Mexico and the Zapatistas- like camp, but more militant.

As it turns out, there is one and only one way to travel to Mexico from Xela – chicken bus. After quite a long night of Halloween and 45 minutes of sleep, we headed for the bus station at 5am. We lucked out by finding a cab for 6 of us kids on my side of town…it just happened to be the smallest car you could imagine. Regardless, we finally made it to the bus and I slept for what seemed like days- only to wake up and find that we were still in Huehuetenango, with hours and hours left to go. I also woke because I heard some man yelling. It happened to be some man, drunk at 9:30 in the morning, yelling at us for being Americans. He started by telling Antonette that “she started racism in California” and then rambling on in somewhat broken English through the back door of the bus Ben ended up closing door to shut him out, but he ended up getting on and yelling at us in our faces. His hate for Americans was very evident for the rest of his rampage, and the conversation including the following comments: I’ve been following you….following you around the world, you shut the door on me like you shut the door on the world, I know you and you don’t even know yourselves, You why you are trash….because you’re a piece of shhh…trash. We finally got the driver to kick him off the bus, and he finally agreed because he was out of beer (expressed by smashing the can under his shoe outside the bus and then taking a leak for all of us to see). As our bus started out after 2 hours in Huehue, we met our second drunk man of the day- this time only a 20 year old kid reeeeeeeking of alcohol and sitting next to Antonette and Lauren. He immediately passed out on Ant’s shoulder…and along the whole bumpy ride slid down almost fully to the aisle and kept banging his cheek on the corner of the metal seat across the aisle. He eventually woke up and realized he missed his stop and got off. After 12 hours, we arrived in San Cristobal in Chiapis, Mexico- somewhat angry and starving since our ETA was 11:00am, not 5pm. We met our guides for the week at a restaurant in town (Peter Brown and Susan. NOTE: Peter Brown decided to translate his whole name into Spanish- so he called himself Pedro Café…on his own will). After a quick meal that was our breakfast, lunch, and dinner, we headed to camp about an hour away with our gross driver for the week, whom we named Jabba the Hood.

We arrived at our home for the week dead tired- in a place that I can only describe as the Twilight Zone. The group stayed with the Zapatistas, a guerilla movement completely against the Mexican government. In case you don’t know, the Zapatistas all wear full black ski masks to cover their entire head only with a hole for their eyes…”We cover our faces so we can be seen, and we cover our mouths so we can be heard.” Arriving in the pitch black and seeing these masked people carrying huge rifles was terrifying, but I was too tired to be more concerned. After checking in and having a short meeting, we were shown our conditions for the following week. First, we saw the LODGE- a gigantic wood building with a dirt floor to sleep on. The kitchen was next, and Peter and Susan had bought food for us to cook the whole week. The food selection included a crate of avocados, a crate of tomatoes, a bag of onions and garlic, rice, pasta, and eggs. We also had three bags of “chips”…which actually were so stale they were soft and had the worst taste ever. The bathrooms were a mile away, so we usually just went outside. The weather was awful- misty and rainy every day, muddy and freezing cold. We failed to see people around the “caracol” or camp, so it actually felt like we were in the twilight zone. The only people we ever saw were the two guards at the gate as we left and returned. Other than that, the whole camp was full of murals on every building- and let me tell you, those Zapatistas are some great artists.

The first day, Nov. 2nd, we spent in the cemetery for day of the dead. It was a pretty interesting ceremony, but we stuck out like sore thumbs, so we couldn’t stay without getting stared out. We lit candles in the cemetery and had day of the dead bread, and learned a little more about the ceremony. Each day we visited different Zapatista camps to see their health clinics and talk to people who ran them. For 5 days straight we did this: although the first one or two visits were interesting, the following 3 days were repetitive and somewhat boring. The coolest day was passing a sinkhole in the road- which was actually just a road that had almost fully collapsed due to the landslides. We had to carefully walk across the path and get back into the car on the other side. We passed the nights in the kitchen- cooking feasts of guacamole and any combination of foods listed above. We also played a lot of euchre and eventually got really sick of our weird guides. Every day they became more annoying…and usually didn’t listen to our suggestions of what we wanted to do. Luckily, after 5 days without showers and wearing the same muddy/wet clothing, we headed back to San Cristobal for some civilized life for a day. We spent the day going to a Natural Medicine Museum and then we had the rest of the day to ourselves. Six of us went to get sushi for lunch- which was delicious and super cheap. HOWEVER, the delicious lunch was followed almost instantaneously by an MSG high (thanks to Amy who knew the feeling- she was in China for 6 weeks before)- which was one of the weirdest feelings I’ve ever had. We felt so loopy that we had to walk around the market before buying anything for about an hour. We finally came to our senses and enjoyed the rest of the day. Either way- we finally got rid of Pedro Café and Susan…and headed back to the homeland… for a whole 24 hours!