The charming town of Cosalá
Nestled in the Sierra Madre is this small town of Cosalá. It's about the size of Sisters, with an equal but different sense of charm. We'd heard a lot about it, and we weren't disappointed. We drove about 1.5 hours northeast on a secondary highway through an area that is a popular destination for fishing and bird hunting. There are several sport lodges with guided trips. There is also an area near the river where you can ride mulitple zip-lines and repell from the trees. There are platforms built in the trees to facilitate these activities.
There is one road into town and it leads directly into the town's center plaza. It goes around the plaza with side streets diverting off from there. The streets are narrow, paved with cobblestones or bricks. All the buildings are painted in soft yet brighter-than-pastel colors. The streets are the width of one-lane but serve for two-way traffic. Cars wait in groups of 3 or 4 to allow traffic to come from the opposing direction and then they go while another group waits at the other end. Where the streets are a little wider, vehicles parallel park, adding to the congestion but there is no choice. We didn't see one parking lot. There are no traffic lights and only a few stop signs. It is congested but it seems to work fine. This picture is one of the side streets during a moment of no traffic. We were lucky to find a parking spot one block from the plaza.
The plaza is the hub of all vehicle and pedestrian activity. This wide sidewalk surrounds the plaza and there are mulitple food stands. Most were serving the soup style cocktail that we had the other day and John didn't care to have it again. We couldn't find a restaurant without multiple entry stairs so we stopped at a small store and bought snacks for the ride home. We'd love to visit Cosala again with the scooter. We think we'd have better luck finding a restaurant w/o stairs if we got a little further away from the center plaza. It's not a very wheelchair-friendly town, as you can see the height of the curbs, (you will see higher curbs in the pictures at the link below) and we didn't have the scooter with us for this trip.
I love old churches so John waited in the plaza to people watch while I went to investigate.
When we were just a short distance out of town on the way home we passed a bus stop with about 10 people waiting. One older man was waving for us to stop. We stopped intending to offer a ride and ask where he needed to go but before we could say anything he was already climbing into the truck bed! A woman about his age was thanking us and when I asked her "A donde va?" (to where does he need to go?) I could only understand a little but figured out he needed to go to one of the villages we'd passed on our way up the mountain.
On our way we'd passed a roadside shrine built high on a hillside and I was hoping we'd be able to stop on our way home. I wasn't sure we should with our passenger, or even if there was a place to stop along the road. But as we approached the spot, there was a small spot to pullover. I asked the man to wait (really, what option did he have?). He said OK, no problem.
The shrine was located on a sharp corner, at the top of a steep hill. 192 concrete stairs led up the steep hillside. Someone went to a lot of trouble to build it! Every road and highway is dotted with similar shrines. When I returned to the truck I told the man to bang on the truck when we needed to stop and we were soon on our way. As we approached the bigger of the villages we'd passed through the man patted the side of the truck and hollered "Alto, Alto" (stop, stop). We did and we watched as he headed down one of the dirt side streets with his grocery sack.
Once we got out of the windy part of the road we decided to stop so Gracie could have a potty break. The brush was so tall all along the route we hadn't seen any livestock but when we turned of the engine and opened the truck doors, the air was filled with the sounds of cow bells. We only saw one cow in a small clearing I could hear someone banging sticks together, probably to herd them along, but the sound of all those bells was absolutely musical.
We decided to eat dinner at a restaurant in the small town of Dimas, south of the RV park. It's right off the main toll road but we weren't sure exactly where the turn off was but everyone had said "You can't miss it!". Well, we did. We'd gone about 30 minutes before we decided we really had missed it. There aren't very many places to turn around because the main highway has a solid concrete barrier the entire distance. There are few over passes, and even further "retornos", which are places to make a u-turn. Highway exits are very different here. Most overpasses/exits are unpaved and consist of one road for traffic exiting and entering the highway. We finally came to an overpass but upon our approach we noticed this exit was very narrow, the width of the truck, with a canopy of vines and bushes over it. We weren't really sure it was an exit as we couldn't see through the brush to see where it went. But not wanting to stay on the highway we decided to try it. We drove about 150 feet and it sharply curved back toward the highway and went up and over the highway down to an equally canopied dirt lane. This is the first one we'd been on where the road over the highway was dirt. Usually just the "exit ramp" is dirt. But we were heading back in the right direction and found the restaurant and had a great meal. Two shrimp dinners, 2 beers and a coke for $18.50, including tip. We had a great day but were glad to get back to the RV, even though it was after dark. We don't like to drive at night because of livestock and pedestrians along the highway but it was only a few miles so we did ok.
Here's the link to more pictures of Cosala.
I was responding to a friend's email this morning and John suggested I enclose part of my reply to her. I think it's self-explanitory so here goes:
She had commented about my describing things as being so nice and in the interest of full disclosure I wrote this:
First, about how "clean" it is. There is a litter problem in Mexico--lots of trash along the highways and roads...reminds John of how the US used to be. In the next blog entry I mention this in the picture captions on the link. We remember as a young kids throwing things out the window w/o thinking twice about it. Remember the big campaign in the 70s--the TV commercials with the American Indian with the tear rolling down his cheek??? It was all about not being a "litter bug". They have similar signs here, especially in the towns, so there is an effort to change that habit here, but the litter still exists. In the little villages most of the streets are dirt. People have dirt yards, etc. In that way, it is very "dirty" but the thing we think is so nice is that the dirt is raked and swept almost every day. When we walk into or drive through the little villages, especially in the morning, that's what people are doing. It is tidy. These small villages are obviously poor. For example, in the little village near us now, most of the men are fishermen or work in the nearby shrimp processing plant. Few people have cars. People walk or ride buses everywhere. Prosperity depends on how much industry is nearby--whether it is agriculture or the port or something like that. In the towns of about 10,000 population, many people seem to make money in services--car repair 'shop' in their driveway, a bakery run from the family kitchen, etc. We've heard it said many times that "the Mexican people know how to keep things running" as opposed to our throw away culture. There are mulitple welding shops, machine repair, used tire stores, small hardware stores that sell very basic supplies, etc. But poverty does not necessarily mean crime. The people in the small villages seem to lead simple yet happy lives, maybe like in the US in the Appalacian mountains or somewhere like that. I'm not sure if that is accurate. Also, so many people are poor that everyone is in the same boat. But from our year here in 2000 and now, in my heart of hearts I think the Mexican culture's kindness and generosity can be credited to the strong religious presense in the community, and in the strong family unit here. Crime, especially violent crime, is rooted in immorality, not poverty. I will try to take more pictures of the little houses, little restaurants, etc but sometimes I feel like I'm invading their privacy when I take pics. I don't want to seem to be gaulking. As to the dogs...no problem coming across the border. We weren't even asked if we had pets, or for papers, etc. Walking around has not been a problem. The first day we walked in the village here we did not take Gracie because we wanted to check it out. While we were sitting at that little restaurant eating there was a dog from across the street that came after a dog who was crossing over into its territory. The 'attacking' dog was well groomed, well fed, had a collar on, but the other dog was obviously a street dog. The 'attacking' dog growled and tackled the other dog and sat on it for a few seconds. The lesser dog squealed. We thought we were going to really see a fight. But no, the dogs quickly separated and the lesser dog walked back to where it came from. A couple days later we walked into town with Gracie being watchful for that dog. We did see it on our way back in the same spot. The dog didn't even seem to notice Gracie but we had her ride on the scooter with John just in case. When we were close it was laying down completely ignoring us and gracie. The street dogs seem fine and non-threatening. The dogs that seem to belong to a house--they are hanging around in the yard, etc.--do come out and bark but no signs of aggression. It's more like they are just letting the owners know someone is around and letting the new dog - Gracie - know that it is their territory. We are cautious but not afraid. All dogs here are very submissive to humans so I think, hope, if we just yelled at them and schooed them away they would retreat. I'll for sure let you know of any 'bad' experiences we may have. so far, so good.
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