Car Trouble in Mexico

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I really didn't know what to expect of Mexico. I had no preconceived ideas of either the country or the people. In the mid- 1970's I'd spent a year in Los Angeles and had met a few Mexican people, they'd all been very nice. On this trip I was focused on our final destination. I guess I had thought of Mexico as just one of the countries we'd be driving through to get to Nicaragua. It turns out that the old saying, "It's about the journey and not the destination", is true.

We had discovered a nice easy trick for finding our way in, around, and out of big cities. We would hail a taxi-cab and pay the driver to take us to where we were going. Of course we wouldn't get IN the cab, we'd just follow them to our destination. For some reason, the cab drivers always charged us much less for these rides than if we had been riding in the cab itself. On arriving in Acapulco, the first thing I noticed, was that there seemed to be hundreds of Volkswagen "Beetles". The old body style. The Volkswagen "Bug" had been my first car. I loved it! After the first one, which lasted many years, I'd gone on to own three more. I can't say exactly what it was I loved about them, since I remember the small heater boxes almost never worked, and most of the time I had to scrape ice off the inside windshield as well as the outside. But it was easy to drive and if it ever didn't want to start I could just push it a few feet and jump the clutch and off we'd go. Like a little tank, tough and dependable. I hated when the new ones were introduced. Didn't like the new body style and was disappointed to hear they wouldn't be making the old ones anymore. Now, here we were in Acapulco, and the streets were full of these V.W. Bugs with their familiar, friendly, front end "faces". I noticed that most of them were painted some version of red, white, and blue. It turns out that these tough little cars are the official city taxi-cabs being produced in Mexico especially for this purpose. We tried to flag one down and three of them stopped. We picked a friendly looking driver and were very lucky in our choice. Rafael, a nice family man with a wife and two small children, would be our constant companion for the next few days. He said, "your car is leaking" and bent down to put his fingers in the liquid on the ground. "I know" I said, not really wanting to know. "Can you tell what it is?" "Sure", he said, smelling the liquid on his fingers. "It's gasoline". Not what I wanted to hear. We asked him to "lead" us to our hotel where we checked in and left our belongings and then we asked him to direct us to the nearest garage to see about getting the leak fixed. The "garage" was an old dilapidated building behind some small ramshackle houses. The "mechanics" were four guys who had just been hanging around drinking beer. I was glad to have Rafael with us. He did most of the talking. The garage itself was crammed full of parts and pieces of cars. Like a mini- junkyard. So our car had to be worked on out in front. They started work right away and it took a couple of hours to get the gas tank off. I think these guys were either pretty drunk or really didn't know what they were doing. It was dark by then and they were working with only one flashlight. At this point, the mechanic who seemed to know the most, told us the gas tank would have to be patched and he couldn't do it till the next morning. I wasn't happy about having to leave our car with these guys but Rafael said he'd drop us off at the hotel and come back and guard our car for the rest of his shift, which was all night! I told him I didn't think I could afford to hire him as an "all-night" guard and asked him how much I owed him so far. He told me he was going to be our personal helper till we left Acapulco and we could just pay him whatever we could afford. I wasn't really comfortable with that so I insisted on paying him what we owed him so far. He wouldn't give me a figure so I paid him for the hours he'd been helping us out and even though it wasn't more than $5.00 or 6.00 dollars an hour (I can't remember exactly how much now) he was happy with it. He left us at our hotel.

The next morning it was clear that one of the things I'd have to do that day was to see a doctor. I was getting sicker. We went to the outdoor cafe at our hotel and watched the cliff divers do their show while we had a late morning brunch. It was exciting and amazing to see these young men jump off of such high cliffs into the bright blue ocean below. The same show has been a famous Acapulco entertainment for over 50 years.

Rafael showed up just as we were finishing our meal. We drove over to the garage and of course the men hadn't started working yet but they were already drinking beer. They told us the gas tank had come apart along the edges when our car had hit the ground with such force. So they soldered it all the way around, put the tank back on and filled it with gas. Still leaking. They took it off, emptied the gas out, soldered it some more, filled it with gas again. Still leaking. They said it would have to be entirely fiberglassed but they didn't have the means to do it. So I asked them to put the tank back on, and by that time, I probably could have put the tank back on myself since I'd watched them do it so many times already. I asked them how much I owed them for working a few hours in the dark the night before and almost all afternoon that next day, and they told me $60 dollars! I was happy to pay it, and gave them each a tip...for beer. Rafael thought it was too much.

Rafael knew a mechanic that lived in a small space in a garage and needed the money. Once again, the garage looked like a junk yard, but the guy had no work and he wasn't drinking beer. My daughter loved that he had a dog for a pet that he pushed around in an old baby carriage. It was kind-of weird, but cute. The dog loved it!
He started working right away. I noticed he was very meticulous about his work. He kept everything very clean although he himself looked like what I'd always expected a "grease monkey" to look like. He was handsome in a rough and worn down kind of way. Watching him work it was clear that he knew what he was doing. He quickly had the tank off, and although there was another younger guy there helping him, he seemed to be only an assistant. He took the gasoline out and filled the tank with water and found all the major leaks. He agreed that the tank would have to be fiberglassed. He told us he'd have to hire two men he knew, that had done fiberglass work before, to help him with the job. He went off to find the men.

Meanwhile, I was directed by our hotel to a "good" doctor right in the middle of the city. His little office was attached to a pharmacy. He took me in right away. He had a calming demeanor and was very professional in his white lab coat. He gave me a full exam, checking my ears and eyes and lungs. He listened to my heartbeat and my chest while I coughed. He told me I had waited too long to come to a doctor and had contracted a pneumonia. I never had pneumonia before, but we had been in such a hurry to get to Nicaragua, I hadn't wanted to stop, and I'd thought it was just a cold. He gave me a couple of prescriptions to fill at the pharmacy next door. Antibiotics for the pneumonia and something for the cough which was getting worse and worse. I asked him how much I owed him and he told me $2.00 dollars! I couldn't believe it! He said that in Mexico, the doctors aren't paid much, it's the medicine that's expensive. He said he worked for the pharmacy. I thanked him and went next door to fill my prescriptions which only cost about $12 dollars all together.

Back at the garage the mechanic told us the guys couldn't get the materials they needed until the next day and then we would have to wait a day more for the fiberglass work to dry before we could fill the tank with gas. Rafael took us to our resort hotel to gather our things. If we were going to stay another couple of nights we couldn't afford to splurge on the big tourist hotels. He suggested a small hotel right down the street from the garage. It was painted a bright pink on the outside and when we got in our room we realized that it was painted in the same color on the inside too. Walls, ceiling, everything. That night, when I woke up coughing and unable to stop and take a breath, my daughter turned on the bright lights in the room and all I could think was, "I'm going to die here in Mexico inside an Easter egg."



The Journey / Travel With Me

A. Zudro a.k.a. Gloria

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Comments

[Robyn]

Wow
I stumbled upon your blog while trying to do some research on Nica. I am so glad I did as you are a very engaging writer and you and your daughter's adventure is very inspiring. I am a 27-year-old female who was supposed to meet one of my friends in Nica this coming week. However, she can no longer go so I was debating just going by myself. Your inspiring and adventurous tales of travel are a very convincing argument for me to pack up and do the trip solo. I can't wait for another post from you! Oh, and if you are still in Aca - which I doubt because of your timeline - there is a little taco place across the street from the Fiesta Americana that is one of the best in the city.