Opting out on the Mexico City smog, from Denver we flew into the Caribbean port town of Vera Cruz. This would allow us, we reasoned, to enjoy a happy margarita on the beach after the climb. The day after we arrived was spent piecing together bus schedules from the coast up into the Cordillera de Anahuac and the tiny town of Tlachichuca. There were no direct buses to Tlachichuca, so the day was spent dragging our expedition duffels from bus to bus, heaving them in and out of various taxis, and struggling though many desperate conversations with bus personnel about times, schedules and routes. I had forgotten that climbing the volcano was actually only PART of the adventure.
Venturing across Mexico by local buses isn't the easiest or safest way to go, but it does expose you to the amazing people and reality of small town life in Latin America. Along the way, the geography changed from the humid coastal lowlands and Pacific oil palms to the dry and rugged cordillera. When we got to the Reyes compound in Tlachichuca, it was almost 9 pm and we were grimy from a day spent wading through Mexico's rural bus system. We settled with Reyes at the office of the hostel, where he uttered his famous line, and were set up with a few nights lodging and transport up and back from the volcano.
Other people at the Reyes had just come back from the mountain and sat around on couches in front of a pot-bellied stove staring at the wall across the room. They were exhausted and sunburned, their faces all red and windblown. A few quick conversations revealed that only about half the group made the summit in spite of the good weather. These also revealed that three Russians had died on Orizaba just the week before in a fall on the glacier. There was the scared story of one climber who got to 17,000 feet and blacked out, having to be helped down the mountain to the base of the glacier roped to another climber.
The ones who made it were rather upbeat about the whole thing, but everyone was so tired that little of this enthusiasm shone through. After dinner one of Reyes' staff mountain guides held a fascinating slide show on climbs in South America and Nepal. But by the end of it half the people were fast asleep on the couches. We walked around the place briefly after hearing the stories, letting everything sink in.
Reyes runs a slick service out of Tlachichuca. He has an old soap factory that he has converted into a climbers' hostel. It occupies half of a 'chuca' city block and has an enclosed wall that gives it the feel of a "compound." Various implements of machinery adorn the main building such as the huge oak mixing vats for the lard and lye, belt-driven mixer paddles and the vast old furnace. In the main building there is a gear room and a few couches around a pot belly stove.
Everywhere people have posted flags, business cards and stickers from mountaineering clubs all over the world. A rack room upstairs holds 20 bunk beds with woolen blankets. In the courtyard outside there is a covered garage which houses three Dodge Power Wagons, huge and beefy 4WD vehicles for taking climbers up the road to Piedra Grande, the base camp for the summit attempts. 1952 and 1962 models, they have been fully restored and are probably the most reliable transport to Piedra Grande. We fell asleep that first night in the rack room listening to the snores of the other climbers. Outside, a nearly humorous cacophony of dogs, roosters, burros and car horns continued all night.
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