To Puerto Madero

a tale of sweaty circumstance and survival

After

After what seemed like an eternity of fume-filled travel, the rickety bus I was riding in died.

We were headed south from Mexico City towards the Guatemalan border through a mountainous tropical jungle when the entire enterprise came to its final, soul-shuddering stop.  With the dashboard shrine-protected bus out-of-commission and help who knows how many hours away, my fellow travelers—a dozen dusty farmers surrounded by several crates of chickens, a couple dozen baskets filled with grain, and a smelly goat—seemed to swell in proportion to the heat and humidity. Any kind of “rescue”, I was told, was hours away.

Truth be told, I was in no mood to be amused—or even interested in the plight of others.
During the previous hours, my sinus infection intensified and my fever had spiked. I felt myself beginning to slip in-and-out of reality, disconnecting from time and place. All I wanted to do at this point was get to Puerto Madero, a small fishing village on the coast, where I’d arranged to meet with friends from back home.

I probably shouldn’t have been on that bus at all.

Until the very moment I stepped on-board, some locals I’d met along the way tried to convince me this particular “milk-run” trip wasn’t a good idea. There were banditos in the mountains and the black-market for young American women wasn’t rumor but reality, they warned. Besides, they argued, there were more direct routes (and more reliable buses) that would get me there in less time and in more comfort The fact I wanted to see the “real” jungle was no excuse to take such a risk. “No matter what happens, don’t leave the bus until you get to the coast,” they yelled as I waved goodbye.

It was half high-adventure, half high-stupidity to travel that route alone, but I choose to dismiss their warnings as overly dramatic. Even when the bus stalled, all that registered as being of any danger was the blood-sucking bugs. With no competition from any other source of light, the middle-of-the-night moon was bright in the sky. Discomfort aside, I had to admit it was quite dramatic—and a good travel story to tell down the line.

Earlier in the day, I passed time talking to the only person on the bus who’d even looked my way: a music student from the Universidad Nacional Autonoma in Mexico City who spoke better English than I did Spanish. He had thick, black hair that fell to the middle of his back, something you didn’t see much on local boys. He was headed home to visit his family, and assured me breakdowns on this route were nothing new. “You can come with me or you can stay here by yourself,” he said, as he stepped off the bus and headed—along with everyone else—up a narrow path that cut through the tropical growth. A few minutes later, we came to a clearing that was bare with the exception of a small wooden shed at the far perimeter.

I wasn’t carrying much, just a small daypack and bedroll. “You sleep against the shed,” the student said. He rolled his blanket out beside mine and we settled in. Sick and feverish, the roaring in my ears intensified with the sounds of the night. Without a doubt, my physical state—and humongous spiders—was the stuff of my immediate fears, not my companion.

I had no idea how much time passed before I felt his body pressing down on mine, felt the heavy mass of his hair as it covered my face, felt the sweat from his body seep through his clothes and into what felt like every fiber of my being. Every part of me wanted to throw him off—fight back! —but I willed myself not to move. Surrounded as I was by strangers who had no reason to come to my aid, to be raped or killed seemed the obvious outcomes. I asked only that my fever and fear render me unconscious and keep me there until dawn—or until whatever was going to happen, happened.

As the sun rose, the cacophony of night receded. I sat up and looked around. It was not a peaceful scene. Scattered about were the remains of the straw baskets—many slashed, some overturned, all empty. Some of the chickens pecking at the dirt in search of a meal; others were gone, their blood and feathers scattered up the path. Who knows what happened to the goat. Most of the farmers had moved their blankets out of the clearing and into the tropical shade. Beside me, the student lay on his blanket, his open eyes on mine.

Only then did I look down at my own body. My clothes were the same as the night before. I had not been raped. I was alive, and I was still on my blanket on that small piece of dirt in front of the rough wooden shed in some unknown—but very beautiful—spot in a jungle.

“I was worried they would find you and take you and kill me for hiding you,” the student said quietly. “I was very scared.” You see, the banditos had come; banditos with machetes looking to replenish their supplies and whatever else they could find. I came to understand this ritual looting didn’t happen every trip, but just often enough to guarantee safe bus passage for locals most of the time.

Slowly, I also came to realize this young man saved my life at great risk to his own. He did so with his body, with his heavy veil of hair, with his act of spontaneous on-the-road bravery. He didn’t have to do it. He just did. It was as simple as that.

Another bus arrived a few hours later and we went on our way.

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