It was like entering a womb to be deep in the crevices of these mountains. Up above on the main road it was hot and dry and the trees seemed wan. But down with the river and the waterfall the trees were lush and the ground bursting with life. The bright green of plants feeds my soul so much. I soaked the neon green ferns into my eyes and sat on a rock and gazed at the water. We wove our way along a sweet little forest path to reach the waterfall.
No one else was there. How delicious to be ours. This was now a secret waterfall, even though we saw it advertised on sun-bleached posters for tour packages. That has been a pretty great thing about this trip. There are plenty of fun and beautiful places to go, but they are not crowded with white people tourists. Just us and if there is anyone else around, it's usually a bunch of Mexican families making weekend vacations.
To sit for so much time, just being and looking and thinking, is a way of being that I rarely experience in the States. I am always going and doing and making and moving. I come to Mexico, though, and I assimilate the way it is here. You sit in the town square in the evening. You sit with your family. You sit with your friends. Granted, I am able to sit probably because I've already moved around fiercely on the bicycle.
We relished the waterfall womb for long enough to forget about the passage of time. But eventually we became our sensible selves again and were aware of how we would need to reverse our dusty bumpy trek back up and how up in that world it was only getting hotter.
How do you fully enjoy something in the moment when you know it will be challenging to return out of? To fully earn your pleasure by doing all the work first is one thing, and definitely my preference. But sometimes pleasures and annoyances are all intermingled. I'm grateful I could set aside the burden of needing to climb back out long enough to relish this place.
Since my phone doesn't have service in Mexico, I rely on WiFi. And WiFi is remarkably wobbly in the places it does exist, except when it works beautifully, for instance, at a little rural shop specializing in cement, wheelbarrows, toilets, and snacks. Or free in a random town park.
If we find a hotel with a seemingly good connection, and I hope for phone calls with a loved one, my person won't be able to hear me at all. Or the connection will be strong during midday but by night when my blog post is ready, the thing won't load. WiFi will be advertised by a hotel but then it will be broken that day. "Perhaps the chico who works este noche will be able to fix it", the girl behind the desk will say.
Then there was the time that the wifi wouldn't reach to the third floor where we were staying. This was after a day of some particularly intense leg output, and hefting up and down stairs wasn't my first choice. So I rubber-banded my phone to my bag strap, tied my strap to my scarf, and dipped this whole length down the stairwell. Ding ding! my phone affirmed from below. It worked! As a child, I always loved hiding in a second floor crawl space and sending down a plastic bucket on a string and getting my parents to put things in it for me. I'd ladle it back up all expectantly, just like I did my phone, bending over the railing.
Can you imagine my deep frustration alternating with intense gratitude to be thwarted connection and also occasionally gain it? When I'm finally able to see the green symbol on my phone appear, like angels singing, and be able to post an entry or check a route distance on Google maps?
Last night, there was a wifi signal in our hotel, but the owners were away that night, and although Mr. Grumpy Nextdoor gave us a key to a room and took our money, he didn't know about the wifi situation. I could see the wifi network with the name of our hotel, but without an entrance code there would be no connection. So close yet so far. How frustrating. Then. I found a wan slip of paper on a cupholder in the bathroom with a random code on it. With only a sliver of hope, I typed it into the password barrier for the WiFi. It connected! Huzzah! What luck! I was only able to push out messages to my closest ones that I'd found a safe place for the night, before the signal drifted off into inexplicable nothingness again.
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