We drove hard that day, (as if we felt some silent, imaginary worry that Alex was pursuing) and by night reached the top of the central mountain range and one of the most beautiful cities I’ve ever seen, San Cristóbal de las Casas. We had a fine ‘European’ dinner and took four rooms at a nearby inn. The catholic priest who founded the cathedral and city in 1528, Bartolomé de las Casas, wrote in beautiful Latin a long and comprehensive history, (the first) condemning the cruel Spanish treatment of the natives.
When we woke up and walked about town the next morning, we found it to be a European town, filled with cafes and breakfast spots and hundreds of expatriate Europeans, culture and art and perfect weather, at a tropical latitude but at such an elevation it was temperate year-round, the mountains making for a beautiful panorama all around us, a New York city in climate and culture in the middle of nowhere, an unexpected find, a gem. The German girl who served me an espresso that morning in a bistro-like, street-side café proved my point. She spoke Spanish, English (and I knew from her accent) German to perfection. She might even have spoken French. I should have tested that. The coffee was delicious.
San Cristobal de las Casas
Later that morning we drove up into the mountains to a native village, poor in every way. Someone in town had recommended we take this detour as worth our while. Old women were sitting on blankets in the dirt in front of a decayed cathedral trying to sell trinkets to the few tourists who stopped by. The prices for these hand-made items were pennies. I was standing next to Joel as he was trying to barter down some old, toothless woman by saying several times ‘mal trabata’. Well, my Spanish wasn’t so poor that I didn’t know that it meant ‘badly worked’.
This was a scene too ludicrous to ignore. I lost it on him. First, I told him to give her the ten cents for what probably took her a day to weave. Then I said: “where’s your humanity for these starving people?” I took the item myself, a little piece of brightly woven fabric and insisted she take a silver coin for it. That might have been five or ten times the price she was asking. She repaid me with a smile as I scowled at Joel, seriously wondering whether he was some penny-pincher, or hated the natives or was demented in some way that blocked all empathy or any sense of the pains of human life or labor.
Poor Indians
I wondered why Joel had never helped or Sanita in her distress before we arrived. He certainly had the money to get her out of her predicament and fly her home, or at least contact her parents somehow, because now he showed an obvious interest in becoming her boyfriend. I thought it might be stinginess on his part, or a fear of Alex.
I guessed the first, as on this week-long trip Louie or I paid all the tabs, for meals and motels while he just smiled, like a kid on a trip with his parents, never once proffering his wallet. But he could have flown her back to Seattle weeks earlier, saved her and won her heart. He lost that chance and on this tour. He didn’t get another.
Sanita had the camera and took pictures and now that our relationship bloomed, my journal is infinitely enriched by them, most taken by her or at her request. I suppose I was so taken up with the written word in my journals that the idea of photo enhancements never occurred to me. But with these pages I realized my mistake. They enhance the narrative immensely. I deeply regret I have no real pictures of Dale or Laurel, or Diane or Maggie to gaze upon, or lovely Vicky, or Bones or Jim for that matter, not only for my readers, but myself. I've done my best with likenesses, most of them close, after hours of searching the web. It’s a camera click that brings it all back to life. Language pales in comparison, as far as faces go in bringing back memories.
On the third day we drove from the cool mountains to tropical forests, to the Yucatan, Palenque to be exact, and the site of a large Mayan temple in the middle of hundreds of miles of forest, a strange, unsettling sight and site, if you think, like I did, that perhaps a few large cities in the U.S. will look like this in two hundred years. After that we drove to the Caribbean coast and made our way up to Veracruz for a night and morning swim. The beach there was so shallow you had to wade out almost a quarter mile to be waist-deep in water.
Palenque
Because of the extremely low value of the peso at this time, we had money to burn, and we did, travelling like royalty, eating and sleeping in the best accommodations. Each night we rented four rooms, except the last in Mexico City, New Year’s Eve. We’d put Joel on a bus that afternoon back to Salina Cruz.
