A rather particular lookin man answered me, and then started the usual ´De donde eres?´conversation, asking me where I´m from. I wasn´t much in the mood, but he was ... different. He was wearing a large beaded necklace, full of different dried berries and unidentifiable beads, along with a large silver chameleon pendant which was holding some kind of spectacular stone. I talked to him for a few minutes, ascertained that he was different than most, and decided to keep moving and listen to my tiredness.
But then a few guys that spoke english started talking to me, and it was a relief for my spanish-fried brain to be able to converse coherently. It turned out they were going to go to the desert the next day, with the other strange-looking man as their guide. People say he´s a shaman. My spidey sense was tingling, it sounded like an adventure to me.
So I packed up my bag, and met the crew at 9:30 the next morning. Now, originally there was a plan. I have learned a lot about ´plans´in Mexico. The distilled version of my conclusions are that they don´t exist. One of my fellow compadres summed it up best: ¨mañana doesn´t necessarily mean tomorrow, it just means not today¨. That is Mexico. Our plan was to take a jeep into the desert and spend a day there. Well, it´s three days, some mad blisters, and a whole lot of unforgettable experience later.
(see how happy I look as we left?...)
The guide-shaman got ansi, and decided that instead of waiting for the jeep, we could just walk. No problem. So, we bought some hats and hit the road... well, the trail... well, the shaman, through the desert and onto the mountain. After walking for a few hours, we asked and it turned out that it was about another 5 hour hike to the town we were going to sleep in, directly over the top of the largest mountain in sight.
Ohhhh kay. We didn´t have the right clothes, shoes, or nearly enough water. But we figured we could make it.
(see the town WAY off in the distance... that's where we went)
Upon reaching the pinnacle of the mountain, we came across some alters and decided to make some offerings of tangerine's and cigarettes. It was at this point that it became apparent that our guide-shaman was definitely on a different plane than the rest of us. We were starting to itch to get going, as we still had a LONG way to go until we reached the town. But our guide had other ideas. He saw some crows flying overhead and took it as a sign. What sign? They were some birds, man. But to him, it was a sign that we should go and sleep in a cave on the side of the moutain without any sleeping bags, blankets, water, or food to speak of. Things were getting a little too Don Juan/Carlos Castenada for the rest of us. After some prodding, we convinced him to descend the mountain and cross the desert to this town. It was getting late, and if we didn´t get going we were going to be hiking across a road-less desert, attempting to follow various stream & river beds into our destination, in the dark.
(HOW are we getting down?)
Fast forward a few hours, and the group has descended the mountain, but been seperated into two groups: a group of two that were ahead of us, and a group of three, myself, another fellow, and our guide. But our guide was showing some serious signs of loco. We would talk to him, but he would just stare as us with a blank expression. Tensions were rising. He wanted to sleep there, in the ruins. Well, that just wasn´t going to happen. So the other guy and I desided to finish the hike ourselves (which was going to be much faster, as we didn´t have to continuously wait for the guide to talk to the cactus´and investigate all the desert plants and animals). Off we went.
(somehow, we made it... look at the biggest mountain in the background, that's the one we just climbed over)
Of course, we got lost. Of course, the sun was setting. And of course, we came across a man with a big gun. Hmmm. Well, after throwing out a friendly ´hola´and getting a well-mannered response, we decided to talk to him. It turned out he was out hunting rabbits and rats, and kindly walked us to the intersection that we couldn´t find before that lead to the town. That man was a life-saver.
(our savior)
We walked along the road, and who did we come across? Our guide. After explaining why we had to get going, we all walkted together, through the sunset into the night, into the town. Finally, we'd arrived. But wow did I have some blisters. And our friends were there. After a long discussion about our miscommunication, we desided to put it all behind us, and do tomorrow what we had come to do that day: walk through the desert.
(hubba hubba)
The next day came quickly. After a meal, we hired a jeep to drop us off about 8 km ouside town in the middle of the desert. This desert is at 6000 feet / 2000 m. Being so high, like the town of Real de Catorce, there is not much water in the air, so when the sun goes down it gets _cold_. No problem. So we set out walking about the desert, examining all things that came our way. Surprisingly, the desert is a place that is teaming with life, I had no idea. Not to mention how incredibly beautiful it is. It reminds me of the prairies, the way the sky just goes on forever. Except of course, there are cactus´and shrubs of all sorts all around you. Little insects crawling everywhere, birds out polinating whatever they´re polinating, and a multitude of sounds and smells that I have no words to describe.
Again, we got seperated. I couldn´t walk very quickly, as I had blisteres from the day before. So I ended up with two fellows, walking back to town. Of course, we had to watch the sunset from the desert, that was the promised highlight. And was it ever... absolutely breathtaking.
(a desert at 6000 feet)
So we walked and we talked and we laughed our way back to town under the stars. At the hostel we found the others, with a fire burning. We sat around it until the wee hours of the morning and called it a night.
The next day we decided to come back to Real de Catorce to collect our bags. This was supposed to be easy. Ha. Nothing in Mexico goes according to plan, which is probably why it´s such an adventure all the time. Making a long story shorter, we took a bus to ... somewhere? Then another van to the crossroads that lead to R14, just 24 km away. After some hours of waiting, and finding other hitch-hikers, we got a ride in the back of a dump-truck, and then the back of a flatbed, and arried back in town just after the sunset.
A good meal and some wine later, we fell into a well deserved sleep. Oh man, except the few hours of intestinal pain and an intense cleaning of my entire bowel tract in the middle of the night. Montezuma had his way with me. And that takes me to now. Valentine's day. A circus has rolled into town, and there´s a big fiesta happening at the graveyard (of course) tonight.
Tomorrow I´m on my horse, time to leave this town for another destination. Destination, unknown.
Happy valentine's day!
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