I disembarked the boeing 737 near midnight in Mexico City. It was the first time I had been to the capital but not the first time in the country. My friend and I had ventured nearby right after graduating high school in search of our spiritual leader, Don Juan (didn't find him).
On my way to the hostel I was propositioned by a handful of prostitutes of varying genders. It took some time to find where I was going, a mega hostel somewhere in the heart of downtown. Finally I laid down on the shot spring bunk in a room full of stinking youth and fell asleep.
The city was huge and bustling, coated in a thick layer of smog and punctuated by colonial architecture and modern art. I packed onto the busses and humid subways in a frantic mode of exploration, getting my bearings on a map and heading off like an ant in a maze searching for an abandoned lollypop. I remember a transcendental moment walking through a flower stall, swallowed by the full-bodied smells and insanely vibrant colors, a smiling man swung out of the inner market in and matched my pace, a large bunch of frilly flowers in his hand, floating like some beautiful planet, I was drawn along by it like a butterfly into the din of mid-day traffic. At night I tried to look sketchy to keep the sketchy people away, it worked. During one of these late night wanderings I found quite possibly the master of tacos. I'm talking about the world's best taco maker, a taco deity. He labored over a long sizzling hot plate in a hole in the wall the size of a closet. Locals were packed in, obscured by smoke, hunched over their food, lost in weird ecstasy. I sat down on the street side stool and everyone looked, some stared with a quizzical expression on their face. I was surrounded by a halo of a thousand colored lights blinking and sparkling madly from a market across the street.
As is always the case when staying at hostels, I ganged up with a bunch of other white folks and we went and gawked at the ancient Aztec ruins just outside of town. On top of the sun ziggurat I stretched my hands up trying to feel the power of Huitzilopochtli coursing through my nerves (I think I felt something). The ancient cultures of Mesoamerica were really on to something. Ok so there were human sacrifices and they warred with neighboring tribes, yeah, but the layout of that ancient city was so intentional, so artfully crafted and powerful. Modern capitalist megalopoli didn't even come close to that magic.
This was the beginning of an incredible journey. It was more than I ever expected and it showed me how far a dream can be realized, the limits are only with how clear your vision is... and what you have stuffed in the bank account. Often I closed my eyes and thanked the whole web of creation for the chance just to walk the strange Earth in search of nothing at all.
On my way from Mexico City South I stepped off the bus in a small town at the foot of twin mountain peaks, one smoking with volcanic eruptions, the other beckoning with rocky outcroppings that pierced the swirling cloud gods. I was hungry so I ducked into a market stall and ordered something I didn't understand, soupy spicy stuff, "is that skin floating around in there?". The son of the old lady cook was trying to set me up with a ride up the hill for a lofty sum. He said it was the only way up (likely story). Politely I refused and told him I would come back if I couldn't find anything else. Through broken spanish I asked a passing bus for a ride further up and made it half way. I got a little ripped off by a taxi driver for the rest of the way to the saddle. There wasn't much up there, a ranger station where I payed the fee and then vanished off onto the trail, a bag of groceries wedged between the top of my pack and the back of my neck. I didn't have a map or any real idea what was up ahead but I could see the mountain I was aiming for through holes in the mist. My body was aching something terrible with my awkward setup. I also carried a gallon of water in my hand, cheap plastic cutting off circulation. Sweaty and panting, a little lost in the misty chaparral. Finally I caught sight of a convoy rumbling up a dirt road and I went down to see if they were heading somewhere that made sense. They were there just to get out and stare at the thick grey of fog before turning around... I crawled back into the bush. Finally as night approached I found a clearing with a few shacks and what I thought looked like a fire at one. The chill had settled in when night fell. As I approached, three or four dark figures lifted their heads and tried make out who I was in the dusk. I asked in Spanish if I could join them at their small bucket fire and they all consented with half interest. We sat there outside the wood shack with our hands hovering around the embers, scattered chatting.
It was too cold that night for my old sleeping bag, before I had sewed duck tape patches over the holes a handful of goose feathers had escaped. My feat became numb as I struggled to get comfortable on the wooden table where I had chosen to sleep. Finally I decided to scrounge around for twigs to build a fire, there weren't enough to keep a blaze going for long so I heated up some rocks with it and placed them around the foot of my bag, slept little.
In the morning that crisp mountain air lifted my system like coffee and though I hadn't slept much I looked up at the peak undaunted. Crunching up the steep switch-backs in loose shale I discovered my old work boots were lacking in traction. As I scurried along a steep portion of the trail I started to lose footing and slid perilously close to the edge of a deadly drop. after this happened a handful of times I decided to take my boots off entirely and try the hike barefoot. The shale cut into my soft skin and made going slow enough that when I reached a high saddle that afforded a beautiful view I accepted that as my summit. Just across from the jagged mountain I was scrambling on smoked it's volcanic twin, a sentinel ready to burst into magma and flames. I watched her smoke signals rise and mingle with passing clouds morphing into massive beings, headed South.
When I made it back to the road in the mid-day heat I noticed a flow of pilgrims coming from the state of Puebla up over the pass. Most had nothing but their cheap sandals, a bed role and a large statue of the Virgin Mary strapped to their back. I couldn't glean much from my inquiries other than it was a pilgrimage in her name. I was satisfied just to witness the spectacle, the dedication to Mother of God's son as they saw it, likely linked to ancient pagan rituals for fertility, abundance. Then again the divine mother can signify almost anything as life itself came from her birthing canal. I got into a negotiation with a taxi driver who swore he was the only one heading South of the pass that day and quoted me a ridiculous price. I talked him down a lot but it was still too high. Suddenly he lowered the price as I saw another van cresting the ridge, loaded with locals. I looked at him with a hint of guile and saw his "uh oh" face. I walked over to hop in and he ran to the driver telling him to charge me more, then smiled at me with his metallic shit eating grin.
We wound down the narrow bumpy road, dodging the constant flow of farmers and workers from the lowlands carrying their statues and meager belongings up the mountain. The further we descended the more locals piled on, many who had been collecting fragrant pine boughs in the woodlands which filled the cab with it's clean sweet aroma. I was crammed on top of a stack of tires by a bag of pine, the other passengers just staring at me blankly, I smiled a little and continued looking out the window. The roadside was cluttered with haphazard taco shacks made from tarps and plywood thrown together for the pilgrims, smoke and sizzling meat, bright colored large women and cackling men in their hats and worn jeans bending plastic chairs with wild gesticulation.
When at last we reached the small town at the bottom of the mountain I handed the driver what I knew the ride to be worth. He exploded that he was promised double, I told him that the other driver was a liar and I would pay the normal fair, he sped away angrily. His passengers still staring at me in that persistent detached way.
I landed in the strange, proud city of Puebla, staying in a a cheep hostel loaded with broken mattresses on shaky bunk beds. There's a couple who seem to be following me as I change beds trying to escape their late night blow job sessions on the bottom bunk. They aren't even good looking so no chance of a pornographic satisfaction from their shameless exploits. I wake up in disgust, all of my clothes are dirty, I have already smell tested the socks and it's clear; time to find a laundromat . I take my bundle and sling it over my shoulder. All that is left to wear are some colorful african pajama pants, in the sleek colonial feel of Puebla I suddenly become uncomfortable. So as not to spend the next several hours a complete spectacle I begin a quest for second hand pants. Dipping into a variety of clothing stores I eventually learn the word for second hand pants and narrow my search. It turns out that there is a bit of an emporium of used things near an abandoned market further out from the city center. In a small, loosely bolted bus, I rumble through the smoggy streets away from the prestige of downtown, into the din of daily life among the common hustle. I get off where I had been told and duck through stalls of decapitated animals and colorful fruit to the other side where tarps hang as shelters for the second hand vendors. There is a grumpy man by a table loaded 3 feet high with mixed pants. I find one that is the right size and ask him the price. Shit! Clothes aren't cheap and he is impervious to negotiation. I am in desperate need to change out of my colorful pajamas so I pay the price. Now with the newly acquired pants in my hand I am left with a new question, where do I put these things on? Maybe the nearby abandoned market has a corner I can change in. I enter through the open garage like door into a maze of dark decaying stalls. There are beds made of cardboard on the filthy concrete and hovels where addicts curl into balls at night. Down the narrow hall I see shady figures making a deal. Tucking into a corner next to a stack of tires I remove my jazzy pajamas (free balling below). You don't know what vulnerable is until you are naked in one of these places. Just as I tug the new pants up a group of large bull dog like men appear in front of me immediately asking what the hell I am doing there. I freeze up for a second and then rapidly begin to explain that my other pair of pants were "broken" and I had to change. As I point to where I had put my pajamas I notice that they have fallen into the center of the stack of tires. Then I explain to them that I have lost my "broken pants" in the stack of tires and they watch, growing more and more amused as I start to remove the tires, suddenly I pull the african pants from the crud they were sitting in and show them with a terror concealing smile on my face. All at once they get it and start to laugh. They have decided not to jump me and steel my wallet because I now seem a penniless fool to them. The largest leader of the pack then comes in a little closer and asks me what kind of drugs I want and I politely refuse as he lists off every conceivable illicit substance. Then he holds out his fist and I again politely refuse. 'No, no, no' he says, 'I will show you the poor peoples hand shake.' Oh I get it. We bump fists and do a few more hand fist combinations before the initiation is complete. I walk from the dark din of the abandoned market suddenly feeling a narcotic sense of relief, not so much because of the pants but because I wasn't killed by a gang of drug dealers.
Dipping down to the deep desert, through the dry stands of cactus and sun spilled hills of Eastern Oaxaca. The bus creeks and shudders down the winding roads, the day stretches on endlessly to the hum of the grumbling bus engine, my back sweats on the vinyl seats. When we finally arrive in Oaxaca City I am full of the exhaustion that only a long road can bring. I know from word of mouth that this is the land of Mezcal, which I have discovered is my favorite of the spirits. So as I huddle into a dark narrow road and discover a shed door open to a small 'mezcalaria' I sling my pack off my shoulders and take up a stool. I have the woman poor me a glass of local 'espadine'. It is the taste of smoked cinnamon and earth that arouses every sense in my body, to my bones.
Sauntering to my hostel I dream of what a magic land I have entered, rich and impoverished, holy and profane, grinding up against the new world with the full weight of it's heavy stone facades and walkways. At the top of a hill overlooking the city center a woman is toasting up some truly amazing cheese stuffed corn cakes. I sit there on a small unstable plastic stool letting the hot cheese burn holes in my mouth. burn the pain away. In time I discover some fascinating hole in the wall mezcalarias serving the profound intoxicant from large bulbous carafes. The psychedelic art that clutters the walls pulls me deeper into the experience until I feel something like love. In a drunken fuzz surrounded by the wavering orange street bulbs, all paths leading me back to the cheese lady.
One morning the fascination of the spirit and art of mezcal is pulling at me and on a whim I begin to ask if there is some way I can go and work with the agave and see how it is all made. The first guy I ask is a young lad who has just showed up at the restaurant where he works, in daze, he says he had drank a toxic dose the night before but yes! He knows of someone I must meet on my quest. He leads me over to another restaurant around the corner owned by a young hip guy from texas, there at the bar are two men, one a mezcal sales rep, not the sleek well trimmed salesmen you would find selling wine or ties but a 7 o'clock stubble, salt and pepper hair, tanned skin with a sturdy grip of the spanish language kind of salesman. He says, "if you want to meet a mezcalero come with us man, but you've got to be ready in 15 minutes, can you do that?"
"Yes, yes of course I can."
I rush back to the Hostel and throw my stuff together and stumble in just as they are loading up the truck. We drive out on a dusty highway to a small mining town at the base of the scrub covered mountains. There in a large shed is an end of the year party in full swing. I gave the driving force behind the business, the Jefe's daughter, three pineapples I had picked up along the way. They were all a bit confused at how I had ended up there. All I said was "well I am just very curious about how mezcal is made and I would like to volunteer some time to work out in the fields" She looked at me quizzically and then at the gringo who had brought me, she sort of shrugged and said "ok we will talk to the Jefe." By simply showing up I was suddenly part of the festivities, sitting down to delicious Oaxacan food and several bottles of their magic spirits.
Chico, who I mistook for a complete wash-up drunk was so faded he could barely stand on his own feet. Swaying from one shoulder to another he would occasionally challenge me to a fight or tell me he loved me, depending on which tack he was on. I later discovered he was the hardest worker of the crew. There was another completely faded older man there with his hat on sideways and a harmonica that he didn't know how to play but played loudly nonetheless. After everyone took a swing at a pinata things started to wind down.
Graciela the Jefe's daughter and PR powerhouse, eventually told me that she had talked with her father and I could come back and work in two days time. So that night I took a ride back to Oaxaca City with the salesman.
Two days later I was on a series of small mostly empty buses out to the old mining town where the party had been. I got there sometime in the night and had no way of contacting the family I was going to stay with, I followed the written directions as best I could until I came to a thick metal door in the middle of an old painted concrete wall. I knocked and no one answered. Sitting for a moment to collect my thoughts and gather up my courage to start asking the few locals still out at this hour where I might find the family I was looking for. After asking a few folks I was finally directed to a door across the street from where I had been knocking. It was Graciela's house and she wasn't really expecting to see me. "Oh, oh right, you were coming out today, ummm.... let me see if father is home" Some yelling over the wall finally produced a response.
I was let inside there humble home, the kitchen, living room and I presume the bedroom all followed the wall in a long rectangular shape. The door opened to a room that had a gas powered corn mill that looked like it had been in constant use since the 70's. The living room was lit by a fluorescent bulb, the Simpsons were playing on the TV poorly dubbed in spanish. I sat there in occasionally broken silence with their grandson who was about 16. My spanish wasn't quite good enough to carry on a long conversation so after the first few questions I was at a loss.
The Jefe took me to where I would be sleeping, an unfinished room open on one side with a tile floor. They were in the middle of building a new home out back, the majority of it was still half rebar.
I rolled out my small air mat and sleeping back, I laid down and tried to get comfortable on the hard tile, blowing out the Jesus candle they let me borrow. I woke feeling a bit feverish in the middle of the night and realized I was being eaten alive by mosquitos. I tried best as I could to cover whatever skin was exposed. After a fitful night sleep I woke feeling haggard and sauntered out to the courtyard. There the crew was just walking through the door with curved scythes and large machetes in their hands. Chico started to sharpen his scythe on a stone at the base of one of the courtyard trees. We ate very little for breakfast, some sugary wafers and some instant coffee and went out to the road to load into the truck.
The truck was a large lumbering beast with wooden side walls and the stain of agave juice that gave off a boozy smell. I stood in the back with the crew as we sped down the highway, our hair blowing in the wind. We finally reached a side road that we turned off on, it quickly turned to dirt as it snaked it's way into the deep desert chaparral.
We parked near a dry creek bed surrounded by thick spiny plants of all kinds. All the plants in this desert were on the defense, protecting what little water and nutrients they had absorbed with crazy long thorns. The agave was the king of thorns, the first thing we had to do was strip off it's long saber like leaves with our scythes. You had to reach down close to the heart of it to do this and get stabbed and scrapped by the saw like sides until you bled in little droplets on the dry sand. All day we hunted through the unforgiving landscape, looking for agave that had been growing there for 10 or 15 years. Some, the Jefe said, had been planted by his father. By the time the sun was sending up golden waining light on the hills I was near dead with exhaustion, the juice of the agave whose hearts we carved into balls with our giant machetes had soaked my arms and neck which now broke out into a painful rash. "La racha!" Chico said with a sinister grin on his face "two or three months of working and it will go away." That night I slept fitfully again, being eaten by mosquitos, waking, swatting dizzily drifting back to sleep.
We went back into the desert to finish our work, shouldering the hearts that sometimes weighed upwards of 90 pounds and took two men to lift onto my shoulder. Slashed and worked to the bone we stopped at a little concrete box on the side of the road. Inside was a long plastic table with a cooler at one end filled with coke and beer, the other side had a rack full of little plastic bags of snacks. The Jefe ordered us all beers and a coke for himself, he didn't drink. He told me that he used to drink morning until night but he had to quit the sauce because it was taking over his life. We sat there at the long table chain smoking "faro" cigarettes and drinking our beers. The shop owner brought out a massive speaker on a stand and placed it at the head of the table. He put on some ranchero music at top volume and blasted us as we sat. Outside the only door was the expanse of the desert punctuated by a derelict quarry, it's rusting metal bulwarks coated by the same dust that swirled in fits into our little shack. After the first beer Chico got a wild look in his eyes and started ordering more and more until the boss finally put an end to it and we were back on the road in the fading sundown light.
That night they offered me cold chicken skin soup for dinner and I passed out on the tile floor feeling destroyed. In the morning after our customary coffee and biscuit breakfast, all five of us packed into the cab of the work truck. The boss pulled out his pack of Faros and we all started smoking, filling the cab with thick acrid smoke. Ranchero music was barely making it through the old wiring as we wound up the mountain side. Today we were collecting a different type of agave entirely. It was a high altitude variety called Tobala. The leaves of tobala undulated in a beautiful lotus like blossom and the hearts were smaller too, making the distilled spirits more valuable and much to my liking.
We wouldn't actually be harvesting these today, they had been collected by a team of men from the high country that deftly loaded pack mules with as many agave hearts as they could carry.
In order to make them easier to handle the men had fastened steaks of wood that they stabbed into either side of the heart, making handles. Once we had filled the back of our truck it was time to descend once again to the mining town.
When we arrived and emptied it's contents next to the giant volcano like pit they called the oven. It was time to clear out the volcanic stone that filled this giant pit in order to start a fire to roast the hearts and once again load with stone. The stone would take the heat of the fire and hold it for a great deal longer and roast the hearts to perfection.
After three days of this demanding labor and poor nights of rest on the tile floor I was pretty well exhausted so when the Jefe told me we were postponing roasting for another day and that he was going into town to sell his spirits, I decided to take a ride with him back to the relative comfort of a hostel bed and a shower to wash my now completely red rash covered skin. I was a bit surprised when I went to buy a bottle of his Mezcal that he didn't offer me one in exchange for all the work I had done. Being from the United States automatically means you are rich, so I kind of shrugged it off and payed the price (not cheap). Also I had a good share of the stuff at their party so it all evens out in the end. With a few more kind words I took my bottle and left the little square where the farmers market was getting underway.
That night, after uploading a few pictures on social media and telling a little of my story while sipping my mezcal I went out and got proper hickup drunk at one of my favorite little mezcalarias.
wondering down the road, chuckling, swaying, covered in rashes from head to toe with every muscle aching. I felt a deep happiness floating around in my chest, or was that the mezcal?
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