canada

more from panama

RAVE BUS


aaaaand, a tupac bus!!!!

sonora

Leave everything
Leave Dada.
Leave your wife, leave your mistress.
Leave your hopes and fears.
Drop your kids in the middle of nowhere.
Leave the substance for the shadow.
Leave behind, if need be, your comfortable life and promising future.
Take to the highways
-Andre Breton

back in canada, wondering why i'm not in the sonora desert. i need to go back there to find out why i was there in the first place. why did i ever leave? i need to get drunk.

i used to play video games because i really craved adventure. or maybe i crave adventure because i played so many video games. what a completely boring thought loop. anyways, i always wanted to feel something new. i wanted adventure. so i started experimenting with drugs, hoping in a flash of lysergic light i would be whisked away into glorious insanity, insight, somewhere new, be it physical or mental...and it worked you know, but not really how i wanted it.

travel works a lot better. i've gone crazier, woken up in more unexpected places, and gained insight beyond whatever the lords of cough syrup can teach. no diss to drugs here. but. travel works a lot better.

i feel like i am on the cusp of something big, that i am about to fall into something serious, something either terrible or wonderful, yet, what's changed?

so it goes!

panama's last picture

let it be said that i am someone who only does things in halves.

from santiago i get a ride immediately to panama city, something i don't remember too much about. i don't remember much about santiago either, except for this place:

since then in my sleep i am visited by bulked out marlins...i've also had strange urges to get big muscles...only in writing this have i put the two together. thanks blogger!

my first time in panama city and i'm shocked. i have no idea what's going on. i've not seen skyscrapers in latin america since mexico city, and before then, not once. this place looks like a shitty mix of san diego and edmonton, and i hate it. i quickly get out and hightail it to san blas.

well. easier said that done. i make it to the road to san blas...40km of the worst hills, all throughout the jungle. i see a man standing on the side of the road selling water, at least, he says he's selling water but when i ask him for some and he walks to his water truck, turns some knobs, and says something i can't understand, but doesn't sell me water. i try to talk to him and he just murmers some weird shit that i don't really understand without making any facial expressions, which i figure is my que to stop bugging him, and i march up a gigantic hill. i start to wonder. one thing the man told me was that there was absolutely no traffic here. lovely. i keep walking. and walking. i have no food and two bottles of water. i keep walking.

sun sets. the jungle sounds like a million sonjas making jungle sounds. who would have thought? it's still really warm out.

the night is long and i wake up multiple times (did i ever fall asleep?) listening to the sounds which now have changed to what sounds like john cage's reinterperatation of bad rave music. one frog (what else could it have been?) has a dubstep wobble as a mating call and some stupid birds have the hoover synth built right into their throat, everything playing out of time, howler monkeys, ever present but never seen, screaming like dying pigs from behind trees, almost danceable beats forming for a bar or two and then disappearing for an hour, nothing making sense...

i wake up (or do i just stop dreaming?) and i decide that walking isn't going to help me much. i can't walk 40k on these hills so i sit under a tree and be the Buddha for a bit, waiting for somebody to serve me a bowl of rice or at least a ride, and it's not happening. waiting. waiting. waiting. suvs pass me and each driver ignores me, even with my tried and tested praying hands motion which works so well down here...the first couple hours are spent bored but that passes and i enter a realm where boredom doesn't exist. soley paranoia, strange thoughts, old thoughts, morphing sounds, oh the sounds, every gust of wind through the leaves of these massive jungle trees transformed into a different truck just over that hill over there, yes, each a different pickup truck with a back full of fruit and just enough space for me...the fruit is ripe and the drivers will look at me with a smile, yes, of course you can have some! it's just over that hill over there...

more hours and my dreams come half true. a truck full of half ripe plantains, with just enough room for me...going half way to san blas.

the plantains are not even half edible. i try to eat one, they won't miss it, right? my mouth goes numb as that time i ate colombian coke and it tastes worse. i realize i am not that hungry.

dropped off in the middle of nowhere, i find an old school phone booth it which provides protection from some nasty rain. i try to call some friends and say "yo, i am stuck in the jungle! but that means i'm almost in colombia! so it's alright!" but the phone is busted, not that i expected anything different being where i was.

another truck comes and picks up the plantains to bring them to san blas and i ask the driver if he can take me and he apologizes and says no, not enough space.

i hang out in this spot for quite a while. i think i went crazy here. or at least did some weird things that i don't usually do.

at some point i saw a baby jaguar. it runs away from me and i grab a big stick and run away, in case la madre is around.

another night.

in the morning a truck picks me up and takes me to the docks of san blas. woooooooohoooooo! i think to myself. all i have to do is ask around and magically some captain will welcome me aboard his boat and i will be in colombia and i will do lots of pure and then go to chile! yes!

no.

i am greeted by some kuna lads. this is how the women dress:

(not my piccie)

pretty cool

but anyways.

the dudes. yeah, these dudes. they were drunk but they don't call it that. they call it happy. and oh boy, are these guys happy. they quickly start fighting over whose house i will stay at tonight and get me wasted. i spend hours playing chess with them, one of whom is actually really good.

"so is this some sort of, uh, ceremony?" i ask.
"yes. we've been celebrating for six days! it's a ceremony for--". i can't understand what it was for. but. it involves lots of sugarcane liquor.

i'm hanging out with elith and marcos and they introduce me to this wise looking dude reading a book. apparently this guy is the teacher of culture. he starts telling me about the kuna's original culture, and my spanish isn't good enough to understand most of it but i like the picture book he's showing me. we drink more and more. elith's dad comes out, already weary from six days of ceremony.

"yo soy...EL PADREEEEE!!!!!!!" he spits out. i smile. "si?" not really knowing how to respond to that.

i guess that wasn't good enough. he says it again. and again. i start talking more to elith and i can hear this dude constantly yelling, to me or to the culture man or to god, I AM THE FATHER, over and over.

we get progressively happier and elith and marcos are falling over themselves reading me kuna poetry in...the kuna language. i tell them i don't understand. they don't care. this goes on for hours, with the dad occassionally interjecting to say that he was indeed the dad. marcos looks at me and says "yeah, he's the boss!". padre looks happy and yells his one and only truth louder.

i take a quick break to ask everyone on the island about the boat situation. nope. looks like i'm fucked for about a week according to some dudes. on guy tries to take me to "colombia city" for 50 bucks. where is colombia city, i ask him. it's the capital! he tells me. i tell him that there is no colombia city (wait, looking it up, there looks to be a colombia village, which is completely landlocked). he keeps on insisting there is. i didn't go with him.

later, back at elith's house, elith is happy as hell and telling me about how we are brothers, and it's honestly one of the most heart touching things i have experienced. this dude is awesome. but it's not long before he starts screaming JESUS CHRIST!! IN!!! MY HEART!!!!

in the morning i look at my lifestyle down here, i look at my current financial situation and realize that i don't really even want to go to south america on no money. i can travel for free, the last two and a half weeks i've been doing it pretty well, but sometimes i like buying food, sometimes i like beer, and sometimes i would like to be able to have a hostel or whatever. and i look at my boat situation: i can't live on these islands for what i have for a week. i shrug my shoulders, hop on the boat back to that terrible jungle trail, and do it all over again. after getting searched by the panamanian military i got a ride out pretty easily, thankfully, straight to panama city, where i stayed in the ghetto, hung out with cokeheads, ate shitty diner food and found a love for that piece of shit. i love panama city. just saying.

i left panama city just as i learned there was a four day fiesta. SHIT. the fiestas down here...!!! i party for like, two hours with my backpack like an idiot and leave.

but hey. my first real adventure i traveled over 10,000km solely by thumb. i don't think i have ever had anything to prove, but now i know i don't.

but let it be said that i am someone who only does things in halves.

can i say even that? i never thought i could get to chile. fuck. i never thought i'd make it to mexico. i just told everyone and myself that to propel myself as far as i could, seeing just where the hell i'd end up. and panama wasn't too bad, honestly.

i've found a love for this place like nothing ever before. i left my heart in mexico (in many ways!) and the rest of central america wasn't bad, if not completely amazing. well shit. guess i'll have to do it all over again :)

my first expulsion

at the diner i saw some protests with some dudes in cool masks on the tv. i had no idea what it was about, but obviously people were getting rowdy over something. i dug it of course, not knowing what it was about but the underdog is always right (well almost always), and promptly forgot about it. after a long time no one was picking me up and i had no idea why, central america is the easiest place to get a ride and panama didn´t seem to change that rule. after hours of walking in the heat i this one hospital administrator, marvin, stopped me on the side of the road and ushered me into his car. he warned me that we could only go so far, that the indians were blocking the roads. good for them i say, and he gives me a worried look. we don´t talk about it again for a while, but i start to get confused. aren´t all these people indians?

night falls and we keep driving up to a huge line of cars. apparently it´s 20km on both sides. i see a way for marvin to keep driving forward.

"marvin, you must keep driving. i want to meet the indians. i want to tell them that i think they rule"
"what are you talking about?"
"i want to give them a high five. shake their hands"
"but why? look at this line!"


marvin looks at me and i don´t think he understands why this looney white boy he just picked up has any opinion on this sort of situation. he tells me to get out of his car and walk to them if i wanted to see them that badly. okay!

i walk maybe two kilometers and give up. there is a beautifully intense lightning storm in the distance and i set up my mat and watch it. the whole thing seemed so poetic...thousands of stranded cars, some dudes putting up a fight for their homes and maybe even winning, at least for a couple of days, amazing lightning, great weather, amazing view of the stars...wasn´t this the most perfect, romantic night ever? i contemplate dropping the guatemalan acid i have had in my pocket for weeks but then think better, realizing i was totally high on life. oh god, did i seriously just write that? but yeah. it was awesome.

later (not sure when) traffic started moving again and i felt a tinge of sadness, got a ride with some lunatic shirtless trucker, and woke up in santiago.


well. i guess you just had to be there.
info here

bus art in panama city

panama city is the shit. no, listen to me. it smells like piss, it´s ugly, it is super americanized (but not american, do you understand?). it´s like midgar from final fantasy 7 with more jungle and....okay, maybe not, but it´s great.



but the best part? the public transportation. when i first came to olympia, the first place i visited on this trip, i was immediately smitten. their public transit is cute, it´s mostly honest, no ads on their buses and at most some psas about washing your hands or condoms or something silly. i loved it, it was such a breath of fresh air, especially compared to edmontons ads over the windows, making it impossible to see where the fuck you were. now, why i am i so concerned over buses? fuck if i know, maybe i am autistic. buses are important. i liked olympia´s buses because of the room to breath. now, anyways, that´s pretty minor compared to down here. in panama (and other places in this part of the world, but so far panama has the best!) they don´t just allow room to breath: they exercise this idea that we up north always dream about: the idea of space for public art, at least on the buses. i think that panama is a fantastic (if absolutely ridiculous) representation of what could be.





. i am definitely for destroying uniformity and collectivizing the redecoration of our buses (and our buildings and our streets and our everything really). wizards smoking pipes everywhere. yes.



apparently there is a war to get rid of this art and standardize everything like a good american city. according to the internet it´s been going on for years, and according to some locals it´s going away in august (but who knows, really?). of course i am never coming back to this city if they get rid of it.




i´m not sure how they´re designed. obviously it´s not one bus per driver or what, there must be too high of a turn over rate for that. but some of it´s pretty personal, like portraits of mothers and children and shit. anyone (as if this blog has readership outside my circle of friends, hah!) who knows please tell me. i am terribly interested.

sugarcanes

so i left guatemala and said goodbye to two (count em, TWO) sets of beautiful friends (did i honestly just say sets of friends?) and headed out to el salvador, the darkest, grimmest place in central america, driven by a nihilistic lack of regard for my own life and puapusas.

my first ride gave me a hat that says REDNECK VS COONASS 1989 SHOOTOUT.

my second is two brothers named jose and they invite me over to their ranch, if you could call a shack with a bunch of turkeys and cows a ranch and one jose asked me what i wanted, what was the point of travelling, one day i wake up in el salvador, one day i wake up in nicaragua, one day i wake up in colombia, why? what was i looking for? i tell him i have no idea and he says, well, come with me and maybe you will find something you like.

we go to this big field of exhausted sugar canes and set the fucker on fire.

i go back to his place and his shirtless dad is yelling raspy spanish at me and i have no idea what he is saying but he sure is friendly and awesome. later that night i get a taste of a real tropical rainstorm in this tiny shed...

in the morning the brothers jose hook me up with one of their trucks (besides professional field burners, they also own a trucking company!) and it takes me about a hundred kilometers in the most blinged out truck i have ever seen. on the side of it there is a huge picture of jesus hovering over a truck. that says everything.

i make it to honduras. the first honduran i meet is this asshole border guard who wont let me pass without three american dollars. i tell him in no uncertain words to fuck his mom, which might actually be uncertain because i only know how to curse in mexican, and find some money.

the second honduran i meet is a cop. i tell him my story and he tells me that not only can i hitch beside him, he will make the next driver going to nicaragua take me.

he pulls over mario, who is going to costa rica! alright!



driving through nicaragua i got a huge boner for all the red and black everywhere, which i know isnt anarchist in this country but come on, the fsln is pretty cool, right? well. even in socialist nicaragua they still have massive chains everywhere and beer commercials targetting nicaraguans featuring only white people. also nicaraguans hate white people more than anyone else i have met.



anyways. panama next. costa rica is beautiful and all my rides speak english. but it is expensive and all my rides speak english.


oh, and heres an irony for you: after all of el salvador, i never got an authentic salvadorean pupusa. the banks didnt work and i had only 25 cents (they use american currency, who knows why).

machetes

in oaxaca city ben and i are drinking in a bar. some dutch chica comes up to us and chats us up, and at some point she tells us she´s protestant. ben, always classy, starts telling her about his time on a creationist farm and how they were all completely fucking nuts, and i start going on about genetics and the impossibility of creationism, which leads into a conversation on freedom, brainwashing, and for the next twenty minutes we just (not so subtly) bash religion. the girl leaves and ben looks at me: ¨she saw us through the window and said ´look at those two fucking cool dudes´¨. she comes back with two beers for us. suave.

after a long ride in the back of a tomato truck i look at my arms. well holy fuck, i´m tanned! i´ve never seen my skin such a beautiful shade, i think in shock. i later learn i am just really sunburnt and dirty.

later ben and i fall asleep on a beautiful beach somewhere on the coast of oaxaca. we haven´t seen any cops for miles which is pretty strange for police state mexico so we don´t really worry. half way through the night we hear vicious dog barking. i grab my machete and rise halfway. i look over and ben is in the exact same position, machete ready. the dog comes close but turns away. we almost get to use our machetes on the first day we got them. we look at eachother, high five, and fall back asleep.

puppyz

markus, conseula, ben and i hitched out to oaxaca. we made it to puebla, where we got totally stuck in the worst place. men selling the cutest puppy dogs out of bags. one in each hand, waving them about, with extra dogs carelessly placed in a denim sack around their waist, with surplus dogs in bags hanging on trees.

i wanted to buy a couple and go home.

for hours we were stuck. no one wanted a bunch of smelly punks, not even in the back of their truck. conseula gets pissed off and demands we catch a bus...fuck. the ultimate defeat. to her, the fun and adventure is all gone, leaving a dirty sundreached husk of boredom....well isn´t that hitchhiking right fucking there? someone forgot to tell her i guess :(

then again, i can´t say i enjoyed hanging out with the puppy men.

the way to oaxaca is a windy path between beautiful mountains. kilometers of mountains covered in cactus, no life but the bugs and the plants...there´s something fantastic about that. these mountains will never be conquered. man can´t turn these mountains into anything. these cactuses will continue as they always did long after man destroys himself and the rest of the world...if that isn´t beautiful, what is? (in this, am i forced to admit the beauty of the cockroach?)

in oaxaca we find our contact´s place. ricardo flores magnon is riding a bike on the front. looks good. we are greeted by two dudes who are totally warm and open. awesome! then this other dude, some anarchist (??) named chuchu comes out and says NO THEY CANT STAY and kicks us out.

markus and consuela freak out and hightail it to the bus station to go to the coast. i guess i´ll see ´em in london. whatever!


later ben and i go down the coast. the road splits off into two and we ask five locals where to go. three say we want the left one, so we go. whoops. never trust a local to give you directions. we keep going and get this one ride that takes us onthe most amazing scenic ride through this beautiful rainforest and end up stranded in a small village of san gabriel, the most amazing place i´ve ever been. talk about paradise. small colourful village in the middle of the rainforest, strangly with a huge pa blaring some recording (¿) of some woman saying something, which is either a prayer or an advertisment, during all waking hours... the language down here is so hilarious yet so beautiful, so much easier to understand than most mexicans. i would live here.

we find a storage area for the local church and sleep in it. the roosters don´t shut up all night. the jungle is really really loud.

anyways. all day i´ve been listening to this song on repeat. it´s really good. maybe i will catch up more another day.

what to post?

what can i say? sure, i have some stories but honestly, what more do i need to say than i am in guatemala with a machete? shouldn´t that say everything?

teotihuacan

in the absence of any crazy stories, i show you a picture of some pyramids i went to. this one celebrates some lunar deity.


teotihuacan is black metal as fuck

let's blow some shit up

i arrive into manzanillo a bit late. it is new years after all, i was trying to make it in on new years eve. didn't happen, so i tried to make it in the morning. didn't happen. it might have if i wasn't called over to celebrate in this tiny pub in this rural village with this toothless old man. i have a hard time understanding spanish normally, so needless to say i have a hard time understanding spanish spoken by a toothless old drunk. he started pouring me some victoria from his big bottle and we drank and we drank and we drank. i could never tell if his name or that he thought my name was anthony. he kept talking about papas, as in potatoes, but the context i never figured out. he waved at everyone passing by and based on whether they cheered or ignored him he would tell me they were assholes or good people. he seemed to know everyone. one more bottle of beer and his friend who is absolutely wasted comes out as gives me a big hug. somehow i understand him way less than the toothless dude. another beer and i give anthony? a big hug and tell him i have to go. he looks kind of sad but i think that was one of the best new years day celebrations i've had yet.

i get to manzanillo and my numbers don't work. apparently mike is too stoned to know his phone number. i can empathize, it's happened to me before...i finally get his information and i meet him and his girlfriend and he tells me that the plan for tonight is to bomb the shit out of his friend's step mom's house. well fuck, of course i'm in! we pile into his house where there's this dude rigging up bombs that are used to blow fish out of the water together. apparently this step mom is a bitch and hates loud noises, so we're going to surround her house with these bombs and scare the living shit out of her...

i have a hard time imagining that a 33ish year old thought of this idea.

first order though, we get drunk and stoned as hell, then we all (about 13 of us?) pile into this minivan, and drive up this mountain. we surround this mansion and light bombs all around it so that the bombs will go of consecutively, so it's not just one big loud bang. we light them and run like hell to the minivan with the dog going crazy and car alarms going off...

apparently the step mom was so drunk she passed out and didn't hear a thing. so it goes--

bip bip bip

from there i walked a few more kilometers, was terrified by this really gnarly looking bum who was following me (i was still stoned i guess), when i get a ride from fernando, who is going all the way to culiacan, a good 600~km ride. i was worried about being dropped off in culiacan which is apparently the narco capital of mexio, and in general, sinaloa apparently isn't the nicest place. but what i didn't know is that fernando was one of the most dangerous men in mexico. on the way i tell him about how i expected to be on my knees, nose running, tears streaming, face pulsing from my first bite of mexican food. he looks at me with an impish grin and suggests we get some dinner. he pulls over at this place in some town i can't remember or maybe i never learned the name and tells me that this is where he takes his mom to eat. he orders, among other things, a huge plate of peppers which he starts picking at. "your turn!". oh fuck. well. when in rome. i pick up a medium sized pepper and bit into it. not bad. i eat it, and another, and another, and things are starting to burn... i keep eating the peppers (and these delicious onions) and i feel my face about to explode...tears are streaming, my nose is runnning, i don't think i've ever felt pain like this before...

after my nose cleared and the pulsing stopped i felt really good. like, really good. "you like?" fernando asks. i tell him in broken spanish that i loved it and i love very spicy things which honestly wasn't true before those peppers.

we arrive in culiacan and i try, without actually saying it, to crash on his couch or something. no go. he drops me off at this huge park and tells me it's safe...maybe, but there's no way i'm sleeping outside alone in the middle of culiacan. i get this shitty hotel which at the very least, has hot water. some dude knocks on two seperate occasions, creeping me out. i try to watch tv but the cable is cut. i fall asleep bored.

i wake up and get some coffee. this dude who looks like a mafia boss sits in front of me and starts speaking perfect english. i tell him what i've done so far, my plans, blah blah blah. he tells me that he has a great deal of respect for me but that i am fucking crazy, blah blah blah. then he goes on this speech for a good hour about how if i so much as talk to anyone in mexico i will be murdered, people will knife me for my underpants, you know, all that good stuff. okay, sure, whatever. he tells me where a truck stop is and asks me what the rule of latin america is. i remember raze the stray by neurosis and tell him that i must mistrust to survive, avoid being burned alive, and before i can finish quoting the song, which wouldn't have really made sense in that context anyways, he tells me that i am right, don't fucking trust anyone. i thanked him and left.

i walked for what seemed like hours out of culiacan, where i got picked up by a car full of bees.

from there i got some rides? i forget how many? all in the back of pickup trucks to mazatlan.


the best ride that went the furthest had a cooler loaded with beer. the driver told me i could have as much as i wanted, which was fucking awesome. what wasn't so awesome is every 20 minutes he'd stop and get himself one, which kind of made me want to drink them all before he could...but i was reminded of a friends words in hermosillo. "matt, i don't mean to alarm you but...we mexicans are very good at drinking and driving!". i thought about this a little bit and felt reassured, and besides, we were getting into the jungle and it was fucking beautiful, who cares if the driver is tipsy?

i get to mazatlan and it's pretty sketchy. i wish i was dropped off before but it's too late. i am a huge baby and sleep at a love hotel. i don't have anyone to love though, and the room is huuuuuge for my needs. i try to watch some pornos on the tv and get this:

well holy fuck, it's the silver surfer and his friends harry potter and optimus prime. i am randy just thinking about it.

mexico is fucking weird.

next morning i walk out of mazatlan and get a ride with a mail man, which is pretty slow for the amount of distance covered...because he's delivering mail to all these rural houses. then i manage to hitch a bus, the driver doesn't care if i don't have any money. this causes some problems when the drivers change and the new boss wants my ticket. no pase! no dinero! a man selling roasted corn comes to the drivers aid. "he's asking if you have MONEY!" i fucking know, shut up. i tell the driver again, no dinero! and the roasted corn man keeps saying the same shit over and over again. i show the driver a couple US quarters i have in my pocket and show them to the driver. he sighs. i ask the driver yo vamos? and make a gesture to the bus door and he grumbles and starts driving.

i arrive in tepic and it's getting dark. it's a beautiful city with a huge amazing mountain on the outskirts. i wander around a long time and think about going back home. i really need to take a shit and all the bathrooms are out of paper and my paper was left somewhere. i walk for hours, lost, trying to figure out the road to puerta vallarta and finally find the exit. i see a group of seven or so street kids hitching and hang out with them for a bit before finding a fantastic hill where no one can see me and i sleep under the stars on the most beautifully clear night. i wake up wet, being victim of the first and only rain i've experienced in mexico thus far. i'm lucky.

i hitch out and my ride is this guy who works in communications who knows good english and hates americans. he is pretty awesome except for when he mentions mark zuckerberg and starts stuttering about how much of a genius he is. totally taken by zuckerberg's...uhh, i don't know, some positive attributes that i can't understand, i quickly try to change the subject, which works after about 5 minutes of this guy in a religious coma for facebook. me, being me, i have had a ton of awkward experiences in my life. maybe more than most people, i don't know. but this was definitely one of the most awful. in fact, just recalling this experience was enough for me to re-deactivate my page on that awful site. nice guy though!

anyways, he drops me off in puerta vallarta and the city is stupid. it's america in a beautiful jungle. it's new years. i know there will be some big parties but i have a huge backpack and also am not too interested in bourgie raves. fuck that. i get a couchsurfing host in manzanillo and he tells me to try to go there for new years, which i am convinced i can do. i try to hitch out of town and there's only a bunch of americans in nice cars driving out, and these assholes don't pick me up in america, they sure as hell aren't doing it here. i walk a couple kms out of the city, walking past resort after resort in the dark until i give up and hop over a fence and crash on a beautiful beach. it turns out the fireworks are being launched maybe 100m away from me, which is pretty cool and though i am not very interested in fireworks, it was pretty great being the only human outside of the detonators around seeing them so close. i fall asleep with a smug smile knowing that people in the resorts have paid hundreds of dollars for their bullshit.

the next morning i hitch out on some adventure bus thing that tourists pay hundreds of pesos to ride on the back of a truck. people are in the back and i get in the drivers seat. hahaha. driving out of vallarta is incredibly beautiful, much better than vallarta itself. from there i get a series of truck rides to manzanillo. i take a bus into town, and the driver is sitting on a sub puts in a cd of ridiculous house music and tunes that were popular in the north two years ago. he then proceeds to talk on his cell phone and blast his horn at pretty much nothing, almost hits a cow in the middle of the road, and takes me to the completely wrong place (which may or may not be my fault).

i call my host again and again and it turns out the numbers he gave me were bunk. i find the internet and get him to give me the real number or his address. he gives me two more phone numbers, both different than the ones he gave me before. one doesn't work, but luckily the other one does.

his name is mike, and he's a very interesting dude. he lives he is totally into 9/11 TRUTH. oh fuck. he's a nice guy but he always goes on about how he hates america...he has similar beliefs to me, we both hate the government and corporations but...bug... he knows that america and the corporate overlords are conspiring together to bring in a fascist new world order. no, sorry mikey :(

i didn't even try to argue with him on 9/11 truth. he was a serious activist for this shit and it would have made my time there miserable to tell him that his political beliefs were actually completely ridiculous, Q.E.D.

we did a lot of fun stuff, like rock climbing and going to marvelous beaches and i met a couple of his cool friends but honestly it just wasn't my scene. but i did appreciate his hospitality, climbing rocks and the time spent high in a hammock. that was awesome.

i hitch out to colima and meet ernesto, a fine fellow who acts, translates, all this interesting stuff. he offers me some cereal which i eat, not noticing the tiny ants in it till the second bowl. when in rome.

he lends me his bike on my second day there. i ride around colima for 7 hours straight...definitely the most dangerous thing i've done in mexico yet. screw hitch hiking. biking in mexico is insane! the traffic...not to mention these grates which catch your bike and slam your crotch into the frame of the bike, oh lord

it was also one of the most awesome things i've done in mexico. how i miss bikes!

i trade ernesto a copy of travels with charlie for hopscotch by some argentinian author which is apparently a masterpiece. so far it's beautifully written but kind of really pretentious. like, pretentious even for me, and i love roberto bolano and thomas pynchon. ouch. maybe i will be able to enjoy it though.

from there i hitch to guadalajara and am there for about a week. i meet this fellow ben who i am now travelling with. we stay at two different couch surfing homes. it's okay. oh, and then we went to morelia. some beautiful people there. some beautiful architecture, i mean, it is the most beautiful city i´ve ever been to, but it confuses me why everyone clamours for european architecture in mexico. something feels a bit wrong about that i guess. oh, now i am in mexico city. staying at this squat of sorts. it's pretty rad.

etc. etc.

anyways. i need a harmonica. i have found a pin that says BLACK METAL WARRIOR AGAINST CHRIST. it's awesome and i would probably be killed here in mexico for wearing it if it weren't so small and hard to read and in english.

i am thinking of staying here till sunday or monday, where i will try to find some farm or a beach to crash on and eat cocos all day. i kind of love mexico city so far but fuck this city shit.

and all that

i haven't written much since i crossed the border. how to correct this?

it started when i was in san diego and i told everyone i was going to mexico. i didn't quite believe myself. i wanted to but i didn't think i actually would do it. but i told my friends i was leaving on monday morning, and that's what i did. i copied down the directions and left.

i didn't even know i was in mexico till i realized that no one spoke english. there was hardly anything i could call a border. i actually had to search in multiple buildings to find a fellow to stamp my passport and give me my fmm (mexican tourist pass, basically), and when i found this man, this huge, cigar smoking immigration baron, he told me in very broken english to go to the bank and give them some papers and give them money. when i did so he gave me a card and said "uhhh..........i guess you want me to stamp your passport??" yeah, that'd be nice.

i walked out of tecate and right on the exit a trucker pulled over.
"you want a...you want a...you want a....uhh.......hrmmm.....you want a..."
"ride?"
"yeah!"
he took me across this incredibly beautiful mountain range seemingly made out of boulders and crashed cars. crosses everywhere. i have never seen such beautiful death.



his name was angel and his adorable nephews are in the back. he's swerving close to the edge telling his nephews to look out the window to look at the crashed cars. "no!" i shout. "we dont want to end like that!". i don't know if he understood me but he soon pulled over so we could all get out and gawk.

he dropped me off in san rio luis colorado, right in front of a place where i got some free internet. i chatted with my friends, was generally confused, worried for my life, blah blah blah. i concluded to cross the border and wwoof at some farm a bit. i guess i already detailed what happened in the first post.

if the circumstances that night weren't enough to make me believe my life was something that could be read, the ride i got from there took me all the way to hermosillo, 350km further than i thought he would. at first i was terrified when he drove past caborca...i thought i was going to be chopped into little pieces or at least used as the fall boy for some coke deal gone wrong... but no, he just took me all the way to hermosillo because his sleep schedule was fucked up from driving all night. oh, and his name was FAUSTUS. no shit. best name ever? my first ride was angel, my second faustus. what am i to make of that?

in hermosillo i sat at a starbucks and contemplated running away again to america. but i was already 1000km away from san diego...i sent some couchsurfing requests out and was taken in by a friendly communist named daniel. after about three hours of trying to figure out mexican payphones i got a hold of him and he picked me up at a gas station.

with him was this fine chap named aaron, an aussie who was motorbiking across mexico. i like these two dudes very, very much. i don't know if i can write all we did? but some of it was very surreal, like having mexican christmas dinner, visiting families, eating some weirdass but delicious mexican food, singing (more like humming) happy birthday in spanish to some old lady i had just met, going to a really wonderful bar (i don't even like bars much) with art everywhere




awesome, eh? we just had big bottles of beer which we just passed it around. it was great.

we went to this one house party which alternated between some dj playing old school (real old school) dub and a band of eight men with tiny guitars playing a style of folk music from veracruz called...veracruzana (which, as far as i know, translates to "from veracruz"). the highlights were when this rapper started rapping along with the folk music...and then the band got drunk and started playing along with the dub creating a most beautiful clusterfuck of sound.

we also went to some awesome beach, ate awesome food, had good discussions about the devil neoliberalism, and i met some of daniel's wonderful friends...

saying goodbye was kind of hard. as we said goodbye, aaron wished me luck in whatever i was looking for which seemed incredibly profound to me at the time. despite being a complete 180 in ideology aaron had a habit of saying simple one liners which i took as deep philosophical shit.

because shit, nobody does what i am doing without searching for something.

i asked daniel to drop me off on the edge of town at 5:30 in the morning.

my first ride was by this big dude with a huge sonoran accent. the sonoran accent if you didn't know, is screaming really fast. every movement and word is hugely pronounced like a stage actor. it's a bit intimidating but i kind of love it. this dude speaks no ingles, and he had no idea how to connect with this gringo kid in his car. so he started screaming UNO! DOS! TRES! CUATRO! CINCO! etc until we screamed numbers over 9000. when i left i felt like i had made an incredible bond with this wierd screaming guy and all we did is yell numbers. most of the time the language barrier is alienating but sometimes i think it helps.

i get out at this town called empate? which is a shanty town? as far as i could see. right by the ocean, pelicans everywhere. i walk out of it, people here are super friendly. i go for hours. i dont even try to get a ride, i am just marveling at this half desert half coast....

i walk for a couple kilometers and there is nothing around. absolutely nothing at all, except for this abandoned old scrap yard with every car rusted to shit, nothing alive at all. i stand in awe and am reminded of fallout 2 and realize that chances are, there is a cave full of mutants very close and i am about to be torn to shreds...i hear a sneeze...yes, this is the end....i'm going to be eaten alive, have my skin flayed into a mutant tapestry, or at least be made into one of them...

a 13-14 year old kid hops out of the bush. tu fumar? weed? he asks. si! he holds out a huge joint and lights it. i take the first two puffs and pass to him and he shakes his fist twice to signify that he doesn't want it (i later learn that the law of "puff puff pass" does not apply in mexico, perhaps because you can get 15 grams for 8 bucks). i keep smoking. and smoking. and smoking. he doesn't want any of it! i know enough spanish to tell him i am hitching to chile and i know enough spanish to know he called me a fucking crazy gringo. the rest, i am hopelessly confused...where did this kid come from? what is his story? why does he have some of the best weed in mexico? what the fuck is he saying? i am left smoking the entire joint and he gives me this big grin and runs to the other side of the street, disappearing into the bushes.

five minutes later i see five soldiers with huge guns in the distance. i immediately think this whole situation is a set up and hide in the bushes the kid came out of. i stay cloaked for about half an hour and never see the soldiers again. which may or may not be a testament to how good the weed is...

anyways. i need to take a break from staring at a computer

anarquistas? comunistas?

i had the pleasure of meeting ben in guadalajara. we both like some of the same things like revolution, zapatistas, stealing, so we decided to travel a bit. our first order was to find where the anarchists were hiding in guadalajara. ben had the address of the "biblioteca social praxedis", a local infoshop. we walk eight or more kilometers looking for this place and come to a building next to some sports stores. no markings at all. now this is fucking underground shit, i think. we try knocking on the door. nothing. knocking more. nothing. so we decide to write a nice note for them in embarrassing spanish which went something like:

hi, we are two traveling anarchists and want some friends.
is this the biblioteca social praxedis?
we want to meet you.
email us.
ben & matt
(A)

a man next door comes out because we're making so much noise. he says something neither of us can understand.

"donde....anarquistas???? comunistas??? bibliotec??? infoshop??? next door???"

i have never seen a man look so confused. from what we understood, there was a single man who worked up there, alone. i hope this single man finds our note and gets confused as hell. or emails me. either way is okay

abejas

i am in culiacan, capital of sinaloa...home of the sinaloa cartel, heaps sketchy you might say, and i want out. it doesn't seem too bad but people are giving me weird looks and i am not too happy here. so i'm walking down this strip of mechanic shops (llanteras!) when i hear someone ask if i want a ride. i look over, and the car is full of shit. like, full of bottles, tools, cans, pieces of broken metal...and a bee keeping suit full of fucking bees...so of course i take the ride! the man gives me a fantastic toothless grin and moves the bees out of the way and i sit down. do you like to fuck black chicks? asks the man. yes, of course! i say. do you like to fuck white chicks? asks the man. of course. do you even fuck...chinee chicks? all of them i say. the conversation goes like this for a while and i am trying to divert the topic to why he has a ton of bees in the car and he doesn't understand what i am saying...

eventually the car starts stalling up a hill. it starts and stops. starts and stops. starts and stops. the bees are getting rocked back and forth and it's making them angry. some find a way out of the suit and into the car. i point to the bees and yell what the fuck hermano!!! and the man turns around and says "oh! the abejas! i get 300 dollars for them!". the car keeps on starting and stopping until it finally just stops. i, only slightly covered in bees, get out and yell MUCHO GUSTO!! ADIOS!! but hey. at least i got out of culiacan.