Alone on a bus

Sat, Aug 15, 2009

The dark mountains outside the capital fading into the night.

Alone in the back of a nearly empty bus, speeding along the toll highway north out of Mexico City. The last vestiges of the great capital cling to the sides of the hills with a thousand unpainted boxes. A shivering patchwork of concrete and shadows.

Vast swathes of soporific maize adorn the mountains and fields, sighing and wilting under the harsh wintry sun – a blanket of dead stalks and parched grasslands punctuated only by coarse cacti, spiny maguey and crumbling farmhouses.

The vast pyramids of Teotihuacán loom suddenly into view. Giant, mysterious structures now perfectly attuned to their surroundings. They transform themselves playfully from pyramids to hills to pyramids again.

In the netherworld of twilight, the dying sun, they are almost completely indistinguishable from the earth’s own creations. They have fulfilled their destinies. They now resemble the mountains they were intended to symbolise.

We steer off the toll highway and climb into the sierras, turning left and right, higher and higher, evergreens and hills, impoverished villages, isolated communities, broken houses, crumbling paintwork, red clay tiles and tiny, faltering patches of crops. The sky turns a deep, heavy violet. Mists roll in, swallowing the road, the trees, the houses and desolation.

The world is cloaked in a sad, dark fog and it starts to rain. Soon there’s nothing but night and water and the lonely winding road. Cortez passed through these mountains on his way to the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlán. The lingering heaviness and grief has never abated. The earth weeps.

An hour, maybe two hours pass and we descend. The fog lifts to reveal a million stars scattered across the canopy. The air is thick and warm now. A dense cloak signalling we’ve reached Mexico’s sultry gulf coast, the state of Veracruz, where there’s no mountains to cool the tropical air. Only water, to humidify it.

There’s a new moon, large and low in the sky, deep yellow flesh shifting and murmuring. What will this journey bring? What lies ahead on this dark, empty road?

The blackness is broken by a singular raging fire in the distance. A violent orange tongue reaching skyward, hungrily, savagely. This is oil country and they’re burning the black stuff into the night. As we pass the port of Poza Rica – the site of one of the world’s largest ever oil strikes – the air turns acrid and charred, ugly smells fill the bus.

Six hours after my departure from the Mexico City, Tuxpan finally looms into view, strung over the banks of a black river with glowing street lamps and shimmering roads. I haul off the bus with my minimal luggage, already sweating, looking around for a hotel and a taxi. Onwards.

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