Mexico (Part Two)

And so I was thinking I’ve got a few hours and maybe I could continue the story of the last time I hitched across Mexico back in 2009. Left it at Palenque, didn’t I? With my trying to leave a few times and not really leaving and then going back to sneak in and spend the night up the temple, which is mostly detailed elsewhere on this blog. And then the decision to head south, which in retrospect turned out to be an awesome decision and a real testament to the faith of going with the flow and trusting in the mighty thumb. Would have been so easy to take a bus along my planned route to Villahermosa – they were only like two quid – and I really didn’t want to head back along that slow crazy sickening road to San Cristobal, but the feeling was there. The big bag of beads the San Cris girl left under her bed. The images of the river I’d crossed and the thought of building a raft and floating out to sea (which was Villahermosa direction anyways). And more than anything the weirdness of spending five hours over different days trying to thumb north and not getting anywhere. Sometimes you’ve got to pay attention to the signs, to do what Life is telling you. Life wanted me to go south and I said, okay Life. And south I went.

I thumbed it to the river. The river was brown and running fast. They must have had some rain somewhere. They did have some rain somewhere – I got soaked in it one night walking the dark road back to Palenque. It was a bit mad but I figured it would get me downstream faster. I had a look around the bridge for some stuff to build a raft and someone in a house or shop there – I don’t remember what – came out and I tried to explain to them what I was doing but of course I was just a mad white foreigner looking at garbage and saying things in rubbish Spanish that didn’t make any sense. They just said “si” and smiled and I took that as the go ahead, that, sure, it was a good idea to build a raft and jump in this river that went who knows where.

I couldn’t find anything though. I got down off the bridge and started walking downstream. The grass was long and there was no path and it was difficult going. The grass was sharp too, and scratched my legs. I walked on, looking for branches.

I walked an hour maybe. I was amazed by the lack of raft building equipment. I didn’t even have any tools. I don’t know what I was expecting. And then I saw monstrous rain clouds sweeping in all along the horizon and I figured I’d perhaps best give up on it. An hour back. Shoes getting sucked into the wet and mud. Legs scratched red raw. And no raft in sight.

What the hell. I made it back to the road. I started walking south. I stuck out my thumb. And a pickup stopped.

In the back I climb. There’s a couple of Mexicans and a gringo backpacker with a massive backpack and a cowboy hat and a smile. I eye him warily. I like to be the only gringo when I’m travelling. And this guy looks French – reminds me of a Frenchman I once headbutted. I don’t want to be hooking up with no Frenchie.

But, by and by, we start to chat, and it turns out he’s Yair from Israel. He’s jolly and cool – not French at all. He’s heading to Agua Azul where I was a day or two back with those Spanish girls and I figure I’ll have another look there. Get this feeling, I suppose. He’s talking about spending the night but Agua Azul – meaning “Blue Water” – ain’t no place to be when it’s deserted and the rains have been and everything’s a fast flowing muddy brown. Normally it’s beautiful waterfalls and crystal clear pools: that’s what the photographs show anyway. But after the rain the torrents are raging and grim.

We stretch out on the bank and find a place to swim in the brown. It’s still nice, but not that nice. He talks exuberantly about everything and you see he’s a young guy in love with everything about life. He’s maybe twenty-three, on the road, digging the whole thing and having his mind blown, seeing perfection and WOW! everywhere he looks. Life is wonderful. I remember those days. He pulls out a bottle of liquor and lights a joint and I go swim while he does that and I don’t mind too much. Nice chap. Nice young chap. All in love with life.

The day draws on. We have a quick look at sneaky camping possibilities – he’s got a hammock – but it just ain’t nice. I say I’m gonna try make San Cristobal, even though it’s hours away and it’s getting late, almost dark. He says hell yeah, let’s go! And so up to the road to rejoin the thumb. And in then with a truckful of Mexican churchgoing teenagers, the grownups in the front driving and me and Yair and maybe fifteen of them in the back being all sweet and lovely and smiling and chatty. Yair stretches out on his pack and grins at everything and looks at the stars and the rest of us stand around and giggle and talk. My Spanish is amazing this night, everything flows. It just does that sometimes. I’m charming and funny and the Mexicans are awesome. Yair just lies there amazed and in love. It’s the Mexican night and we’re being mad and on the road and we don’t know where we’re going, who cares. The wind and the dark and the goodness of it all.

A little y-junction town is where they’ve got to turn off. We leave them and get back on the road. Maybe that’s Ocosingo or maybe Ocosingo is where we ended up that night. In any case, at some point – yes, I think it was Ocosingo – we land in a larger town and decide that’s the place to be. We walk around thinking of hotels but in the meantime I’ve been telling Yair about some of my mad travels from the past and he’s enthralled and wants to try things a bit more madly. He says we should sleep on a roof. Weirdly, I’m resistant, ‘cos I’m older now and the hotels don’t cost much, but he’s enthusiastic and really wants to give it a try and given that he’s high on life and open to anything he’s even keen to knock on people’s doors and in his practically non-existent Spanish say, we can sleep on your roof? It’s okay? And in one door some really sweet girl opens it up in her pyjamas – maybe sixteen; talk about gone – and encourages us, says, it’s okay, but they don’t actually have a roof, something like that. In any case, we wander, and then we spy this half-built structure, maybe three stories of a new office building or hospital, and we enter into that. It’s dark and sheltered and probably perfect. ‘Cept on the second floor while we’re mooching around in the dark we look over and in the building adjacent – linked, I think – there’s a policeman standing at a balcony and just looking at us. He seems chilled out. We know that’s the end of our proposed sleep in this building but – hail beautiful Mexico! – his just standing there being chilled is about as far as it’s gonna go.

Buenos noches, we say with friendly smiles as we move towards the exit.

Buenos noches, he says back, leaning on the balcony and not moved in any possible way.

It’s the sweet Mexican policeman that Kerouac testified to even back in the forties, such a natural and normal soul who knows a couple of boys who ain’t doing no wrong when he sees them. Just souls in the night, passing by and looking for a place to sleep: ain’t no harm in that.

Such lovely policemen God hath never wrought in America. Something like that.

We move on. In the end we just climb up on some house on the outskirts of town and sleep on their flat roof right on top of them sleeping down below. I piss in a bottle and Yair takes my picture in the morning, of me lying there in my sleeping bag in the yellow dawn with a bottle of golden piss by my head. We creep on down and head on back out to the road. It’s Sunday.

Sunday morning, yawning. Lazy cars trundling by not so frequent and me and Yair shooting the shit and lazily thumbing too. He wants to know everything about me. He loves all the stories of the things I’ve done. A more inquisitive and curious and enthusiastic man I never met. He’s making me feel useful. He’s reminding me of the me I was back when I was sucking all the juice out of Lindsay and Shawn and Shane. Except he’s much nicer, much sweeter and innocent and pure. A great tall bearded Israeli with a booming laugh amazed by everything, saying “get out of here!” and “no fuckin’ way!” when I say things that seem normal to me. Mystical things, sure. All those former synchronicities and miracles and insights and memories. Always saying, too, “is that in the book?” – and half the time me realising that, no, that ain’t in the book, but a good story it would make.

And another good story then comes: for me and Yair in the middle of our lazy thumbing and talking are picked up by a guy who then promptly turns around back in the direction of Ocosingo and Agua Azul and Palenque – namely, north – and starts saying something about money. Hot damn! We been picked up by a guy who wants bucks for his good deed – but that ain’t the hitch-hiker’s way. Not mine. And in any case, he’s going the wrong damn direction. We try to say something but I can’t make head nor tale of what he’s saying – the Spanish ain’t flowing now; maybe he’s drunk – and then this crazy weird Sunday morning guy actually pulls off the road and into the place where all the minibuses are gathered. What the hell? He’s taken us from the southern edge of town and drove us right back in the wrong direction to the bus station. Madness.

But out we get and at least we’re free of his weird perhaps drunken ways and we can trek the walk back to where we were in the first place.

Except he gets out as well. And talks to some bus drivers. And pulls some pesos out of his pocket. And hands them over and says, si, si, San Cristobal – and suddenly everything becomes clear. He’s an angel, a sweet Mexican saint. He’s seen us there and decided to pay our way to San Cris. I can’t believe it. I want to cry. Us there, two moneyed handsome young westerners from the land of iPods and excess, and still in dusty Mexico they sweep you up and shower you with kindnesses. The world is too good. Mexicans are too good. Sweet and holy and charitable and generous. We sit stunned on the bus and thank our heavenly Father-Mother in the sky. The world is just astounding.

Then Yair says, you know what I want when we get to San Cristobal? Granola. Granola with fruit and honey. Lots of it. Yum yum.

And when we get to San Cristobal? Yes, right there not even two steps off the bus – a young Mexican lad holding out a big plastic tub rammed full of granola and fruit and honey, practically shoving it into Yair’s hands. It was just a crazy mad dream – I didn’t even know you could get granola in Mexico – but there it is. The miracles continue. The magical mystery tour is right back in full swing. All this talk of manifestation and being taken care of and the universe providing – proved and proved and proved all over again. And me and Yair are connecting and seeing things and a little bit of the something I have is perhaps being transferred over to him.

Spirituality, man. It’s contagious.

And San Cris: missions to be accomplished. The girl with the beads. We find her in a square. She looks a bit out of it and is sort of stunned when Yair and I wander on up and press this big bag of lost beads that make up her livelihood into her hands. Lost five hours by mad winding road away. Lost forever, I guess she’d assumed. But there they are and her reunion makes the whole thing worthwhile.

Beads returned. Lovely sweet cheap luxurious roof terrace hostel found. And settling in then for a few days and rest and relaxation in nice San Cris where mostly I chill and read and play four-string guitar and Yair goes off and has crazy adventures into the night – me early night sleeping – and comes back to report on the wonder of it all and I smile at his joy and discovery. He keeps meeting girls. And then he falls in love with one – a wide-eyed French wonder – and they hook up.

Beautiful things for my young friend in San Cris while I look on and smile like his old daddy or big brother or shepherd.

He gives me a copy of The Alchemist: interesting experience for me. I’d read it back in ’99 when I was young and wide-eyed myself and it’d blown my mind. Well, I was in the mind-blowing way back then, all full of spirit and the need to give everything and die for the quest and what I wanted. It was one of those books where people tell you over and over you’ve got to read it and then finally someone presses it into your hands and you know it’s come at exactly the right time. Magic books, like The Celestine Prophecy and Conversations With God and The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah – the books that just landed in your lap and were perfect in the days before you went hunting out books and then got loaded down with information and intellectualism and lost then in books that weren’t perfect, didn’t come by magic. I read The Alchemist and I was filled with the spirit – the juju – the holy beans. It made me want to give my all for the thing that I believed life was guiding me into. I sat on a plane headed for St Louis with Saram the yoga teacher and said, it’s the only thing I want. I burned for it, man. The destiny, the quest, the passion and search for enlightenment. Like, really.

Except, well: things change. And then many years later after the burning had been quenched and I’d either found it or grown up out of it or wised up or lost it or got distracted by other things or given up or failed in whatever way I read it again and I thought, hm, this book means nothing to me, it’s kind of like a kid’s book, not very well written, a bit daft to be honest. All I could see was the simplicity of the story and the writing and I wasn’t very impressed. So I didn’t hold out much hope for my third reading – but seeing as it was there and Yair had given it to me ‘cos he knew it was amazing I thought I’d give it another try. And…

Whaddya know? There was something in it for me. A reflection of my life once more. ‘Cos, first time I read it, I was the boy, all swept up in the adventure and the quest for destiny. Second time, I don’t know what I was – something in between, perhaps. But this time…I was the Alchemist, and I identified so strongly with him, and not the boy at all. I was reading the book from his perspective, and it struck me then that it was showing me something about my journey and where I was at. Something that I liked.

And so, yes, I got something from it once more. Me and the Alchemist himself were as brothers. Older and wiser, I guess. Sometime teachers.

And dear sweet Yair there, the boy full of questions getting his own thing from Mr Coelho’s groovy book.

That was the trip, eh? For we’re all teachers and students but sometimes more one than the other, and me always so keen to put myself in position of student when sometimes you’ve just got to acknowledge – it ain’t no consciously decided thing, it’s simply being aware of the way it is – that in a given situation you’re the one with the thing to share and not really the seeker at all. Not to keep it hidden – to be aloof – the lantern under the basket. Something I’ve done too much of. Because, perhaps, seeking and striving and wanting and longing are kind of comforting and habitual and fun. And maybe even easier. If you catch my drift.

San Cris. Finding an awesome travel book so far removed from pansy-assed Lonely Planet warnings to “never, ever hitch-hike” – “it’s dangerous, you’ll die” – which actually encouraged it and even featured overland routes through the Darian Gap in dug-out canoes saying, well, sure, there are bandits and drug-runners and stuff but you’ll probably be okay – can’t remember the book – and me still even then contemplating the overland route down to Peru for meeting with lovely Laila, the whole plan all along.

But instead…something else happens. What was it? We meet a guy from Puerto Vallarta called Salvador who speaks perfect English and the three of us kind of bond. He’s a yoga man. He talks about being able to get on ships to China from the west coast and that kind of grabs me. And somewhere in there I start to hanker for riding on a freight train and I tell Yair and he’s of course massively gung-ho for it and then I find some information about some lines and figure there’s a town down the way not too far off where a train might go. Hell, they’ve got tracks, and I suppose I read somewhere that the trains still run even though Mexico’s pretty much like the States and the once prolific passenger services have been reduced to almost nothing.

And so back on the road we go, streaming down the mountain in a minibus and gaining what feels like twenty degrees in a little over two hours – I forgot to mention that we pigged out on enormous falafels before leaving San Cris – and, oh yeah, several of the girls that Yair met, and just about everyone else, seemed to be converging on Mexico City for the big Independence Day celebration on September 15th – two million people! all in one square! – and they wanted us to be there and Yair was going to be there anyway, and could find a place for me to stay, and I started to think, why not? And…

Try that sentence again.

We’re back on the road. Massive temperature change from high San Cris back to low steamy Tuxtla Gutierrez (I think it was). Goodbyes there to Salvador (he’s the third man in the awesome picture of us, riding on a rock truck as we depart San Cris). And me and Yair board a bus for Arriaga, which is where the train maybe is. It’s a mad thing. We don’t know where we are or where we’re going. But it’s cool to be off the map and on the bus.

Arrive in Arriaga at night. Drive over rail tracks and then once off the bus ask some passerby if he knows anything about a place to catch a tren del cargo (or something like that).

Si, si, he says, he does. He points and off we go in the dark weird Arriaga night. And at the other end of town we come to some tracks and it’s dark and spooky and all in the dark we see figures and shadows flitting in and out of the wagons. There’s something a bit strange about all this. Something that don’t feel right…

Well, cut to the chase I’ll tell you what we eventually found out: that Arriaga is the place where all the Honduran and El Salvadorian and Guatemalan and Nicaraguan – etcetera, etcetera – illegal immigrants en route to the States gather to begin their long arduous trek up across the vast body of Mexico where, remember, they’re still just as illegal and not welcome. Poor souls! They’ve walked and hid their way already hundreds and thousands of miles and now they’re here in Mexico getting ready to ride the rails across the nation because unable to board buses because even the Mexicans will arrest and deport them. Hundreds of men and women arriving in Arriaga every week and waiting for the train. And what a train! The train, we learn, is called “The Train of Death” and “The Beast” – and the reason it’s called that is because it’s mad dangerous. Bandits lie in wait for the poor bedraggled immigrants. They jump on the train themselves – with guns – and the poor immigrants get robbed and even shoved off and maybe die and who’s going to say anything about it. Or they get loaded on booze and drugs and just fall off anyway. Or the train derails and then they lose arms or die that way too.

None of this, of course, we knew when we got there: we pieced it all together by talking to people and then by finally finding some information about it online. People have made documentaries. There’s writing a plenty. But we didn’t know all that till later.

And still, despite the feeling, and the apparent folly of the project, Yair’s still keen. I’m slightly more dubious but I don’t mind the wait. Two days we sit there by those tracks, mulling and talking and meeting and learning and flitting back and forth between gung-ho adventure let’s just go for it and fear and wanting to be safe and mummy white boy terror. Yair’s got the world’s biggest backpack – and another smaller one too – and the bandits would just love that, would lick their lips and imagine laptops and cameras and all kinds of juicy fruits. I’ve got nothing and so I guess I don’t mind losing it – but the being shot and flung off a moving train into the night and losing limbs don’t sound so good. But then…adventure, right? And in any case…

That first night we stay up late and meet some young guys who have come up from Honduras and Nicaragua. We thought them shady at first but probably they were just as afraid of us and they turn out to be sweet. There’s like six or seven of them. They tell us their stories and it’s sad because they’re beautiful and nice, despite being illegal and intent on stealing those poor Americans’ dollars and jobs. They’re all like eighteen or twenty or something. Walked all that way and, man, they’ve got nothing left. Just the clothes on their backs and everything else was basically robbed. One guy shows me a scar on his ankle where he got shot in Guatemala. Bandits wait for them there too. There are certain trails that they can cross the borders on, avoiding the officials, but the bandits know all that and it’s easy pickings. Sad, sad world. But the boys are sweet and hopeful and, wow, I wonder where they are now, how many of them made it – and whether any of them got rolled off the train or died or what. So easy for us to cross that big long Mexico – but such a trek for them. Man, the train don’t even average no more than twenty or thirty miles an hour. Long long nights sitting terrified in the dark strapped to the wagons along with hundreds of others…

We play football with them that night in the town square with a found, deflated ball. It’s jubilant and fun and we buy them soda and snacks. Then some drunk guys come up – immigrants too – and Yair’s not there and the vibe’s pretty bad. They say something to me and I say something back and I’m friendly and non-afraid, bigging it out though mainly just accepting and not giving in to fear. And when they go I ask my young friends what they wanted and one of them says that they wanted to fight me and I really hope Yair comes back soon.

I don’t tell him about that and when we sleep up on the overhang of a supermarket out of sight of everyone but not too far from the train, just in case it comes, Yair sleeps the sleep of the innocent and I sit there all night watching and waiting in case of attack from desperadoes unable to relax and close my eyes after that. Good old Yair, down by my side, snoozes good and true as I watch over him…

The second day we try to get info about the train. It’s always imminent, always coming in three hours or the next afternoon or at two in the morning. We check out some religious hostel type place – they’re dotted all along the immigrant route – and they let us shower but not eat, since we’re not really desperadoes. We talk to guys in there and watch them watch telly and there’s maps on the walls with all the train lines that’ll take people north. I get excited and ready for it but then Yair gets nervous. Someone’s finally made him understand how dangerous it is. He don’t like it. But still we wait.

We talk. We wait. I read an account of an English journalist who rode the train and survived. I read other accounts of deaths and amputations and that don’t sound so good. I keep thinking about Yair’s massive backpack. We see daytime drunks stumbling and waiting in the tracks, bloodshot eyes eyeing us up and when you think about ten hours on a train with hundreds of eyes like that…

On the third day with no sign of the train we both realise it’s stupid and mad. We say goodbye to our beautiful young friends – take some pictures – exchange email addresses, which I later lost – and then turn ourselves instead for the Pacific Ocean and the beachside town of Puerto Escondido. And in quite some style we leave Arriaga, discovering a whole new brand of hitherto uninvented hitch-hiking which goes something like this: you stand at the edge of town, preferably by one of Mexico’s twenty billion speedbumps, and you’re just being all normal with your packs and your thumbs – and then when a pickup goes past and doesn’t stop, but goes past all slow, you run after it and chase it down and jump on it anyway. Riding the rails except the train is a truck and the rails are the road. Run and chase and then grab the bars and jump – and whooping Yair waving his mad cowboy hat, and laughing and grinning me, hanging on the bars with our feet on the bumper digging it massively and the Mexicans in front being wonderful, non-hungup Mexicans – imagine that in the US or the UK! – just spy us in their mirrors and then laugh and whoop too, and press their foot on the gas, and there’s no sense that they’ll stop and jump out and furrow their brows and get irate. Viva Mexico! Everyone so sweet and chilled and good-humoured. And off they go to the next junction, and turn off where we don’t want to go, and by another speedbump we jump off and everybody waves each other goodbye and then we do exactly the same thing again – right in front of some police! – and all it is once more is giggles and whoops and Yair’s mad hat and the policemen smiling on and me and Yair riding that pickup clinging to the back and loving absolutely everything in the dusty Mexican sun. And on the road to Puerto Escondido – mad train adventure left behind – we go.