I have been struggling with how to start this post. I think it best, one week removed from Mexico, to just tell a few more 40-year-old stories from Mexico.
Mary, Pat and I left Veracruz after absorbing all the Carnival we could and headed southeast to Lake Catemaco, the third biggest lake in Mexico. Back when we were there, a tropical rainforest covered the watershed of the lake resulting in crystal clear water surrounded by dark green, lush vegetation. Recent decades have seen the decimation of the rainforest resulting in run off that has greatly affected the clarity of the water. There is even fear that if this process continues the lake could fill with silt and eventually disappear.
But when we got there the place was post card beautiful. We arrived on a bright sunny day and inquired at a resort where we might pitch our tents. We were told to follow a path that hugged the lake for about a kilometer until we saw an open, flat area where we could set up camp. We quickly found the spot and pitched our tents. We went for a walk and marveled at the physical beauty of the lake. Then it started to rain.
We were locked into a weather pattern similar to the ones that ruin countless Florida vacations. The cloud cover was an unbroken dark gray and it rained all day and night.
Those of you have been camping, especially in pup tents, know that sitting in the tent soon becomes intolerable. Our only option was to walk back to the resort and sit in their open-air restaurant and while away the time reading, eating and playing cards. It was the off season for the resort so we were usually pretty much alone except at meal times when a few people would show up.
The first thing we learned was that the people who ran the resort had a German Sheppard named Hitler. This dog had a name that perfectly fit his personality. It was the wise patron who knew, at all times, Hitler’s location. This situation caused me to reconsider reincarnation, until it dawned on me that had Adolf been reincarnated it would have been in a much lower life form than a dog.
The rain continued throughout the first day and as the dinner hour approached we asked for menus. There weren’t any menus but we were directed to a blackboard that had pescado as one choice and mono as the other. We knew pescado was fish but didn’t know what mono was. So we asked the woman waiting on us what is mono? She tried to explain what it was but we just didn’t understand what she was trying to tell us. Finally, she told us to follow her into the kitchen. There we saw a large pot on the stove with one hairy paw hooked over the side. She lifted the contents of the pot by the paw and we saw an entire, intact, skinned monkey. We said, “We’ll have the fish.”
A large group of Mexicans came in and ordered the mono and raved about it. When they left they took extra orders with them. For me, it was a little too much like eating your cousin. Just in case, any of my cousins should ever read this, I am referring to a generic cousin and not specifically to any of them.
That evening we walked back to our tents in a light rain and stored our gear in one tent and the three of us crawled into our sleeping bags in the other tent. This arrangement would become important a couple of days later.
The next day the rain continued so we trekked back to the resort. We weren’t there long, when we heard a God-awful shrieking coming from somewhere back by the kitchen. At first I thought we were in for another unusual culinary option for dinner, but before long a waiter told us that a parrot was being killed and it’s blood drained. Apparently, the bird was being sacrificed because of the belief that drinking parrot’s blood was a cure for mental illness. They were collecting the blood to give to an ill young woman. Before you get too judgmental (and I agree this was undoubtedly a futile attempt at a cure) remember these were country folks and it was forty years ago. Also remember, Rick Santorum is a possible GOP presidential nominee in 2012, so be careful who you call backward.
That evening as we got ready to leave, the sky opened up and it poured. The owners of the resort took pity on us and offered to let us sleep in an old shack on the resort grounds. They gave us the key and we dashed through the downpour to the shack. Once inside, we discovered there was one small mattress and a naked bedspring. Not a box spring, but the old fashion springs loosely held together by wire or twine. We either flipped a coin or played rock, paper or scissors but how ever we decided, Pat and I ended up spending the night on the bedsprings.
A bit of advice for those of you who might wish to do some unconventional traveling, do it when you are young. As it was, we woke up with kinks in places we didn’t even know we had. After a little bit we were able to work them out. If I was to spend a night like that now, it is likely, I would have to be helicoptered to a hospital and taught to walk again.
The next day it rained and we spent an uneventful third day at the resort. Right after dinner the rain let up and we walked back to our tents and planned our departure the next day.
Early the next morning, not long after sunrise, Pat poked me in the ribs and said there is something outside our tent. I made a couple dismissive grunts and tried to go back to sleep. Pat trying again to get my attention said, “I think it’s a bull.” I opened one eye and was about to tell her she was imagining things when a loud snort finally got my full attention. I looked up to the little window above my head and saw a massive hindquarter. At this point, Mary was awake and aware of what was happening.
Once we had confirmation that a very large bull was licking water off our tent, we set the world record for the most people crammed into one corner of a pup tent. I have often wished a representative of the Guinness Book of Records had been there, because I am pretty sure we would still hold the record. While we trembled in the corner, the bull continued to lick water off our tent. Finally, he had his fill and he walked right over our second tent and went on his way. Later we were told, matter of factly, that a nearby rancher’s bulls would get out from time to time and wander the area. We didn’t have to think about the possibility of another up close encounter because we left Lake Catemaco later that afternoon and headed to Oaxaca.
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It was late afternoon, when Don, Gary and I were cruising the highway about 20 kilometers west of the south central agricultural city of Irapuato. We were on our way to the west coast of Mexico and Don decided to make a left onto a dirt road to look for a place we might take a break and get a little something to eat. As he started to make the turn, a bus traveling about 65 miles per hour, slammed into the side of Don’s Volkswagen bug. We ended up landing on all four tires in a farmer’s field and the bus landed on its side in the ditch.
After cleaning all the shattered safety glass out of our mouths and hair, we looked at each other and discovered none of us had suffered any injuries except a couple of minor nicks where the flying safety glass had struck us.
I think Don could not believe we had suffered another car related set back and he wandered off saying he was going to call his dad. That left Gary and me trying to understand a very agitated bus driver who was speaking so rapidly that we could not understand anything he was saying.
The people on the bus crawled out, apparently unharmed and before too long a young man walked up to where we were engaged in “conversation” with the driver, and inquired, in English, if we could use some help. There are times in life when it would be nice to have a soundtrack and this was a time when glorious singing of angels would have been appropriate.
The young man was a college student going back to classes after a break. Just as he was getting the driver calmed a bit, the owner of the bus line walked up and joined our little group. He had been out for a Sunday afternoon pleasure drive with his family and had witnessed the accident.
With the help of our student we quickly struck a deal with the owner of the bus line. We agreed that each side would bear its own costs. The bus company would tow our car to their mechanic’s lot and make their chief mechanic and his team available to us to repair our car. We asked if the police needed to be called and the driver and the owner reacted with horror and quickly told us it was Sunday so they wouldn’t come out anyway. Happy not to have to involve the authorities and feeling it was the best deal we could get (both sides shared the blame for the accident), Gary and I started looking around for Don. A short time later he walked up and we explained the proposed deal to him and he quickly agreed. The Volkswagen was then towed to the mechanics yard. Our student stayed with us and found us an inexpensive clean hotel room in Irapuato.
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| El coche diablo blanco |
The student told us that he would stay with an uncle who lived in town and would return the next morning with the bus line owner and pick up the chief mechanic and go to various junkyards to find the parts necessary to fix our car.
Bright and early the next morning we set out to pick up the mechanic. First we went to his house where we were informed he hadn’t been home for a week and he was probably on a weeklong bender. Next we went to the mechanic’s friend’s house and were told he had no idea where he was. The bus line owner then tried the mechanic’s girlfriend’s house and after a short while he came out the front door, his hair sticking up in about a hundred directions, pulling a wife beater over his head. He climbed into the backseat of the car. I have to admit; our first glimpse of the guy who would put our car back together was not a confidence builder.
We drove back to the yard and Ramon, the mechanic, got out of the car and became all business. He inspected the car, talked with his team and then crawled back into the car so we could start our junkyard tour. We spent the rest of the day going to three or four junkyards where Ramon picked out fenders, a door and a hood along with a couple of smaller parts.
That evening as we sat in our hotel room there was a knock on the door. There stood the bus line owner’s twelve-year-old son with his arms full of cans of beer. He told us it was a gift from his father.
The next morning our student came by to say goodbye. He needed to get back to school and felt we were now set up and didn’t need him any more. How can you not love a country that produced so many people like this student? With out him, who knows what would have happened?
That day we found out our destination on the west coast had been hit by a large earthquake, just about a couple hours after we would have arrived, and thousands of people were being fed out of mobile kitchens in the region. In some strange way getting hit by a bus had been a stroke of luck.
We spent the next few days walking around Irapuato, reading and visiting with the bus line owner. He had taken a shine to us and we were all becoming friends. A couple nights after he had his son deliver beer to our room, his son showed up with a jug of tequila for us. Most days we went down to Ramon’s yard to survey the progress on the car.
Ramon would greet us enthusiastically and show us what had been done to the car that day. The three of us, proving we hadn’t missed our callings as either drug and alcohol counselors or social workers, agreed a good gift for Ramon was a nice bottle of tequila. Ramon seemed to greatly appreciate our thoughtfulness.
Finally, about a week after the accident, we were told the car would be ready at 5:00 pm the next day. At the proscribed time we went to Ramon’s yard and there was the car looking about like it had looked before the bus smashed into it. Don climbed in behind the wheel with the intent to drive the car to the end of the street and back as a test drive. As he started out the rear wheels began to seriously wobble and we, along with the entire crew, ran after Don pleading with him to stop. Someone had forgotten to tighten the lug nuts on the rear wheels. Don stopped and this small problem was remedied.
The next day we left and they must have done a good job because we drove that car for several thousand more miles before Don got rid of it back in Green Bay. Years later Irapuato became a sister city of Green Bay. Judging by the people we met there it was a good choice.
Don, Gary and I left Irapuato and spent several weeks traveling up the west coast of Mexico. When our money began to seriously run low (buying beer became a cost/benefit decision) we made our last stop in Guaymas, about 240 miles from the U.S. border.
Guaymas is located on the Gulf of California in the state of Senora. It is a port city located in the Senora desert and in the early 19th century it was said to have gotten down to one resident. Tio Pepe, a reputed drunkard and thief, apparently had the town to himself. By the time we got there, it was in the beginning stages of a real estate boom fueled by gringos who could buy beach properties for a fraction of what they would have had to spend in California.
The beach we camped on had been the set for the movie Catch 22. There were the remnants of a runway and various hospital and military buildings about three hundred yards from the beach. Every time I see that movie, I look for all the places we roamed around while we were there.
Every day we were camped on that beach, the wind would come up around 4:00 and blow very hard for about 90 minutes. Each day it would blow our tent down and we would have to pitch it again. After the 90 minutes of wind it would calm down and the evenings were beautiful.
On our first full day there, we walked across the flat, hot surface of the desert back from the beach to the movie set. The buildings were shells, of course, but their exteriors were largely intact. While we were walking around treading the ground once walked by Alan Arkin and Art Garfunkel, I looked up and for a moment thought we had been transported into a Clint Eastwood spaghetti western. Out across the arid, dusty landscape, heat waves radiating up from the ground, came four cowboys riding full tilt directly at us.
As we looked out at the riders, dozens of western movie images flashed through my mind, some of them quite unsettling. As the riders rode up upon us in a cloud of dust, the wind that had started to blow, blew the leaders hat right off his head. It blew right by me and instinctively I stuck out my arm and the hat stuck in my hand. I took the hat and gave it back to the lead rider and the whole posse grinned.
It turned out the cowboys had been hired by the people who owned the land to make sure people who camped on the beach didn’t use the lumber from the buildings for campfires. They told us we were welcome to look around and go wherever we wanted to go, but were cautioned not to take any wood for our fire. The sight of those riders coming at us full tilt was enough for me to keep my wood rustling urges under control and we avoided any frontier justice while we were camped there.
One afternoon, Don and I decided to go rock climbing. For Don this was a logical decision. He loved to climb, had an aptitude for climbing, had great upper body strength and was confident in his abilities. For me it would be hard to count all the ways this was a stupid idea. Let’s just go through the obvious reasons. I had no climbing experience and what I did have proved I wasn’t any good at it. As a kid I would usually outrun my mates to the fence but then spend so much time getting over it I would have to run like hell to catch up. I had not yet worked as a trackman on the railroad and didn’t have a great deal of upper body strength to rely on. I had absolutely zero climbing experience and we were going without ropes or any safety equipment whatsoever. To fall was to die. But what the heck, what possibly could go wrong?
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| Climb Site |
Together we walked a footpath to its end and surveyed the bluff we intended to climb in order to reach the top of a ridge that ran to an easy walk down. We started climbing together but soon got separated when Don took a route further up the bluff and I stayed to one more in the middle. I climbed across the face of the bluff for a while until I came to a point where I wasn’t sure how to proceed. I looked down at the rocks and the surf below me and quickly concluded I better not make any mistakes. As I clung to the face of the bluff, my options seemed very limited. In fact I didn’t see anyway to move safely, including back the way I had come. As the fear started to settle into the pit of my stomach, I decided that I had indeed gotten to this point and that my only viable option was to try and retrace the way I had come. Slowly, and I do mean slowly, I worked my way back, pretty much the way I had come. All ten fingers were bleeding and both knees were scratched up by the time I reached a safe place. The funny thing was that I hadn’t felt anything until I was walking back on the footpath and noticed the blood. I met up with Don, who had climbed across his northern route without any trouble and we walked back to camp.
That night a diamond driller from either Australia or South Africa (I can’t recall which of these two locations he was from) and his girl friend camped next to us on the beach. He went into town and bought a couple of chickens and a case of beer and turned a night that had promised to be quite austere (we really were out of money by then) into a small party under the stars. I kept thinking what might have been and was truly happy to be on that beach in one piece. The next day we drove to the border and reentered the United States.
