México’s beauty can leave you breathless, but can also knock the wind out of you

By Tim Fanning

Last week, my girlfriend and I watched a man tether his puppy to a metal post in his backyard.

Last week we watched him beat its snout with a closed fist until the dog stopped whimpering.

We saw it all from the street above in Tepoztlan, México.

He stomped into the house and out of sight. The puppy tried to retreat to the rusted shed 10 feet away, but was choked by the short rope that held him in place.

When the man re-appeared, he was holding something heavy and metallic. We couldn’t tell what it was, but the dog knew.

It yelped, it screamed and tried to run. But the man was on the dog in a second.

I froze. I didn’t know what to do. Do I yell something in Spanish? What words? ¡Basta ya! ¡Ayuda!

Impulse told us both to run, so we ran. I could hear the dog’s panicked pleas for respite. But that was drowned out by the roar of a truck. By the time the truck passed, there was only silence from that backyard.

These are the gritty things our friends and family don’t want to hear about when we come home. These are the things I never want to write about. These are the things I push to the back of my mind at the end of the day, until now.

There were all the holocaust thin children, begging on the street with grandma, dad or mom.

There were the gaunt faced 10-year-old girls and boys, who sneaked into the bar to sell us candy, and who stayed, long after we tried to ignore them. Their eyes were searing.

There were the legless men and women who dragged themselves on the floor of the subway car, selling USB flash drives or bill folds.

There were the families playing cards in the social welfare lines that snaked for blocks.

There are other things I don’t want to put to ink, so I’ll end this sentence with a period.

These scenes made me wonder aloud: Where are the other tourists?

They were absent from the cramped subway cars and stations. They were not ordering breakfast at the counters or eating lunch at the street cart vendors. They weren’t walking behind, beside or in front of us on the sidewalks to and from our destinations.

Honestly, I don’t remember seeing any outside the main attractions in México City. They were taking selfies inside el Palacio Nacional, admiring revolutionary-era murals in El Museo Nacional de Historia and sitting in comfortable cafés with English menus.

I wondered what they saw or heard.

In México, it’s easy to only see the polished and the shiny. It’s easy to research neighborhoods with low crime, fresh paint and lush green trees. These are like pockets of middle and upper class living surrounded by the realities of the daily struggles in a city of 8.8 million.

With free time and a preference for strolling, my girlfriend and I weaved in and out of these places and themes on our way to check off things on our to do list.

Travelers, especially novice ones, often brag about how much better life is “over there.” Those who don’t travel abroad often remind me, as if it’s not the millionth time I’ve heard it, of how “good we have it here.”

And what will I say when I return home?

Traveling leaves you breathless, but sometimes it knocks the wind out of you.

I’ve learned that to travel is to experience what life might be like elsewhere. It’s about being forced into situations that often make you cringe and squirm. It’s about crossing paths with a billion or so other lives that are different from your own.

This trip over spring break made me realize that these things are what makes travel so interesting, intriguing and inviting. It gives us something new – not only outwardly, but also inwardly.

Traveling sometimes knocks the wind out of you, but it also leaves you breathless.

Header photo: Tim Fanning | The Crow’s Nest

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Written by: Timothy Fanning on March 19, 2018.
Last revised by: Emily Wunderlich