Don't Go Chasing Butterflies

Toluca, Mexico

6,116 km

The morning after the car accident the sky was mostly clear but sharply cold. I left around midmorning as Male and her sister and their parents left for work. Male apologized profusely and I sarcastically thanked her for the excitement. Soon I was out of the city and heading west on the free highway. The first danger came when I arrived at a patch of highway construction where deep grooves were cut into the lane parallel with the direction of traffic. The grooves are to hold the new tarmac when it is poured but they are a terrible hazard to a motorcycle because the front tire can get caught in the groove and loose all traction. This was made worse because here the highway twisted through hill country and I had to make leaning turns amidst the grooves in the tarmac.

Soon it grew very cold. It started to rain, then it rained hard, then the rain became hail. It pelted my helmet and the gas tank and I could feel the staccato sting through long johns, trousers, and rain pants. I pressed on and the downpour continued sometimes as rain and sometimes as icy pellets. It pooled in the center of the highway and then broke into rippling mudflows. Occasionally the rain stopped and the skies cleared but then the wind rose and I had to lean against it and the leaning means less tire touching the we tarmac and so less traction. Finally, I passed Zitácuaro and then I turned north on a secondary highway towards Angangueo. Before there, at Ocampo, I saw the signs for the El Rosario butterfly sanctuary.

The road meandered for 15 kilometers up the hillside in two lanes paved in rough, bone-jolting stones around two narrow tracks of smooth stone. Water flowed downhill as I climbed, soaked and shivering, trying to stay on the smooth tracks and trying to stay perfectly vertical to lose no traction to a lean. The rain turned to hail and struck hard and the downhill flows grew heavier and cut the road crossways rushing at times perpendicularly against the tires.

At the entrance to the butterfly there was a small open-air hut where old men and women bundled up and huddled against the stinging cold and did not come forward to greet me. I parked the bike and approached. The said there would be no butterflies today, which of course I knew. I said I wanted to get something hot to eat and drink in one of the structures a half kilometer ahead. They wanted to collect 20 pesos as a toll and I – cold, wet, and exhausted – became somewhat indignant and replied there was no way I would pay if there are no butterflies. The shrugged their shoulders and said that I could pass but now, bizarrely there was a principle to stand on, so I remounted, made a U-turn and returned the way I had come.

The descent was more harrowing than the ascent. To climb you apply throttle: you exert force against contrary force – you turn wheels against gravity, push water between treads, heat cold rubber, and this creates traction. But descending, gravity is no longer against you; you no longer create traction by exerting force against contrary force. Worse now was that the hail had frozen in sheets across the smooth paving stones and it was a virtual slalom for 15 kilometers until I arrived, shaken but not beaten, at Ocampo, where I took shelter in an open-air taquería and drank a hot coffee to settle my nerves.

A Road Accident in Toluca

Toluca, Mexico
5,843 km

The motorcycle appeared to be running well again so I spent a few more days in Mexico City before I shoved off again. I made other small repairs and had a new rack built for the saddlebags because the high speed vibration was causing wear on the vinyl. I spent a very fine day visiting the Plaza de la Constitución and the Catedral Metropolitana. Inside, standing before an enormous backdrop of carved saints and martyrs brilliantly leafed in gold, the priest sermonized of the “enfermidad del sexo, alcohol y oro” (“sickness of sex, alcohol, and gold) and I appreciated the irony of the latter. In the afternoon I visited the Museo Nacional de Antropología where a casual visitor could fill several days and an aficionado could lose himself for weeks. The museum is a marvel and the exhibits dispelled any prejudicial doubts I had that Mexico is poor in cultural heritage.

In the evening Memo and I had dinner and a few drinks. He told me of the terrible Mexico City earthquake of ’85. He was very young but he and friends obtained a truck and drove water and food into those in the affected area. He spoke of the poverty of his country, of his family members in the Oaxaca region that still go without shoes. There was great sadness in his eyes and his voice and I saw the soul of a good man.

The evening of the next day – the 14th of January – I left Mexico City for Toluca, which is on the way to Ocampo in the state of Morelia where I wanted to visit the monarch butterfly sanctuary the following day. In Toluca I stayed with a young lady, Male, that I had met through couchsurfing.org. In the afternoon we went to the Cosmovitral, which is like a cathedral to this natural and beautiful. Stone paths meander among lush flower gardens and bubbling fountains and streaming tinted sunlight pours through enormous stained glass images of cosmic creation that decorate the simple gray stone walls.

In the evening, Male, her sister, Erica, and I took the car to go out of dinner. It drizzled and the night was dark but for the rushing headlights along the freeway. Male drove in the fastest of the three traffic lanes. Rising on an overpass she noticed an approaching car traveling fast. She moved to the center lane to let it pass but quickly found that she was approaching too quickly upon the car ahead of her. She swerved left too hard and then back again right to compensate. The sedan hydroplaned and went into a uncontrolled spin as though the wheels were skies and the rain slicked tarmac icy snow. We made a turn and a half as we barreled to the right, clipped the car that Male had tried to avoid, and careened backwards into a concrete-reinforced rail post at the top of the overpass. I saw the whole thing happen in slow motion, aware of everything – of the spinning, of the crashing, of the broken glass shattering inward upon me from the rear window – fearless, strangely, but also impotent, powerless to control an uncontrollable situation.

The reinforced post halted us and prevented us from breaking through the railing and falling the dozen or so meters to the pavement below. There was a moment of shock before the three of us reacted. Male launched into hysterics but her sister, Erica, was cool and levelheaded; I was impressed by her. After we calmed Male into a stunned silence, I said that we needed to call the police. Instead the girls called their parents and then the insurance agent. Eventually, but only eventually, the police arrived, although they had not been summoned. A woman in the other car had severe whiplash and I thought it a terrible thing that the police were barely an afterthought. The police regulated traffic, which had mostly ground to a standstill and much later I head the approach of an ambulance but it was ages in arriving because in Mexico nobody yields the roadway for emergency vehicles.

The injured woman was finally taken to the hospital and Male was reviewed and released by the paramedics. Male and Erica’s parents came and the insurance adjuster came and began the paperwork. It was wet and very cold and the middle of the night now, the rain still falling in a light sprinkle. Eventually we were taken to the police processing station and there was more waiting while we waited for word to come from the hospital regarding the severity of the woman’s injuries. Eventually the terms of the restitution were agreed upon and we left. At the house, cold and exhausted, we had hot tea and quesadillas and talked little before we went to bed.