Climbing Mexican Pyramids with a Lost Puppy by Daphne Carpenter
On a warm November afternoon in Patzcuaro, Michoacán, México, I found a puppy under a car after a terrible fight with my (now ex-) boyfriend. It was the day after Night of the Dead and we were on the docks of Lake Patzcuaro when the immature fight began.
We had spent the night at a graveyard on Janitzio Island observing drunk tourists walk all over the candlelit graves of the deceased. It was a complete debauchery fest.
To flee the argument, I ran at the speed of light leaving my boyfriend in a cloud of dust (we had sold all of our belongings to live a life of adventure on the road together). I ended up in a dirt parking lot. As my tears started to pour down onto the earth and I pondered what to do next, I saw something move under a parked car in front of me. It was a puppy—my puppy, the companion sent from the universe to replace the boyfriend, Yay!
As I followed her with my eyes, a colorfully clad indigenous Purhépecha woman selling artesanías approached me. She said that the puppy was about two months old and that she had wandered out from the house across the dirt parking lot we were standing in.
After about a minute, the little fleabag walked towards my desperate grasp. The fact that she came to me was a good omen, I thought, so I decided to take her with me.
After I had calmed down, I started to walk away with the dusty creature tucked under my arm. The indigenous woman, whose beautiful, long shiny black braids were intertwined with ribbons, offered me some comforting words about how to maintain my spirit as a strong woman. “Don’t become consumed by negative energy,” she said. “And remember—you won’t feel like this forever.”
Then she gave us her blessing and pointed out a discreet path through the trees that led to the bus station, where I bought a ticket for what I knew to be the nearest pyramid site, the ceremonial center of Teotihuacán, near Mexico City. I really needed to be as close to the heavens as possible, I thought (early Meso-Americans symbolized these pyramids as “sacred mountains” that lead to the heavens). Alright, here we go!
But my hopes of freedom where shattered at the bus station when I tried to sneak the dehydrated little canine in my carry-on backpack. All passengers were being asked by federal officials to open their carry-on’s for inspection before boarding. The inner peace that I had temporarily cultivated dissolved away. Could I get in trouble for this?
I hoped for a miracle. Maybe they won’t check me. Yeah right, with my long dreadlocks and colorful striped pants, Chicana accent and dirty backpack, Sure! They’ll just look away and let this one go right on through. But I managed to gather my composure and walk towards the men. I took a deep breath and opened my backpack. When the dog popped up, the men kind of paused and then looked at each other, surprised. They burst out laughing!
“Uh, this is going to need a box,” one said, with a friendly voice, still chuckling. The senior officer sent a young trainee to find a cardboard box in the office.
“Señorita, la cachorrita tendrá que ir abajo con el equipaje, lo siento.” “The puppy had to ride with the luggage below,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
So there she went.
After the first two hours of travel, I had to force myself to stop paying attention to her desperate, yelping cries. It was very uncomfortable for me, and I’m sure torture for her. But I finally managed to drift off into a superficial sleep that was interrupted by frequent bouts of gory images. I imagined that the bus driver would open the luggage door to find her dead, with the box (and her) melted to the hot metal corridor.
Oh, what have I done? I was going crazy in my mind.
At five a.m. we pulled in to a chilly, still dark Mexico City and I was the first one out of the bus. When the unknowing attendants opened the luggage doors, the puppy, which had managed to escape from her taped-up box, was walking around and had pooped on other people’s luggage. Shaken but not stirred, and just like a refreshed puppy awoken from a long nap, she was elated to see me and forgot about the experience very quickly.
We slept for two hours in the Mexico City bus station, until the first buses left for Teotihuacán at 7:30 am (again I had to sneak her on that short bus ride, but this time we were successful and no one saw her). Then finally my new baby and I walked through the gates of the pyramid site, through the museum, and past the array of tourist paraphernalia. Then, from a distance, the temples appeared! They were ominous galactic beehives, out-of-this-world cosmic mountains that sent shockwaves through me and took my breath away upon first sight. Incredible.
I unzipped my backpack at my chest, so that the puppy could put her head out to see and breathe, but she became excited and started moving around abruptly. “Stay in there,” I whispered. But she wouldn’t keep still. When we reached the first pyramid, La Pirámide del Sol, my heartbeat began to pulse rapidly. This was my moment. With exhilaration, my right foot met the first ancient step. Centuries after Teotihuacán was abandoned by its original builders, the awestruck Aztecs utilized the city for their religious ceremonies. From there, they made human sacrifices to the Gods by offering the hearts of their captives. They believed that Teotihuacán had been built by gods. As we ascended the pyramid, the puppy couldn’t resist the urge to try and jump out of the backpack, so all of a sudden it became really difficult to climb. People started looking over at the spectacle.
“Stop, please stop,” I implored. I was annoyed. My endeavor at soul liberation turned into a sloppy attempt to try to secure a whiny, lost dog. I had to make sure she didn’t go plunging down the mountain—to her death.
There she was, haphazardly falling out onto the monolithic steps, hurting her tender little bones. She was confused and yelping, causing everyone around us to wonder what the heck I was doing there with a dog. It seemed like it took a lifetime to get up to the top, but when we finally did, we both collapsed down and surrendered to the fresh air that washes upwards from the Valley of Mexico.
Atop the colossal, magnificent structure, adorned in a network of ancient designs and hieroglyphs, the puppy and I froze. She had a purple aura. She had no idea that our destinies had become intertwined and we were bound together on the journey.
On top of the world, we soaked up the rays of the Mexican sun. As I imagined the ancestral practices of ancient people, she pawed lethargically at the mystical monarch butterflies (mariposas) that swarmed over her head. They were drawn to her like little faeries. Cascading sunlight dripped down onto us and I gazed across the valley in disbelief at what I was seeing and feeling.
That night, the puppy and I hit the road together. In the end it was complicated traveling with her, but she was my new friend and I couldn’t just leave her. I named her Mariposa, after the butterflies.
Daphne can be found either sitting in a tree, laughing hysterically, dancing wildly in a drum circle, wandering through gritty and beautiful urban areas at night, or sitting at her computer writing this. Read her blog about homeless youth in Brazil at www.sublimeadventures.blogspot.com