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Goose on the Road

Mexico is Mecca for biologists. Blessed with multiple seacoasts, jagged mountains, sweeping deserts, roiling rivers, and stunning forests, the country boasts an unparalleled richness of plants and animals. That extends to reptiles and amphibians, which led, some 40 years ago, to the sawing and hammering in Jonathan Campbell’s Arlington, Texas, driveway. We were sprucing up his redoubtable Ford F-150 pickup, known affectionately as The Blue Goose, by retrofitting the truck bed and camper shell with the finest cheap plywood available. Things had to be arranged so that three of us could sleep in the tiny space yet carry collecting equipment, canned goods, and a bulky cryogenic storage dewar needed for hauling liquid nitrogen to preserve tissues for biochemical studies. Crowded but functional, the camper endured us for over 20,000 mi, crisscrossing Mexico and spawning a book’s worth of gritty stories best suited for campfire airing. The Blue Goose was stalwart, as evidenced by the never-ending quantity of fur distributed throughout the motor and dating from a violently unfortunate kerfuffle with a black bull that galloped, during dark of the moon, onto an unlit Mexican road. The bull lost.

After jumping through interminable paperwork hoops to obtain the University of Texas at Arlington museum’s collecting permits, we hauled our ambitious herpetological Easter egg hunt south for the summer. Our interests embraced all things Mexican with some priorities. Dave Hillis sought specimens and tissue samples of anurans traditionally known as Leopard Frogs. His dissertation revealed that what was thought to be Rana pipiens was actually a diverse complex of species. This threw the status of innumerable lab-based studies on physiology into turmoil because no one knew what kind of frog had been used. Arguments about the proper relationships among these amphibians, perhaps in the genus Lithobates, continue to this day, but Dave’s research opened the door. Jon, an unparalleled authority on Mexican and Guatemalan herpetofauna, likely already had an eye on producing a scholarly treatise covering the country; it’s a staggering task with which he is currently engaged. Having recently entered grad school after delightful years living in Colombia, I was interested in everything and grateful to be getting back into the tropics. Time in the field teaches valuable lessons, but I hoped it would also ease the surprisingly intense culture shock that wracked me upon my return to the United States.

Happily, our agenda was loose so we could indulge a collective passion: getting into Mexico’s inaccessible areas, mostly upland forests—like the Sierras Mixe, Juárez, and Zongolica—and plumbing their depths for zoological novelties. We barreled across the country, breezing through dusty hamlets, dodging insane truck drivers while snatching rattlesnakes like noodles off the roads. Revving and braking The Blue Goose—at times with considerable artistry as it lacked four-wheel drive—we got ourselves into places any popular book would call forgotten Mexico. I’m one of the few Acapulco visitors who have never seen the beaches; we simply dipped down into the city’s outskirts, gorged on street food, and sought other roads leading back into the highlands. The Blue Goose did not lack idiosyncrasies. On Sundays in rural Mexico, any car mechanic worth his salt was inebriated; enlisting their help required participation. More than once, after obligatory bouts with pulque, mescal, or tequila, the truck was restored to working order but our hangovers were horrifying. Other circumstances called for celebration. After amassing a collection, we conducted a marathon session of specimen photography, tissue extraction, tagging, cataloging, and preservation before continuing to our next destination. Benefitting from the devalued Mexican peso, we rewarded ourselves with excellent local food and libation, at times boisterously consuming so much of both that the antagonized help must have longed to serve us using sticks. Life was good.

Passing buildings adorned with exquisite Talavera ceramic tiles in venerable Puebla, we made our way south toward Oaxaca, steering through colorfully named hamlets like San Salvador Huixcolotla, Tecamachalco, and Tlacotepec de Benito Juárez. In the environs surrounding San Andrés Cacaloapan, we sought Mixcoatlus melanurus, the Black-Tailed Horned Pitviper. Our efforts turned up only Mexican Pygmy Rattlesnakes (Crotalus ravus) and alligator lizards (Gerrhonotus sp.). Departing the next morning we rolled into Tehuacán, where we had a choice. We could angle southwestward toward Santiago Chazumba and a town with the commanding name of Heroica Ciudad de Huajuapan de León, one of countless places in Mexico where fabulous dining awaited. That might include tacos made from nopal (cactus pad) tortillas laden with refried beans and chapulines (toasted grasshoppers) … delicious! We’d pass through the Zapotitlán Salinas basin, an otherworldly, cactus-studded, rain shadow rife with endemic reptiles including Pueblan Milksnakes (Lampropeltis polyzona), Mexican Lyresnakes (Trimorphodon tau), and Giant Blindsnakes (Rena maxima). Plus, we could hit the adjacent Sierra Acatepec for those Black-Tailed Horned Pitvipers.

Off to our left, in northeastern Oaxaca, loomed the imposing Sierra Mazateca, studded with karst peaks and bedecked with pristine cloud, temperate, and tropical rain forests. We opted for that route, turning east at Teotitlán de Flores Magón onto a surprisingly (even for Mexico) inhospitable road that wound insanely up to Huautla de Jiménez. The indigenous Mazatecan culture there embraces spiritual use of entheogens derived from hallucinogenic mushrooms (teonanácatl) and Salvia (xka pastora). After seminal anthropological and ethnobotanical investigations in the 1930s and 1940s, things exploded in 1957 when Life magazine published Gordon Wassen’s self-aggrandizing account Seeking the Magic Mushroom. Owing to intense interest in the psilocybin-containing fungi, the area has, for decades, attracted a global amalgam of tourists, scholars, and famous dilettantes, including Bob Dylan and John Lennon, all undoubtedly dizzy after negotiating that road.

We were passingly acquainted with the region’s psychedelic history, so when a glassy-eyed, mumbling, traditionally clad Mazatec Indian carrying a shoulder bag crammed full of mushrooms appeared out of nowhere to stare at us while waving a shotgun skyward we found it only moderately disconcerting. He seemed to be under the influence of something but let us pass without incident. A cursory glance at a local topographic map revealed extremely compressed contours, especially east of Huautla, where things got interesting. The squiggly red line indicating a road on our map abruptly ceased, and a blank spot intervened before things picked back up at the town of San Felipe Jalapa de Díaz, 40 mi to the east. There was a gap in the map.

Normal people avoid such spots, or at least have a noble cause that merits heading into one, but we were still young enough to possess more brawn than brains, and we were not normal. Not all road trips require roads, right? That made perfect sense to us, so in a display of hubris best described as flamboyant, we blithely piloted The Blue Goose into the void; it’s technically called the Huautla Fault. Mexican geologist Manuel Villada wrote of the Sierra Mazateca in 1906: As one advances, an interminable series of peaks appear, of different altitudes and shapes, simulating the waves of an agitated ocean. When the good lord made Mexico, I’m guessing the acreage was apportioned up the Pacific Coast, across the Baja, Sonoran, and Chihuahuan Deserts, and thence southward along the Gulf shoreline. Excess land accrued as things approached the narrow Isthmus of Tehuantepec, so at the confluence of Veracruz, Puebla, and Oaxaca the creator simply wadded it up and planted it where the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt crashes into the southern Sierra Madre Oriental Mountains. Iron the place flat and you’d have another country. The descriptor craggy is inadequate.

On one particularly steep incline we blew a tire and had a grand time fixing it, which meant we now lacked a spare. Later The Blue Goose rolled through Nubiñuutun, a grassy, incredibly isolated Mazatec village. We narrowly missed flattening a crying little girl’s pet chicken and bewildered the scrambling locals, shocked to see a vehicle and seedy-looking foreigners. More than anything we encountered, that cloistered place drove home what was meant by a gap in the map. We drove into nowhere and also, it seemed, back in time. As we braked into the bowels of the gorge, the oatmeal grays and tans of the highlands yielded to shades of green. A tentative route materialized, which took us in a near free-fall for 30 mi, zigzagging some 5000 ft in elevation from cold, damp Huautla down to the limpid and beautiful Río Uluápam, which had—astonishingly—a decent bridge and improved driving conditions on the far side. During most of our descent, we saw no one, but that bridge meant something lay ahead. It was dusk, and we could already hear the distinctive WRAACK of unknown calling frogs; we stopped to collect.

Some 6,500 ft above us lay Cerro Rabón, a vast Cretaceous limestone plateau punctuated by deep arroyos and valleys. Surface runoff and rainwater percolates through its porous karst, creating caves and waterfalls; indeed, the deepest cavern known in the Western Hemisphere lies in the Sierra Mazateca. Upstream from the bridge, the Uluápam emerges from a mountainside cave in a beautiful cascade. The river was as clear as a swimming pool, meandering among massive boulders and bordered by mesophyll forest. Scattering, we tracked frog calls, finding Schultze’s Streamfrog (Ptychohyla leonhardschultzei), Small-Eared Treefrogs (Rheohyla miotympanum), and ubiquitous Mesoamerican Cane Toads (Rhinella horribilis). As darkness settled in, explosive breeding choruses of Mexican Treefrogs (Smilisca baudinii) seemed to laugh at us HA-HA-HA!

Flush with success, having conquered the worst stretch of the phantom road and discovered a frog-filled oasis, we had the last laugh, loaded our catch into The Blue Goose, and headed east. The narrow path (hardly a road) abutted the Santo Domingo River valley, and forest brushed against the sides of the truck. Entering a curve, The Blue Goose abruptly stopped moving and died. It was as though a giant hand had detained us, replacing our cheery progress with silence. We feared a failed universal joint or worse. Dave, seated by the window, started to step out. Making the understatement of the century, he said, Uh, we should get out on the other side. He had opened the door to stare down into black emptiness.

Part of the road, over an arroyo concealed by vegetation, had dropped from under us, leaving The Blue Goose beached and delicately balanced, the right rear tire dangling over the precipice. Quickly and carefully, we unloaded everything; the truck could somersault into the gorge at any moment. We sweated in the humid air as clouds of mosquitos descended upon us, overjoyed at the foreign food. And those Mexican Treefrogs erupted raucously HA-HA-HA! Our luck, it seemed, had run out.

Flashlights were cumbersome affairs; their incandescent bulbs quickly drained the best batteries. I had invested in a fancy, 6-volt cave light—rechargeable via the truck’s cigarette lighter. Since this might last the longest, I went for help while Jon and Dave guarded the truck. Worried about our prospects, I trudged off, leaving my companions to the mosquitos … and the triumphant frog laughter. On the plus side, the going was easy. The road continued to drop slightly as I hiked out of the sierra’s embrace, passing through groves of sweetgum trees, Mexican sycamore, and agotope amidst the riverine profusion of gingers and vines.

I passed rivulets oozing from the higher ground to my left where more Mexican Treefrogs unfailingly burst forth, HA-HA-HA! I wondered how long it might take to find help (let alone the cost) at the next town, San Felipe Jalapa de Díaz, 10 mi distant. I fretted more over the likelihood The Blue Goose would take a terminal tumble. An hour later my vaunted cave light dimmed, so I walked hunched-over to see the ground. It went out. Guided by the stars, I staggered on, taking the occasional spill for my troubles. Parched, I felt my way into the foliage and crept toward the sound of a bamboo sluice I knew must be embedded into a trickle; it’s the way to make a spigot in the mountains. Feeling for it and hoping my fingers wouldn’t encounter a venomous snake, I slaked my thirst.

Periodically I tried my light, gaining a minute of feeble illumination before it died again. Suddenly pitching forward I tumbled broadside over a sleeping cow. There were several, and I crashed squarely into their midst, a sign of humans if I wasn’t first trampled to death. I balled up, protecting my head as the bovines staggered to their feet. Miraculously I felt no hooves, and their torrent of excrement missed me. Was my luck changing? I continued, slowly feeling my way along. Astonishingly, three Indians, traditionally clad and swiftly walking abreast in the dark, appeared. I heard strange glottal/nasal intonations that seemed alien. Buenas noches, I offered in Spanish, and they responded. When I asked for directions they resumed their peculiar conversation and kept walking. They were speaking Jalapan Mazatec.

Dawn’s first streak etched the horizon and a light twinkled in the distance; I had reached town. You need to see don Jorge, a man told me, so we approached a darkened house. Sleep in Latin America isn’t sacred, but I was embarrassed rousting the family. Jorge responded loudly and emerged, belly protruding, clad in underpants. My worries at offending him were unfounded, but hopes of economizing faded when he leered predatorily at me and said, Buenos días, Meester. I talked as he walked down a long green hall. Behind the door at its end sat an elevated, throne-like commode. King Jorge plopped down and, leaving the door open, indulged in his morning evacuation, shamelessly punctuating my testimonial with explosive bursts of flatulence. Feeling like the court jester, I longed for the mosquitos and laughing frogs. Intense bargaining ensued; he had the upper hand, so we settled on an exorbitant sum for his services.

We careened through the empty streets in Jorge’s truck as he rounded up assistants, machetes, and car jacks. Looking The Blue Goose over, he barked orders, and a helper gingerly slipped down into the arroyo, actually locating a tiny spot on which to plant a jack with blocks stacked high on top. Gently raising the truck a few inches, we all pulled from the other side, causing it to lurch off the blocks and gain ground. Several more times and we were back on firm terrain. It was a display of Mexican ingenuity at its finest and costliest. I fell into a deep, exhausted sleep as we drove away. My dreams were punctuated by staccato peals of frog laughter HA-HA-HA!