20,000 Miles South

by Helen Schreider

  While the women scrubbed their clothes and spread them to dry on nearby bushes they shared their mangoes or papayas with Helen and chatted, always asking the inevitable questions—where she came from and where she was going. But more, they asked about her family and her home. Once, laughingly, Helen pointed to the jeep and said, “That’s our home. We’re gypsies.” An old woman looked at her with compassion. “You have no home?” she said. “Then you must come and live with me.”

  When their work at the river was done the women bathed and combed their long black hair before piling the gleaming white clothes on their heads and returning to their village. The men on their way home from the fields always left with us a cluster of bananas, or coconuts, a pineapple, or thirst-quenching stalks of sugar cane. Then, alone at the river, we bathed and watched the sun redden and sink behind sleek tall trees.

  Sometimes when we were digging out stumps or filling in ruts we were only a few yards from the railroad tracks. As the train passed we waved to the engineer and looked longingly at those who sat reading in their vehicles aboard the flatcar. Mirage-like, we remembered the billboards that lined the California highways with the Southern Pacific slogan “Next time try the train.” And sometimes as we jacked up the wheels to clear a rock we couldn’t move, puzzled natives asked why we didn’t drive over the rails as the oxcarts did when they couldn’t pass. It was difficult to explain to them that to us that would be the next thing to putting La Tortuga on a flatcar.

  As discouraged as we became at times there was always something to buoy our spirits. With the sun high in the sky and our water cans hot to the touch, we were digging our way along a ravine at the bottom of the railroad fill when we heard the put-put of a tiny rail car pass us. Then we heard it coming back again. Loaded with seven or eight smiling railroad workers, it stopped directly above us. One of them jumped off and slid down the embankment, bringing with him half of an ice-cold watermelon. Nothing I can remember, before or since, ever tasted as good as that icy bit of pink and green ambrosia.

  And there was the time when a few minutes of unseasonal rain bogged us down again in a small swampy area with nothing within reach of our short remnant of rope. All our digging, piling brush in the mud, and letting air from the tires accomplished nothing but sank us deeper. I had decided to leave Helen and go in search of some oxen when six men, their clothes fresh and clean, walked by on their way home from a bath. Without a word they plunged into the mud to push. When La Tortuga was clear they would accept no payment, but with a “Que le vaya bien” they returned to the river to bathe once more.

  Meeting Tomás again was a real boost to our sagging determination. We had met him for the first time on the previous trip when at dusk we had been unable to find our way around a marshland. Returning to a cluster of grass huts in a jungle clearing, we had asked an old woman for permission to camp there for the night. Making us welcome, she offered us food, water, and hammocks, and that evening we met her oldest son, Tomás. He was about my age, slender and dark, with bright smiling eyes. He told us that there was no trail to the next village, but after hearing our story he said, “Well, I know of a river bed. Perhaps we can make a way.”

  At dawn we had followed behind Tomás as he cut a path through grass and reeds, through dense growth, felling three-inch-thick trees with seemingly effortless blows of his machete. Down a steep bank and along a dry river bed he guided us, and up the other side, where the earth gave way and the jeep almost tumbled over backward. We inched behind him as he sliced through vines making a tunnel in growth so thick the sky above was hidden. By evening we had detoured five miles around the marsh to reach a trail again.

  This time we met Tomás on the trail several miles from his home. Proudly he told us of his wife and new baby, and then just as proudly said that the path he had cut around the marsh was now a regular cart trail.

  “You’ll come with me to see my mother and my family, won’t you?” he asked.

  I looked at the threatening sky and hesitated.

  “Yes,” he said understandingly, “the rains will be early this year. We expect them in a few days. You must not delay. I will go with you again over the trail.”

  For the second time we followed Tomás as he lopped off new growth that La Tortuga couldn’t clear. At the end of the five miles, while Tomás was washing his hands in a small water hole, I said quietly to Helen:

  “I wish there were something we could do to show our appreciation. The last time he was offended when we offered him money.”

  Helen thought a moment. “You’re about the same size. Why not give him one of your shirts?” She reached into the cabinet and pulled out the gray-and-white knit sport shirt she had given me for my birthday. When I handed it to Tomás his face clouded.

  “Is this in payment?”

  “No,” I answered. “It’s in friendship.”

  Thoughtfully he unfolded the shirt. Beneath his big straw hat his eyes brightened again. “Then in friendship I accept it.”

  After leaving Tomás we continued to jolt over the crude oxcart trails, moving rocks and fording rivers, under the constant threat of darkened skies, knowing that even one day of rain could keep us from getting through. At the end of nine days we had covered but two thirds of the distance from Tonalá, but we knew that if we could make it to Huixtla, some twenty miles away, there was a fair truck road from there to Tapachula. Helen had been quiet the last few days; I thought it was just fatigue.

  When we inquired in the small town of Acepetagua about the cart trail to Huixtla we received the unexpected good news that there was now a new route over which trucks passed carrying coffee from the mountains down to the railroad. I was elated at the thought of being on a road again, but surprisingly it didn’t make much of an impression on Helen. We followed the road through banana plantations, and then high into the mountains, where coffee bushes clung to the hillsides and waterfalls thundered to the valleys below. Trees poked through the mist like green lace on white absorbent cotton. Higher and higher the road twisted. It began to rain. Desperate to reach Huixtla, I drove recklessly, skidding around slick clay curves and bouncing over loose boulders. It rained steadily for an hour, and finally we began to descend only to find that the brakes, filled with mud from the swamps, wouldn’t hold on the steep grades. Braking with the lowest gear, we slid down the narrow road, keeping the jeep as close as possible to the side of the mountain. By nightfall we were back in the lowlands again and learned with relief that there had been only light showers there. We also learned, however, that we had made a thirty-mile loop that had brought us but five miles closer to Huixtla, still eleven miles away. We made camp on a gravel bar in the middle of a river and the next morning continued over a good cart trail to Huixtla. As we drove that last twenty-five miles to Tapachula, through some of Mexico’s richest coffee land, we felt the same elation that we had known four years earlier. After eleven days and 240 miles, and nearly fifty gallons of gas, we arrived that night, the tenth of March, in Tapachula.

  The night life of the city, with its neon lights, juke boxes, and speeding automobiles, seemed almost unreal to us after the bright stars, humming insects, and creaking oxcarts. Blissfully we rolled along the smooth pavement looking for a hotel. Leaving Helen in the jeep in front of the Gran Hotel Internacional, I threaded my way through the lobby, where a group of fastidiously dressed men stood idly fanning themselves. No doubt I looked like a Steinbeck character. After one disdainful look the desk clerk said there were no vacancies. I was annoyed. While the men in the lobby whispered “loco americano,” I explained to the clerk in my halting Spanish where we had come from, and after an uneasy glance at the guests in the dining room he reluctantly assigned us a room—with the pointed suggestion that we bring our bags around the back way.

  With La Tortuga safely in the courtyard parking area, we were grateful for the darkness as we unloaded huge bundles of dirty clothes, cameras, suitcases, typewriter, and almost everything movable preparatory to working on the jeep t
he next morning. “Make Dinah heel,” I warned Helen. “I was afraid to tell the clerk we had a dog too.” Discreetly we climbed the service stairs to our back room.

  The next morning I left Helen trying to persuade the laundress to take our heaps of dirty clothes while I took La Tortuga to the Willys agency. Agency is a rather misleading term for the open shed on one side of a fenced dirt rectangle where I supervised the removal, cleaning, and lubrication of La Tortuga’s mud-filled wheels. While I hopped around keeping track of the parts being scattered all over the ground, the maestro, or head mechanic, sat in one corner and straw-bossed the activities of two men and three small boys. One by one I added my own tools to their inadequate supply when they used pliers and chisels instead of wrenches. Promptly at two o’clock they all dropped everything right where it was and knocked off for the afternoon siesta.

  I took stock of the damage that La Tortuga had incurred in the last eleven days. Although Helen and I would regain the ten pounds we had each lost, La Tortuga would never be the same again. Her sides, back, and bottom were pocked with dents from rocks and stumps, paint was missing in long gouges where branches had dragged, and both gas racks were bent from the steep sides of ravines. In addition, while we forded a river, some twenty gallons of water had entered the hull through a punctured rubber seal. We had spare seals, but the dents and scratches were honored battle scars and we left them as they were.

  Shortly after the men returned to work a green jeep drove into the shed. Too engrossed in making certain that all of La Tortuga’s pieces went back where they belonged, I didn’t pay much attention to it until one of the workers tapped me on the shoulder and said, “A countryman of yours.”

  Then I noticed the California license plate and, what surprised me even more, the University of California seal on the side. A tall young fellow with sandy hair and a crew cut and wearing a T shirt and khaki pants unlimbered himself from behind the wheel. With a big smile he said:

  “So this is what had everyone so excited all the way from Arriaga to Tapachula. I’m Ed Markell.”

  “I’m very happy to know you,” I said, looking again at the UCLA insignia. “If you had said you were Dr. Livingston I couldn’t be more surprised. What brings you to Tapachula?”

  “Well, I am a doctor,” he laughed. “I’m doing research on tropical diseases for the university medical school. When I came through on the train, every time it stopped someone would tell me that two crazy Americans were trying to drive a strange apparatus through the jungles. I thought they were kidding me. I should have known it would be a couple of Californians.”

  “It wasn’t easy,” I said. “How about having dinner with us tonight? I’d like you to meet my wife.” He seemed surprised that the other “crazy American” was a woman.

  As it turned out, Dr. Markell was staying at the same hotel, and that night the three of us sat around a table having a regular school reunion. When Ed brought us up to date on the recent architectural developments at UCLA, I couldn’t resist saying, “We consider ourselves almost alumni of the medical school too—we learned to drive there.”

  “You did what? I’ve heard of law schools being accused of teaching ambulance chasing,” he laughed, “but this is the first time I’ve heard that a med school taught driving.”

  “Well, this was sort of a pre-med course. We used the excavations for the building to practice our jungle maneuvers.”

  “And,” Helen added, “it was a very valuable course.”

  That was the first comment she had made all evening. A little later she asked to be excused. It wasn’t like her, and I was concerned.

  “It’s nothing, my stomach’s a little upset. I’ll be all right in the morning.”

  “Where you’ve been, it’s little wonder,” Ed said. “I have some pills upstairs that should give you some relief. I’ll be leaving in the morning, but if you don’t feel better in a day or so you’d better see a doctor. Best of luck, Bruins.”

  The next day I left Helen resting in the room while I went back to finish the work on La Tortuga. That afternoon I received a telephone call from the hotel:

  “Your wife is sick. Come quickly and bring a doctor.”

  Leaving everything, I called the doctor recommended by the hotel and rushed back to Helen. It was a hot, sticky afternoon, but she lay shivering in bed. The doctor took her temperature, and as well as I could, in Spanish, I answered his questions. When he left, I followed him into the hall.

  “Your wife has a high fever,” he said. “I think it’s typhoid.”

  Stunned, I returned to the room. For the first time I realized that Helen’s listlessness and lack of enthusiasm the past few days had been due to something more than fatigue.

  But how could it be typhoid? We had boiled all our water, and we both had had all the inoculations. I told the doctor that when he called the next morning.

  “My diagnosis is typhoid,” he said. “It may be that the inoculations will prevent the symptoms from being so severe, but in any event it will be some time before you can travel again.”

  Each afternoon of the days that followed rain flooded the streets. Constantly I sat by Helen’s bedside watching her temperature rise, recede a bit, and then climb still higher. I kept the covers on her when she tossed in fever, filled the hot water bottle when she shook with chills, and listened to her talk of home, of swamps, insects and flowers. How grateful I was that we had reached Tapachula when we did.

  Each day the doctor came, prescribed more medicine, but each day Helen’s temperature climbed higher. At 104 degrees it leveled off. She lay still, pale under her dark tan; several days passed before her fever broke. With relief I heard her ask for food, and when she made a few feeble puns, I knew she was going to be all right.

  While Helen was gaining her strength back, I finished the jeep and stocked it with supplies, including two hundred feet of quarter-inch steel cable for the winch. When we left Tapachula, Helen was still weak, but anxious to be under way. We both knew that if the rains were early farther south, too, we were due for trouble.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  WITH new mental pictures of the jeep’s contents strewn about a customs inspector’s office, Helen and I approached the Guatemalan border. We had a few nervous moments while officials eyed with suspicion the many bulges and hollows of La Tortuga’s contours, but then, apparently believing that no self-respecting smuggler would travel in such an outlandish contraption, they stamped our passports without so much as a look inside.

  The cool mountain highlands were a blessed relief from the humid heat of Tapachula. Dense forest that admitted little light covered the hillsides, wild orchids clustered to the bare lower branches of trees, and as we climbed still higher there was the paradox of evergreens and banana palms side by side. In the blue distance ridge upon ridge was differentiated by haze; in the valleys far below us tall trees projected from a mass of green, their slender trunks and leafy tops looking like tiny frayed toothpicks. As the afternoon mist settled, everything was bathed in an ethereal glow; delicate ferns and large leaf plants, a yard across, quivered gently under the droplets of moisture. In the mottled sky overhead the sun tried vainly to force its way through, edging each scudding cloud with gold. How good the cold rushing streams felt when we stopped briefly to bathe, and then hurried on. And what a pleasure it was to snuggle in our sleeping bags in the chill night air.

  Neat little villages, their streets cobbled, lined the dirt highway. Every dwelling was brightened with flowers, the sharp petals and delicate stamen of poinsettia, lazy undulant circles of bougainvillaea, and the riotous color of hibiscus. Extremely steep grades wound in hairpin turns, requiring all the turtle power the engine could muster. In spite of the fact that the low-octane Mexican gas made the motor sound as if there were a panful of marbles somewhere inside, we had filled all our tanks. Gas would be forty cents a gallon henceforth instead of the thirteen cents we had been paying.

  Along the coil-spring road to Chichicastenango, Indians on the
ir way to market looked like a string of multicolored beads. Each one carried a burden that would put even a burro to shame. It was Saturday afternoon, and although we saw them twenty-five miles from Chichicastenango, their seemingly slow trot brought them there in ample time to set up shop for the Sunday-morning market.

  The next morning the plaza at Chichicastenango was swarming with Indians, their handiwork and livestock crowded under the shade of purple jacaranda trees. Unglazed earthenware pots were piled like cannon balls, lacquered chests were stacked high, and there were pigs on leashes, chickens in baskets, the ever present dogs searching hungrily for a scrap of food, and the red combs and wrinkled necks of turkeys bobbing in tempo to the walk of little boys who carried them under their arms.

  Near the church steps Indian women sat surrounded by baskets of pink and yellow rose petals. The colors of the flowers paled beside the women’s scarlet embroidered blouses and headdresses. Obscuring the whitewashed façade of the church, smoke billowed up from fires on the semi-circular steps. Kneeling Indians prayed in a monotone of dialect, swinging censers tirelessly, the heavy-scented smoke of burning incense swirling around their dark faces. Their red turbans sooty, their black embroidered jackets and short black pants dusty, they moved up on their knees, pausing on each step. Inside the church they kissed the feet of an image of Christ dressed in the feathered ceremonial garb of the Indians. They sprinkled rose petals on the floor and backed away to continue their prayers in front of a stone altar on a hill above the town.