The first five hours we drove under the classic cloudless
blue winter sky of Oaxaca. After hearing Linda and me talk so glowingly about
the magic towns and magical views of the Sierra Norte of the State of Puebla, Matt and
Abby hankered to see the Pueblo Mágico of Cuetzalan and spend a couple of
nights in don José María Simón Ruiz’s cloud forest retreat.
Leaving the Valley of Etla, we
climbed through the parched, eroded hills of the Mixteca that separate a few
high, dry valleys like Nochixt
lán, still reeling from the faceoff with
government troops two years ago that left six people dead. North of Nochixtlán
the road plummets suddenly into a vast canyon, dropping 1,400 meters (about 4,700
feet) in less than 15 kilometers. Anywhere else it would be a national park,
and here it serves as a vivid visual explanation of why the northern
civilizations like the Aztecs exerted so little influence over the Zapotecs of
Oaxaca and the Mayas of the Yucatán.
As we climbed up the other side
toward Huajhuápam and the vast plane of Puebla and the chain of volcanos that
form its northern border, the blue faded as clouds thickened over the peaks. No
view today of Orizaba, Mexico’s highest mountain. At the junction we left the cuota, the toll road, and headed north
along the western flank of Volcán Perote, the likewise massive volcano that is
dwarfed by its snow-covered neighbor.
At Aljojuco we turned off the
secondary road and drove up a low volcanic hill to its church, a building of no
particular artistic merit; its tower is sheathed in scaffolding that is
testimony to October’s earthquakes. The attraction is the view of the crater on
whose edge the church optimistically stands. he circular crater is a kilometer
in diameter, and filled with a blue-green lake, 200 meters below the rim.
Google says the lake itself is 600-meters deep. The dots on the surface of the
lake, our binoculars tell us, are small boats, each with a couple of fisherman
hoping to catch enough to feed lunch to the family and have a few left over to
sell at market. A narrow, dirt road serpentines from the church to the
lakeshore. Another time, perhaps.
From here we drove through flat corn country and dusty
ancient lakebeds on tertiary roads, straight enough to invite speed, and in
poor enough condition to make that foolish. It was Abby who first spotted the
smoke.
“Over those low hills, where it
looks like the pines begin. A forest fire? Burning corn stubble?”
The closer we got, the thicker the
smoke appeared. It was clearly advancing, for the pines were disappearing in
the thick gray cotton. It looked like we were approaching Rod Serling’s
Twilight Zone. As we reached the first wisps the road cut between two low
hills, and dipped sharply down and we were enveloped in white. Cold, wet,
white, with no smell of smoke. We had left the Plane of Puebla and were
starting down the Atlantic slope of the Sierra Madre Oriental.
With every turn of the tires the
cloud thickened. Soon we could not see the hills on either side. The tops of
the roadside pines disappeared. Then their trunks. Our speed dropped to 10 KPH,
our eyes —mine anyway— were riveted on the road. I gave up blinking. The grayer
patches sometimes indicated potholes, so we slalomed around them. One large
gray patch, thoughtfully marked by a stone cairn, resolved itself as void: half
the road had disappeared into the valley whose edge the road was skirting. When headlights approached we stopped dead and
pulled to the side, at least in the places where there was a side to pull off
onto.
Driving was actually fun, in a high
adrenaline, white-knuckled sort of way, and I never heard one gasp of “Watch
it!” from either of my passengers.
After two twisty hours, during
which we descended from 2,200 meters to about 1,400 meters, we turned up a
cobbled road to the Aldea San Francisco, the little patch of the eastern slope
that don José María has preserved as a showpiece of the extraordinary
biological diversity of the cloud forests. Cloud. Forest. No further
explanation needed.
His holding isn’t enormous, a few
hectares at most, but it is gorgeous and lovingly stewarded. [For more about
Aljojuco and the Aldea and don José María’s San Francisco, see “Vacation!” of
June 27, 2017.] A wide variety of trees, many of them giants, some covered with
flowers or fruit, all covered with epiphytes and bromeliads.

Their upper
branches, at least those we could see in the occasional thinnings of cloud,
form a tight canopy. The branches of middle story, which we could mostly make
out, harbor whole ecosystems of ferns, funguses, and parasitic plants of every
imaginable shade of green. How enough light gets through the upper layer to
sustain them seems a mystery. The lower story, likewise light deprived, copes
by sporting enormous leaves the size of Volkswagens. Palm trees –or are they
ferns, or palmettos?—all of them in their whimsical improbability seemingly
designed by Dr. Seuss, fight for space. Everywhere vines creep up, roots trail
down, and every flat, postage-stamp-sized patch hosts growth. What they are
anchored to is likewise improbable: a vast, varied field of lava, in shelves,
funnels, corkscrews, columns, and pinnacles. Many of the holes are filled with
water; in the larger ones fish swim slowly among the aquatic plants.
Over the years José María has built
a half dozen cabins, most of them two story, with kitchenettes, single and
double beds, sitting space, an balconies covered to keep the drip off the heads
of the tenants peering out into the green jungle.
It was nearly dark, so after
a brief hike among the barely visible trees, a delicious dinner at the
restaurant, and an hour of sobremesa
conversation with José María about politics, ecology, innovative kitchen
architecture, and the state of this and other worlds, we squished back to our
cabins.
Up on the Puebla plain we had been
comfortably warm, even at 2,400 (nearly 8,000 feet) meters, but here at 1,400
meters (about 4,600 feet), soaked to the skin by the wet cotton fog, we were
freezing.
Our cabin had a couple of extra beds, so we stripped them and wrapped
ourselves in the heavy wool blankets. And after quick warmish showers, early to
bed.
About 6:30
in the morning, waked by chirping in the trees just outside our windows, we
decided to greet the dawn. Dawn didn’t get the message. The thick cloud, h
appy
in its mountain residence, was putting down roots. Matt, the wisest of the
three of us, pulled his covers, and Abby’s, up over his head. Abby and I
clothed ourselves as best we could, grabbed our binoculars, and headed for the
jungle trails. The birds were mostly high, and the visible world stopped at the
mid-low.
We did spot a few hummingbirds and a noisy tribe of black-throated
green warblers, but that was about it. Our best view was of the turgid fish in
the muddy pond.
So we
changed plans. Scratched: hiking to some of the regions spectacular waterfalls
and the caves that burrow into the karst landscape. Instead, we doddled for two
hours in Cuetzalan, Abby and Matt traipsing up and down the narrow, cobbled
streets in their newly-purchased rain ponchos, David sleeping snugly in the
car. Then they woke me and I joined them for an hour in the regional
Anthropology museum, one of the nicest I’ve seen in Mexico, at least in a
pedagogical sense, and in explaining and championing the Sierra’s diversity.
No
mention, though, of the Rafael car, an icon of diversity, parked on the
street outside the museum.
Then we drove down (i.e., another 500-meters of cliff-side,
mostly intact road) to the area’s most developed archaeological site, which
Matt and Abby enjoyed while I completed the second half of my nap (I’d seen the
site before).
All in all,
despite the weather, a delightful and thoroughly satisfying visit.
But wait, there’s more . . . You’ve
never seen anything like Cantona, appearing in sortie #3!