CORDOBA JOURNAL

These are some "dispatches" sent to my friends by e-mail during a trip to Vera Cruz state in November and December of 1995. HTMLizing it is a sometimes project . . .

7:26 a.m.; Wednesday, 29 November 1995; Cordoba, Vera Cruz, Mexico

The wonders of the Net never cease to amaze me. A decent connection can be found even here.

"Here" is a beautiful place. Monday we flew in to Mexico city on one of those rare "clear" days where you can see the lay of the land. The entire Valley of Mexico lay in mist-shrouded splendor below the plane. Most striking were the snow-capped volcanic peaks of Nevado do Toluca, Iztaccihuatl and Popocatepetl, floating above the valley like surreal apparitions. Mt. Rainier's domination of the Seattle area is the only such site that comes close to comparing.

As the plane descended slowly in a shallow arc over the city, I was amazed yet again by the sheer mass of humanity that lives in Mexico City. One of my companions, Vern Tuck (one of our translators and a very interesting character that I think this group would enjoy meeting) mentioned to me later that he has seen estimates of the population of Mexico City as high as 30 million. I've seen none lower than 20 million. Two-and-a-half to three-and-a-half New Yorks. The densely packed residential neighborhoods alternate with light industrial and commercial districts in a crazy-quilt pattern that stretches as far as the eye can see. It makes the view of the aerial approach to Los Angeles seem rustic.

We rendezvoused with the rest of our party (5 lawyers, 2 translators, 2 reporters and 2 drivers) at the new international terminal at the airport and set out, like some 19th century English safari caravan. We traveled in two rented Suburbans eastward on Highway 150, the new U.S.-Interstate-class toll road that links Mexico City with Vera Cruz. In brilliant sunshine we climbed up out of the Valley of Mexico into the last pass that Cortez traversed as he came upon Teotihuacan. Looking back, we saw a view like that of the Great Salt Lake from the last pass out of the Rockies; a vista to inspire empire.

Highway 150 twists through the pass, moving through tall, thin pines and offering stunning views of the two great volcanoes to the east of the city. The area on either side of the road for many miles through the pass is a national park and has somehow escaped gross signs of damage from the huge concentration of primates down in the valley below. Since I assume that there has been no systematic reforestation here, I must conclude that the forest in the pass is original growth, an amazing sign of nature's resiliency. The pines aren't thick enough to provide economic timber (yet), so I suppose this explains the persistence of this forest. In response to my questions, our driver explained that there are backpacking trails in this park, so Death Marchers take note.

The road trends gently down once it exits the pass and there is a slow but steady change in the vegetation, reflecting a warmer and only somewhat drier climate. The way here lies through a shallow valley, with the broad, level land of the valley bottom clearly being quite fertile. Towns dot the valley floor, each one dominated by a colonial era church.

We stopped in Puebla for lunch. Puebla is half-way to the sea and is home to about a half a million people. Puebla has clearly been a major town for a _long_ time, with lots of evidence of colonial development dating back three- and four-hundred years. Lunch was a mess. The first place our drivers took us served only pork. No side dishes, no beef, no chicken -- just pork. The Spanish linguists among us re-named this place "Puerco-puerco". The squeamish among our group vetoed the place for fear of trichinosis, despite the fact that it was packed with Pueblanistas, many of them quite well dressed. Winding our way through the narrow streets, our caravan finally made its way to another restaurant, where the descent of a horde of moneyed gringos set off a flurry of activity among the staff, little of which seemed directed to achieving any definite goal. The usual inscrutable hierarchy of managers, waiters, bus-boys and unidentifiable flunkies alternately scurried around and stood slack-jawed, thoroughly muddling our meals and serving the otherwise quite good food in what seemed to be a completely random order. There followed the usual interminable wait for "la cuenta", marked by the traditional passing around of various forms and multiple receipts among the upper echelons of the staff, again in some seemingly random exercise in bureaucracy.

Three hours after pulling into Puebla we were on the road again. The land here is watched over by the most diminutive of the "big" volcanoes, La Malinche, named after Cortez' Indian squeeze and guide. La Malinche is low enough that it does not yet have a snow cap, although I understand that some years it does develop one later in the year. Tropical vegetation begins to appear in this area, with palms of various varieties becoming more common as the road approaches the last pass leading down to the coastal plain.

Even from the eastern edge of the town of Puebla, we began to catch glimpses of the easternmost and, in many ways, most impressive of the volcanoes of central Mexico, Pico de Orizaba. At a height of 5611 meters (18,404 feet -- really), Orizaba is the tallest mountain in Mexico and it rises majestically from the surrounding plain, which comes up to only 2500 meters (8,200 feet) at the base of the mountain.

Because it stands essentially alone among lower foothills, the details of the mountain's topography stood out in amazing detail as we approached it. We could clearly see the delineation of the treeline and then the beginning of snow and, finally, the glaciers draped on its shoulders. As we drove toward Cordoba, the sun was setting behind us, slowly turning the upper reaches of the mountain burnt orange. The peak glowed in the setting sun long after the valley floor was wrapped in darkness, making an even more surreal image.

We reached the last pass that leads down to the coastal plain after dark. Here the divided four lane road has not yet been completed and the way is only an undivided two-lane road in questionable repair. Because Highway 150 is the main route between Mexico City and the sea, the road is heavily traveled by lumbering trucks, most of which would not meet safety standards in the States. The long decline presents harrowing near-death experiences at every hairpin curve. Great fun! I particularly enjoyed tormenting the young gringo associate from our Dallas office who travels in Mexico in constant fear of hijack and intestinal mayhem: His face turned a ghastly shade of grey-green in the stark light of approaching traffic.

Cordoba is almost down on the plain. We got in quite late and, again in the usual confusion of any such interchange south of the Rio Grande, took a long time to finally end up in our rooms.

Work presses now this morning, so I can't write more. However, my bright young associate from Laredo, Adolfo, reports this morning that he has located a guide with a 4-wheel-drive jeep to take us up onto the flanks of Orizaba on Saturday. Consider this a scouting expedition, Death Marchers .....

7:57 a.m.; Wednesday, 30 November 1995; Cordoba, Vera Cruz, Mexico

Just a hurried note to let ya'll know we've located a guide with a 4-wheel-drive who, for 100 pesos per person (maybe all of 15 bucks a head) will take us up the mountain as high as a vehicle can get. We hike from there. We're going to do this on Saturday and see what happens. Hope I'm alive on Sunday to report on it ....

Meanwhile, I've been deposing the rich landed class of Cordoba. This ain't America. These are not capitalists. Their place in the world is much closer to that of 16th century Spain.

On the other hand, their place in the world is beautiful. It never freezes down here at the base of El Pico, and the vegetation reminds me of San Jose in Costa Rica -- a cool tropical climate, lots of flowering trees, open verandas and collonades. And no turistas at all. As far as I can tell, you can't buy a post card in Cordoba.

Last night we ate at a restaurant on a balcony overlooking the central square, which is bounded on one side by the late 17th century cathedral and on the other by the mid-19th century "civic palace". The park in the middle of the square is dominated by palm trees rising to a height of 200 feet.

The life of the city played itself out below us, old men talking on the park benches, federales strolling casually with submachine guns slung over their shoulders and young couples necking beneath the bandstand in the middle of the square. Even with the movement of the people, it looked like a sepia-toned still photograph.

7:01 a.m.; Sunday, 3 December 1995; Cordoba, Vera Cruz, Mexico

Well, we made it through the day yesterday, but it was a challenge. Six guys, including me, began the day by driving our rented Suburban the 5 or 6 miles from Cordoba to the town of Orizaba early yesterday morning. The stark white snow cap of Pico de Orizaba tantalized us on this drive. The sky was clear and only a little cool as we rendezvoused with our guide, Armando, at a hotel there. Armando is a tall, lanky Mexican with a dark brown, weathered face and ready smile.

In the street next to the hotel, Armando introduced us to our transportation, his highly modified four-wheel-drive pickup, which he affectionately calls "El Cabron". "Cabron" literally means "goat" but, as you may know, "cabron" has a lot of other meanings in Mexican Spanish, mostly connected with male sexual prowess and the rich Mexican vocabulary of insult. Thus there was a lot of joking about the truck as we loaded our stuff into it. Armando speaks no English and I only have a little Spanish, so, for my part, this conversation was carried on either through translation or was augmented by some pretty strange pantomime. Since this street corner appeared to be Armando's usual pick-up point for his customers, I guess the locals are used to seeing Armando make these gestures early in the morning ....

As we inspected our transportation and Armando chatted with our group, a couple of Mexicans showed up as additional passengers. This was a husband-and-wife team of young doctors from Vera Cruz, who would ride in the cab of the truck with Armando. They were very quiet and seemed somewhat intimidated by the loud joking and laughing going on in our group. I could see the husband nervously eyeing us, wondering whether it was good idea to bring his small and attractive wife on this trip with seven other men. Poor bastard, I can just imagine the hell he is catching now ...

El Cabron sat very high off the ground on a suspension that appeared to have been put together from many sources, most of which probably came from large semi-tractors. The leaf springs alone looked to weigh more than a person. The truck accommodated its passengers with two bench seats stripped from old cars, one jammed up against the cab of the pickup and one against the truck's tailgate. A welded overhead framework was stabbed nonchalantly into the sides of the pickup bed, held in place only by its own weight. This framework was obviously designed to support the heavy plastic tarp that lay rolled in one corner. It was NOT a roll cage. When Armando cranked the engine, we were introduced to another modification he -- or the mountain -- had made: There seemed to be little or no exhaust system to speak of, as the narrow street was filled with the unmuffled roar of the old V-8. Whenever Armando would lift off the throttle El Cabron would emit a staccato series of explosions that sounded for all the world like an artillery barrage. When we pulled away to begin our little adventure, we also learned that the bench seats were not affixed in any way to the truck bed -- a primitive form of suspension for the passengers, I suppose, as the jumping mass of the seats absorbed the shocks of our travel somewhat, but did nothing to steady our confidence.

The trip to El Pico was made in the easy fashion of all endeavors in Mexico. We began by climbing up a dirt road immediately outside of Orizaba. As this road paralleled the highway, we couldn't figure out the point of this route, until Armando slammed the truck over a curb onto the paved road -- just around a curve from and out of sight of the one toll booth on our way to the mountain. Once on the highway, we retraced somewhat our original journey last week down from the great plateau of central Mexico, snaking up into the pass. Along the way, I was able to observe this territory in daylight for the first time. Coffee and sugarcane plantations hugged the hillsides, with some fairly large undeveloped areas in between. The vegetation was all tropical; banana and palm trees and many flowering shrubs. But as we climbed, the vegetation quickly began to change from tropical to temperate, the flowering shrubs and trees giving way to broad leaf and then, in the space of a half hour, to pines.

Near the highest point of the highway's climb onto the plateau, El Cabron once again took to its natural element, unpaved roads. We headed north, climbing steadily by way of a narrow, very dusty road that followed the contours of the hills in a way that suggested that the road had not been re-graded since the primary mode of travel had been the ubiquitous burro. And I quickly saw that this was not inappropriate, since most of the traffic on the road was indeed animal and human. Tiny little burros traveled along the road in ones or twos, laden with impossibly large loads of corn stalks tied in bundles. These little animals were in the charge of equally small people, the children of the area. Boys and girls of less than ten seemed to be the usual draymen, often riding on the burros' rumps behind their loads. A few rode backwards so that their faces weren't buried in their burro's load, trusting to the animal's dim guidance system to stay on the track. One of our number, my translator Vern Tuck, had known to buy a bag of hard candies, which he tossed to the kids as we passed. Vern clearly got as much pleasure from this as the kids.

Our journey took us over a hump in the mountains and down into a valley that held the final approach to El Pico. By this point the sight of the mountain was overwhelming, its great mass looming over the valley. Our intermediate destination was the town of Atzitzintla, where we would buy water and food for the remainder of the day. Coming into town, we passed a fairly large church, standing by itself. A sign indicated it had been built in 1821. The effort required to pull the building materials up the mountain into this isolated valley 170 years ago boggles the mind.

Atzitzintla is a town of perhaps 5,000, although official census figures for places like this are unavailable or unreliable. Like all Mexican cities and towns, Atzitzintla looks smaller to gringo eyes than it really is. This is because there is less commercial development, and the cues we are used to using to gauge the size of a town don't work. So there might be 2,000 people who call Atzitzintla home, or there might be 10,000. You just don't know. Neither do the Atzitzintlanistas.

Atzitzintla, like the rest of Mexico, just had regional elections. The signs of the campaign were everywhere, and as a predominantly Indian, rural and remote place, Atzitzintla seems to have a left-wing orientation. There were just as many PRD signs as PRI signs and many of the PRI slogans had been stricken through with black paint, although none of the PRD signs had been so disfigured. I didn't see a single PAN sign anywhere in the valley.

Atzitzintla is surrounded by the fields worked by the locals, primarily producing corn. The harvest has just been completed and, as the heavily laden burros had foreshadowed, the people are now at work cutting and bailing the corn stalks for use as pig fodder, fuel and the wrappings of tamales. It seems the smaller fields are worked by human and animal power and the larger ones with tractors. We saw a number of mule-powered plows, a sight I haven't seen since I was in China, more than 15 years ago, although there the animal power is supplied by oxen. As we got into town, we discerned that the flat roofs of the buildings served as corn-drying platforms. Standing up in the back of the truck, we could see the little town lying under its burden of corn.

We pulled into the center of town, a place too poor to have a plaza. However, the central "x" of cross streets that marked the nucleus of the town was paved for a few blocks in each direction. The thundering arrival of El Cabron at the grocery store didn't seem to excite much comment among the local patrons of the store. We guessed that Armando probably gets some form of kickback for bringing his customers here, so the Atzitzintlanistas are probably used to seeing young, rich gringos on their way to El Pico. Stocking up on water, bread and cookies, we moved on, now steeply uphill.

We passed through one more small community, Texmalaquilla. This place marks the highest extent of cultivation on the southern flanks of the great mountain, with the campesinos working sloping fields of the rich volcanic soil as high as the thinning air and swiftly dropping temperatures would allow. This trade-off pays poorly, though, and the Texmalaquillenos seemed to be considerably poorer than their cousins just a thousand feet lower down the flank of the mountain. Although the faces of the folks in Atzitzintla had clearly been much more Indian than one finds down below on the floor of the plateau, Texmalaquilla was even more Indian. Cortez and his ancestors had passed far below and have not sown their seed in the mountains.

Passing the last fields, we came to the border of the national park, which I did not see, but that one of our group noted from a sign that stated that climbers should register in a small shack at the side of the road. Since Armando didn't stop there, we assumed we didn't count as "climbers". With El Pico now obstructing half the sky before us, we didn't mind the slight.

Although there wasn't a cloud in the sky, it was now getting cooler by the moment. I pulled on my windbreaker and the others in our group, some of whom had not planned on making the trip, did as best they could. Naricsso Cortez, one the insurance agents who sold the policies we were in Cordoba to investigate, had been one of these late joiners. He had shown up at our muster that morning in leather dress loafers, slacks and a cotton shirt with only a t-shirt underneath. He had purchased a pair of sneakers for four dollars in Atzitzintla, and was now wearing a wool sport coat that Vern had loaned him.

The road turned into little better than a rocky track now, bordered very closely by pine trees and winding in a series of steep switchbacks up the mountain. Armando shifted down into first gear and stayed there, violating the silence of the mountains with the din of El Cabron's now struggling motor. In one spot the track ran next to a very steep drop and was no wider than the truck itself. The truck's tires skittered and jumped over the rutted and rocky way, making no headway at all. Six pairs of eyes exchanged nervous glances in the pickup's bed as we gritted our teeth and imagined in unison the twisted wreckage we would be if El Cabron lost his footing. But through deft steering Armando managed to find some purchase and, with a jerk, the truck danced forward, rocks and dirt falling down into the ravine below to mark our passage.

The land flattened briefly at the foot of one of El Pico's smaller companions, Sierra Negra. We stopped here to acclimatize. As we did, I began to feel the effects of the altitude and remembered the precautions we had taken this summer in New Mexico to get used to a much lower altitude. Looking at the contour map in the guidebook Vern had bought me as a gift, I saw that we were at 4000 meters (13,129 feet).

Not entirely as a psychological reaction to this information, I noted that I was VERY lightheaded and felt a little nauseous. We had come up more than 11,000 feet in under two hours. One of our group, Roger, who had had serious misgivings about coming on this little adventure, looked very green, and sat down immediately upon stumbling down out of the truck.

Within a couple of minutes, though, we were all feeling a little better and followed Armando on a brief climb up to a cave. Armando related that 30 "French" soldiers had hidden here and then been slaughtered by some Mexicans. Although I assumed he was talking about some of Maximillian's forces, I was too winded to ask and just sat looking into the fire-blackened maw of the cave and picked out a few words of Spanish here and there as Vern and my young associate, Adolfo Campero, talked with Armando about some of his adventures on the mountain as a guide.

I noted that the place was pretty trashed out, with old, rusted cans and lots of plastic wrapping paper strewn around messy fire pits. Spray-painted graffiti on the rocks announced that "Chico" had been here in 1983 and that someone from Mexico City had been moved to record his presence two years ago.

While I sat and slowly moved blood into my brain by sheer force of will, Armando related a truly amazing story about how he had found the wreckage of a light plane that had crashed into the side of El Pico almost at the summit some years ago. The plane had been carrying two executives from Volkswagen's plant in Vera Cruz and one of their sons, a 14 year old boy. Only the boy had survived the crash and had apparently lived for a few days, with one leg amputated, before freezing to death. Armando related the condition of the bodies in gruesome detail, including a hair-raising description of the pilots' faces smashed into the rock of the mountain's side.

But the most amazing part of the story came next. When Armando came down off the mountain and reported the crash to the police in Orizaba, he was arrested and taken to Mexico City. It seems the Volkswagen executives had been carrying a briefcase with $5 million in U.S. currency on their trip. The police accused Armando of stealing the money. Of course Armando had not known the money was on board and had only confirmed that there were no survivors before descending. He told us that the police had tortured him by connecting electrodes to his testicles and shocking him repeatedly until they believed that the money was still on the mountain.

Finally, the police took him back to Orizaba and ordered him to lead ten of their number up to the wreckage on the peak. Armando equipped them and, handcuffed to one federale, they ascended the mountain. One by one, the party of policemen dropped out of the expedition, suffering horribly in the cold and altitude. Armando said that one of them had begged Armando to take his pistol and kill him to put him out of his freezing misery. Armando said that he told the cop to kill himself, he wouldn't do him the favor. He said that the only one of the federales he had any feeling for was the one he was handcuffed to, who over the course of this adventure developed some respect for Armando's knowledge of the mountain. This was the only one who made it to the wreckage, where they indeed found the briefcase, locked into a compartment that hadn't been burned in the crash. Opening it, they found the money. Armando said he could have killed the federale and kept the money ... then he just shrugged his shoulders and pointed up at El Pico, telling us it was time to move on.

[NOTE: This would make an absolutely fantastic movie script. Michael, find someone who will write this!!!!]

While Armando had been relating the story of the plane crash, a group of local hikers had come up on the cave. This group consisted of seven teenage boys and one dog. They had sat too far away from us to hear our conversation, but as we walked back down to El Cabron, they asked whether they could hitch a ride up to the end of the road. Armando happily agreed and we slung their gear into the bed of the truck. I inspected their loads with amazement. All were carrying home-made packs of some kind, most consisting of some kind of duffel bag (many festooned with the logos of U.S. professional sports teams), rigged with hand-made woven straps. One had an external pack frame fashioned from iron rebar welded into a fairly good approximation of a modern external frame pack and held in place with tied straps cut from a serape. They all carried ice axes that some local welder (probably the artist who had created the pack frame) had made from tubular and sheet steel. No two of the axes were alike, but all looked like functional copies of something that would cost $500 to $1,000 in a store in the States. The kids were wearing tennis shoes, with one exception, a pair of army boots that had seen better days. Although our group was layering up as we made the final leg of the drive, these kids were wearing t-shirts. We could see that their only cold weather gear were sweaters and Indian blankets, tied to the outside of their packs. No tents. No sleeping bags. I felt like a wimp.

Vern explained to me during this part of the trip that this was a season in which many people made pilgrimages up the mountain. Although ostensibly Catholic, the Indians still worship the old gods just below the surface. Of course el Pico de Orizaba has always had big medicine in the nature religions of the Indians, and they still come up the mountain near the winter solstice as they always have. Armando chimed in later that he and the other mountain guides do a good business bringing pilgrims up the mountain and he told us that a tractor pulling a trailer load of such folks would be coming up the mountain later in the day. He owned the trailer and took a cut of the toll the pilgrims paid.

The last stage of our motorized ascent took us to approximately 4,200 meters (13,776 feet). This took quite some time, as El Cabron now was laboring mightily against the steep incline and the rapidly thinning air. Twice the truck stopped entirely as it was straining up a particularly vertical spot and Armando got out to tweak the carburetor, cheered on by lots of advice from the local kids. The last part of the "road" was completely above the tree line. The final grove of pines had hugged the bottom of la Sierra Negra at the cave where the "Frenchmen" had met their doom.

We finally pulled up onto a gently sloping shelf that marked the end of the road. This shelf is a saddle that connects la Sierra Negra and the last sentry peak guarding the final approach to El Pico, Las Torecillas. A steep, boulder strewn wall rose up from the shelf to a cirque just at the snow line. We would climb this. We agreed that our goal was a stone climber's hut, the "Fausto Gonzales Gomar Hut" (named after a climber who had been killed on the mountain). The hut is at 4,660 meters (15,284 feet).

Vern, who is closer to 50 than 40 and is carrying about 20 more pounds than he should, elected to stay on the shelf with Armando and El Cabron. The two doctors from Vera Cruz also decided to stay, not saying much and looking pretty unhappy about the Martian surroundings of the high mountain side.

The rest of us began our climb. Every step was a great effort, although the "trail" was not particularly challenging. Even the youngest and fittest of us (Adolfo) though, found that the only way to make progress up the boulder-strewn wall was to climb 20 or 30 steps and rest for a while. Roger fell behind, developing a pretty bad headache from the altitude.

I managed to stay with the vanguard of our group through sheer effort of willpower and, within about 45 minutes, had climbed the 1,500 feet or so from the truck up to the hut. The hut is a VERY stout building about 25 feet by ten feet. There were quite a few climbers on the little ledge it sits on. This population of climbers varied from a group of Europeans with state of the art gear, to the group of locals that had ridden up with us (and who had essentially RUN up to the hut ahead of us) to more of the pilgrims Armando and Vern had told us about. The pilgrims, it seemed, would spend the night near the hut and try to climb to the peak in the morning.

We talked to one fellow from Mexico City who had just returned from the summit. He pointed up the wall of ice and snow to show us the route, and we could pick out a number of climbers working their way down the snow-covered glacier that was the route of choice on this, the steeper, but warmer southern side of the mountain. I wished for some kind of field glasses, but we had brought none and I saw none in evidence in any of the other groups. Nevertheless, we could see the tiny dark points that were the climbers and the long tracks of their passage on the snow.

We spent about an hour on the ledge, climbing a little higher toward the flanks of Las Torecillas and taking in the view eastward down a long scree-strewn glacial valley that leads down the eastern flank of the mountain. If one were to come up totally on foot, that would be a rugged, but do-able approach. The northern wall of that valley blocked our view of the northern side of the mountain, which Armando had told us is much better for camping. There are two streams there that start at the snow line and the slope is much gentler although, again, it is colder and, this time of year, there is more snow and ice on that side.

The view from the higher, northern edge of the cirque to which we had climbed was astonishing. I would say the view was breathtaking, but the mountain had already taken all the breath we had to spare. We were above the peak of la Sierra Negra and could look southward across its mass down into the valley of Orizaba. A broken bank of clouds had rolled into the valley and the tops of those clouds were far, far below us. We could see Texmalaquilla clearly, far below. Although the fields had seemed steeply pitched when were down there, they now looked like gently rolling hills, at most.

Steve Mines, our other translator, who is only 31 and has done some climbing, went a little way up Las Torecillas, so he got top altitude honors for our group. I'd say he made it to 4,700 meters (15,416 feet). The peak of Las Torecillas requires technical work, though, so he turned back well short of the top. While Steve climbed back down we scooped up some snow from the shaded pockets that stay frozen on the cirque and threw it around.

We picked a slightly different line going down. There is a little cut of finely ground volcanic powder on the eastern side of the rocky wall that lead down to the truck, and we "skied" down this. I had my trekking poles and, with their assistance, I was down in about fifteen minutes with little effort. This was a lot of fun.

We discovered that the two doctors from Vera Cruz had decided to go up after us and ended up waiting for almost an hour before we left, because Armando had to go up to help them down. They were pretty green from the effort. Poor bastard. I'm afraid this mountain is a "guy thing".

Before Armando set out to retrieve the doctors, he and I talked about the mountain through Vern's translation. I asked him about all the trash up at the hut, which had been worse even that the cave. Armando explained that the pilgrims left the trash and that he and a handful of other guides packed down as much as they could. He seemed to have a real respect for the mountain and was apologetic about the way the locals didn't seem to understand that the trash would stay there forever. I thought about the Mexican ability to just not "see" things like this.

It was late in the afternoon by the time we set out and it was getting quite cold. We shared out all the cold weather gear we could muster to cover up in the back of the truck. I had stashed a space blanket in my fanny pack and Adolfo and Narcisso wrapped themselves up in this, looking like two ears of corn to be baked. Roger began to really suffer from the cold and the altitude as soon as we began our descent. He was looking pretty miserable, so I gave him my down vest and we found an extra pair of socks to put over his hands. He pulled out the light hood from the collar of his windbreaker and pulled it tight around his face, so that only his nose and mouth showed. He looked absolutely ridiculous and we couldn't help but laugh, even though, we couldn't help but laugh, even though, with his nausea, he let out heart-rending groans every time the truck jounced over the rocks.

Getting out of the valley of Atzitzintla took a long time. It seems the locals treat El Cabron as a free bus line, which Armando offers as part of the great web of mutual favors that is the real economy of rural Mexico. We made many stops to pick up and drop off people, who clung to the sides and back of the truck, looking down in astonished silence at the sight of the six freezing foreigners in their outlandish garb shivering in the pickup's bed. Then we were in Texmalaquilla for at least an hour, as Armando checked in on first one and then another aspect of his business of ferrying the pilgrims up to the mountain. When we finally got to Atzitzintla, we made yet another long stop, as Armando picked up a huge side of beef from a butcher there. No money changed hands in this transaction, so we speculated that this was on element of the kickback scheme for the grocery store where we had stopped on our way up to the mountain.

[I'll write more another time, probably, but for now ...]

Gotta go.

GB

[I never did write any more ...]

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