It is such a lovely feeling to step outside of one's own room, into the sunshine, in bare feet, and into one's own kitchen. To make a cup of tea and enjoy it in the sunshine, to say "Hm, what should I do now? Suppose I'll lie in the hammock a bit." This is what my mad rush down through Mexico brought me to and now I can appreciate every second of the return to the far south.
The first week was a bit rough as all of my previous plans regarding San Cris fell through (well almost all of them), but luckily they were quickly replaced by serendipitous happenings, thanks to God. A quick trip to the beach, ah lovely lovely Boca del Cielo, helped me to get my thoughts in order. I ran into an old friend from Mexico City and we spent the whole week catching up and engaging in extravagant time-wasting activities while he told me story after story about his recent trip to Cuba. And just as I was about to be homeless once again, a friend of this friend graciously and unexpectedly offered me a room in his home, free of charge.
I have to say thank you, thank you about a million times a day. I've been so very lucky.
Also in these past couple of weeks Abigail has arrived, just in time to give me some additional perspective on the madness and beauty that surrounds us. We worked in the Casa del Pan organic garden once again, where we worked alongside a beautiful Canadian family and a new garden worker whose interests range from compost to windsurfing to therapeutic massage.
It's amazingly easy to spend an entire day just seeking out ingredients for and making no-bake cookies. Vanilla was the hardest, "Oooh" A woman who runs an herbal stand in the market tells me, "That's very hard to find, I don't think anyone will have it, try the other herbal stand around the corner." Well, we couldn't find that stand but indeed, around a different corner, after asking several more people and receiving similar responses, we finally found a little bottle of vanilla essence, made in Veracruz. The cookies turned out beautifully, a friend told us they looked like they came right out of a magazine and that we could make some good money selling them around town. Hm.
21 February 2008
20 February 2008
The Return Pt. 4: Oaxaca
I wake up confused because I do not recognize this bus station. A fellow from Hospitality Club is supposed to meet me so that I can leave my things at his house during the day. I’ve decided to just take another night bus from Oaxaca to San Cristobal, just to get somewhere where I can actually put my bags down and rest. But I can’t bear to pass through Oaxaca without at least getting coffee with my dear friend Leo, a wonderful and talented musician whose secret weapon is his incredible laugh. I realize this bus company doesn’t drop me off at the main bus station but instead some little shack-like station outside of the city. So I get in a cab, hoping I’ll find my host soon.
And I do. He shows up and helps me carry my oversized bags on and off a bus and up a street to the gym where he’s going to work out. I put my bags in the gym and decide to walk around the city while I wait. Though I am slightly delirious from the bus ride and the hour of the morning, I manage to remember the layout of the city somewhat. I try to go to the organic market at el Pochote but it’s not open yet. So I walk and walk for an hour and a half, surprised at my ability to just keep wandering despite my exhaustion.
My HC host then takes me to his house where I get to meet his whole family and his mother invites me to eat breakfast with them, very sweet people. I realize I’m already late to meet Leo but I have to wait patiently for my host to shower and get ready for work (he’s already an hour late too, but I guess it’s no problem?). But despite all my panicky fears that the one reason I’ve come to Oaxaca will disappear, Leo is waiting patiently for me at Santo Domingo. Happy laughs and hugs and all the tardiness and waiting mean nothing.
We go to have a coffee and tell each other stories for a couple hours, catching up and also stories just for the laughs of them. Leo is teaching classes now in an institute run by the city government of Oaxaca and he loves it, though now he can’t drink beer anymore, he laughs loud at this. “No more Coronas!!!” He exclaims and he laughs and laughs.
In the afternoon I buy my ticket for San Cristobal, very eager to just arrive and sleep. The afternoon is sunny and breezy and we go to a place where Leo usually plays, a sushi restaurant outside of the center of the city. Leo is supposed to play today but we show up and he whispers to me, “I didn’t even bring my guitar!” and he laughs and laughs. We’re just here for the sushi; he knows how much I love it. Salmon, aguacate, cream cheese, yum.
The day is winding down when we head up to the mirador a look-out point just past the luxurious home we enjoyed for a couple of days back in November, the Hotel Victoria. We chat and laugh and via text message I set up a quick coffee date with another Oaxacan friend. He texts me a bit later saying he'll be 20 minutes late and I am really in no rush, though my bus does leave at 9pm that night. Eventually we ease up from the concrete slab we'd been occupying and head for Leo's red bocho (his old beat-up VW beetle that recently started to smell nauseatingly of gasoline, "At least it covers up the old smell of beer!" I tell him and he laughs and laughs). As I put my hand on the door handle, I hear a voice "Oh my God." It sounds familiar but not until I look up do I see our dear friend Beni! Beni's a young German kid who was sharing the house with us in San Cristobal in December. I had been disapointed when my trip got delayed to the point where I wouldn't be able to see Beni before he left Mexico, but thanks to God we found each other on some little mountain in Oaxaca.
Late again, I meet my friend at Santo Domingo and we head for a coffee shop near the park where I'm set to meet my host in an hour. Mostly I listen sympathetically to him tell me the great saga of some problems he's been having with a radio project. He always has wonderful stories and I never have enough time. Rushing again to another bus, it's very easy for me to fall asleep as soon as I board.
And I do. He shows up and helps me carry my oversized bags on and off a bus and up a street to the gym where he’s going to work out. I put my bags in the gym and decide to walk around the city while I wait. Though I am slightly delirious from the bus ride and the hour of the morning, I manage to remember the layout of the city somewhat. I try to go to the organic market at el Pochote but it’s not open yet. So I walk and walk for an hour and a half, surprised at my ability to just keep wandering despite my exhaustion.
My HC host then takes me to his house where I get to meet his whole family and his mother invites me to eat breakfast with them, very sweet people. I realize I’m already late to meet Leo but I have to wait patiently for my host to shower and get ready for work (he’s already an hour late too, but I guess it’s no problem?). But despite all my panicky fears that the one reason I’ve come to Oaxaca will disappear, Leo is waiting patiently for me at Santo Domingo. Happy laughs and hugs and all the tardiness and waiting mean nothing.
We go to have a coffee and tell each other stories for a couple hours, catching up and also stories just for the laughs of them. Leo is teaching classes now in an institute run by the city government of Oaxaca and he loves it, though now he can’t drink beer anymore, he laughs loud at this. “No more Coronas!!!” He exclaims and he laughs and laughs.
In the afternoon I buy my ticket for San Cristobal, very eager to just arrive and sleep. The afternoon is sunny and breezy and we go to a place where Leo usually plays, a sushi restaurant outside of the center of the city. Leo is supposed to play today but we show up and he whispers to me, “I didn’t even bring my guitar!” and he laughs and laughs. We’re just here for the sushi; he knows how much I love it. Salmon, aguacate, cream cheese, yum.
The day is winding down when we head up to the mirador a look-out point just past the luxurious home we enjoyed for a couple of days back in November, the Hotel Victoria. We chat and laugh and via text message I set up a quick coffee date with another Oaxacan friend. He texts me a bit later saying he'll be 20 minutes late and I am really in no rush, though my bus does leave at 9pm that night. Eventually we ease up from the concrete slab we'd been occupying and head for Leo's red bocho (his old beat-up VW beetle that recently started to smell nauseatingly of gasoline, "At least it covers up the old smell of beer!" I tell him and he laughs and laughs). As I put my hand on the door handle, I hear a voice "Oh my God." It sounds familiar but not until I look up do I see our dear friend Beni! Beni's a young German kid who was sharing the house with us in San Cristobal in December. I had been disapointed when my trip got delayed to the point where I wouldn't be able to see Beni before he left Mexico, but thanks to God we found each other on some little mountain in Oaxaca.
Late again, I meet my friend at Santo Domingo and we head for a coffee shop near the park where I'm set to meet my host in an hour. Mostly I listen sympathetically to him tell me the great saga of some problems he's been having with a radio project. He always has wonderful stories and I never have enough time. Rushing again to another bus, it's very easy for me to fall asleep as soon as I board.
The Return Pt. 3: el DF y Texcoco
It was early evening when I got to el DF and getting dark by the time I had pulled my bags up and down the stairs of several metro stops and was looking for my friend’s apartment. I was exhausted. I had met this gal through the Mexico City couchsurfing community and found her again. I’m glad I did because she is such an interesting and sweet person to be around. She quit school when she was 14 and traveled all around the world, working on and off, and is now working for a couchsurfer that contracted her, while she saves up money for her personal dream: a traveling culture bus.
So the real reason I’d even stopped by Mexico City on my way down was to see the wonderful banjo player and our friend Andru Bemis play. It was just too lucky to be passing through at the same time he’d be playing so of course I had to stop. Unfortunately a friend who lives just outside of Mexico City changed his mind about coming with me and the friend I was staying with was too tired and broke to want to go. I was a bit disappointed but we decided to just play cards and go to sleep. As we’re getting close to the end of the game (thank God because I’m losing horribly), another couchsurfer calls. My friend thought she was getting in the following day and now has to go meet her to give her the apartment keys. Turns out this woman’s hostal is only about 4 blocks from where Andru is playing. So, we decide to walk over and perhaps just go for a little bit, until we find out that the cover is 150 pesos. Eh. I decide to just go in and say hi to Andru but he insists we come in and we do, thanks to his utter generosity. We end up staying the entire show even to the very end where Andru got up on a table, stomping his feet, even getting guys in suits who had just finished their extravagant dinners and several bottles of wine to bark and howl like dogs along to the music. I’d never seen Andru play in a crowd like this but as always people shouted and clapped and wanted to hear more.
The next morning I went to visit my friend in Texcoco, an hour outside of the city, where he goes to an agricultural/forestry-based university. He studies tropical forest systems but is currently finishing his thesis on organic agriculture in Mexico, so of course we hit it off immediately when we first met in Chiapas a few months ago. Some friends of his had told him that it was going to be the free pulque day of the Pulque Feria, taking place in an even smaller village 15 minutes from Texcoco. Along the way we meet several people who tell us that this is false information but the sun is shining so nicely and the breeze blowing so sweetly that we decide to go anyway. It doesn’t take long to get there and find the pulque, a sort of sour fermented cactus drink that goes down easy and then gives you a good smack when you’re not looking. First we are buying pulque in a little stone courtyard from a fierce woman who serves pulque and insults with equal efficiency. I start out with mamey-flavored, which is very sweet and a bright sweet potato color. Later I drink a cup of guanabana-flavored and later we all move on to the good and simple “natural.” We also move on to some straw bales down the road under a tree where a man serves us pulque messily by dipping a big ladel down into a large metal vat.
We are me, my friend, a friend he knows from school, and a friend of his friend’s (who I later find out is named “Funny” and this gives me great amusement especially after a few liters of pulque). Our conversations range from school to homosexuality in Mexico to politics to whether Lala actually does rent their entire fleet of trucks. Our pulque server can’t help but listen as we’re sitting only a couple of feet from him and he occasionally smiles saying to us once “Well you certainly have interesting conversations.” The day starts to fade and so do our individual grasps on reality. Pulque can be quite strong, though it seems like it’s only a slimy juice. At some point we realize that the court yard pulque must have run out because young kids are coming to our (“our” because we had been there first and had nearly exclusive access to this pulque for several hours) pulque stand.
Some cowboys stumble up and say hello, one repeatedly refers to me as “clear eyes” and he later tries to give his white sombrero to my friend’s friend. He says he can give away the hat but not the band tied around it because that’s from his girl and he loves her so much she’s really the sweetest girl and he loves her so much so he can’t give away the band but he really wants to give the hat way because you’re good people and it’s a good hat but he can’t give away the band because he really loves that girl. At one point he is standing directly in front of me, shouting, God I wish I could remember what he was saying, only I don’t think I was even listening because all I remember now was thinking was, “Is this God? the devil? What is happening here?” It seemed he was accusing me of something, maybe of being clear-eyed and sitting on a straw bale somewhere in the center of Mexico, who knows.
Sometime after the sun sets we get back on a bus for Texcoco. Then there is confusion and we are jumping off the bus on a very dark stretch of road, somewhere outside of the village where there are only high weeds and fenced pastures. We start walking back and only after we are walking for several minutes do I find out why: Dario lost his backpack. Well, we somehow find our way back to our pulque stand but never find his backpack. It’s around this time that I realize it’s 9pm and that I’m not going to attempt the Mexico City metro system in this state. So I just crash at the house where my friend lives, a house for students but most are out of town right now, and I want to go right to sleep but not before, of course, we attempt to drum on a water jug. My friend’s roommates come home and find us silly and drumming and loud and for them it is just a quiet Thursday night to come home and study. Oh, dear.
The next day we get a cheap breakfast of eggs a la Mexicana, perfect for a morning following a day of pulque, though I eat so slowly that my friend eventually asks if I can just eat the bread while we walk. We take a walk around the university and he explains to me how it functions. Basically it started as a university for the poorest of the poorest students in Mexico, to offer them a place with free (or heavily discounted) tuition, but not only that, it also gives the very poorest of its students free clothing and shoes and haircuts, nearly any basic necessity. There are also dorms on the campus (very rare for a Mexican university) and cafeterias where students can eat for free. Though my friend is skeptical as to how much longer this will last due to the push for privatization and social cutbacks taking place all over in Mexico, in which the higher education system is getting hit with enormous and detrimental changes. He said it is already affecting the scholarships that he receives and that his university is one of the only of its kind so it’s especially terrible. But for me, I just keep thinking about the fact that they give out clothes and shoes. “What kind of shoes” Are they good clothes” I ask. For me, coming from the most anti-communist, individualistic place on earth where the only footwear associated with one’s economic state is “boot straps” all I can imagine is a large warehouse of uncomfortable black shoes that all look the same and if they don’t have your size you just have to make do. He admits that most students don’t actually wear the clothes that they are given, except for to work, but that the shoes are pretty decent. And no, they’re not all black.
In the afternoon we crash a luncheon hosted by my friend’s department. We aren’t fully “crashing” it; we signed up the day before, but it’s mostly a function for faculty and overly ambitious students so we just show up, eat, and leave. Turns out that most, if not all, of the professors also live on the campus and the luncheon is held in the backyard on of these houses, which is actually pretty nice. I can’t imagine what kind of houses they would have to offer to Western’s professors to get them to live on campus.
In the evening we head for el DF as I’m aiming to catch a bus for Oaxaca in the night. I bought my ticket for midnight which would put me in at dawn in the city of Oaxaca. Then, we decide we have just enough time to go and crash another party in a suburb of Mexico City. It’s the birthday party for a gal that my friend met in one of his classes. He barely knows her but hey, in Mexico everyone’s welcome at a party. Again we show up, have a couple of drinks, eat, make small talk, and then ease out of the party and head back for my things. We have to rush a bit and take a taxi to the bus station but I make it to my bus just in time.
So the real reason I’d even stopped by Mexico City on my way down was to see the wonderful banjo player and our friend Andru Bemis play. It was just too lucky to be passing through at the same time he’d be playing so of course I had to stop. Unfortunately a friend who lives just outside of Mexico City changed his mind about coming with me and the friend I was staying with was too tired and broke to want to go. I was a bit disappointed but we decided to just play cards and go to sleep. As we’re getting close to the end of the game (thank God because I’m losing horribly), another couchsurfer calls. My friend thought she was getting in the following day and now has to go meet her to give her the apartment keys. Turns out this woman’s hostal is only about 4 blocks from where Andru is playing. So, we decide to walk over and perhaps just go for a little bit, until we find out that the cover is 150 pesos. Eh. I decide to just go in and say hi to Andru but he insists we come in and we do, thanks to his utter generosity. We end up staying the entire show even to the very end where Andru got up on a table, stomping his feet, even getting guys in suits who had just finished their extravagant dinners and several bottles of wine to bark and howl like dogs along to the music. I’d never seen Andru play in a crowd like this but as always people shouted and clapped and wanted to hear more.
The next morning I went to visit my friend in Texcoco, an hour outside of the city, where he goes to an agricultural/forestry-based university. He studies tropical forest systems but is currently finishing his thesis on organic agriculture in Mexico, so of course we hit it off immediately when we first met in Chiapas a few months ago. Some friends of his had told him that it was going to be the free pulque day of the Pulque Feria, taking place in an even smaller village 15 minutes from Texcoco. Along the way we meet several people who tell us that this is false information but the sun is shining so nicely and the breeze blowing so sweetly that we decide to go anyway. It doesn’t take long to get there and find the pulque, a sort of sour fermented cactus drink that goes down easy and then gives you a good smack when you’re not looking. First we are buying pulque in a little stone courtyard from a fierce woman who serves pulque and insults with equal efficiency. I start out with mamey-flavored, which is very sweet and a bright sweet potato color. Later I drink a cup of guanabana-flavored and later we all move on to the good and simple “natural.” We also move on to some straw bales down the road under a tree where a man serves us pulque messily by dipping a big ladel down into a large metal vat.
We are me, my friend, a friend he knows from school, and a friend of his friend’s (who I later find out is named “Funny” and this gives me great amusement especially after a few liters of pulque). Our conversations range from school to homosexuality in Mexico to politics to whether Lala actually does rent their entire fleet of trucks. Our pulque server can’t help but listen as we’re sitting only a couple of feet from him and he occasionally smiles saying to us once “Well you certainly have interesting conversations.” The day starts to fade and so do our individual grasps on reality. Pulque can be quite strong, though it seems like it’s only a slimy juice. At some point we realize that the court yard pulque must have run out because young kids are coming to our (“our” because we had been there first and had nearly exclusive access to this pulque for several hours) pulque stand.
Some cowboys stumble up and say hello, one repeatedly refers to me as “clear eyes” and he later tries to give his white sombrero to my friend’s friend. He says he can give away the hat but not the band tied around it because that’s from his girl and he loves her so much she’s really the sweetest girl and he loves her so much so he can’t give away the band but he really wants to give the hat way because you’re good people and it’s a good hat but he can’t give away the band because he really loves that girl. At one point he is standing directly in front of me, shouting, God I wish I could remember what he was saying, only I don’t think I was even listening because all I remember now was thinking was, “Is this God? the devil? What is happening here?” It seemed he was accusing me of something, maybe of being clear-eyed and sitting on a straw bale somewhere in the center of Mexico, who knows.
Sometime after the sun sets we get back on a bus for Texcoco. Then there is confusion and we are jumping off the bus on a very dark stretch of road, somewhere outside of the village where there are only high weeds and fenced pastures. We start walking back and only after we are walking for several minutes do I find out why: Dario lost his backpack. Well, we somehow find our way back to our pulque stand but never find his backpack. It’s around this time that I realize it’s 9pm and that I’m not going to attempt the Mexico City metro system in this state. So I just crash at the house where my friend lives, a house for students but most are out of town right now, and I want to go right to sleep but not before, of course, we attempt to drum on a water jug. My friend’s roommates come home and find us silly and drumming and loud and for them it is just a quiet Thursday night to come home and study. Oh, dear.
The next day we get a cheap breakfast of eggs a la Mexicana, perfect for a morning following a day of pulque, though I eat so slowly that my friend eventually asks if I can just eat the bread while we walk. We take a walk around the university and he explains to me how it functions. Basically it started as a university for the poorest of the poorest students in Mexico, to offer them a place with free (or heavily discounted) tuition, but not only that, it also gives the very poorest of its students free clothing and shoes and haircuts, nearly any basic necessity. There are also dorms on the campus (very rare for a Mexican university) and cafeterias where students can eat for free. Though my friend is skeptical as to how much longer this will last due to the push for privatization and social cutbacks taking place all over in Mexico, in which the higher education system is getting hit with enormous and detrimental changes. He said it is already affecting the scholarships that he receives and that his university is one of the only of its kind so it’s especially terrible. But for me, I just keep thinking about the fact that they give out clothes and shoes. “What kind of shoes” Are they good clothes” I ask. For me, coming from the most anti-communist, individualistic place on earth where the only footwear associated with one’s economic state is “boot straps” all I can imagine is a large warehouse of uncomfortable black shoes that all look the same and if they don’t have your size you just have to make do. He admits that most students don’t actually wear the clothes that they are given, except for to work, but that the shoes are pretty decent. And no, they’re not all black.
In the afternoon we crash a luncheon hosted by my friend’s department. We aren’t fully “crashing” it; we signed up the day before, but it’s mostly a function for faculty and overly ambitious students so we just show up, eat, and leave. Turns out that most, if not all, of the professors also live on the campus and the luncheon is held in the backyard on of these houses, which is actually pretty nice. I can’t imagine what kind of houses they would have to offer to Western’s professors to get them to live on campus.
In the evening we head for el DF as I’m aiming to catch a bus for Oaxaca in the night. I bought my ticket for midnight which would put me in at dawn in the city of Oaxaca. Then, we decide we have just enough time to go and crash another party in a suburb of Mexico City. It’s the birthday party for a gal that my friend met in one of his classes. He barely knows her but hey, in Mexico everyone’s welcome at a party. Again we show up, have a couple of drinks, eat, make small talk, and then ease out of the party and head back for my things. We have to rush a bit and take a taxi to the bus station but I make it to my bus just in time.
The Return Pt. 2: Guanajuato
The first night I stayed in a hostal but the following nights I slept on a thin mattress with a thin blanket on the floor of Bar Fly. This time I won’t pretend that it was, in fact, a learning experience to view this social underbelly of Guanajuato, this group of close friends and travelers who love each other dearly but always know that good byes are coming, this constant, gossipy, festive, directionless swirl of partying and meandering people. Truth is, I like these people. They make me feel at home every time and we all share a unique love for life and each other. And, of course, they give me a free place to stay anytime I’m in town. With these folks I can even tolerate the terrible nickname given to me when I first came to Mexico which follows me ever since, even when they slap their hands on both sides of their face and shout “Ahhhhhh!!!” (again, think Home Alone) when I walk into the room. Everyone is mildly frustrating and completely endearing and you can’t help but get the feeling that if you double cross even one of them, you’ll get run out of town.
So, I swung back into the rhythm of this tight-knit bunch, parties, food runs, dog walks, coffee breaks, drama, belly laughs, confusion, familiarity and all. Again I found myself pushing back my trip to Mexico City day after day. It was a combination of really loving where I was at and really dreading getting back on a bus anytime soon. I mean, why not spend an entire afternoon at Café El Santo, drinking coffee and chatting with a Norwegian lady that had decided to make Guanajuato her home? Or, going to get pizza at the mall (I’m still not sure why we went to the mall) and then playing for hours in the parking lot with dogs and shopping carts and escalators? Or walking all around the twisting, rising, falling streets with a Canadian traveler who shares my affinity for taking pictures of doors? I had no real reason for staying in Guanajuato other than I really was enjoying my time (Heaven forbid), but one morning I woke up feeling so great that I packed up my things, asked an Italian couple on the street corner if they were also going to the bus station and wanted to share a cab, and a bit later I got on a bus for the monstrous and beautiful city of Mexico.
So, I swung back into the rhythm of this tight-knit bunch, parties, food runs, dog walks, coffee breaks, drama, belly laughs, confusion, familiarity and all. Again I found myself pushing back my trip to Mexico City day after day. It was a combination of really loving where I was at and really dreading getting back on a bus anytime soon. I mean, why not spend an entire afternoon at Café El Santo, drinking coffee and chatting with a Norwegian lady that had decided to make Guanajuato her home? Or, going to get pizza at the mall (I’m still not sure why we went to the mall) and then playing for hours in the parking lot with dogs and shopping carts and escalators? Or walking all around the twisting, rising, falling streets with a Canadian traveler who shares my affinity for taking pictures of doors? I had no real reason for staying in Guanajuato other than I really was enjoying my time (Heaven forbid), but one morning I woke up feeling so great that I packed up my things, asked an Italian couple on the street corner if they were also going to the bus station and wanted to share a cab, and a bit later I got on a bus for the monstrous and beautiful city of Mexico.
The Return Pt. 1: Escape
I don’t want this to be overwhelming, but certainly a lot has happened in these past few weeks. In some ways things were planned (what a joke eh) and in most ways, seemingly spontaneous moments found themselves accidentally, needlessly, miraculously all tied together by geography and time. I’ve been lucky.
The last time I decided to write I was miles and miles away from where I am now. It was cold and depressing and then damp and brown (but not before I slipped on the ice and banged both knees up) and then I got on a train. I packed what I thought I would need for the coming year into an entirely oversized suitcase, my family saw me off at the bus station, I started heading south again.
I tend to try and leave out folk’s names. Though this blog is only very limitedly read, I’ve never asked anyone if I could write about them in what is still technically a public space, so for that reason I usually just leave individual names out of this.
Even in Kentucky, where the grass was still green, I wasn’t satisfied with the rise in temperature. I was still bundled up, my movement restricted, thoughts only on things like hot coffee, warm food, hot shower. In attempted denial of the cold, we had a barbecue outside, but as soon as the food was done cooking we all ran inside and shut the door and enjoyed the heat of the indoors again. Despite the lingering of the winter that I was trying to escape, I did get to visit an old friend and meet several interesting folks, many of which I’d heard so much about. I even met a 4 year old girl who proudly told us she could speak 4 languages (Greek, Bosnian, Spanish, English). I’m not even sure how I should go about learning a 3rd language at this point, but anyway a few days in Kentucky were enough and the next place I set off for was “The hellish Greyhound experience.”
My bus was “direct” from Louisville to San Antonio, meaning we stopped about every 4 or 5 hours to get off the bus, get our luggage off the bus, get confused about which line to stand in, and get back on the bus. I did get lucky in the sense that at least half of the time I had two seats to myself, precious time that I took good advantage of. I wasn’t interested in talking to other folks, I just wanted to ride and sleep and finally disembark in a warm place. I didn’t even eat and rarely drank water. Finally, Texas.
I wasn’t sure if by the time I got to San Antonio I would be too exhausted to continue by bus or not, so I had a couple Couch Surfers phone numbers in my pocket just in case. But I found that the only thing I wanted to do was get back on the warm, dark bus and ride throughout the night. I don’t have any trouble sleeping on buses so I bought a ticket for Monterrey and re-boarded the bus.
Sometime around 3 in the morning I woke up to see a small woman standing at the front of the bus, talking to the passengers. I could see that she was an immigration official but none of the folks in the back of the bus could hear anything she was saying. I figured at some point someone would tell me what to do because clearly I was too tired to figure out what was going on myself. Eventually I saw her point to one young guy sitting in the front row of the bus. He got off, went in the office and we all watched as he pushed the button on the stoplight and it flashed green. Someone behind me worried that they were going to make us all get off one by one. But instead, after this guy got back on the bus, we sped across the border and into the early morning, into Mexico. Was I really the only U.S. citizen on the bus? I suppose so because no one else said a word.
So, I get to Monterrey wondering what to do next. I also had numbers for couchsurfers there but at that point I just wanted to get deeper into Mexico as fast as possible. After almost 2 days of being completely alone, I just wanted to see something familiar, somebody familiar. I quickly find that there are no direct buses for Guanajuato and I listen to some guys argue about whether it’s faster to go through San Luis Potosi or Aguascalientes. I buy a ticket for SLP, then try to change it but the bus has already left for Aguas so I just get on my original bus a few minutes later. Things were quite confusing. Then on the bus, I see that the thickest, whitest fog I’ve ever seen has settled all over Nuevo Leon. Visibility extends about 6 inches in any direction. As the bus crawls at about 5 mph, I start to wonder “Where am I really? Where am I going? Why am I here? Who am I?” I feel like I’m losing my mind and it doesn’t help that the rest of the bus is only occupied by a handful of old, sleeping men, “Do any of us exist?” The bus driver’s assistant hands me two magazines about soap operas and celebrities in Mexico and I find myself reading about Dr. Simi’s (owner of huge chain of imitation drug pharmacies) many young girlfriends. Again, “What am I doing here?”
I feel that I am on the bus for eternity, a ghost destined to haunt empty Primera Plus buses for the rest of time, watching terrible dubbed movies while floating past discarded ham and cheese sandwich wrappers. Eventually I fall asleep and as soon as we arrive to San Luis Potosi I race to a phone to test my ghost theory. “Bueno?” Jonathan answers. “Hey!” I shout and then let Spanish awkwardly tumble out of my mouth. “Hey Macaouly!” he shouts back. While I do hate this nickname (think Home Alone), I am relieved that he can, in fact, hear my voice and that I am still a real person with a name, a nickname even. I jump on the next bus for Dolores Hidalgo and from there I ask very nicely if I can still get on the next bus for Guanajuato despite the fact that I’m short two pesos. The woman waves her hand, “Of course,” and an hour later I meet Mr. Paniagua (always in a suit) at the bus station.
The last time I decided to write I was miles and miles away from where I am now. It was cold and depressing and then damp and brown (but not before I slipped on the ice and banged both knees up) and then I got on a train. I packed what I thought I would need for the coming year into an entirely oversized suitcase, my family saw me off at the bus station, I started heading south again.
I tend to try and leave out folk’s names. Though this blog is only very limitedly read, I’ve never asked anyone if I could write about them in what is still technically a public space, so for that reason I usually just leave individual names out of this.
Even in Kentucky, where the grass was still green, I wasn’t satisfied with the rise in temperature. I was still bundled up, my movement restricted, thoughts only on things like hot coffee, warm food, hot shower. In attempted denial of the cold, we had a barbecue outside, but as soon as the food was done cooking we all ran inside and shut the door and enjoyed the heat of the indoors again. Despite the lingering of the winter that I was trying to escape, I did get to visit an old friend and meet several interesting folks, many of which I’d heard so much about. I even met a 4 year old girl who proudly told us she could speak 4 languages (Greek, Bosnian, Spanish, English). I’m not even sure how I should go about learning a 3rd language at this point, but anyway a few days in Kentucky were enough and the next place I set off for was “The hellish Greyhound experience.”
My bus was “direct” from Louisville to San Antonio, meaning we stopped about every 4 or 5 hours to get off the bus, get our luggage off the bus, get confused about which line to stand in, and get back on the bus. I did get lucky in the sense that at least half of the time I had two seats to myself, precious time that I took good advantage of. I wasn’t interested in talking to other folks, I just wanted to ride and sleep and finally disembark in a warm place. I didn’t even eat and rarely drank water. Finally, Texas.
I wasn’t sure if by the time I got to San Antonio I would be too exhausted to continue by bus or not, so I had a couple Couch Surfers phone numbers in my pocket just in case. But I found that the only thing I wanted to do was get back on the warm, dark bus and ride throughout the night. I don’t have any trouble sleeping on buses so I bought a ticket for Monterrey and re-boarded the bus.
Sometime around 3 in the morning I woke up to see a small woman standing at the front of the bus, talking to the passengers. I could see that she was an immigration official but none of the folks in the back of the bus could hear anything she was saying. I figured at some point someone would tell me what to do because clearly I was too tired to figure out what was going on myself. Eventually I saw her point to one young guy sitting in the front row of the bus. He got off, went in the office and we all watched as he pushed the button on the stoplight and it flashed green. Someone behind me worried that they were going to make us all get off one by one. But instead, after this guy got back on the bus, we sped across the border and into the early morning, into Mexico. Was I really the only U.S. citizen on the bus? I suppose so because no one else said a word.
So, I get to Monterrey wondering what to do next. I also had numbers for couchsurfers there but at that point I just wanted to get deeper into Mexico as fast as possible. After almost 2 days of being completely alone, I just wanted to see something familiar, somebody familiar. I quickly find that there are no direct buses for Guanajuato and I listen to some guys argue about whether it’s faster to go through San Luis Potosi or Aguascalientes. I buy a ticket for SLP, then try to change it but the bus has already left for Aguas so I just get on my original bus a few minutes later. Things were quite confusing. Then on the bus, I see that the thickest, whitest fog I’ve ever seen has settled all over Nuevo Leon. Visibility extends about 6 inches in any direction. As the bus crawls at about 5 mph, I start to wonder “Where am I really? Where am I going? Why am I here? Who am I?” I feel like I’m losing my mind and it doesn’t help that the rest of the bus is only occupied by a handful of old, sleeping men, “Do any of us exist?” The bus driver’s assistant hands me two magazines about soap operas and celebrities in Mexico and I find myself reading about Dr. Simi’s (owner of huge chain of imitation drug pharmacies) many young girlfriends. Again, “What am I doing here?”
I feel that I am on the bus for eternity, a ghost destined to haunt empty Primera Plus buses for the rest of time, watching terrible dubbed movies while floating past discarded ham and cheese sandwich wrappers. Eventually I fall asleep and as soon as we arrive to San Luis Potosi I race to a phone to test my ghost theory. “Bueno?” Jonathan answers. “Hey!” I shout and then let Spanish awkwardly tumble out of my mouth. “Hey Macaouly!” he shouts back. While I do hate this nickname (think Home Alone), I am relieved that he can, in fact, hear my voice and that I am still a real person with a name, a nickname even. I jump on the next bus for Dolores Hidalgo and from there I ask very nicely if I can still get on the next bus for Guanajuato despite the fact that I’m short two pesos. The woman waves her hand, “Of course,” and an hour later I meet Mr. Paniagua (always in a suit) at the bus station.
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