better than TV

At most hotels in Mexico, the front desk hands over a TV remote control along with the room key. Television is very important here, and for many, that remote is probably as important as the room access. And the main genre is the telenovela. Soap operas with no subtlety and loads of camp, the music crescendos with every conflict, hyper-feminine and  deeply masculine voices mirror cartoon characters, and the wicked always get their comeuppance. I haven't turned on a set for ages, but things here have been entertaining nonetheless.
the drama within
In the empty beach town of Puerto Arista, I gave up on finding any non-seafood and tore into my last Tasty Bite. For the uninitiated, Tasty Bites are spicy MRE Indian dishes so yummy you don't even need to heat them up. They're excellent for car camping but especially useful as emergency travel sustenance for vegetarians. I'd been craving leafy vegetables for two weeks, and the lukewarm saag paneer (spinach with cubes of cheese) made me feel all warm and happy. Until it didn't.
A half hour after eating, I realized that my heart was going turbo on the autobahn. I laid down and tried to relax, but this all-important organ refused to slow down. After a while I remembered the stomach medication I'd taken earlier in the day, and started googling possible adverse reactions. The doctor had told me not to drink alcohol, and harrumphed that I needn't deny myself anything else. But guess what? Cheese happens to be a mammoth no-no with these cute red pills. For hours, my pulse ran a double marathon. Huge bombs of thunder jolted me awake in the early morning, and my chest continued to thump away like a dribbled basketball.
drama in other people's living rooms
Hanging out with exotic foreigners has social cachet in small let's-sit-and-stare-from-the-sidewalk towns. Still, I was surprised when a 20-something bike taxi driver I'd met earlier showed up at my hotel after dinner. He'd brought his wife, and they invited me to their house for coffee.
They pedaled me a few blocks away and I was ushered into large low room marked off with a red curtain. Seated on plastic chairs, the woman's family watched a blaring telenovela episode set at the beach. The actresses played with tumbling hair and somehow kept their plunging necklines from misaligning, while the men played goofy cuties or sexed-up lotharios. Everyone greeted me warmly, and I shook hands with the elders. Then my hosts and the rest of the family tuned back in for the bonfire and bikinis. I tried to engage by helping a teenager with his English homework, but he became too embarrassed, his nervous laughter escalating into manic high pitched squeals. He eventually corked it and stood one foot away from the television screen, staring intently and looking soothed. I fielded family status questions every so often, but mostly I just watched them watch TV.
drama at home
Back at my hotel, the night staff was now on duty. The youngish man sat on the end of a couch in front of the loud lobby TV, canoodling with his girlfriend. He looked up just long enough to verify that I posed no threat, then put his lips back in business. Determined to find a puff of unsecured wi-fi, I roamed around the cement hotel courtyard, my laptop a divining rod. Passing the lobby again, I noticed another woman sitting beside the couple. Moments later, a shriek: "WHAT ARE YOU DOING WITH MY HUSBAND?" It wasn't a cliffhanger in their cheesy telenovela, but a real live confrontation. A long silence hung before a woman sashayed past me out the back door. Screams and recriminations began.
With drama like this, who needs cable?

cheese and things

Tapijulapa Cascades

Random things I've seen in the last few days:

• a 20-something hotel desk clerk carving a pietà out of pink soap
• bats buzzing near my head in a dank cave of stalactites
• a shower head covered with mosquitoes
• chickens scratching in the dirt, surrounded by a dozen frenzied chicks
• a dreamy waterfall with no one swimming in it but me
• dozens of men brazenly riding a rusted-out freight train
• a very loud evangelist ministering to the passengers of an intercity bus
• the intersection of two waterways, one muddy brown and the other a deep blue-green
• a billboard for a political candidate whose first name is Darling
• female high school students wearing Pepto Bismal pink uniforms
• a young boy following me on his bike so he could talk to me as I walked to the bus
• pickup trucks full of cops driving around and looking bored but sociable
• a kitschy altar to Frida Kahlo in a pizzeria
• an entire museum dedicated to marimbas
• a store called "Quesos & Cosas"

life with public transit

Finally at Yaxchilan

Some days I space out over dinner and can't remember where I am or what the hell I did all day. Here's an example from a few days ago:

Reforma Agraria to highway junction (5 minutes)
From the village of Reforma Agraria, a rickety lodge truck drops us back on the border highway. I stand up in the back next to the luggage, watching the ground through holes  in the wooden floorboards. The van we're trying to catch passes 15 minutes earlier than usual, but our driver can't get the horn to work and signal for it to stop. We sit down in a cement shelter with a piece of lumber propped up as a makeshift bench, and notice a small cemetery behind us. Waiting across the street is a weathered man wearing tall rubber boots and holding a machete, and we exchange pleasantries. Your van just went past, he says, why didn't you stop it?

Highway junction to Pico de Oro (40 minutes)
We leave a piece of luggage by the side of the highway to make sure we get the attention of the next colectivo, which also comes by early. We're the only passengers, and after a while the driver tries to persuade us to head back the other direction. I worry that we're going south instead of north, but then realize that he just doesn't want to go to the end of his route. This section of road is paved now, but sports huge rain-filled potholes and the occasional landslide chipping away at the asphalt.

Pico de Oro to Benemerito Las Americas (30 minutes)
A few taxi drivers are playing cards under a tree, and look surprised to see foreign travelers. We arrange a private taxi to Benemerito Las Americas. An older man in a cowboy hat is sitting by the road the outskirts of town, and hails the taxi to share the ride. He falls asleep next to me in the back seat almost immediately. The driver tells the Teen that drug violence along the border has decreased in the past year or so, though he alludes to a recent local "massacre."

Benemerito Las Americas to Crucero Corozal (1 hour)
We switch to another waiting van, and the driver putters around town picking up his lunch before he finally leaves this dusty desperado-style town. A mile out, the driver stops again and idles in the middle of highway, making a phone call. Another van finally comes up behind and unloads more passengers for us. At the turnoff for Yaxchilan, a military checkpoint makes our whole carload get out for a bag check. We start negotiating with a taxi driver and didn't bother showing the soldiers anything.

Crucero Corozal to Frontera Corozal (15 minutes)
Whizzing down a road surrounded by high grass, our taxi stops to pick up a man standing by the side of the road. No houses or buildings are in sight. The driver continues along, dodging dogs trotting along the pavement.

Embarcadero into town (30 minutes)
On a shadeless street, I walk a mile round-trip to buy a tacky new hat, replacing the practically new one I lost somewhere earlier that day. Sweat pools on my knees, making puddles erupt though my pants. As I try on baseball caps, the vendor woman tries to convince me to buy a pink straw boater that looks like a giant Easter egg. It's layered with cobwebs - she must have been trying to get rid of this one for a while.

Lancha (long motorboat) to Yaxchilan ruins (40 minutes)
These boats now have thatched roofs, so you don't even need to wear a hat. The Teen takes a nap on the seats, jolting up when I spot a ceiba canopy with a half dozen howler monkeys.

Walk through Yaxchilan (1 hour)
We hear the intermittent rumble of howler monkeys, but a high tree comes alive with a crew of noisy spider monkeys. A cloud of mosquitoes start snacking on the Teen. She retreats back to the boat.

Lancha back to Frontera Corozal (40 minutes)
The breeze is the closest we've come to air conditioning all day. We retreat to our room and lie down for a bit under the ceiling fan.

Time for dinner again.

death by soy

My Way or the Highway

After witnessing a mere two specimens walking the streets of DF in face masks, the whole flu thing seems like a relic. At least until you notice the free hand sanitizer sitting on every front desk and building entrance, and oversize street posters with step-by-step instructions on how to wash your hands.

And yes, I did spot a few bike lanes here and there, as well as a decent-looking but unused bike parking area in the Auditorio metro station. If I have time when I pass through again in a month, I'm thinking about tracking down a bike at one of the free bike stations and seeing how many blocks I can go before I'm Frogger roadkill.

In San Cristobal de Las Casas, a lunch special at a popular traveler's joint turned out to include a bonus case of food poisoning, cramping me into a fetal position for two feverish days of matted hair and lethal gases. If I only I could do something more drastic than yanking them from the book. Like keeping them in, and shaming them with their own special warning box: "Colon Blow for Beginners." 

After becoming ambulatory again, the next day I had the odd experiences of defending myself from vicious attack geese, dodging starstruck young women as they tried to mob a hunky telenovela actor shooting a scene downtown, and having a 12-year-old show me hotel rooms (his afterschool job).
Tomorrow we're continuing south for a few days along the border highway next to Guatemala. The Teen has her I-device all charged up, and we're ready to explore the Lacandon Jungle.

from the zócalo to zinacantán

Clean Hands

Ladies and gentlemen! Dust off that Spanish dictionary and charge up your currency converters! I'm on the road again in Latin America, this time to update the Chiapas and Tabasco chapter of Lonely Planet's Mexico guidebook.

Against the backdrop of a well-publicized flu pandemic, intermittent feudal drug war shootouts and the pressure of entertaining my teenage traveling companion, your intrepid scribe will be oohing and ahhing over some of the Mexico's best green places and giving a shout out to all the compas down south.
First stop: a few days of leisure in bustling Mexico City. Stay tuned for the answers to these questions and more:

• Are face masks still a vogue accessory?
• Does Caracas make DF feel like the sweet small town where everyone calls you honey?
• Is the local government really building miles of new bike lanes?

high sierra happiness

Alpine Meadow

I recently finished my first sola backpacking trip, a six day test-drive of the John Muir Trail. But until midway, when I jettisoned an excess five pounds of trail mix and dehydrated vegetarian protein, it was truly a hip-busting trial.

In times of high altitude semi-delirium, I kept my feet in motion by humming Blue Oyster Cult's Don't Fear the Reaper and the theme song from the Flintstones. Over and over and over again. I plastered the welts under my waist belt with chunks of moleskin and did my best to look jaunty when I crossed paths with fellow hikers. And I swore not to remember just the phenomenal alpine scenery, but also the times when I wanted to shirk my pack and slink away.

As a concept, pushing your boundaries sounds so inspirational and admirable, though so completely vague. Carting a food-overloaded backpack over 10,000-foot mountains? That's much more concrete. But it was so damn beautiful, with tubby marmots whistling at you on the trail, baby deer grazing in meadows and pure blue lakes reflecting snowy granite peaks. Yeah, I'll be back next summer.

attack of the testy seagulls

Bird Blockade

Alfred Hitchcock must have spent time on Anacapa while researching for The Birds. A chain of three almost-connected scrubby islands just off the coast north of Los Angeles, I'd been warned that Anacapa's resident seagulls weren't exactly kiss-kiss sociable. A friend had even recommended that I bring a helmet, but for some reason I hadn't paid heed. Can't countenance the idea of vicious attack birds? Imagine the reaction you'd get strolling through a parents' meeting at a nursery school wearing a sign that reads "child molester."
During nesting season, fuzzy gray gull babies plod the treeless ground like the wide-eyed infants they are, while screeching adults menace any and all humans (and try to eat each other's offspring). A quarter mile exploratory walk from my campsite evolved into a shooter game where I was the bonus target. Eerily surrounded and outnumbered by beach-variety seagulls, I'd hear a screech of avian rage and then the dreaded flapping sound. Hovering just overhead, a bloodthirsty beak would unleash a high pitched warrior cry, lunging at my ears. The really angry ones unloaded copious barrages of liquid bird poop, which thankfully missed me as I ran zigzagging back to the tent.
Now that you've ripped Anacapa off your must-see list, note that there is a plus side to this island masochism: kayaking. Anacapa's a kayaking dreamland, with cathedral caves to explore and iconic arches to duck through. Massive kelp stalks dozens of feet long trail along the water's surface, tempering the waves. Beefy male sea lions guard caves where their harems sleep, but often a lone sea lion will pop up near your kayak, with big button eyes that will make you forget all about those nasty winged things waiting to menace you on shore.
The 6-hour trip from San Francisco to Los Angeles along the I-5 highway can be a straight-shot snoozer, with ho-hum scenery and legions of pokey 18-wheelers blocking the lanes. If you want to learn something interesting during the drive, check out the Invisible-5 audio series. A free downloadable driving tour of the communities near the highway, it's an oral history of some of the region's environmental justice struggles, and an excellent way to get a sense of the geography flying by.