Water-logged Tabasco

You can't talk about Tabasco without talking about water. With its cacophany of rivers, swamps, and blobs of land in between, the geography of this southern Mexican state looks like a toddler's squiggle drawing - though one dotted with scores of PEMEX oil drills. Somehow I always end up researching here during the rainy season, when major flooding becomes routine and the TV news kicks off with footage of families being rescued by boat.

I swung up to the northeast corner of Tabasco today for a quick visit to the Pantanos de Centla Biosphere Reserve, a massive and biodiverse wetland and river delta. Huge iguanas lumbered along the raised wooden boardwalk of the reserve's interpretation center, and chunky islands of waterlilies flew by on the river current. Driving back to the main road, I stopped to marvel at a house completely surrounded by a swampy tide and accessible only via a skinny walkway. One of the residents invited me in, but first I had to embarrass myself by inching across the wobbly planks as his family giggled and encouraged me to walk with confidence. Inside the dirt floor room, a woman cooked over a fire, three 'tween girls thumbed through bilingual dictionaries to do their English homework, and I chatted with the ten inhabitants as we waited for the rain to let up.  

Every so often you rush through a place and wish you'd been able to linger and explore it more deeply. Last night I stayed over in Tapijulapa, a little town that dazzled me a few years ago with its cobblestone alley streets, red tile roofs and never-ending green mountain ridges. It reminded me of some of the towns - mostly Spanish - I've visited in the Pyrenees, except with little kids sidling up to me to ask where I was from. 

Invierno, al fresco

It's been a really difficult year. I usually fantasize about the Sierra summer backpacking season all damn winter, but the months of obsessing just didn't seem healthy this time around. I wanted to get out there NOW, even if I had to risk snow-dusted equipment and the baffled looks of friends.

When things get tough, for me it always feels good to get outside and move around. But the conditions this time of year can be pretty challenging. Like what do you do when the temperature's below freezing and liquid turns to slush in your water bottle? How about when your boots freeze into rigid blocks and you can't get your feet back inside them?

And lo and behold, I discovered that the local Sierra Club organizes snow camping trainings for fools like me. I could meet other deprived backpackers who didn't mind trudging through high altitude snowdrifts in search of their nature fix. Obsession solved.

After the last few years of sola adventures, I was a bit skeptical about joining a big group outing, but the weather was kind and my fellow snowshoers (unsurprisingly, mostly fellows) were a friendly group of outdoorsy folks who were psyched to learn about survival tips like digging snow trenches (below) and the intricacies of Leave No Trace in winter. My comrades-in-cold also delighted in finding animal tracks in the crusty snow, a trait I always find endearing.

Everything was hunky dory during the day, but after sunset I began fondling the brandy flask, popping hand warmers into my gloves and worrying about the circulation in my frigid toes. Sure, the temperature skirted the low 20s and I was socializing in a snowfield, so numb extremities were no surprise. I finally tore myself away from gazing at a ceiling of stars and dove inside my down bag, where I spooned Nalgene bottles filled with hot water. Unfortunately, it was still damn cold. Every hour or so, I tried to calculate how much heat I'd lose by unzippping to don more clothes, which didn't add up to the most restful night.

So next time I'll wear more clothes to bed. And definitely skip the summer hiking boots. But this all-season mountain thing may be a game-changer. We'll see.

Ready for the dead

It's that time in Mexico. Painters are furiously whitewashing the cemeteries, and flower sellers are stockpiling their sweet-smelling inventory - especially sunset orange marigolds - to get everything in place for Day of the Dead.

I'm currently on the road in the Yucatán for Moon Handbooks, breezing along some of the back roads (read: potholes) connecting the major sights here. Daylight seems to be slipping into the trees earlier and earlier every evening, and yesterday I shut down my overachiever tendencies and spent the night in a nondescript transit town instead of pushing on in the twilight.

So I was walking the streets of Tizimín this morning after breakfast, and talked to these guys prepping flowers for sale next week. The floor of their shop was awash in leaves and stems, as was the street outside.

Tonight I'm in the town outside Chichén Itzá, where December 2012 is reaching a fever pitch and everyone's offering tongue-in-cheek "end of the world" packages and the archaeological site is revamping its sound and light show to capitalize on the influx on Maya doomsday revelers.

Four seasons on the JMT

I  didn't start backpacking in the wilderness until I was an adult. My first trip was organized by friends of friends, and we were a group of six women with varying amounts of backcountry experience. I still wince thinking about the slip-on leather shoes that gave me blisters within a half an hour and the hip belt-less pack I carried, but I'll always remember scrambling to a natural rock pool and skinny-dipping in the 90-degree afternoon heat.

I started backpacking by myself a few years ago, mostly because I couldn't find anyone game for longer hikes. Before setting out the first time, I geeked out overpreparing myself. I borrowed library books on wilderness first aid, lurked around online backpacking forums for gear pointers and read up on the most effective bear hazing techniques. My bicycle suffered benign neglect as I walked everywhere for weeks, loading up my backpack to hike home with big grocery shops or ambling miles over San Francisco hills and back to meet friends. I also read Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods and thought: if those jokers can take a stab at the Appalachian Trail, I can plod along a well-marked footpath without requiring a search and rescue team.

So after four summers, I recently finished section-hiking the John Muir Trail. Hurrah! If not for the snow-packed Sierra Nevada passes last summer, it would have been three seasons, but no sense dwelling on that.

After logging all those miles on the trail, one sticky issue keeps swirling through my brain: where are all the girls? I hiked alongside a dozen Boy Scout troops and scores of father-son duos, but encountered only one group of girls (a Girl Scout group from SoCal) during that entire time. Besides the ubiquitous Boy Scouts, most of my fellow hikers were men going solo (beard mandatory), groups of male friends (duuude!) or men with their female partners. And so few women hike alone that almost everyone I met assumed I was there with someone else.

So why aren't more girls trekking the trails? It bugs me that it's such a boys-only (and mostly white) rite of passage. If no one takes them into the wilderness, how are girls going to learn the self-reliance and camaraderie found there, or a deeper respect for the natural world? I'm committed to change those statistics as best I can, and I hope that other folks will do the same. 

If you're wondering why it's worth slogging over mountains with a heavy pack and digging catholes every day, I'm posting a few photos from the southernmost section of the JMT (accessed via Onion Valley) below.

Kearsarge Lakes

Forester Pass facing east

Bighorn Plateau

Guitar Lake basin

Sunrise over ridges west of Whitney

View from Mt Whitney

Venezuela in photos

Blame it on the road, but I've been too exhausted to do much more than hit the pillow every night. Here are a few photos to narrate my trajectory over the last few weeks.

In Caracas, and soon to open as the new resting place for Simón Bolívar. Some have derided it as overpriced ski slope architecture, but it does mirror the upward slope of El Ávila behind it.

Flying in over Gran Roque, the main settlement in Los Roques. Most of the houses on the island are on the righthand side, next to the lagoon.

An astillero, or boat-building yard, along the northwest coast of Isla Margarita. I think it looks like the skeleton of a whale.

A worker preparing tobacco leaves in a cigar factory in Cumaná.

I noticed this store in Puerto Ordaz during my first visit to Venezuela back in 2006. When I asked them about the name, the folks working there had no idea where it came from.

One of my biggest disappointments was just missing the arrival of presidential candidate Henrique Capriles Radonski at the airport in Ciudad Bolívar, but my plane was leaving for Canaima. Hundreds of flag-waving supporters mobbed the airport- a true rockstar moment.

Dusk at Playa Medina, along the northeast coast near Rio Caribe. I hired a taxi to drive me to remote beaches along the coast all day, and this was the last one. We drove back in the dark along a road that had more holes than pavement. Wish I could have stayed here instead. 

Bus . . . or boudoir? One of my many experiences with unusual interior decorating on public conveyances. 

Touchdown in the land of Bolívar

A friend described arrival in Venezuela as akin to getting your sea legs. To me it feels more like running a gauntlet. It's certainly not like flying into any other place I know.

First of all, the embassy travel reports hyperventilate about crime at the Caracas airport. Don't arrive after dark. Don't catch rides with unofficial taxis. Be wary of strangers, who could be drug smugglers (putting things in your bags), or run-of-the-mill thieves (removing things from those bags).  Other warnings include nightmares like "express kidnappings" en route to town and extortion by police authorities.

Because of an artificially pegged currency situation, local currency withdrawn from ATMs means you’re essentially paying double for everything- unless you change money on a dodgy black market.

And the merciless airport touts know you need bolívares and transportation, with every other person trying to herd you into a makeshift taxi or whisper “change money” as they stroll by.

It's enough to make you completely paranoid.

goodbye tropics

Don't be a pig

It was finally time to head home, pile down comforters on the bed and take a few deep breaths before checking if all my research notes were legible. So here are a few belated highlights as I whip this Puerto Rico assignment into shape and indulge in a little flashback procrastination:

Culebra
Wow. As I've hinted at a number of times, this pale scribe is no lotion-bearing beach bunny, but the white sand and dreamy coastline of Flamenco Beach lived up to the hype. After biking there to cross it off my to-do list, I had to return the following day and indulge in the full sensory experience (and get body slapped by a sneaky wave). On the drive over, I swear I saw a road construction flagger teasing a tarantula with the end of a pole. Or was that long-legged thing a crab? Shows how tired I must have been.

Fajardo
Got caught driving through a succession of downpour curtains blanketing the highway, and had to slalom through the resulting water parks on the pavement. Same thing at night, plus a few thunderbolts thrown in for good measure. In the countryside just south of town, the hills sprang to life after dusk, with frogs that chirped like rusty swing sets and fist-sized toads lurking outside my door.

El Yunque
At a deserted ecolodge on the south side of the park, the coquis really did eat all the mosquitoes, and a chartreuse 5-inch-long lizard stared at me from the wall across the room. Snails with shells the size of golf balls slurped up the exterior walls, and I could see a waterfall from my bed when the clouds cleared away. I hiked a bit up Rte 191, which crossed the park until closed by landslides years ago. Traipsing along through warm rain, I watched the road devolve from rutted pavement to jungle-reclaimed rivulet, turning back when the water crested over my sneakers and the route demanded a sharp machete.

Western mountains
You know you're driving a true back road when a half dozen dogs snoozing in the middle of a hairpin turn raise their heads up to look at your car but don't bother to move. That and the sight of basketball nets set up in the road. At this point, you also realize that you are very lost.