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“the vast natural landscapes filled with the beautiful nothingness far away from the Wal-Marts and Bennigan´s of my home ... ” |
On a tranquil Thursday morning, I got up early with the sounds of singing birds outside my window harmonized with the blaring horns of morning traffic. My host family and I had been talking about a day trip to somewhere outside the city, away from all the loud trucks and cars that smoked and roared down the grimy and busy carreteras of Mexico City. ¨Valle de Bravo,¨Mili (my host sister and good friend) suggested when I asked about where we should go. ¨Es preciosa¨ So we packed in the car and left.
Perhaps the greatest single thing about this small city where the Mexican elite go to escape from the fast-paced Distrito Federal to play golf and relax is the trip there. The surrounding valley and hill country is beautiful. Filled with lush greenery and vast landscapes, with only the occasional small pueblo of communal farmers and their shanty roadside cantinas that pepper the countryside, the vistas gathered from just a single glance through the crisp air is enough to make any city-goer trade in their laptop for cold cerveza and campesino´s sombrero.
I loved it there, the beauty of open land with hardly any comerical development to speak of was like stepping into a fresh new world yet untouched by the almighty dollar. And it was in that absence that I found a subtle promise that there was still something left to be discovered there, something to been seen just as it might have been a hundred years ago. This was something that I wasn´t used to; the vast natural landscapes filled with the beautiful nothingness far away from the Wal-Marts and Bennigan´s of my home town in Suburban America was rare occasion, and for me, something to celebrate as my own discovery of what seemed like a new world in a pure Earth.
I promised to come back to these untouched landscapes and celebrate this discovery properly, in a small roadside cantina with a view of the great blue hills and mountains in the background, as I sit outside and talk about life with the bar tender and drink in a way that I am far from used to.
previous travel blog entry
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