First an appology on how long it has been. I think we both aim to be caught up to our experiences in Oaxaca soon (all positive).
My pictures are on Facebook under Chris and my alias: Autostop South
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=11020&l=5f5f9&id=708372808
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=11021&l=0e24a&id=708372808
and Chris's pictures:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=10953&l=afa08&id=708372808
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=10955&l=17ba2&id=708372808
From the wonderful tiny town outside of El Dorado we got a ride back towards the major highway to Mazatlan, but our ride overshot it. So rather than doubling back we decided to go on and hitch the secondary highway.
While waiting for a ride we saw an army troop trandport truck hanging arround with dozens of soldiers with massive automatic weapons. They were just lounging around and buying food from the street vendors, but it was disconcerting seeing all that fire power. We wondered if it had anything to do with the Mafia boss that our last ride had said lives on the other side of a mountain in those parts. Whenever we started talking to our drivers about the mafia they would catch themselves and suddenly become suspiciously vague with answers to simple qurestions 'I don't know,' 'maybe'. We were told that the mafia and police/army (polluted infiltrated with mafia informants) fight against each other and let the average people alone and nobody mentioned anything about protection money or anthing, but it was strange that people were still so guarded talking about it. We later read in a newspaper article that those army troops were part of a garison reenforcement to Sinaloa and it was indeed in response to the mafia.
The ride that picked us up from the town in which we ended up was a work truck and they only took us a dozen kilometers down the road to the middle of a construction site. We were just thinking that this might have been a bad moove, when a second work truck said that they could take us on to a hamlet further along the highway. There we split a huge water melon that we bought from a street vendor. There were wasps all over it as we eat, but they didn't sting even if you pushed them to the side or blew them off. I guess there was enough water melon to go around.
We waited for a very longtime there, but were eventually picked up by a worker who had whitnessed our long wait. He was going home to Mazatlan at the end of his work day.
We knew that Mazatlan was big and dangerous and didn't have a good idea of where we were in the city, so we imediately caught a local bus to Villa Union, a small town just down the road, by the intersection with the hiway to our next stop, Durango. There we eat dinner and contemplated a plan of action. Out of nowhere a small, soft spoken drunk man invited us to stay at his place. We were very cautious because he seemed a bit illusive. It turned out however that what was preoccupying him was the iminent confrontation with his wife. When we got to his house she lectured him in a pained, desperate voice about drinking their money away and how they were going to feed the children. It was horrible to whitness, but we wanted to excuse ourselves politely rather than just run away. We think the husband's drunken plan was to distract his wife with us. We finally managed to excuse ourselves and went to find a place to set up our hammocks because we were now on the outskirts of the small town. Chris took a step off the road onto what looked like dirty concrete or packed earth and it turned out to be thick swampy sludge water. Fortunately he only got half of his shoe wet before pulling back and didn't lose ballance, but it certainly took us off guard. Nowhere to camp in that direction. We asked a family if we could camp in the trees accross the road from their house and they said that they didn't have anything against it but that there might be junkies and thugs arround so it wasn't safe. They recomended that we go and sleep at the church. This was a hard decision to make because neither of our philosophical views align with the church's, but I rationalised that our philosophical views do align with the church insofaras one should help strangers who are in a bad place regardless of their beliefs. The reasoning behing this conclusion upon which we agree with the church differs, but that shouldn't be a reason to miss the common point on which we agree.
We stayed up, sitting, eating and chatting on the benches in the church courtyard until the priest came home, but when he did he just said hello in a big rush and flew into the church. It was't clear wether it registered with him that we had big, partially unpacked bags because we were planning on sleeping there, but either way he hadn't told us to move on and passers by affirmed that the benches in the church courtyard would be a safe place to sleep.
That night we whitnessed what the cool kids in Villa Union do of a wednsday night. They get in their cars and drive very slowly around the centre of town (where the church was located, with their windows open and side doors of their vans open blaring cheezy 90s pop music and drinking. This continued until about midnight, but peaked at about 10:00pm. We had our pictures taken with one group of curious local friends and were asked to come and have a beer with another group, but we respectfully declined. Rest was our biggest priority.
We weren't hastled at all that night. The next day we went to the market and discovered some interesting fruit: cactus fruit, giant bananas and some other delicacies foreign to us.
We hiked on to the highway that would take us away from the Pacific coast towards Durango and started hitching. The heat was oppresive and we wern't having much luck. Also, we kept on seeing British Columbia license plates drive by which was a bit puzzling seeing as we felt so far from home. I guess we were actually quite close to Mazatlan and the beaten track.
Eventually we got a ride with a man in a beaten up truck all the way to Durango city. He was quite well dressed and explained that he was driving this beater truck because he had totalled his new car recently and didn't have insurance. It turned out that he had only injured himself in the accident, but that he had been drunk and the penalty was six years in prison. With this as thier leverage, the police demanded a bribe of $100 000 pesos (10 000 dollars). In order to come up with this money he had to sell his house and buy a smaller one for his wife and children, but after he did that he has no criminal record. The perils of this scenic mountain road took us to talk about his friend who liked to drive this road at deadly speeds on a motorcycle. We expressed that we were amased that he had not crashed because the road was so ridiculously windy and steep. Our driver replied that his friend had actually been in two rather serious accidents, one of which had him hospitalized for a full year. We asked how he could afford to be away from work for so long and he replied that the insurance covered it. We then commented that his insurance premiums must have sky-rocketed, but our driver told us that premiums do not increase after an accident in Mexico. This sounds pretty far fetched, but I have no other reason to disbelieve it. Seems strange to me.
As a side note to all of this, our driver was actually driving very slowly and safely along the crazy mountain, understandable given his recent terrible accident.
We were dropped off on the outskirts of Durango, bought some food and searched for a place to sleep. The one we came up with turned out not to be subtle enough and we were approached twice during the night, once by a guy in a truck apparently searching for someone who had thrown a rock at him as he had drived past, and the other a weed smoker early in the morning, looking for an out of the way place to do his thing. There were no negative consequences but we resolved to be more carefull in our future hammock spot selections.
The next day we hiked to the appropriate onramp and were picked up within ten minutes which was a nice change from the long waits we had become acostomed to recently. This ride took us to the junction with the road leading to Zacatecas. Our ride said that they couldn't take us any further and then continued onto a side road. 15 minutes later however they came back and told us that they could take us a bit further after all. They took us to the next junction and as we were thanking them for a second time we were given steeming hot egg salsa sandwitches completely out of the blue. This really hit the spot and hardly had we finished our snack and set up to hitch again than we were picked up by another ride who was friendly and good natured. We were dropped off in a small town with a farmacy, so Chris decided to go in and ask about some bumps he had on his hands that looked like tiny insect bites. He succeded in his task and got some medication for what the doctor thought was an alergic reaction to something. Next, we were picked up fairly promptly by a truck that only brought us a small way, but where we were dropped off, we were befriended by another hitchhiker. Fortunately the ride that picked us up had room for all of us, Chris up front and myself and the other hitchhiker in the back. I had a good broken spanish conversation with the other hitchhiler who was very patient and helpful in our converstion. Chris later told me that the driver had said that he was taking some raw materials to his work where he converts it to leather. What didn't occur to Chris but slowly became apparent to me was that the large pile under the tarp in the back of the truck was a bunch of cow hides and the liquid that was slowly sliding around under the pallet that I was standing on was actually cow blood. It smelt bad, but we managed to finish the ride without picking up the dead cow skin smell.
Our next ride also came fairly quickly, we were making record time in interior Mexico. This guy drove us into Fresnillo in Zacatecas state. He was really excited about our adventure and we had good conversations about Canada and mexico and indigenous issues and education systems. He thought it was so cool to have us with him that he insisted on driving us on to Zacatecas city because it is so beautiful. But he was not going to take us there before giving us a guided driving tour of downtown Fresnillo. He had to stop by his house to do something and on his way he drove past one of his sons who was on his way walking somewhere. He told his son to come over and he introduced him to the 'Canadianses'. His 15ish year old son had a my-dad-is-so-wierd look on his face as we drove off. This ride also drove us arround a significant amount of downtown Zacatecas before dropping us off. Zacatecas did indeed live up to our ride's hype and as we sat and eat dinner in the main square we watched breakdancers bust a move in the town square and we were approached by a group of 8ish year old kids throwing bits of stale bread at each over and trying to breakdance. They told us that the next day, a Saterday, there was going to be wrestling and clowning in this town square. We stayed up late people-watching and reading our books with coffee from the 24 hour store.
When we called it a night we hiked up to the park on the hill above the city. The next morning we consulted the SAS survival guide and confirmed that the cactus fruit around us was indeed eadible. We sampled some, but Chris got a lot of spines in his hands lips and even in his mouth. He told me that is was good but hardly worth the pain. I was more succesful in removing the spines and I really really liked the fruit. With a bit more spine removing care, Chris came around to them too and we eat a whole bunch of them. There were red, yellowygreen, orange, big, small, ripe and young and they all had unique tastes.
The whole morning we had been serenaded by a marching band parctice, and we got closer and closer to it as we climbed back toward the city centre. When we got to the square there was more music being played by a really amasing traditional mexican band. They had three different sized guitars and three or four brass horns of different types too. They accompanied the instrumental music with vocals and I was really digging it. It turnmed out that the day was going to be full of free entertainment in aid of the flood victims in Tabasco and Chiapas states. After each act someone came around with a hat to collect donations for the cause. After the traditional band had finnished a couple clowns took over and started cracking funnies in heavy spanish, slurred by the P.A. system and we couldn't understand at all. Inevitably we became targets for the clowns, with our huge backpacks and acentric appearance. One clown called me Santa Clause and they asked us to contribute one hundred dollars. We gave as many pesos as we could spare and the clowns moved on to another subject. After the clowns came the breakdancers. Two of them were the same breakdancers that we had seen last night, but today they were going way bigger with their tricks and a couple bits were synchronized and they had elbow pads and at one point got up onto the springy wrestling floor. It takes a long time to upload videaos, but hopefully I'll get one of the better breakdancing videos uploaded onto facebook at some point. The breakdancers were really givin'er though, they did one hand hopping handstands, lots of spins, some contortion, a couple of big flips and generally were old school-badass. After the breakdancers were the mexican wrestlers. There were two on each side and three of the four were wearing face masks. One was dressed up as a ninja turtle and another a 'Mexican Lover' I con't remember what the others were supposed to be. they wern't pumped with steroids like WWF wrestlers, but they were just as cheezy and significantly less athletic than the breakdancers. It occured to me that being able to do a backflip and tumble is way sweeter when you are busting out a dance move than when you are pretending to beat the shit out of a supposedly wounded masked wrestler. We left to go and do some blogging and afterwards came to see more performances and hang out. We wandered the streets looking for a cheap hostal with free internet, but had no luck and so once again climbed above the city through some seriously prickly bushes and made camp.
The trees I pitched my hammock with were not really strong enough because while they held me mostly off the ground, I was still touching it in one place. This had never been a problem before so I wasn't motivated to look for a better option. In the morning I woke up and my air mattress was flat. NOOO! I have a really nice air matress that has travelled all over with me. I hope that I would be able to repair it either with super clue on the leaking spot or with a gortex repair kit that Chris has. First I have to find somethwere with a bathtub to find out exactly where the puncture it though. Oh well, at least it isn't cold here. I just have to fix it before Patagonia. This however was one of a growing amount of unfortunate events. I had left two of our three hitchhiking signs in Basconcove, I broke my nice lightweight spoon that I got from MEC, I lost the long handled spoon I had picked up in a cafe in Northern California, I had almost lost my camera's extention cord in the internet cafe the night before, I punctured my beloved air matress, I left my big black wonderfull penknife (with a telescope, flashlight, magnifying glass (think firestarting), sewing needle, decent sized blade, but more importantly a can opener) near the prickly pears we had been de-spineing, I dropped my camera in the toilet in Mexico city, I have come down with a cold and conjestion and finally (I hope) I left my whole clothes bag at an unknown location in Cholula or Puebla. The camera, after a short scare started working again, I found the long spoon, Chris found my camera cord and I can probably superglue my matress and MEC spoon, but I think it is about time to stop being materially self-destructive.
On our Sunday morning walk to the outskirts of Zacatecas no food stores were open. So we stopped by a taqueria and has some excelent mini tacos. We spent a long time walking and trying a hitchiking spot, becoming discouraged, continuing to the next, giving up again and we contined in this way until we got picked up by one of our randomest rides yet. It was the first totally female car (plus small child) to pick us up in Mexico. A middle aged lady and her teenaged daughter. We didn't talk much to them, we didn't want to be pushy or awkward and they were silent, so we just went with it. The ride didn't take us very far, but it lead to our next ride which has been the longest yet. After a short walk to a good pulloff, we were picked up by a ride going all the way to Mexico City. We had planned to avoid Mexico City by heading out to Tampico and then following the Gulf coast southward, but with this opportunity we could make great headway southwards and also meet up with Chris's friend (now mine as well) Kimmy who was going to school in Cholula, Southeast of Mexico City, near Puebla. The danger was that we would be arriving in an unknown part of Mexico City, one of the most dangerous parts of Mexico after dark. We decided that it would be ok if we just went straight to the nearest bus depot and bussed right away to Cholula. At the decisive stop where our intended path and the rout to Mexico City diverged, we told our drivers that we would indeed take them up on the ride. The rout was so long that we got two full chess games in by headlamp light. As we got into Mexico City we started to be able to smell the polution. It wasn't clear wether the smell was coming from raw sewage or some acidic fumes from a factory (or both), but it was hardly bareable when a heavy whiff of it came by. We were dropped off at a bus stop and asked a passer by where the bus station was. He told us and recomended that we take the bus because this was a dangerous part of town. We did just that and were in for one of the craziest rides that either of us have ever had.
We climbed up into the first bus that pulled over for us and were off before we had confirmed where it was going. Navigating the buss' isle (although it was a normal isle, straight down the middle) was trecherous, especially with a big backpack, as the whole bus lurched violently around. I caught my balance and started walking down the isle. The bus shot foreward and with my inertia I was forced to break into a run before I could slow myself. I sat down and got two firm handholds. What was this a roler coaster or a bus? The bus shot in and out of trafic like a sportscar full of teenage testosterone and peer pressure. The bus driver would floor the accelerator if there was any space in the lane in front of him at all and then slam on the breaks tailgating some poor compact car, always in a super low gear for umph, engine roaring. Then before the tailgated car could pull over, our bus would lurch into the other lane and then back out again looking for an opening. This bus had as much get up and go as any car I had ever been in and the buss driver kept it at roaring rpms that threw the whole bus around every time he engaged the clutch. At one point the bus actually drove over a curb at high speed (catapulting all of the passengers off their seats by a food six inches), cut accross a boulevard and then over another curb and into a side road and slammed on the breaks (which were also unbelievably powerful). People were being thrown arround the bus like rag dolls, but nobody looked surprised or shocked. The passengers wore mundane bussriding faces all round. To allow passangers on or off the bus, it would slow down, but rarely stop. When we got to our destination my hands were shakeing as I counted out the bus fare because I had been whit-knuckling the hand rails so hard. I have only ever been thrown around in a vehicle that much for periods of ten seconds or less by a big showoff. I didn't know how to take it. Chris and I got off the bus and stared at each other incredulous, speachless, wobbly knees from adrenaline.
We entered the medium distance bus depot outside of which we had been let off and an angry (gorgeous) rotweiler that must have been close to 200 pounds jumped at us with it's owner, the security guard, leaning way back, struggling to be able to hold him. We asked the people at the counter when the next bus was to leave for Chelula or Puebla. It turned out that there were none left today fom this depot, but after making a phone call, the man at the desk told us that we could make the last one if we crossed town (city of 19 milliion people). He added however that it was a complicated and dangerous rout and that we didn't have much time. He recommended instead that we get a hotel. In the past we had taken recommendations about how safe or how dangerous a place was with a grain of salt and always asked for a second and third opinion. But the tone of this man's voice and the way he looked us straight in the eyes when he said "it is dangerous" made us believe him unquestioningly. We asked him where the cheapest one was and he told us. We asked him if it was safe to walk there and he hesitated. Then his friend who was just off work said that he could take us.
We made it without event and paid for a place to sleep for the first time on our trip. It only cost just under $9 CAN a piece.
More to come soon if all goes according to plan!
Ian
Mexico's Flag
Map of Mexico