My Popoluca had pissed me off and I ran away.
I crossed Laguna Catemaco to climb into the Santa Marta volcanic hills, said hello to an old guy in Tatahuicapan who had previously been friendly to me and asked him if the road was clear to El Paraiso. Three hours later in 4x4 I am still climbing cattle trails until finaly I stall out with a presumable transmission problem.
The village was not far away and I walked. And all stared and gave me the evil eye which is a sort of double crossing your index finger. And they said possibly tomorrow a car will arrive to take me back to the nearest other village. And I asked for hospice and was invited to sleep in the bed slatterns of a son who had emigrated to the US.
And they fed me something of cactus mixed with chicken and I avoided choking until the old man invited me to his personal stash and we sat and drank it and watched a million stars and talked about televison which he had seen in the low lying villages and wanted to have for his village.
None of this Jorge Castaneda stuff for me. By that time I was making google eyes at one of his resident daughters, but that rotgut finally kicked in and I passed out, I think. And absolutely nothing mystical happened.
At 5:30 am, on a gorgeous cloudless but full moon sky filled with zillions of points of light the promised pickup truck arrived.
And hundreds of mini parrots screamed while we hauled down the mountain.
