What did you see when you first saw poverty?

I saw isolation.

It was the summer of 1975, and I was in between jobs, exploring Mexico with my girlfriend. One morning, we left the Mayan ruins in Palenque for the old colonial town of San Cristobal de las Casas, on the other side of Chiapas. The distance, I see from Google maps, is 140 miles, but the going is tough down there, and the bus today takes five and a half hours.