9 minute read
Let’s talk about travel
From north to south hitchhiking and getting to know the most incredible places in the mexican country.
by Helena Vanesa Moreno Solano
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Part I. Let's go!
It all started when a friend from Spain was enjoying an Erasmus scholarship in the Mexican city of Colima. I saved what I could and bought a round trip ticket to spend the two summer months travelling around the country with her.
I took off from Madrid on July the 9th, 2012, and landed in Cancun, Mexico, where my friend was waiting for me. We began to travel with our backpacks, hitch-hiking, throughout the Mexican Caribbean, carrying our tent and sleeping bags with us so we could sleep wherever we wanted. We toured the beaches of Puerto del Carmen, Akumal, Tulum, Bacalar, visiting wonderful places and meeting charming people along the way. Some of them gave us a lift to Cenotes and other places to which they were heading.
Houses in Guanajuato, México.
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In the nights we spent in big cities, it was more difficult to sleep outdoors. We used the Couchsurfing platform, in which people offer their accommodation for free, with care and common sense. It works quite well, you get to meet very interesting local people, which is good to discover the essence of each place that you visit.
After a few days of travelling through the Mexican Caribbean, we decided to go to the city of Colima so that I would know the culture and the place where my friend had been living for seven months. Mexico a country large enough for each state to have its own climate and culture.
From the Mexican Caribbean we took a bus, in which we stayed twenty-five hours, until we reached Colima. Ten days had passed since my arrival and I was already running out of money. After buying the plane tickets and other provisions for the trip I had two hundred euros left, which I thought were enough for a place where my friend told me you could eat for one euro and sleep for two.
When I got there I realized that while, yes, it was a cheap place, it wasn’t quite as much as I had accounted for. The two hundred euros were spent very quickly between transportation and food, so shortly after landing in the country and I had hardly any pesos left in my pockets. This is when my friend taught me how to make some craft knots that she had learned during her trip, so we could sell some bracelets and get some money.
Once in Colima, my friend was leaving her things at the house of a Mexican friend who lodged us for a few days. There, she received a call, during which she decided that she could not waste the plane ticket that she had bought months ago, which meant that in a week she would return to Spain. I was exhausted, I was 22 years old and I had never been so far from my country and my family, alone and with little money. I spent a while trying to convince her that we would get the money to buy another plane ticket closer to mine, but she disagreed and, finally, took that plane.
Part II. Why not?
I found myself alone in a country that I knew nothing about, other than the paradisiacal beaches and drug trafficking that took place.
A friend told me about Jorge, a young Spanish artisan who had been living in Mexico for a long time, so I decided to contact him.
With no cellphone or anything of the sort, in a phone shop, via Facebook, I contacted him and we met at the central bus terminal in Mexico City. With my last funds, I had bought a bus ticket from Colima to Mexico City. I spent the whole night travelling, and something told me that everything would be fine.
Helena and her craft suitcase.
© Helena V. Moreno
Hours later, I arrived in Mexico Federal District and I was waiting where Jorge had told me to. I recognized him immediately, despite never having seen him in my life. He stood out from the hustle and the bustle of people; tall, thin and with a big smile. The conversation easily flowed between us and we were both happy to meet so many kilometres away from our country. He took me to his girlfriend Kim’s house, on the outskirts of the great monster that is Mexico City, in the Nezahualcóyotl district, there we stayed for a few days and they taught me how to weave more craft knots and sell my bracelets to get food and some money.
Wirikuta in the desert of Mexico.
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When we were tired of being in the city and we had bought the materials, we started moving around hitch-hiking. We crossed the state of Querétaro and arrived in San Luis Potosí, entering the desert where we were camped with our tents for a few days, cooking, on the fire, the food that we had and some more that we found there.
We were lost for days in the desert when we decided to head to León Guanajuato, where Jorge had lived months before, there we stayed in a cheap hostel for 20 pesos, equivalent to 0.74 euros a day, which, as expected, provided no great luxuries. But we could sleep, shower, and drop our backpacks.
In the León square in Guanajuato, we used to hang our fabrics with handicrafts and start selling. We went to the shoe factories, a big industry in the region, where we could recycle the skins of boots that weren’t of use to them. From snakeskin, crocodile and other exotic animals, we created cheap and easy to sell bracelets, so we could get some quick money to eat and sleep. Before we left, we were joined by a friend of Jorge named Hernán, who was also a craftsman and juggler. We decided it was time to go from there, so we took our backpacks and set off, hitchhiking from the city exits and gas stations.
On many occasions, the goal of our itinerary was to go to cities where the raw material was locally sourced and cheaper to buy, make our crafts, sell them and continue travelling. A
s the days went by, we continued to the south of Mexico, to the state of Chiapas, on the border with Guatemala. When we arrived at San Cristóbal de las Casas, where we could get amber for our crafts. Here was the place of origin of this ancient resin, therefore, we got it for very cheap. We had to walk and hitchhike to get to the indigenous villages where this mineral or resin is worked.
The month of September was approaching and so was my plane back to Spain. I decided not to take it and to go instead to Guatemala to renew my visa with Jorge and continue my journey.
In Guatemala, we were selling incenses and juggling at traffic lights to get money to eat. When we arrived at Lake Atitlán we found a small hostel to sleep in. It was a wonderful place in the middle of Guatemalan nature, its streets full of markets with exotic fruits and traditional crafts with cheerful colors. We spent a few weeks getting to know that magical place, impressed by its culture, its food and its people. It was an even cheaper country than Mexico, so we could sleep and eat with the little crafts that we sold. Those days, I started to lose the concept of money and time. I was in a dream, everything was flowing nicely and going well. I was very happy.
When we were selling our handicrafts in the town centre where we met some boys who were circus artists. They told us that we could sleep in their circus, in exchange for helping them with a juggling show.
After traveling through Guatemala for a couple of months, they told us about the Mexican celebration “El Día De Los Muertos”, in the state of Michoacán, on November 1st, and we wanted to head there. This state is in the middle of Mexico, which meant we had a long way to go. We hitchhiked on a trailer with a driver named Jimmy, who was very nice. We spent three days traveling with him, he behaved very well with us and was delighted to have found people who would make his journey more enjoyable. After three days living with Jimmy, in his truck, he left us a few kilometers from our destination, so we hitchhiked a few more times, took a boat, and finally reached the Island of Pátzcuaro. The celebration was incredible, like being in a movie. People took offerings to their dead and prayed and sang all night; it was magical and surreal.
At the celebration, we were able to sell our crafts and do henna tattoos, getting us enough money to spend a few days relaxing and enjoying the place.
Day of the dead Patzcuaro Island, México.
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There we bought materials from an old craftsman who worked with clay, making unique pieces, such as smoking pipe pendants, dreadlocks decorations and key chains that we bought in bulk in order to make more crafts.
Part III. Flowing
Christmas was approaching and they had told us about a trance festival where we could spend our Christmas days, in southern Mexico, in the Lacandon jungle. We wanted to get to the place in advance, to try to work at the festival and get free entry. Hitchhiking we arrived, again, to the state of Chiapas, this time to the city of Palenque, where we met by chance with a multitude of hippies who came to a Rainbow meeting in the middle of the jungle, next to the Maya pyramids. We were camped for days in the jungle, together with about four thousand people from all over the world, who were waiting for the end of the world according to the Mayan calendar.
After days of fun, on December 12, 2012, a flood began, as the Mayan prophecy foretold. It rained so much in a matter of hours that the river separated the camp into two parts, inaccessible from each other. You could see objects floating downstream, and I lost my travel friends. I spent hours looking for them in the jungle when, by pure chance, in the middle of that Mayan apocalypse, I found a Spanish friend that I had met months ago on the beaches of Almería, in Spain. I couldn’t believe it, we spent hours talking and we wanted to meet many new places. There my journey began with Anita, a craftswoman and artist; we continued hitchhiking and painting hostels in exchange for accommodation and food. We also sold our crafts, everything was going well in my beautiful and beloved Mexico. The journey continued for another eight months, and incredible things happened to me.
Mayan pyramids in Palenque, México.
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