pesos more to take us the final four kilometres. Fuck that, we're getting cabs.
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