The Mouth of Heaven

We are not quite off the map, but definitely out of the book, and well off the beaten path here in Boca del Cielo, Chiapas. The sun is setting gold and melodramatic over the Pacific, almost a year and many thousand miles away from where last I met her in Northern California. I am fairly comfortable at the Loco Moskito open-air bar, under palm trees, drinking a halfway decent michelada, but there is discontent in the periphery. Zahra, my Dutch travel companion, is somewhere around, but I can’t find her at the moment. Last I saw she was swimming off to my left. Even when close by, she has been distant ever since we got out of the colectivo on the other side of the lagoon.

This was my idea, coming here: to split the difference between where she and I were going from San Cristobal, she due west to Oaxaca, me southeast to Guatemala. We could travel one more day together, a quick jaunt southwest down to the coast, and then back to the main highway where we’d follow our journeys in opposite directions. When I suggested it, she thought it was a great idea, said she’d been thinking of coming here already. If you sort of squint your eyes at the map you could see how going southwest could split the difference, though the reality is that this is not on the way to anywhere.

The universe so far had conspired to bring us together: her coming up to the roof just when I so badly needed someone to talk to about my bus accident, me getting moved to her dorm room the second night, us both losing our spots at the hostel and finding a room together at another one. But now it was me doing the conspiring, not ready to say goodbye, though perhaps it would have been better if we had.

The bus in San Cristobal that we barely made at 11:45, grabbing a couple tamales from the ladies outside the station, took four hours to get us to Tonala. A taxi across town to the colectivo station, then a long, hot ride in the colectivo van, jam packed with folk, kids sitting on laps, young men hanging out the door, bags and packages crammed in the corners and strapped to the roof, took us another hour and a half. So it was evening but still intensely, tropically hot and we were weary when we arrived at our destination, only to find that we had a long way still to go.

We were at some kind of a marina, with a few scrappy tiendas and some shady guys hanging around their lanchas, with that particular way of looking at you when your presence equals a boat fare. Before us was an inland waterway, and about half a mile across the sound was a long barrier island covered with palms and uncountable palapas, simple open air buildings with thatched roofs. The colectivo to Boca del Cielo doesn’t get you there, it seems. So we had to now figure out what was what to get across this water, and then still find a place to stay from among all those waiting palapas. The first boat man said he’d take us for ten dollars or fifteen round trip. This seemed like way too much, and when I said so, the other boat men just shrugged. Oh well. We weren’t going to stay on this side, and they knew it. He assured me that we didn’t need to go into these stores, there were tiendas on the other side, we should just go.

So we did, Zahra looking skeptical and downcast about the whole thing. Back at the Tonala station, when the lady at the counter told her that there was only one bus going to Puerto Escondido, and it only went once a day, three in the morning, she’d started musing aloud about how this maybe had all been a mistake, and maybe it had. Only the prospects of the magical and healing beach were carrying us forward now. The man took us across, and then turned right at the shore, most of the way up the island, past fifty palapa restaurant bars with no one at them, straight to his house, where his family was waiting in the shade, and his father (I assume), an aged and inarticulate old man, tried to rent us a decrepit scary cabana for too much money.

I’d assumed that the lancha would just take you straight over, that there might be a village, some orientation, but here it seemed that each boat might take you to a different place. We politely declined the mold-ravaged cinderblock cabana, strung up our packs, and started trudging through the sand past palapa restaurant after cabana after palapa with identical white plastic chairs under palm trees with no one sitting in them. This place seemed capable of hosting thousands of people, which was odd as it seemed nearly deserted. Perhaps this is what happened when you go to the places that don’t even get a paragraph in the guidebook. Perhaps there are reasons no one goes there.

This part of the island seemed pretty rough, ramshackle houses, crumbling concrete. Most seemed abandoned, at least for the moment, some had families looking at us longingly. There was no road or even path, let alone the promised stores, just houses facing the sound and high sand behind, waves crashing on our right, the whole island only about a hundred yards wide. Sweating through our shirts, evening sun still beating down with a vengeance.

I could tell Zahra was fading, wilting in the heat. I wasn’t doing so great myself, but had enough energy still to profess optimism and keep up a conversation, which she’d respond to in single syllables. We were looking for a place called La Luna, which no one seemed to have heard of. After about fifteen minutes of this unhappy journey, she decided that she couldn’t wait any longer, and had to eat. Conveniently there was a palapa restaurant right beside us (as well as the others in front and behind). We walk in, say our holas, and start looking at the menu, which is entitled “Mariscos” (seafood), while the family there looks at us like we are strange, exotic animals. This is the setting for the following scene, of a traveler very near the end of her rope, sitting down at a table and making an announcement to everyone present.

Z: Yo soy vegano. No como leche, huevos, o carne. (I am vegan. I don’t eat milk, eggs, or meat.)

Waitress: (mystified, likely lives at this restaurant) Solo mariscos. (Only seafood)

Z: (closes eyes, sighs deeply) …

Mother of Waitress: (holding up menu, which, to be fair, only lists seafood items) Solo mariscos.

G: (thinking how good some mariscos would be right about now, with a cold beer) Tienes arroz y frijoles? (Do you have rice and beans?)

Waitress: Solo mariscos.

Mother: Solo mariscos.

Zahra gets up, her eyes burning, and grabs her pack and walks out of the palapa, and I thank the baffled family and we walk on, no longer talking. Five minutes ahead there are fewer houses and restaurants, and at a certain point some of the people we talk to have actually heard of La Luna, and before very long we are there, a lovely bar facing the beach, and then a series of charming little cabanas on both sides of a path leading towards the sound. On that side, there is an open air restaurant, with a stern-faced but kind European woman. This is the least depressing place on the island, and there are actually a handful of guests here. The lady shows us the cheapest cabana, tells us the restaurant is closed but that the bar serves food. We accept all conditions and drop our bags. Zahra goes straight to the bar to deal with low blood sugar, and I stay behind to get changed to swim.

I see how things stand when I come up to where she’s sitting, facing the ocean. I make no move to sit, but she says, without looking at me, “you can sit somewhere else (motioning to another table) (pause) so we can both look at the view.” I just say “I’m getting in the ocean,” and that’s what I do. Wade into the good water, very warm but not hot. The froth and the salt and the surf wash off all sweat and worries and I let the force of the waves push me around for awhile.

Go back up to the bar, happy to see that she’s got a big bowl of vegetarian pasta, get a beer and sit under a canopy some distance away and look at the waves. It’s a weird thing when you start traveling with someone you don’t really know. A lot is resting on a little. Tomorrow it will all come to an end, and we’ll go in opposite directions. But for tonight the state of my new friend matters quite a bit.

We lead separate lives for a few hours; I swim some more, she eats, I eat some fish tacos while she swims, she sits by the water, she goes to take a shower. A bit after dusk, we are finally sitting together when the name of the bar became either ironic or literal- the appointed hour of the mosquitoes, and perhaps sand flies or other fun creatures, arrives, and it is no longer good to be here. This condition is punctuated by the power suddenly going out, and now the lights and music are gone, and it is only the buzzing of mosquitoes, and Zahra flees for the refuge of the cabana and its mosquito nets and it seems there will be no peace or togetherness on this night.

I feel it to be my duty, having suggested that we come here, to brave it out. The bartenders are lighting candles, you can hear the waves better without the music anyway, and I’m clinging to silver linings all over the place as I swat away the bugs. The bartenders offer me a free beer for my troubles and tell me that los insectos won’t last that long. I douse myself in bug spray and sit there with stubborn fortitude and write. They keep biting, but a summer living in a tent in Maine has prepared me well for this sort of thing. Half an hour later it has passed, and feeling like I’ve won, I go to take a cold shower and wash off the salt and sand and bug spray.

When I go back to the cabana to get dressed, I inform her that the mosquito hour has passed, it is safe to come out of the netting, and make a peace offering with an invitation to play some cards. She likes this idea, and we go back to the bar. By candlelight, I slowly teach her the rules of cribbage, and can see her coming to life. After about five practice hands we play a game for real, and when it is done, she insists on a rematch, a very good sign to me. I say that I would be glad to grant such a rematch, but first will briefly step away for a smoke. Walked outside the palapa and a few steps away, and Oh my glory, what I saw.

The name immediately became clear. Boca del Cielo, the Mouth of Heaven. The best stars I can remember. The Milky Way thick and bulbous like clouds, never seen it like that before, with shades of color, stars piercing, living, active things, not dots of light but embers of fire out there. It is easy to forget what stars are really like when you haven’t seen them in a while. It’s not not so much something you see- though they are indescribably lovely- but something you feel.

I immediately walk back in and motion for Zahra to come see. She gasps at the sight and just says “I’m going to have to lie down.” This is the correct and only appropriate response, and she spreads out her shawl and lays down on it. When I finish smoking I come to lie down on the sand, but she offers space on the shawl next to her, and I lie down and know that peace has been made. We look up at the unbelievably bright vault of sky and both of us know what we had come out here for. You could travel for hours with your eyes across this sky, there was so much contour and depth to it.

We talk in whispers and hushed tones about space and stars and traveling and sea turtles until they close the bar and we are the only ones left on the beach and still we can’t pull ourselves away from that sight. When would we ever see stars like that again?

Then back to the cabana to talk more in the dark, late into the night, all sorts of things tumbling out now, about her family, her Dad in Morocco, and how her parents split, what its like when parents are enemies, my family, my niece Maya, love and relationships and how they go wrong, and it was sweet. She agreed it was worth it to come out here, said she knew as soon as she’d eaten and got in the water, but I knew it was really when she saw the stars, the mouth of heaven. “Sometimes the best places are the hardest to get to,”…”often after things are very difficult it’s the best time,” we said. Or some things like that, but more poetic, at least it seemed so at the time.

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