San Cristobal to Puerto Arista
June 13th 1995
Full Moon
Early in the morning i got up and went. A whole group of people were going out to one of the encampamientos, or encampments, in the forest, and i called in at CONAI on the way to the bus station to say goodbye to everyone. They were all there waiting to get their accreditation, so they could stay in the encampment. And then i left San Cristobal.
It was sad in a way, because i knew it would be a long time before i'd be back there again, and i really liked San Cristobal. But at the same time, i was glad to be leaving. Glad to be going to the coast. Glad to be getting away from all the people for a while.
I was going to spend a couple of weeks by the beach and then go to D.F., where i should have somewhere to stay while i helped some people set up a modem and an internet connection. I was looking forward to getting back to work on stuff like that, as it had been a long time. In fact, that was really the only reason why i was doing this now. I had decided to go to Cuba and try and get a cheap flight from there to Europe - as flights from Mexico are ridiculously expensive. But i'd changed my mind when this possibility came up. If i spent a couple of weeks in D.F., i could get my mum to buy me a cheap ticket in London and send it over to me by courier.
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The journey to Puerto Arista took all day. First i had to get a bus to Tuxtla Gutierrez, the capital of Chiapas, eighty five kilometres west and fifteen hundred metres below San Cristobal. Then from there it was about three hours on another bus to Tonalá, which is on the coastal plain.
From Tonalá, it was about another half hour or so in a local bus. Not far south of town, the road turned off and ran perpendicular to the coast. Behind you are the dark blue shapes of the Sierra Madre mountain range, which runs parallel to the coast about twenty five kilometres inland. Between the mountains and the coast, there was a flat coastal plain which seems to be good fertile agricltural land. In the bus on that road, with the montains behind us and the coast in front, i had a sudden overwhelming feeling of home. The smell of the air, the climate and the overall feeling of the place reminded me so much of the area around Mullumbimby in northern New South Wales, where i'd lived for a while and where i often spent time now and then. It was strange in a way, as Mullum is quite a different lattitude to this and the equivalent latitude in Australia would be two thousand kilometres north of there, but it just felt so much like it. I smiled. I was happy. I felt comfortable at last.
The bus arrived in Puerto Arista just as it was getting dark. It stopped in a deserted street, which was obviously the main street of this small town. In fact, it turned out to be the only street. I put my hat on, hung my bag over one shoulder, my bedroll over the other and walked down a laneway onto the beach.
The sun had gone down and the last of the light was fading fast. I wandered slowly along the beach, which was lined with restaurants and guesthouses - but the friendly, low key, thatched roof sort of places, not the intimidating, efficient, prison-like ones of Playa Del Carmen and Cancún. A couple of kids called to me and i walked over to where they were standing, as i couldn't catch what they were saying above the noise of the waves. They were just about the only other people on the beach. They were asking me if i was looking for somewhere to stay and took me over to have a look at a room. It was a reasonable price and quite an OK room, but there was building work going on in the front of the guest house, and i really didn't feel like staying in the middle of a building site, so i wandered on.
After a while, i found a place that offered me a room for twenty five pesos a night, which was reasonably cheap - and it would want to be for what i got for it! The place was built out of concrete, which was crumbling badly, the way it does when it's built with salty water - the reinforcing steel was showing in a lot of places and was badly rusted! The whole place was damp and mouldy. But that's the tropics in the wet season, you can't avoid it anywhere, unless you imprison yourself in a sealed room with airconditioning. And then you might as well be dead anyway, because you're already in your tomb! The bathroom and toilet weren't far away, but they were more of the same. The toilets had to be flushed with with a bucket which you filled up from a tank outside and the doors didn't close properly beause the frame had rotted. And when i looked in the long, crumbling, three-person shower room, there were two gigantic toads in there, enjoying the dark, cool dampness - they were about twice the size of a large fist. All in all, it felt like home!
Fortunately there was a fan in my room. It was rusty from the salty air and a bit on the dodgy side, but it worked. It was the only way to keep the mosquitoes off me in the night. I didn't much like fans, and i particularly didn't like them running all night, but the mosquitoes here were pretty heavy-duty. If i tried to sleep without the fan on, i'd be eaten alive and come up in itchy, painful lumps all over my forehead and other sensitive places. A mosquito net would have been nice.
The place was run by an old woman, who i took a liking to. Her and her old man spent most of the day lying in a hammock. There were some younger people around, but i never quite worked out what the relationships were. I was the only person staying in the place at that time - in fact, i was almost the only visitor staying in the whole town! However, that would be normal at that time of year, all tropical holiday resorts have a low period in the wet season.
The town itself was just a small country town. It didn't seem as if the fact that there was a beach just a block away from the main street, with restaurants and hotels on it, had any effect on the place. It must have, of course, but it wasn't noticeable. There was no sign of any of the commercialisation that you get in the sort of place where international tourists go - so presumably most of the visitors there were mexican.
One day, i passed a pig wandering down the main street, snorting agitatedly, unconcerned and unmolested. Round the corner, there was a chicken in the middle of a side road. Nobody else took the slightest bit of notice.
I never went in the water at Puerto Arista. I'm not completely sure why. Partly, because i didn't like swimming on beaches where i had to wear clothes. But also, somehow, i just didn't feel like swimming at that place. Another thing that put me off was that there was a very dodgy-looking yellow scum on the water out where the waves were breaking and it certainly didn't look natural. This place was pretty close to Tuxtla, which was an industrial town, i didn't know if that had anything to do with it or not, but i didn't fancy swimming in whatever that yellow stuff was, either!
I stayed there for four days - or rather, for four nights. And then i just had the urge to get out of there. No particular reason, i was just getting sick of it. There wasn't much choice of things to eat, as there were no visitors in the place and most places didn't seem to have any food. There was also a total lack of change of any sort in the town, which meant that every time you wanted to pay for something it was a major drama. I don't know why there was absolutely no change, but i assumed it was because there was absolutely no money in the town at all. Everyone must live on credit for the low season or something, and then pay it back through the good season and then have nothing left to live on in the next low season... I dunno!
Also, it was getting close to the solstice and i wanted to be somewhere else for that. This seemed like a bit of a dismal, dead place to spend the solstice, even though i liked it in a way and was happy to be there for a few days. It was just time to move on. I decided to go back to Zipolite. It was on the way to DF and it seemed like the best bet.