One fine day in Chiapas

This time, we get out of bed the moment our eyes are first prised open by the waves on our doorstep. It is not as hard as we imagined. How quickly one can forget the trauma of an early morning alarm clock. How dramatic the improvement a pelapa-thatch roof and the sound of pounding waves can be on one's awakening.

We play chess while we eat our eggs next to the silent lagoon, twenty metres away on the other side of the sand bank from our hut. I lose again. Today, that does not frustrate me as much as usual.

A baby manta ray has found its way in to the shallows and basks in the bath-like water, camouflaged against the grey sand.

We take a lancha across the lagoon to the mainland, watching the spit of sand that has housed us for the last week slide slowly into the horizon.

It is like a tongue, licking the sea, the palm trees its taste buds, studding skinny barrenness with spiky bursts of flavour.

The Frenchlings come with us in the boat. They have been our casual companions this week. We decided to stop drinking for the month of June and this has in some way caused an impenetrable rift between us and any potential friends. On the other hand, the rift could easily have been Mike and I's reluctance to do anything other than be with each other, playing chess, writing music, exploring.

But this morning, however, their presence makes a difference. It means that when a taxi arrives, there are six of us waiting for a lift.

This does not matter in Mexico. We pack ourselves in, four in the back, Mike and I sharing the front passenger seat, the driver, wallowing in space, peering through a cracked windscreen with one surplus arm waving in the car's slipstream. As we accustom ourselves to the speed and the proximity, he introduces himself as Francisco with a wide smile to each of us in turn. He is visibly exalted to be sitting next to Mike.

"Miguel! MIGUEL!" he cries in happiness, patting Michael on the back and laughing. Michael appears to be enjoying the attention and replies in return, "Pancho! Panchito!"


Our driver looks about to wet himself with pleasure at being called the diminutive version of his nickname.

To celebrate the occasion, he turns the mariachi up. Stoic men in gold buttoned suits and white cowboy boots serenade us through the speakers in penetrating shades of brass and strings. Halfway through the joyful anthem, Pancho realises this song will not quite fit and slows the car to a halt. He unceremoniously removes the CD from the player. After a few moments of searching he inserts a new CD, forwarding to track number 8. A tune almost entirely alike the one paused earlier starts blasting from the speakers. Satisfied, he begins to drive again.

He appears to have installed a sub bass in the boot. The Frenchlings in the back are squinting from the volume.

He begins to sing.

He suggests going for a beer. One of the Frenchlings is in a hurry and says no. The driver is disappointed. He changes the song.

The third song hits the spot. He begins to yelp.

He pats Michael on the back again and cries his name into the wind, swerving to avoid potholes in the road. He buys chopped chili mango through the window, from a boy stood at a speed hump, and passes the bag around like juicy chips. Whenever the energy within the car seems to drop, he begins yelping again. Mike looks at me. "This is the most inspiring taxi driver I've ever met!"

I lean further out of the window in a failing attempt for more air. There is not much to do but laugh and sing along, which we do for almost an hour of back twisting, fist clenching, life dripping Mexican experience.

Michael looks like he's on drugs, such is the admiration and aspiration he has for this man. Rarely does one ever see someone so high on life as our Pancho. When we leave, uncrumpling bones in the square at Tonala, he kisses everyone on the cheek and thanks them for the pleasure of their company on this fine morning. We shuffle slowly away, marvelling at the spicyness of our early morning adventure.

But the day is not over yet. We leave Tonala having looked at a large-scale map of the area and pointed to a place down the coast with another lagoon and an interesting name.

The man in the sweet shop waves us towards the market. The man in the market waves us on to the car park. The man in the car park waves us on to a mini bus that drops us two hours later on a motorway, where there is another man who gives us the keys to a shop with a toilet and points towards another minibus going south.

That minibus leaves us in the rain. Once again, the human sponges, sloshing along in slippery sandals.
The women on it tell us we need to carry on our journey from the centre of town. We are hungry and we still haven't bought proper rain jackets. So we take refuge in a cute looking restaurant where a young man with one and a half arms serves us shrimp and black beans.


When we are finished he begins, as they all do, to ask our story. Where are we from, where are we going. Do we like Chiapas. The thing is, we're not at all sure where we're going. We picked a name from a map, that may or may not be possible to get to. So he invites us to talk to his parents, who are sitting just behind the restaurant, celebrating fathers day with their son and their nephew.

We walk into the room and they greet us with huge smiles and make us take our place at the table. They offer us coca cola and beer. They rattle off the same questions as their son did moments earlier. They are delighted with our answers.

The mother has never been on a plane and never will. The men tease her about her fear and she giggles into her beer bottle. "I like Chiapas and Chiapas is where I will stay. I won't go in a plane. Unnatural things." I agree with her and feed her glee with tales of our fifteen hour journeys to get to Mexico from London. England is grey anyway, and cold. She shivers with delight. "Yes, yes, Mexico is beautiful. Stay here, chicita, where the wind is warm." They ask how old we are and cannot believe the answer. To Mexicans we look like teenagers. They ask if we are brother and sister. We laugh a lot. Then their daughter sticks her head in the door and asks the same, and we realise that we all look the same to them in the same way they all look the same to us. They laugh with us.

Then they tell us they will host our wedding. "You must have the party here! Here in Chiapas we know how to party. We will fill this room with people and keep going for three days!" We are like Alice stumbling across the Mad Hatter's tea party, apart from these merry-eyed people are not mad, not even drunk, just high on life and happy to have such unexpected guests at their afternoon table. We leave them with sparkling smiles all around and promises for invites to our future (never-going-to-happen) wedding.

The next bus is driven by a young man who tells us he does not go as far as today's mecca. The village before it, where he lives, is called Zapotal. "Zapotal it is," I reply, and ask him if there are any cheap hotels. He laughs and looks sideways at the woman in the passenger seat, who turns out to be his mother. "Zapotal does not have visitors, but I have a restaurant, and you can stay with my mother if you like."

When we arrive we understand. This is the sleepiest little village I've had the pleasure of stumbling across yet. Thatch huts house snoozing families draped two-to a hammock, televisions barely cutting through the shrieking of the cicadas. Children sit barefoot in the pavement sand. The empty beach, just a continuation of the hundreds of kilometres of identical beach along this coastline, lays silent and unexplored next to the restaurant.

We sit at a plastic Corona table on a small cement patio with a bare lightbulb shining invitations to the mosquitoes. The bus driver turns waiter and lights a cardboard egg carton to place on the floor next to our table. The bites slow in frequency and we get out our homemade chessboard.

Within moments a steaming plate of garlic prawns, the cheapest thing on the menu twice in one day, arrives in front of us. We do not stop our game. This time I win one in four games. I make my head hurt and begin to see everything in terms of chess moves (...thank God the table is in the way of me and Mike's chair - it could take me in one move and I have no back-up. But he should be careful too. His eyes are just one L-shaped Knights move from being taken by his mouth.)

We are presented to the grandmothers bed, a small island under an enormous empty space of a house that looks more like a petrol station forecourt than a residence. As I prepare for bed I am watched by two small grandchildren from behind a curtain that serves as a door, who dart away like fishes whenever I let their attention be known.

The water tank has a turtle in it.

The night presents a continual stream of spectres to keep us awake, under satin sheets slipping against hot limbs.

The power goes off and with it the fan. Without the wind, the mosquitoes move in, burrowing into ear canals with dentist drill wingbeats. The grandfather arrives home and cannot figure out who is in his bed. The grandson, called in to help, shines a mobile phone in our faces and then apologises profusely. The cicadas grate their endless song, drilling through the concrete walls.

Eventually sleep's long fingers begin to take me. Silhouettes of our phantasmagoria of a day creep along the walls. Squinting through the warm waters of a lagoon. A cackling taxi driver and his love for music. Rain, beating on the windows of a minibus. A salad made of chopped hot dogs on the lace tablecloth of a laughing family. The kindness of an old woman and her scampering granddaughters, sleeping in an unknown location under our corrugated cathedral.

Just when we begin to doze off, our host's alarm begins to bleep.

4.30am. Time for another day.