Aruga

Doing like fifty on the carreterra, we edged past an equally swift vehicle in the shape of a giant road-ready caterpillar (aruga). It sat on six wheels and was clad sumptuously in lacquered green molded plastic, like a carousel horse, with bright orange antennae. Above its headlights it grinned an enormous caterpillar grin. A sign on its flank said “Rent Me For Parties”! It was an open-cab style caterpillar, no doors or roof, and the driver was pretty young and he was leaning back with one hand on the wheel.

We were continuing north to Villahermosa for two reasons. First, we wanted to see those famous Olmec relics that anthropologists call “the colossal heads”. Second and perhaps more pressingly, because we planned to take the long way around and back up to the mountainous heart of Chiapas, using the graded highway of the western approach instead of the abominable one to the north. When you go north out of San Cristobal down to the town of Palenque, you take curve after punishing curve down from its 7,000 feet, you probably spend half the voyage traveling in the opposite direction from your destination, and you thread these curves along inclines so steep and roads so narrow it seems impossible that they’ll accomodate your bus, let alone traffic in the opposite direction, and because this road connects all the many mountain villages and hamlets, there are also men, women, and children leading animals or carrying bundles up and down the side of the road, edging along the cliff or against the steep hillside. It’s classic. For the protection of these villagers and their livestock there are hundreds of speed bumps and ‘vibradores’, and we duly registered each one. Most of the four-hour ride down I was covering my face with my hands, trying to think of the least nauseating things I could. We were ill for the rest of that day. We sat ourselves in a cafe and felt the earth heaving and shifting.

It was while taking the long way back that I was moved to give thanks for just how far the theory and practice of road-building have come.
Just as the jungled-under ruins of ancient Palenque make such a dreamy contrast to the greasy modernity of contemporary Palenque-town, the screwy road from highland Chiapas down to Palenque is so wonderfully juxtaposed with the dead-shot, black-top four-lane highway west to Tuxtla Guiterrez, the capital of Chiapas. Instead of winding up, down and around every peak and gulch, it bores right through them like justice itself. We crested a hill and I saw the road for miles ahead framed at the base of a deep and perfectly symmetrical ‘V’ of dynamited rock, more beautiful to me than any of the corbeled arches of Palenque itself. The road cut like a canyon. It flowed like a river. This is how you build a road, I thought, straight and flat and still affording big blockbuster views, a swooning red hazed-out sunset on our right as we crossed the neck of an immense mountain lake. Colossal tractor-trailers barreled by on either side. Some were carrying new cars. What a luxury, I thought, a road big enough for a truck big enough to carry a bunch of cars! Bring it on, I smiled, there’s room for all! Fiat, a strong hand, eminent domain: the land calls out for an iron will to bind it! At Tuxtla, the bus station is actually incorporated right into the mall, so you can hop off and grab a Cinnabon or watch ‘Thor’ or get your name engraved on rice in the name of progress.