Ahuehuetes, or the Montezma baldcypress, are Mexico’s national tree. The name comes from the Nahuatl (a family of Uto-Aztec languages) meaning “upright water drum” or “old man of the water.” Which, makes sense since the barrel chested beauties prefer to grow in riparian zones (transition area between land and water), where they can drink their fill. Accounts vary about how thirsty they are, ranging from 4,000-20,000 L per day. For this reason, they like to grow over springs and headwaters. This correlation connects to much of the mysticism and culture which springs up around them, as lessons for kings and resting points for pilgrims alike.

Even further back, these giants are woven into the tapestry of origin stories of the Zapotec, Aztec, and Mixtec peoples. The Aztecs used them as an analogy for what makes a good emperor. The Zapotec, who tend and meld with the land of this region to this very day, like to say the ahuehuete tree is like them: short, stout, and ancient. One of the origin stories tells that the gods flooded the lands but to preserve human kind, one of the trees offered shelter to a human couple to live inside its ample trunk.

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Thusly, when Cari, a friend who lives part time in the region, told us about an arbol centenario the Ahuehuete de Chalma, we shifted our route to pay a visit. we climbed out of the Malinalco valley to a volley of daytime firecrackers clapping and echoing along the ridge.

Arriving around lunch time, we sat eating a bag of rotisserie chicken and rice, held our daily check in with each other, and watched life unfold. Even into recent days, the ahuehuetes are a stop along pilgrimage, thus a giant golden Virgerncita Maria also grew out of the hillside behind this specimen. I was enamored with the 230 year old giant, though Marc had talked about a 2000 year old cypress he had met in Oaxaca and my mind boggled to imagine the perspective of a something of that size and age. But, that was still 500 km away, a creature from the long ago, somewhere in the distant future.

Lore around the trees is quite built up and thus, so is Latin style infrastructure. The road was lined by comedor stalls, vendors hocking snacks, trinkets, and coronetas. An abeulita had no hard time of convincing me to buy an elote al palo. Traditions hold of buying a coroneta and wearing it until the end of your pilgrimage, or until you get bored. We only saw one couple wearing them while taking selfies of making out with their mouths full of elote. This level of comfort with PDA across Latin America has fascinated us.

All other stages of life also played out. The tree himself was inside a black, wrought iron fence hung with signs and mementos. The waters are considered sacred, so, as we ate, we watched a set of adult children hold their aged mother by the waist as she bent to cup handfuls of water to rinse over her head and joints. Young mothers similarly held on to their toddlers who dangled over the pools. A guy wearing a Black Sabbath T-shirt and pierced lip walked a very disinterested pony around letting folks pose their kids on it for pictures for 10 pesos. A pack of young boys ran around playing and splashing. A group of teenage siblings swam and played amongst the sapling cypress downstream. I like thinking about our species playing together, an unspoken enjoyment in one another’s company.

The bucket hatted toddling son of the couple who sold colorful jugs at the base of the tree, engaged his dad in a very short Nerf gun war across the water and then a very long and elaborate effort to regain the dart which floated out along the various pool. The dad, dressed all in black with shiny chic black combat boots, would use a water gun to move the dart toward his wee one who somehow just missed grabbing it as it fell over each subsequent small cascade into the next pool. Once I realized the project was less about successful recovery of the toy and more about time spent together, I chuckled along and cheered when they eventually returned to their sales-post near the fence with the dart recovered.

Recognizing the importance of these waters to the locals, I thoroughly rinsed the plastic bottles of soda which had come with our chicken lunch and filled it at one of the spouts from the base of the tree. I brought this back up to a pair of vendors at the market in Santa Monica well up the mountain, who had helped us out. The teenage grandson had wanted to use his English and I could see abuelo subtly smiling behind his table of wares. They were both very honorable and the young man had refused my offer of a few pesos in thanks for their directions, saying in English, “it’s no problem.”

In regions where poverty and need are so pervasive, I am always struck by the dignity with which some will refuse financial remuneration. It is a matter of pride. How to express gratitude to these folks can be a challenge for those of us accustomed to the grueso dealing of cash.  Some go to gifts I’ve learned are: thanks, sharing food, words of praise, mini English lessons to their children, connecting their pueblos with ours, time, and stories. Putting a bit of thought into it and watching what is meaningful to them. In this case here before me, flowed the answer.

I scooped the bottle full and carried it back up the mountain to where we resumed our route. I spoke with the grandson in full view of other community members. Gauging my conversation based on the scope of his vocabulary, which words to say in English and spinning the rest in Spanish so that I would not confuse or embarrass him (greetings and words like “please” “thank you” “cool” “I like your hat” and anything you can detail with hand gestures are safe cross-territory). Then I turned to abuelo, thanked him for his help, complimented his grandson, and presented him with the bottle of water. He rose, grinning, held it up and said “ella me trajo agua sagrada.” I pedaled away and into another steep climb still grinning and glowing from the interaction.

The next Pueblo Magico we arrived to was Tepoztlán, more of an alternative lifestyle, party town than the sleepy quietness we have become spoiled by traveling in the wake of COVID. While the archaeological site on the ridge above was closed due to COVID we meandered through the Paroquia Nuestra Senora de la Natividad, another of the massive chapels compromised by the earthquake. We paid the nominal entrance fee to the guard wearing his uniform and a “smoke weed every day” bandana. A nun sat under an awning selling baked goods on the lawn and while the museum in the cathedral was not open we enjoyed ambling the vaulted corridors and inspecting the detailed, hand drawn designs on the walls.

It was beautiful grounds and a quite place to stay out of the background of the many very dressed up people posing for pictures along the main street.  Numbers of people escaping Mexico City were gathering for weekend festivities, waiting in lines at the liquor tents for cantaritos (basically kitchen sink mixes of alcohol in imaginative vessels the size of a human head). We got some chores done and enjoyed a nice meal out watching the revelry from the safety of an empty rooftop, taking advantage of dining options other than the comida tipica we can usually access, before tucking in for the evening.

It’s not something we talk about often but which we practice diligently when traveling abroad:
We do not stay out after dark and when strangers ask or invite us, we simply tell them we don’t drink. The truth is, we really aren’t big drinkers anyway but it’s just easier to not go there at all. These are basic safety precautions we have kept since the beginning because they keep us out of potential gray areas or risk situations. Other long term travelers have told us they do the same but don’t want to talk about it in their blogs because they would rather not open that bag of worms.
So I will.

I understand the reasoning behind the pushback, that it is “not fair” or “shouldn’t have to be that way.” We have also debriefed on enough “she was at the club and just needed to find a place to stay for the night, then they found her washed up on the beach in trash bags” situations that we try to avoid the whole realm. We usually have lodging lined up ahead of time, aim to get in before the sun is down, and prefer to avoid going out after dark.

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I have been told by men who have bikepacked and otherwise traveled the region that we are “missing out” and that “bars are where you get to know the REAL Mexico,” and that “you HAVE to spend a night at one of the auto motel (sex hotels) to get the full experience” but, this is not an interest nor are they areas safely accessible as women viajando solas (as they like to refer to us down here). There are other cultural access points open to us as women which are not as available to men. Such as the kitchens, around the table, or amidst their children. It is a style more becoming of my preferences.

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Respecting language use and tempering it amidst excitement to share, as individuals privileged enough to travel, is tough. I suspect it to be a leftover from reptilian ‘survival’ brain thinking, believing yours is the ‘right’ way to do things. I try to be mindful of language and tone when asked to advise young travelers or even when consulting with seasoned travelers. Phrases such as ‘must’ or ‘you HAVE to’ or defining what is an ‘authentic’ experience is sets a tone and creates an unnecessary and sometimes unhelpful impetus.

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That said, a really fun resource I keep coming back to and which I’ll happily share is Atlas Obscura. Sometimes their entries are just about the only English source I can find about some of the funny nooks and crannies we end up in.

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Each of us have worked hard to get out here and are seeking and finding fulfillment in our own realms. The best thing you can do for yourself is travel with someone who enjoys a similar style of experience. It is easy to think ours is the ‘right’ way when really, there are very different ways, which vary according to everything from season to gender. It can be as blatant as a museum with a steep, narrow wheelchair ramp that ends in stairs or as subtle as framing your experience as being more ‘real’ or ‘authentic’ than some else. I know I am as culpable as others at this echelon and tenure of travel.

Through this stretch we routed ourselves through one of the large, industrial cities (either Toluca or Puebla, I think) where we stopped to hide out in a Holiday Inn Express. Sure, I’m kinda embarrassed to admit that but I think it bears explaining that after stretches of being immersed in a foreign culture and socially engaged and wary much of the time, sometimes you just want to be anonymous and have access to familiar things. The constant human interaction and volume of social engagement required to achieve basic tasks is particularly exhausting for someone as introverted as Neon.

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So we flopped onto clean white bedding heaving sighs of relief. We enjoyed doing things like: our laundry ourselves, having steady enough internet to upload pictures and have video calls. We even got overzealous in our urge for comfort and tried to order a delivery pizza but after an hour of trying to get the online form to take, calling twice and the myriad of quirks which render such inaccessible we settled for carryout from the mall across the highway which was another reason for our stop.

While I have been chugging water, it felt like it wasn’t sinking in. I felt water logged but couldn’t absorb it. A quick call from the museum steps with our health advisor and he recommended more salts, citing Nuun tablets, something I had never heard of before. We’d found a Google tag of a health food store in the mall where we hoped to also find some energy bars with actual nutritional content rather than the empty calorie cereal bars we can find at most abarrotes. I spend a lot of time thinking about food deserts and astounded at the nutritional deficiency of most pre-packaged food distributed across our planet and species. Much of the trash we see says the primary culprits are Coca Cola and Nestle. (A quick Google search and The Guardian corroborates this.)

It took me a bit to work up the nerve and settle my guilt to go to the mall but then Neon reminded me there was a food court and suddenly, somehow, I found the motivation. We got a meal of whatever cuisine style we wanted, hit the health food store, and took a victory lap. We even saw a couple making out with their masks on, which was next level amusing. All in all, we enjoyed the reprieve of soft beds, toilet with an actual seat that doesn’t have to be bucket flushed, and take showers in free flowing, non-electrically charged hot water.

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Sometimes, like the Montezuma Cypress, I just want to be around a surfeit of flowing water, more than what I can actually consume but I rest better in the reprieve of knowing it is accessible.