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--
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Saturday, January 22, 2011
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.
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.
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
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
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
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
Monday, January 10, 2011
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.
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.
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