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
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