He woke in the dark approaches to Guadalajara, at some ungodly hour before dawn. Will the Sun ever return from its passage through the bowels of Earth Monster? Bus jerks and growls into the station, stops. Jose Cruz appears at the cabin door, "Por favor only take a few minutes here because we are still late...."
Still making up time from the desert breakdown night before last.
Daniel stands up. No rush to get off. Empty seats sit shrouded in silence. Only six passengers in all that huge, rumbling bus.
Bus station seems small -- but it's only one of many modules that make up big Guad station. Clean, tiled toilets are quiet this late/early. Noisy splashes into the minditorio.
Then hit the road again, this writer sleeping through the last hours of darkness before dawn.
In the morning sun, some eighty/ninety kilometers before Queretaro, we stop for a meal. I sit with the drivers for a few minutes by their invitation and sufference of the waiters. Television -- always a TV -- babbles on and on about the Pope paralyzing traffic in Mexico City. I'm worried about getting a ticket out of Mexico City this afternoon.
Pastor Jose Lopez out in the regular section with his traveling companion, a silent, smiling woman. He gives me a look like -- what are you up to now, Daniel el travieso? I smile back. Decide to go out and sit with them. Finish my eggs. Excuse myself from the company of the drivers. Take my little plate of fruit over to the pastor's table.
He laughs at me, "We were thinking you thought we weren't good enough for you, Daniel," and I treasure the sounds of his participial clause and subjunctive tense. When will I ever learn to get off a phrase so naturally in Spanish? Ai.
I sit, answering, "No, no, es que... I want to sit with everybody."
"Sit up front with us, Daniel...."
You ride in the front windshield, all the way into Mexico City, four hours driving from breakfast. Pancho by the outer door, you on the fold-down seat, pastor Jose on a cushion before the cabin door, and Jose Cruz in the driver's seat.
Down the long, straight superhighway across Guanajuato state into Queretaro. Endless agricultural lands with hints of industry. In the distance, hills, mountains. Around you, everything flat until you finally reach the city of Queretaro -- no stopping there -- the hills come close, lift up the tollway past the modern stadium, into a network of canyons east of the city. Then, more flat land, and more hills as the tollway loops and rolls around half-forested slopes, up narrow canyons, into the state of Mexico.
The panorama unrolls like some vision of travel while you four protestants swap miracle stories and Christian testimony. Que raro! Como los cuatro caballeros del autobus esperando un apocalipsis -- like four horsemen of the bus, waiting for apocalypse, "Watch, then, and wait...."
Pancho tells the tale of how he came to be converted.
Pastor Jose tells a protestant miracle story from Oaxaca.
You share many more such tales.
You pop back into the passenger cabin, return with the last of your Ghirardeli chocolate squares. Pass them to each of your brothers. Mmmm, dark chocolate melting in your mouths....
Rumble down the superhighway into the megalopolis. The bus climbs into one last passage over a low hill and... "Now we are in Mexico City," Jose Cruz says.
The tollway drops into a crowded boulevard. Dodging and weaving like a whale amidst sharks and sardines, Cruz manouvers down the swarming street. "People drive crazy here," he remarks, bending into a left-turn lane, "you watch, someone will get right in front of us here."
Sure enough, a little blue Japanese flea cuts across your nose, edging out in front of the huge windshield.
Jose soon guides the bus into the arms of the vast Terminal Norte, nuzzling up against the sidewalk.
We are here! We are here! Get your from the space underneath. Take out a pair of clean socks and underwear, fresh shirt. You will change in the bathroom.
Jose Cruz walks you to the ADO counter where you buy a ticket on the overnight bus to Palenque, leaving in three hours from the other terminal (there are four in this capital), Oriente -- TAPO. $384 (pesos).
"Bueno. Entonces, nos vemos, Daniel."
Hands clasp in farewell.
14:44 pm. Waiting in the TAPO sala de ADO. Read. Write. Read some more. Think. Floor sweepers go back and forth across the tile floor. Every few minutes the booming announcer voices babbles something about a bus leaving for somewhere. A senora paints her nails. I dream of dead stones.
15:25. Go check in my equipaje. The bus with its big sign in front -- PALENQUE -- pulls in. As we leave Mexico City, my eyes will be pressed against the glass, gazing at abandoned railroad tracks, Metro construction, the grass strip beside the boulevard, trees painted white -- always those white-painted trees.
We will roll down the long, long calzada leading out of town, into the southeast, block after block after block until we rise up from the dry lakebed sprawl, twist past the stinking sewage outfall, and emerge into open countryside.
In golden afternoon, as the cabin video rolls, the bus will climb up the mountains. I shall eagerly seek my first glimpse of the mighty volcanoes. Above the pine and cedar forests, the feet of Izta reveal their white flanks, gleaming white snow under the yellow sky.
Then we will fall down the back side of the mountains, into the valley of Puebla. Popo will emerge from behind his princess, a faint puff of smoke and ash trembling above his triangular summit. We will slide through the suburbs of Puebla -- no stop here. Sun sets into haze.
In darkness as I begin to sleep the bus shall descend from central highlands toward the tropical lowlands of la tierra caliente. On the bottom, wrapped in mountain arms, Orizaba will pass by, a spangling of light with one weird arm flowing up onto a steep hillside. Stop for Cordoba. Another two-peso restroom, another Mexican urinal -- un mingitorio.
On the road again I will fitfully sleep until we reach Villahermosa. Inside the Villahermosa bus station, I will gaze up at the vast destination board above the ticket windows. Hundreds of names in little white letters march across the black expanse. Wonderful, mysterious names like Oaxaca, Campeche, Chetumal, Xpujil....
And then it will be time to go again. Rolling into the darkness, into the world that will already have turned into tomorrow (January 27).