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The Road Less Traveled

Over Sleeping Policemen, Into Sleeping Volcanoes: Driven into Mexico's Central Pacific Highlands

by Lee Patton

Emerging from my bath in a volcano's steam vent, I sensed intent eyes on my half-naked body. I faced a Mexican bull.

A week before my volcanic face-off with a snorting beast, I stood on a hotel balcony determined to escape Puerto Vallarta. To my left, on a beachside stage, a
large, tipsy tourist belted "I'm Just a Gal Who Cain't Say No." At the rooftop bar to my right, a local drag queen channeled a creaky Cher dance tune. On this Mexican vacation, I vowed, I would actually find Mexico.

My first time in Puerto Vallarta, footsteps from tourist nightclubs, women still hand-washed clothes in the the Rio Cuale. On the morning bus, off to work as chambermaids, their daughters boarded, immaculate in river-laundered dresses. Shaken beside them in the SRO of local transit, I yearned to get closer to some
elusive notion of "real Mexico." The surrounding mountains tempted me to skip the mango margaritas and Britney-bopping happy hours.

I'd take aimless walks on sandy jeep trails. But squeezed for holiday time, I always copped out and hit the beaches rather than blunder into some godforsaken hill town in some unheard-of state.

This year, though, I finally had the time to rent a car and slip farther behind the mango-margarita curtain. The plan was that I would travel alone, heading south from Puerto Vallarta to Colima, where I would explore that state's volcanic national park, its twin snowcapped cones spearing the tropical sky. Then I'd swing over interior highlands, heading back to Puerto Vallarta from the north. Completely on my own, forcibly improving my schoolbook Spanish, I would explore natural wonders and stay in towns where no one was lip-synching "Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves."

Evading Cher was easy; within minutes of leaving P.V.'s radio zone, south on Federal Highway 200, American pop faded into ranchero music's odd polka tempos. But getting close to nature presented unexpected obstacles. In the interior of Central Pacific Mexico, there's little accessible public land."National parks" and ecological preserves dot the map, but many are simply natural places saved from ranching, mining, and development because they're too remote to exploit. The parks offer no rangers, no road signs, no brochures or maps. An independent traveler won't neccessarily get any closer to the wilds than the cowboys, prospectors, and time-share sharks who've been there before and failed to find the access.

Most confounding, that volcanic national park was not necessarily a point of interest to anyone but me. Above palm trees in Colima city's garden plazas rose my guiding vision: those twin cones, one actually belching fire, the other quiet for now, laden with fresh snow, and presumably open to the public. Wanting to glimpse the active volcano from its western flank, ecstatic, I got lost in the sugarcane highlands above the city. Switch-backing, empty roads wove through almost depopulated landscapes where rainforest and small coffee groves braided along valleys and ridges. Locals clearly not used to strangers in their midst discussed routes with me, explaining how the nearest town had long been evacuated and the road to the crater was closed. Though I stood on the fiery volcano's shoulder, I had to abort my attempt by day's end.

On the inactive volcano's east side the next morning, without a single sign from the superhighway or the local two-lane, without a tourist office or any other travelers heading that way, I followed random roads across the valley. It was not until I was already five rough kilometers up a dirt track onto the volcano's flank that I saw "Bienveniedos a La Parque Nacional de los Volcanes de Colima" on a plastic banner strung from tree to tree.

The road further deteriorated just as I discovered my dodgy rental car had a nail in its tire. Halfway to the summit, completely alone on the mountain, I entertained visions of dying like an animal at the snow packed summit, tire ruined, transmission shaken to rusty salvage on the giant ruts. No one would find my body until the summer thaw. I turned back in search of a tire shop. The coming evening closed another attempt to reach a volcano crater.

Finding no service in the area, I kept putting air in the tire's slow leak and went on, my frustration dissolving in the passing landscapes' knockout beauty and variety. On back roads between Colima city and Ciudad Guzman, the smooth volcanic slopes gave way to seismic, rugged landscapes. The route switch-backed up ridge tops only to plunge into chasms and river canyons. Palm-filled, vine-strung rainforest in the lowlands disappeared into hillocks of leafless trees, which themselves dried into classic, stark Mexican vistas of cactus, mesquite, rocky ravines and darting roadrunners.

Palm-filled, vine-strung rainforest in the lowlands disappeared into hillocks of leafless trees, which themselves dried into classic, stark Mexican vistas of cactus, mesquite, rocky ravines and darting roadrunners.

A few more kilometers further, the highway would dive again into lush valleys of wild green tangle and flowering shrubs. I drove on, tire imperceptibly losing air, out of Colima state and back into Jalisco, then north into Nayarit.

Before I left home, friends who'd traveled in the Mexican interior warned me: "Locals send children into the road who pretend to be injured, then you'll be jailed until you pay cash for damages." I was also told to flee from accidents staged to extort me. Even Lonely Planet warned of highwaymen and marauders on the open roads. One buddy who knew the territory offered me this farewell: "God blesses fools and angels, and, remember, you're no angel."

I must've been a blessed fool, because the worst hazards I found on the highways were the "sleeping policemen," the ever-present speed bumps, sometimes ten in a row, sometimes in the middle of nowhere without any warning whatsoever, hungry to break tinker-toy axles. The only highwaymen I encountered were the relaxed cashiers along the toll roads; the Federal superhighways charged more to speed 100 KM on smooth pavement than I spent on most hotel rooms (that is, 12 bucks).

Instead of highway marauders, I found kindness and generosity from those I encountered along the road. Though no one away from the coast and big cities
seemed to speak a syllable of English, all my interlocutors suffered my Spanish with smiles and even spontaneous lessons. Proprietors would bow just as gallantly at my ridiculously formal questions ("Madam, with your permission, could you please inform me whether I might dispose of this gum wrapper in your store's trash basket?") or my infantile shorthand ("Is there still food now?"). After I'd missed one junction, a gasoline attendant drew an elaborate cardboard map of the immediate area. He sketched cloverleafs with encouraging arrows and names to watch for, and kilometers between landmarks, and a blown-up impression of his little cousin Rosita's school in Ajijic. I was surprised he didn't draw mermaids, dragons and"Terra Incognita" at the bottom of his masterpiece.

Deep in the tiny state of Nayarit, the signpost I needed for the Volcan Ceboruco stood many kilometers past an indecipherable network of side roads and junctions and ranchero two-tracks, and didn't even mention the route to the sleeping volcano. At the outskirts of Jala village, a cobbled street seemed to dissolve into a family's dirt driveway. Roosters challenged my bumper. The gentleman in residence told me the road leading to the sleeping volcano went behind the soccer field, up through the agave plantation, then left at the government signs "that
brag about the telecommunications towers." Unimpressed with volcanoes, that government sign merely acknowledged YOUR TAX PESOS AT WORK. So much for showing the way to the national treasure on which the tele-towers stood, the Ceboruco Volcano crater itself, which I would never have found without the kindly gentleman and my Spanish 2B teacher's vocabulary drills.

A cobblestone road seemed to lead all the way to the volcano's crater, conjuring visions of pine forests, wild beasts, and volcanic steam vents. A work-of-hands engineering feat, the road rose complete with crafted embankments to climb 15 kilometers around the entire peak. At the top, despite the utter lack of signs or personnel--or a single fellow visitor--I found glassed-in, tiled-roofed shelters, a picnic gazebo, and a trailhead to the crater.

Hiking the crumbled-lava path over the summit's wide, forested crest, through silvery pines, century plants, purple shrubs and prickly pear, I kept spotting huge
hoof prints, impossible to match to the occasional pack of wild dogs or solitary roadrunners. I searched for a big fighting stick, sure the prints might signal
giant, hungry wild boars.

After three kilometers rambling the volcano's crest among tropical-alpine scenery, I descended into the actual crater. Dormant, yes, but one goal fulfilled. A gentle slope marked by a faint path dropped me near a stony outcrop. Out of its jagged folds, four or five steam vents hissed like punctured tires. I chose the largest, angriest and noisiest, stripping to my shorts to enjoy a solitary steam bath amidst the rock caves. After I endured all the steam heat I could manage, I ducked out, only to meet that snorting bull's gaze.

Clichés of Spanish-Mexican bullfighting culture sprang to mind. My mere presence in the bull's territory might be the equivalent of a red flag. "Nice toro, soy tu amigo!" I muttered, terrified, grasping for my clothes.

Then, as I dressed myself as calmly as I could, I realized the bull, almost imperceptibly, had paced backwards. Apparently, he didn't consider me any kind of amigo, and by the time I zipped up my jeans and tied my shoes, he'd backed up all the way to the crater's edge. Snorts became sniffs as the bull nuzzled a clump of purple flowers. He wasn't going to kill me after all. Lucky fool again, I'd encountered Ferdinand, the flower-loving bull of the children's story.

Mission accomplished, I descended the spiraling, fairy-tale road and decided to use what little daylight was left to find a place to stay further down the highway. High in Nayarit's plateau, cane fields' blinding yellow-green competed with agave's muted blue under cotton-candy evening clouds. Once again, cactus heights would sink into pine, then leafy tropical forest. I crested sumptuous hills though the most sublime roadside landscape I've ever seen in all of North America. Deep in a valley, I'd spot a town, its cathedral soaring among the white, huddled neighborhoods, and dream of spending the night in Shangri-La.

But when I dropped into the main drag, Shangri-La withered into row after row of depressing little shops with empty shelves and distressed people hobbling on imploding cobbles. There wasn't a hotel, and I wouldn't want to stay in one, anyway, because the whole village smelled like a broken sewer.

Then, back on the road, getting tense about finding a bed and a meal before nightfall, I lost heart. The town in the next valley looked skanky even from a distance. I approached Compostela's endless car-repair, rooster-squabbling, junkyard exurbia with deep wariness, but kept bouncing forward on the cobblestone narrows, into ever narrowing streets without names, without signs or postings of any kind. But I'd been in Mexico long enough to keep faith, sure a town this size would have a church plaza with a hotel smack in the middle of its random, dumpy
aggregation.

Around a blind corner and there they were, every lost traveler's hopes: Hotel Azteca, bottle shop, ATM, a restaurant promising home cooking, and the little
cathedral's rising cross, everything surrounding a pleasant plaza. Palms lining its strung-lit gazebo, the plaza came alive with vendors and the usual bench
warmers. A spontaneous parade of old ladies honored an unknown saint, her statue borne on their shoulders. They marched into the street, singing a chant, while
traffic jammed to a halt. Looking on, a tough-looking kid crossed himself. Then, for no discernible reason, a flock of little girls in perfect white dresses crossed the plaza opposite the old women, starting a parade of their own.

I crossed into the plaza myself, looking forward to killer pozole and fire-baked enchiladas, but felt enticed to wander among the diagonal walks. Tiny businesses materialized, selling homemade tamales or demonstrating kiddie bubble-soap. A trampoline was offered for a few pesos. A baby-bungie-jumping enterprise flourished. A grandmother on the church steps displayed dashboard Jesuses. As the instant marketplace-carnival installed itself, teenagers inhabited every interstice. Two buddies pushed their shy amigo toward the golden senorita waiting beside the fountain.

If not Shangri-La, this "godforsaken hill town" became Brigadoon at twilight. I soaked up the Mexico I 'd been seeking, wide awake under a sleeping volcano.