SIERRA de CACOMA, Mexico — The caravan of Toyota pickups careened down the twisting mountain road. I sat in the back seat of the third car, praying we wouldn’t tumble off the steep mountainside on the next turn.

An hour in, the caravan pulled over a wide turnout on the dirt road. It was time for a parada tecnica, a pit stop. A fat man with his shirt halfway unbuttoned jumped out of the lead car with a bottle of tequila in each hand. He did a quick shimmy, the music started, and everyone was out of the cars and dancing. “La Banda Está Borracha” — “The Band is Drunk” — blared from one of the trucks.

We were driving through the cloud forest in the Sierra de Cacoma, the coastal mountains of Jalisco, Mexico. Towering firs and pines surrounded us on all sides, moss and lichens hanging from their branches. The thick fog glowed orange as the sun set. [Read more…]