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Let's Go2Mexico - Articles You can tour the back roads of Mexico It’s new to tourism, and it works great. Now you can visit little towns and villages; you can visit rural areas rich in ecology and culture and adventure; you can go far off the beaten trail without needing to be able to speak Spanish. You don’t need travel agencies, and you don’t need tours. In fact, they can’t take you there. You need a Home Base. Home Base does a million little things to help you, but it all boils down to [1] housing that serves as a point of departure and [2] folks that will take care of the logistics of getting you from here to there.
The human side of Home Base is what makes it all work. If you don’t speak the language and if you’ve never traveled abroad before, it’s all daunting. What do you do at the airport? How do you know a taxi will be safe? Where, off the beaten path, do you want to go? How do you get a bus, the right bus? And toughest of all, once you get to where you want to go, how do you do anything? Language barriers are insurmountable. The only solution is to remove language as a barrier. Help makes language not be a barrier at the Home Base and also not be a barrier at your destinations. Home Base and Help groups do what travel and tour groups can’t do, they individualize to the max. And that’s the secret to back-road travel work for those who don’t speak Spanish. Let’s use the incredible state of Veracruz as an example. In many ways it reminds one of California. It’s a long and narrow coastal state with its inland border along the ridge line of the East Sierra Madre. From ocean’s edge to North America’s third highest mountain peak (Orizaba Peak) is only 80 miles. The variety of eco-environments is incredible. The largest city in the state of Veracruz is the city of Veracruz. It’s Mexico’s second busiest ocean port. It’s an extremely popular tourist town, and there the tourists are Mexicans themselves. They come from all over the country on summer vacation, for Carnaval, for Easter and for Christmas. The come from closer-by for weekends all winter long. In Veracruz there’s a great Home Base and Help group. By the week, you get a well appointed, large room with private bath in an old, traditional Mexican home. It comes with breakfast and a light evening meal set aside and waiting for you when you get back at night. It’s only half a block from the ocean and two blocks from the beach. Veracruz the state and city are incredibly safe, and the Home Base is in the safest part of the safe city. It’s comfortable and friendly, and when you’re out off-the-beaten-trail your possessions (except your backpack and the few thing you’ll carry) are securely locked up in your room.
Since you don’t speak the language, and assuming you haven’t traveled “like a local” much in the past, Help has to get you on the right bus. That’s easy. The first few times they go to the bus station with you. If you’re getting off at a crossroads, they may walk with you to the bus and ask the driver to be sure you know when to get down. If needed (this is how highly individualized this is) you’ll be met at the end of your bus ride, at the terminal, and accompanied to where you’ll get on your back-road bus. If it’s an easy transfer, maybe all that’s needed are instructions written both in English and Spanish. Maybe you’ll have pictures of where you want to jump off the back-road bus or maybe you’ll just know the name of the stop. It’s easy to worry that you’ll miss it and end up who knows where. It’s okay to worry, but there’s no need to worry. We’re back to individualization—if need be, Help will have someone at the stop waiting for you, flagging down every bus you might be on until they find you. And then that person will orient you to the area, and get you started looking around. At the end of the day, it’s back to the back-road bus, and back to the terminal and the travel bus and back to Veracruz. You’ve had your first outing. You’re back at Home Base safe and sound. You’re tired and hungry and you’ve had your first of many great days.
After an early breakfast, you and Help walk to the corner and catch a taxi to the bus station. You buy a ticket to Jalcomulco, saying only Jamcomulco. The ticket agent turns toward Help with an inquiring look. Help nods yes. Your ticket is printed. The ticket agent tells you how much, but of course you don’t understand. So you hand her a 100 Peso bill. You do that because as you got ready for the trip, you were told all the prices. She hands you your change. The bus leaves in 20 minutes, but you’re not allowed to pass the gate until 15 minutes before departure. Help reminds you immediately to show your ticket to the gate guard. He’ll say no, of course, but what you’re after is that he knows where you’re going and when. The public address systems in bus stations are impossible to understand. After five minutes you walk up to him again with your ticket. He tells you to head on in. You don’t know which bus. Help can take you directly to the bus, but you’re learning how to be an independent back-road-traveler. You show the ticket to a bus driver, and he points a little ways down the run of bus stalls. You go where you think he said. And then you show your ticket to someone else. You’ll end up on your bus. Help goes back to the Home Base, and you’re off to Jalcomulco. You’re a little anxious—in a bus you don’t know, on a highway you don’t know, in countryside you don’t know, in a foreign country where you don’t speak the language. Relax. Everything’s fine.
The magic begins. You’re in the town plaza of a very Mexican little town with its cobblestone streets and small shops and big beautiful church. There are people walking here and there, and no one’s paying attention to you and you’re paying attention to everyone. The colors are beautiful, and you smell tacos cooking. Someone mispronounces your name. Maybe it’s Chevy Rodríguez Téllez (or his wife Yunuen). He’s captain of Mexico’s national whitewater rafting team. He speaks a little English. He’s been waiting for you. You’re off to get ready for rafting. But on the way you grab a chicken sandwich on a hard roll and a glass of fruit juice. The food’s good. The rafting is even better. On el Rio Antigua, the Antigua river, rafts are seven person size. You’re rafting with 5 Mexicans and Chevy, one of the five speaks a little more English than Chevy. You’ve got a partner. Rio Antigua is nature at its finest. High walls with glorious vegetation and a birder’s paradise rise from both sides of the river. The roughest rapid is only a two and a half. The water is cool but not cold. And because this is Mexico, everyone is as happy as can be. For the next three hours you don’t even notice that you don’t know the language. Communication always works when you’re having fun. After the run and another sandwich, it’s off to the ziplines. The longest single run in the state is your first stop. You’re not really sure you want to do it. You new-found friends cheer you on. You don’t know the words, but the sounds are the same world wide. You slip yourself into the harness… Getting home’s a little tougher. There are no more buses coming all the way into Jalcomulco. You need to get out to the Xalapa-Veracruz highway. Jose Maria will drive you, Yunuen tells you. (You don’t know Jose Maria, but Help, of course, told you this is how it goes.) It’s an early ‘80s pickup. You feel pretty good. Six of you are going for the ride. Locals like to visit with foreigners, and on the back roads, they don’t see many. They practice their little bit of English, and teach you some Spanish. The Veracruz people are among the warmest and friendliest in the world. You chose to sit in the bed of the pickup so you can visit. It’s a little bouncy. Back-roads are bouncy.
You haven’t even once used the cell phone Help sent along with you. Maybe you’ll use it tomorrow as you head up to La Mancha for a motor launch ride through the mangroves, or maybe you’ll wait until you’re sitting on the burro for the nature tour, or maybe you just won’t call Home Base at all. Help will just have to wait until you’re back for the night to hear your stories and share your love of the true Mexico—back-road Mexico.
© Linda and Eric Langner, 2007 • Linda and Eric Langner own and operate The Language Immersion School, Veracruz, Mexico. They’re always happy to answer questions. You can email them at info@veracruzspanish.com and visit them at www.veracruzspanish.com.
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The housing is usually a room in a city or large town—a room that serves as your staging ground, a room where you can leave your stuff while you’re on the road, a room that’s waiting when you get back. It should provide breakfast and a light late evening snack. To come to Mexico, you need suitcases. To travel the back roads with ease, you can only carry a backpack. Home Base gives you flexibility and freedom.
And their Help is sensational. The folks know the state. They have photos and brochures and stories and all you need to first get oriented and then to begin building your travel plan. Some folks want adventure tourism; others want ecotourism, and still others want cultural tourism (both living and past). Most folks want a mix and match of all three. You choose. It’s your trip. The decisions are yours. The choices are yours. You’ll make a plan, a plan that can be changed and changed every day as you gain more experience and become more independent. This well may be the best trip you’ll ever take.
Say you want your first outing to be white water rafting in Jalcomulco. Remember, you haven’t traveled by yourself at all in Mexico, and you don’t speak the language. And to make things as daunting as possible, you’re traveling alone instead of with a friend.
At Jalcomulco the bus driver, using his big in-the-bus mirror, makes eye contact with you. Or maybe he calls out to you. And you get off.
Out at the main highway Jose Maria and you five other new friends flag down a travel bus. Before you get on you take you two hundredth picture of the day. The smiles are so big and happy your camera begins to smile. You’re in Mexico. Off the beaten trail. Surrounded by good folks. Safe as can be. And having more fun than you could have ever imagined.
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