Benito Juarez

At this moment, we´re sitting, bathing suit-clad and sweating, in an internet cafe on the beach. The town is Zipolite, famous, according to our semi-trusty Let´s Go, for currents that come in from two directions and aging hippies running around in the buff. We have had some experience with both in our few hours here so far, but also there are lots of families, many of them Mexican, and the water is bath-like. (Also, the prices have quintupled in the 7 years since our travel guide went to press). Most of yesterday is not worth recounting, as it was spent on a bus, a late bus, weaving it´s way thankfully slowly from switchback to switchback. But the beginning of yesterday, and the day and a half before that, passed fairy-like in a mountain village, a couple miles in the air, called Benito Juarez.

Arriving, the bus dropped us off at the base of a dirt road, which, we soon discovered, wound a steep four kilometers to the town itself. But the mass of purple flowers and hummingbirds that welcomed us off the bus foreshadowed more beauty to come, and the feeliing of walking through a cloud created by the misty rain added to the rather mystical feeling. Arriving at the friendly tourist office, we paid for a single room and were given a full cabana, with fireplace and bathroom. Benito Juarez is one of several tiny towns linked by paths through the woods, similar in feeling to Cinqueterre in Italy, only a lot smaller and colder. The towns govern collectively, and have also developed a self-run eco-tourism business, with matching cabanas and tourist yuús, horse rides and birdseeing trips. We loved everything about being there. For lunch we splurged on hot chocolate and trout, wrapped in tinfoil and brimming with juices. The rest of the day disappeared reading, until around 8 a couple men came with a huge supply of wood and lit a fire for us. The next day, we took a 3 hour horseback ride in the morning. My horse appeared to be drunk, weaving back and forth constantly, and threatened to run away a couple times, but still we got lots of flower-filled valley views, and ran into some herds of sheep and a few grazing donkeys, and it was all very nice. Then we tried to hike through the woods to the next town over, Cuajimoloyas. There was one vague map, hanging in the tourist office, but the man there had said to just keep going right, so we thought we´d be ok. Well, we were ok, but after trying several forks, all of them ending quite unpromisingly, we gave up on finding the town and turned around. I guess, if they want to expand their tourist industry much, they´re going to have to put up a few signs on the trails. But it kinda seems like they like it the way it is, and so do we.