Feb 24th
Woke up too early for my taste. Hector dropped us off and we were thumbs out along a rather empty stretch of Mexico outside of Puebla by 8AM. We had no map, just the name of the 'highway' we wanted to take- which we declined to write down for whatever reason. At this point, we really should be more efficient at traveling like this. By the time our first ride stopped I had already forgotten the name of the road, it was difficult to pronounce I remembered, and maybe had a 'Kla' sound in it? Angela wasn't any help, she said she thought I knew. Not wanting to keep our good samaritan waiting, I thanked the driver and declined the ride. He pulled away, looking puzzled. With no phone, no internet cafes, and no way to determine where we were going, we simply settled on East.
This meant we didn't have to be picky with our rides; we were already walking with the East bound traffic, we had determined that much, so as long as our potential driver didn't have either a weapon or his junk in hand when they stopped, we were going with. Our first ride was a classic style red Volkswagen Bug. Those cars are everywhere in Mexico and I was really beginning to dislike them. Unless the car was pretty empty and without passengers, getting myself, Angela, and our packs into the car was quite the task. But, we weren't about to turn down a ride based on that. Roberto was in his mid 20's and on his way to work, construction. Turns out he had went on a hitch hiking trip of his own in the not too distant past, along with another guy and 2 girls. He spared no details of his trip and told us about a ride with a truck driver that very nearly turned ugly when he couldn't have his way with one of the girls. Morale boost, thanks. He dropped us off at his exit and explained that ahead would be a fork in the highway with the right branch going into Oaxaca and the left into Veracruz.
Our next ride was in a VERY nice Dodge Ram. With the Dodge Viper engine and all of that. The driver wasn't the chatty type, another young guy about the same age, with tattoos and impossibly dark sun glasses. He was much bigger than me. I wondered if he was in the cartel or something. It was an expensive truck. It was also air conditioned and very fast, so I didn't care. He came up on the fork and without saying a word continued on to the left, so just like that, we were going to Veracruz. After 20 minutes and well more than double that in kilometers, he dropped us off and headed down a tiny road into some small town off in the distance.
We got picked up by a semi, hauling concrete blocks or something of that sort, right outside of Pico de Orizaba, a dormant volcano. This is the 7th most prominent peak in the world, containing permanent snow and a glacier. I wanted to climb it when we first sat in Puebla and looked at in the distance, talking about how we could do it and how awesome it would be. I still wanted to now, but it's a lot more menacing when you aren't 100km away. Our driver explained how a few people die each year climbing up it, saying they don't realize you can't just go walking up a glacier without the spiked shoes and a pick-ax etc. One day...
The ride in the semi was incredibly slow. I can't emphasize this enough. The road into Veracruz wrapped around the volcano, reaching what I would guess is close to the half the altitude. Clouds, not little pussy fog, but full on thick ass HUGE clouds were rolling down the sides of the mountain, making the drive wet, low visibility, and slow as the truck struggled to pull its load up the mountain. Just a few minutes earlier we might as well had been in the desert with not a scrap of shade to protect us from the oppressive sun and it's desire to cook us alive. Now I needed a coat. Every now and again a car would dart around us and its tail lights would quickly disappear into the thick white in front of us. That's about all we got to see for the next couple of hours with the exception of a break near the peak of our little journey up and down the mountain; unfortunately I wasn't comfortable enough yet with our driver to pull my camera out, and the view was amazing. Coming down into Veracruz was equally amazing though, my favorite part of Mexico so far, tropical trees, tropical breeze.
