Chiapas y El Rancho la Granada (Part 2)

The Ranch

On our second day in Chiapas we were heading out to El Rancho la Granada. We had to stock up first because my friend Anoushka told me we could bring "whatever we wanted." That leaves a lot of options. And certainly would include beer. This meant we had to snap our chinstraps and drop into the Central Market in San Cristobal for some provisions. As I mentioned in my last post, this market is something to behold. We mostly loaded up on tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, peppers, avocados, and squash. We would have picked up a couple of live chickens or turkeys but we didn't know how we would carry them around town. We bought three chickens al carbon, cans of beans, local cheese, bread, pastries, and a couple of kilos of tortillas. We grabbed a collectivo in town and asked the driver if he knew where the ranch was and of course he said yes. Because they always say yes. Even if they have no clue. There is a certain swagger and confidence to it, even if it proves to be really annoying when you realize the guy has no idea where he is going. So we rode down to Teopisca while the driver made the standard seven or eight passes into oncoming traffic where he has to force himself between two semis to get back in our lane. We dropped off a couple of passengers and pulled into the beer store. Four cases later we were on the road. When we got to where we thought we should be, we realized that the driver had no idea where the ranch was. We drove up a few dirt roads and saw a party up on a hill and thought maybe that was it. It was a party with a ten piece band and like 15 guests. It wasn't our place but you gotta love the Mexican party spirit. We drove a little further up the road and asked a campesino working in a corn field with a machete if he knew about the house with the gringos. His first response was "why didn't you ask all those people at the party?" Fair enough. We had a pretty good laugh at that one. But then he told us that we "might want to check the big house on the hill, pointing with the machete. We drove through the gate and pulled up in front of the house in a taxi which was the first time they had seen that. They only have a motorcycle and a couple of horses most of the time (and no electricity) so when we pulled out four cases of cold beer, their was much rejoicing among the residents who were all out on the front porch. We gave our driver a huge tip and asked him if he could come back in a couple of days. He agreed and so there we were.

The ranch is owned by a guy named Luis, who lives in San Cristobal. The place is kind of his vision and his son (Cristobal) is basically overseeing things. Cristobal is probably in his late 20's and has an American mom who lives in Florida. He looks like a Gringo and speaks English and Spanish with no accent. Luis wanted to create a self-sustaining place where they would grow their own food and where artists and other creative types could work. The idea is to get some things going to generate income. They do sell some things and trade other things but people are paying 10 pesos a day to live there (about $.80). That means I could probably retire there today with the money I have. They asked me what I would do if I moved there and I said I would make beer. That sounded like a very good idea to them.

The main house is a 500 year old Spanish hacienda. It has both a gas and wood stove and a big stone fireplace. The only light is the fire and candles. Everyone kind of cooks dinner together and then cleans up. They usually break out the guitars and people play chess by the fire at night. With no electricity and lots of physical work to do, bedtime is pretty early. The current breakdown of residents is three Argentines, two Spanish, two French, one and half Americans, one and a half Mexicans, and one Brit. They have built adobe houses that most of them live in. My friend Anoushka has one with a loft. It's pretty cool. I don't know all the stories about how people havre come to be there but I know that they just found the French couple sitting in a doorway on a street in San Cristobal as they were looking for a place to stay. The one American guy (Justice) rode his motorcycle down from Canada this time but originally he rode up on a horse from freaking Nicaragua! And that horse tried to kill me. More on that in a minute.

There were a lot of people there when we arrived because a few people had come up for the day. I spent most of our first day hanging out with and talking to this doctor, Antonio, and his wife Guadalupe. They had such good energy and we all just clicked once we started talking about the environment and politics, the general state of the world, and what the people are trying to achieve on the ranch. I will stay in touch with them and have an open invitation to their home whenever I want it. These are people who really get it. Guadalupe is a student of the Mayan calendar. If you haven't read about it or don't know about, check it out. Fascinating stuff. They were some smart motherf**kers. The calendar runs out in 2012 and there is a lot of debate about what that means. There are anthropologists and mathematicians here right now trying to figure out if it actually ends or if it resets (or if there is a way to reset it). In any case, they predicted some big changes in the world, a great awakening in 2012 that will be precipitated by some natural or man-made disasters. I'm kind of hoping all religion will disappear in 2012 and the concept will be erased from everyone's mind so people can actually wake up and address the coming man-made catastrophes instead of waiting for salvation from an invisible man in the sky. I know, I know he's coming. And in 1000 and 10000 and 50000 years he will still be coming. Someday. I will try to look busy in the meantime. Or get struck by a bolt of lightening.

Hay is for Horses

So this guy Justice rode a horse from Nicaragua to Mexico. It took him four months. He said they confiscated the horses first when going into Guatemala from Nicaragua and then when going from Guatemala into Mexico. Of course they had all kinds of signed waivers and paperwork from customs but, as I said before, all laws here have a giant loophole. Or, in this case, a reverse loophole. What's that called? I think the legal term is clusterf**k? So now Justice is here on his motorcycle that he rode down from Canada. And he's taking another four month horse trip around Mexico. He's also talked me into buying a motorcyle and riding through the Andes in about 18 months. I know, make my funeral arrangements now. However, I would much rather die on a mountain road in Bolivia than have a heart attack in my car on Hwy 101 driving (sitting in traffic) to the job that I hate in Mountain View (there is no mountain nor is there a view there) where my douchebag manager is giving another Power Point presentaion on the virtues of Who Moved my Cheese.

If you ride a horse up from Central America, the horse should have some attitude. Clearly, the horse that Justice rode up has a serious chip in his horse shoulder. "Andy, meet Dragon. Dragon, this is Andy. He will be riding you today. If you actually let him get on." That SOB of a horse wanted no part of me. They told me he may be a little difficult to get on. So someone holds onto the headgear and I try to get on. He swings his ass around and knocks me onto the ground (to some nice applause from the ten people watching). We get a couple more people to help hold him, I walk up, and he steps on me. "Oh, I forgot to tell you, he might try to step on you." With four people holding him and Justice pulling down hard on the headgear, I mount the bastard. We spend the next 20 seconds bouncing around the yard rodeo style with me hanging on for dear life. Once that stopped, Justice told me that he would be fine because now the horse respected me. Until we got into the trees. He tried to scrape me off his back on just about every tree and wanted to bite me every time I pulled on the reins to either steer him or slow him down. We ended up riding to some waterfalls where we smoked a funny cigarette, after which I decided I was terrified of the horse. Anoushka and I switched horses and the ride back to the ranch was much easier. At least after we got Anoushka back on Dragon and gave him another chance to step on me. Bastard.

Speaking of Dragon the Satan Horse, we needed tortillas and poche (the local moonshine) so Cristobal decides to ride Dragon into the village. We were cooking dinner and the trip was only about 15 minutes each way. After about an hour, I asked if we should be worried about Cristobal but everyone assured me he was fine. As it approached two hours, I asked if we should go look for him - "no, he will be back." At about the two and a half hour mark, we here "goddammn, motherfucker, I'm going to kill that horse." Cristobal comes through the door dirty and all cut up. His first mistake was not taking a light. His second mistake was not bringing an extra rope (which he says he always does). Apparently, after getting poche and tortillas, he was riding next to the corn fields and the Dragon's headgear broke. He got off, fixed it, and it broke again right away. Dragon, being a horse, has an affinity for fresh corn and corn stalks. So dragon bolts and Cristobal doesn't know which direction he went. He spent the next hour and a half looking for the horse and finally found him standing in the middle of the cornfield having a feast ("there is going to be one pissed off campesino tomorrow") but he has no rope and this horse is a pain in the ass. He ends up having to drag the horse by its mane a half mile up the trail back to the house. He lost the tortillas and poche. And he thought we should eat the horse.

The next day we would leave the ranch and go to Comitan. Another adventure...