When I reach the mountaintop chapel, I slump on the dry stone wall, wheezing in the thin air, marvelling at what combination of brawn and piety must have been needed to build such a thing at such a height. It might not be a Sunday, but I can tell that mass at 3,000 metres must be magnificent. Open walls reach out to the rolling slopes of the Sierra Norte, 35 miles east of Oaxaca City in southern Mexico, with virgin pine in every direction. Somewhere unseen, a brown-backed solitaire bird lifts a lonely song over the valley. Then comes the bark of warring crows and, most exciting of all, the quick peeps of a hummingbird, believed here to ferry messages between the living and dead. At this height, even to a heathen like me, the urge to pay tribute is understandable.
My guide, Eric, who must have a third lung, judging by his ability to tell stories on the climb, becomes quiet and crosses himself before the altar. I’m a little surprised at this show of devotion. Down in the small town of Tlacolula de Matamoros, he had shown us a site the Indigenous Zapotecs used to praise the sacred mountain above – before the Spanish came and plonked a church on the same spot. The colonialists’ intention, Eric explained, was erasure. But when conversion comes at the point of a sword, some resistance seems inevitable. Here, Indigenous signs hide in Catholic icons. Dark stones in holy corners hold animist engravings. Duality is everywhere. Praise whispered in the name of the Virgin of Guadalupe, the mother of Christ to Mexican Catholics, is also meant for Huitzilopochtli, the old sun god.
Eric gathers pine needles in a small clay cup and lights them on the altar together with chunks of amber resin, which glow as they catch. Then, as gifts for mother earth, he leaves an apple and a banana at the entrance. Finally, he goes back to the cup, and watches in silence as the smoke carries his wishes to the heavens.
The mountain is just north of Llano Grande, one of the self-ruling villages in these mountains that form the Pueblos Mancomunados (united villages). Each holds a few hundred people living in log cabins, tending black roses, making tortillas on wood fires. It’s a million miles from the shining streets and buzzing mezcal bars of Oaxaca City. Up here, when the sun drops, the air freezes; when I’m woken by the cock crow in the morning, I see the ground glazed with frost. Life in the clouds requires discipline. Lowlander decadence will not pull squash, beans and corn of all colours from the hard ground. The people abide by an iron rule: adults must commit one year in every three to community work. For some, that means policing. For others, it means forestry. And since the mid-1990s, it has also meant participating in their tourism project.
Eric’s company, Zapotrek, is one of a handful of trusted operators based in Oaxaca City that have developed partnerships with the mountain people. Booking secures permission to access the community, represented by a local chaperone for the duration of the trip. Ours, smiling Florencio, comes with three dogs, a laser eye for flora and a hunger for wasp larvae. He seems in no rush to complete his year of community service. Following his easy pace, we spend two days padding along gorgeous forest paths, soft as royal linen. We climb to spectacular viewpoints, call out in vain to jaguars, and watch wild horses gallop on wide green plains.
The project seems a good deal. A gentle flow of visitors get sylvan splendour, while the hosts receive reliable revenue. That money is divided equally and has bought bigger, better cabins with hot water. But more importantly, it has allowed more people to stay in the communities they were born to. Economic gravity still drags young people to the cities, or across the border to the north. But now, if someone wants to stay here, they have more reason to. And despite the old distortions – the colonial invasions, repression of religion, prejudice against the Zapotec language – and more recent globalism, an ancient way of life adapts and carries on. Wishes made on mountaintops may come true.
This really matters. If you spend time in Mexico City, in the coffee shops of Roma Norte or La Condesa, you see familiar people. People with the same trainers, the same laptops, the same look of inbox worry. People who would make sense anywhere. The people of the Pueblos Mancomunados, however, are hard to picture anywhere but here. Their lives are green lives, bound with this land. It’s as if Florencio could stop in his tracks, take root, sprout a great shimmering crown.
They tend to the forest; the forest tends them back. Eric explains there’s a plant for everything. Poleo mint for fresh breath. Pine resin for splints. Corn silk tea for urinary tract infections. Corn husks to mould tamales. Bitter willow leaves for headaches. When food is scarce, they grind fresh agave hearts into flour. When water is needed, they look where the birch and ferns grow, and dig down. The undergrowth is a glittering mosaic. Pine and peeling madrones (evergreens) shine with silver mosses, bromeliads, bearded lichens. Bursts of Indian paintbrush plants glow red in the evening sun. Care for woods properly, as they do here, and to walk in them is to enter a pharmacy, a pantry, a gallery.
When I come down from the mountains my eyes are wider. A few buses and a boat ride later, I’m on an empty jetty facing the lagoon of Chacahua. All the surfers and hippies are elsewhere; all the fishermen are hard at work. As the tide goes out, a sandbar appears 10 metres away; I wade to it with the low amber sun marbling in the cool water. Where the pool deepens, a flock of gulls gather and discuss their day in paradise. From the mangrove fringes, demon eyes leer out and a night heron appears with a meal in its mouth. Three pelicans wheel in from the sea, perform a survey loop, then divebomb so close I can see the fish squirm down their gullets.
Finally the huge platinum moon arrives, the shallow boats chug back with the swordfish for dinner, and the birds stop bickering. Everything is silent in silhouette. I walk back home along the beach. The waves hush the village to sleep, each crest twinkling with bioluminescence. I look down to the sand and see footsteps, stretching forward to the huts with their palm roofs. The human prints wind together with those of other animals, the talons of kiskadees, maybe, or yellow kingbirds, and the tiny bores made by skittering crabs. Everything weaves on and on down the shore until disappearing into darkness.
Zapotrek offers cycling and hiking trips from one day up to a week. A guided two-day hike for two, including taxi collection and return to Oaxaca City (two hours each way), all meals and a night in a cabin is £240pp
