Day 4: Tornado of birds and entering the mountains

 

Today (aka Monday) is only Day 4, yet it feels like a whole week has gone by, each day so stuffed and varied. This morning we did our first touristy activity, and visited the Cave of Swallows. This is the 6th deepest cave in the WORLD, reaching down to 500+ meters deep, and is so wide in diameter that ferns growing on the opposing face looked like only flecks. This immense planetary pore is home to thousands of white-collared swifts, who sleep deep inside at night and then fly out each morning at dawn for their daily hunt. Tourists gather at the lip of the cave, sitting butt-painedly on hunky rocks, to await the mass flight. 

Ellie and I arrived at 6am, via a truck in the rain, and sat alone in the quiet thick darkness next to the cave lip, which is accessed by clamoring down steep rainforested steps from the road. We could see nothing after our guide turned off his light and left us. I sat with this intense sense of unknowing, un-seeing, and anticipation. The rain stopped and the clouds imperceptibly became diluted. Slowly, other humans joined us and awkwardly positioned themselves on rocks. The clouds parted and revealed a waning gibbous moon and the white sweatshirt on one of the women glowed and we all turned our faces to the moon in silence. Moonlight is unlike any other light, at times expansive but also thin and mystical. 

Dawn came slowly, and before us an enormous rocky opening yawned into visibility. The sounds of echoey chirping emanated from within the shaft. We waited. I tucked my knees into myself to keep warm. We waited. More onlookers arrived. We waited. A few neon green parrots, previews to the feature film, if you will, punched thru the air, swooping to the cave lip and back down again. We waited more than 2 hours, divots drilling into our butts from the rocks. We learned later that the swifts were late because they wait longer to come out in cold and rainy weather. By now sun began to warm my back and I could see all the ferns and vines and rich tropical greenery that had been around us all this time. 

Then! A few birds circled up into view. How far they had flown to get up to the light! Then more birds. They grew into a great swarm of black flecks in a counter-clockwise tornado, swooping around and around and then off-ramping into the sky. To watch a singular bird was like throwing a stick into a stream under a bridge: where will it end up? Some birds circled dedicatedly over and over before off-ramping out of the cave, while others made an accelerated exit. The noise from their thousands of combined wings was exquisite and the sound of a community moving as one entity. 

Waiting on the edge of the abyss.

Birds off-ramping into the sky. 

Later that day: 

Here I am again, squatting on the side of the road in the shade, eating. Polishing off most of a bag of plátano chips, crAnch crAnch: "For what I am about to do, may I be powerful." We were about to begin our first ascent into the Sierra Gordas, heading to the town of Xilitla. To ride that first curving upward-stretching road. Until now it has been mainly flat. I was a bit "gordita" myself in that moment, actually, having enjoyed the first (and decidedly rare) delicious baked goods of the trip, in addition to some black raspberry ice cream. "Pan Canela" said a sign along Route 85, and without questioning anything Ellie and I bought two pan each. Soft, fresh, tender little muffin things, redolent of Cinnamon. I wasn't even done eating my first two and we were buying four more. Otherwise, dissapointedly, I have found bread to be unusually white and dry and tough here, or, impregnated with so much margarine you can smell the yellow itself. But these were manna from heaven. 

In fact, we had been riding in heaven itself. The mountain range on our right, banana trees and ferns and little homes with gardens and flowering bougainvillea. This was not a highway through flat dryness anymore. "The CAFOs and dirt lots were only to prepare us to appreciate THIS gift", said Ellie. We couldn't stop exclaiming over the road and the views and the verdant greenery of it all. Roadside shops advertised colorful gifts and shop after shop boasted "nieve!". Snow? I came here specifically to avoid nieve! So of course we had to see what all this nieve was about. Snow cones? Some sort of trinket? Turns out: nieve is ice cream in many diverse flavors. Could we get any closer to paradise? 

Farther along the road tractor trailer trucks were parked nose to nose. Dump trucks waited roadside as well. We were riding through a gauntlet of trucks as far as the eye could see. What a strange change of scenery. I felt very small on my bicycle next to them all. "Where's the party? Where is everyone?" asked Ellie of the deserted trucks. Then I observed a pile of oranges peeking from the open top of one of the dump trucks. Actually, all the trucks were filled with piles of oranges. Huge immense towering piles of oranges. Oranges by the tons of tons. I could smell the hot sugary citrus in the sun. Then we passed a huge grey complex with a logo of an orange on it, orange juice! I can say with true certainty I have never been near so many oranges before in my life. 

Orange load guantlet. 

So we began our first climbing. The road clung to the side of the Earth's bulge and tall trees draped over us. I used my lowest gear at times and thanked my bike shop guys in adulation for the smoothness of shifting. Looking up from the concentration on pavement and I could see the land dropping away as we slowly gained in height. My face was huge with sweat and redness and exertion, I looked not unlike an heirloom tomato. But I love views from above; I love the soaring expansive feel of them. The sense of knowing where you are, where you've come from. 

After climbing about 1000 feet (two Cornell hills worth, just under half of the days climb, which is a sliver compared with some days we'll be doing), we stopped and ate fruit. I sat off the road and gazed at the soaring face of vertical land rising into the sky. "I am sweaty and sticky and tired and I am so happy right now," I said to Ellie. I told her about all the silly workouts I did in my Mansard apartment this winter, the grey coldness outside and me doing high-stepping around the kitchen and wall-sits in the hall. The bleak January days in the over-crowded Cornell gyms on a stationary bike. How my love Matthew would come over and tickticktick, up the resistance on the stationary machine, "remember Mexico babe!" he'd say and I'd be left heavily pumping away going nowhere. 

But now! Oh, it was all worth it. To get up here on my own power. My knees cooperating, free of pain so far. My legs doing as they're told. Ellie summed it up:

"Brought to you by High Knees in the Kitchen." 

How mountains can be such formations! So many different shapes! Lumps and humps and sharp drops and gentle bodacious cleavage and bare rocky patches and, are those tiny specks cows up there? 

When we came around a curve and saw the city of Xilitla, perched atop a peak and centered in an out-pouring of sun beam, I felt as if I were seeing a city out of a Disney princess movie. We didn't even need to consult each other to stop, we just both pulled roadside and went "whoaaaaa". 

The little center of Xilitla town was as bustling and lit as midtown Manhattan, just stacked in a tall pile. Built on a mountainside, it was incredible to see layers of buildings in this way. The town was like a split-level house, but a town. A five-way intersection blended vertical with horizontal and bustled with people and dogs and vehicles and a solitary policeman waving his arms about trying to maintain some order amongst all the gravity. 

Xilitla, all stacked and bustling.

Ellie and I are taking today as Saturday here, sleeping in past 6am and lounging about resting legs and enjoying internet and coffee and scraping out the last of our beloved and endangered peanut butter.  

In raptures over a rare latte. 

We're being good about checking in with each other and taking care of our bodies. This exchange happened first thing this morning, after stretching and admiring the mountains: 

S: How's your hunger level? 

E: Not bad but I can feel it coming. 

S: It's like seeing a train in the distance. 

E: You know it'll be momentous. 

I am so grateful for her positive and wonderful company! We are having a wonderful time.