Bueno Mexico

Do you want to visit this guy? Yeah, I thought so.
To be honest, I was a bit trepidatious about visiting my high school friend Dave (pictured here on a visit to Champaign our senior year of college). Dave is, well--crazy. He has the pent-up energy of a 3-year-old combined with a porpensity for putting himself (and his friends) in embarrassing situations. Wearing a moose hat to Dairy Queen, shouting "Goat Sex!" as loudly as he can out of car windows, and drunkenly running off into the night in a strange city in search of burritos are some of the highlights of knowing him. So I was worried that the entire weekend he'd be full of nothing but crazy antics.

With my settlement from being hit by a carin February, I could afford a minibreak. I told Dave I'd visit him in Tucson--where he's been going to school for the past five years--on the condition that we go to Mexico. I have to leave the country every six months or so, I've decided, or I'll go stir-crazy, and I'd never been.

At Midway (Chicago's other airport) for the first time, I suddenly realised this was the first time I've flown solo since I moved to London in Sept. '03. An odd thought. The plane ride lasted about six hours, since we touched down in Kansas City, Missouri and Alberquerque. Each time I saw a different section of American terrain: heading off from Chicago, I gazed down on rectilinear fields dotted with farmsteads. In Missouri, dense, tree-covered hills followed the paths of streams and rivers. By the time we reached New Mexico the trees had been scraped away, leaving barren, dry hills with low mountains glowering in the distance.

I'd visited Arizona in high school, and found the terrain to be almost horrifyingly alien. I missed grass and trees, and misliked the barren gravel and harsh cacti. Yet this visit I fell in love--not so much with the sand and gravel, but with the mountains. Everywhere you look in Tucson you can see blueish-grey mountains, and on our drive to Mexico we passed through Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, formed to protect the mountains in the shape of--you guessed it--organ pipe cactuses. (Note: due to illegal immigration, it's the most dangerous national park in the U.S.)

You know how you just click with certain people when travelling? Well, Dave proved to be an ideal travel companion. He likes to drive; I like to sit. He likes to eat Mexican food; I like to try new things. He likes to nap and read; I like to read and nap. Having never spent much alone time with him, I was pleased by how well we got along. Our time in Mexico consisted of eating, resting, swimming, resting, eating, drinking, and sleeping. Repeat.

I'll admit that my introduction to Mexico wasn't the most "authentic" it could have been: after all, we were visiting a tourist town. The prices weren't dirt cheap, the city center was clean and packed with signs in English, and everyone, from the concierge to the indigenous women selling trinkets in restaurants, could habla English. Lucky for us, seeing as how I can't speak a lick of Spanish and Dave is limited to menus. Yet for all that, I got to see the "true" Mexico: small concrete-block homes in the middle of nowhere, rusted cars covered in sand; the dichotomy between mestizos and those of Spanish descent with pure-blood Indians. The small children, some 3 or 4 years old, going table to table trying to sell cheap trinkets. The families walking along the seafront on Friday night. Teenagers who cruised the strip in the back of their friends' trucks, drinking beer and blasting music on an endless circuit of the downtown.

We were lucky enough that there weren't tons of co-eds from the University of Arizona: just enough to make the town seem full without it seeming like Cancun. One night, frustrated with downtown's empty bars, we asked an ex-pat owner of a bar where the good clubs were. He directed us to a different area of town where the entire street was blocked off for pedestrians. Pedestrians who all happened to be young Mexicans in their teens and 20s, walking up and down looking into the clubs to see if they were packed enough to go in. We found a couple that were jiving (one with a sand floor right on the beach) and had a couple of drinks. Everyone keeps asking if I had any run-ins with cheap tequila, and the answer is no. While we had drinks with most meals (Dave's preferred beverage being Tecate, that most authentic of Mexican beers), neither one of us got close to being wasted. Guess we're too old for that!

I did manage to dance with a real, live, authentic Mexican man, but it was earlier on the sea front. Dave and I were listening to a mariachi band who was serenading four Mexican men sitting near a truck and drinking. One of them, a Mexican-American, noticed us and asked if we wanted to come closer to listen, so we did. Dave having two left feet, I asked one of the Mexicans to dance. They seemed surprised, probably thinking he was my boyfriend. The first guy pretended to be sad. "Why didn't she want to dance with me?" he asked Dave. "Am I ugly or something?" I have to say I was impressed with everyone's manners. Every time the check came they put it in front of Dave, and not once did I get honked at or cat-called. A nice change from my Mexican-laden neighborhood here in Chicago, where even walking to work in a skirt necessitates honking. Perhaps I was spared because I was with a guy. And what an intimidating one he is!

Dave did an excellent job of picking our hotel: in a small area near another hotel, yet more family-oriented and not noisy. It even had a swimming pool with a faux waterfall. Our hotel was right across the street (if a packed-sand strip can be called such) from the ocean, and the almost Maxfield Parrish blue took my breath away at first sight. I'd last seen the Pacific at the tender age of 7; last swam in the Atlantic three years ago. Being able to jump up as waves crashed to shore was exhilarating--as was seeing the jet skis, parasailers, and ultralights going overhead. The water was crystal, with a graduated sand bottom that meant you could be a hundred yards from the shore and still be up to your shoulders in water. One night Dave and I joined in that most Mexican of traditions: lighting fireworks off on the beach. Dozens of explosions went off each night as dusk turned to night, with booze cruise boats letting off huge 4th-of-July style fireworks complemented by smaller Roman candles on the shore. We witnessed this from our high perch in a restaurant atop the eponymous rocky point (puerto penasco in Spanish).

Ah, the restaruants. That was one of our favorites: not only did it have a magnificent view of the bay and the pleasure cruise boats bobbing about it, but the food was excellent, the drinks were enormous, and a live jazz singer's melodic voice added to the ambience. We also ate at a restaurant that was on top of the water itself, with dozens of pelicans swooping above the waves. We had shrimp, and fish, and oysters, and fish on our tacos, and fish for snacks. All of it delectably fresh, seeing as how it's a shrimping town.

One of my favorite experiences was on our way out of town as we stopped to fuel up. I'd been whining about not being able to buy a coconut the whole time--something I'd been wanting to do since I saw people drinking coconut juice out of small green coconuts in Brazil. I was in luck: there, on the side of the road was a truck with a sign saying "cocos." I politely greeted the man selling them and asked for one. He carefully wiped off a machete with dirty water, then took out a hunk of brown wood the width of a small tree trunk. Slicing off several pieces, he stopped once a small hole emerged, in which he stuck a straw. So there I was: $3 garnered me a five-pound coconut as big as my head, filled with refreshing juice.

I buckled the coconut into my lap, and sucked on it all the way through the Tohono O'Odham Reservation. Aside from a short excursion with Dave and our friend Megan to a Minnesota casino, I'd not been on a reservation, and was excited to be driving through such a large one. It really hit home how depressing a life it could be were you to grow up on the rez. No jobs, no industry, miles from anywhere on inhospitable land. No wonder a lot are on welfare! It was also interesting to see the difference between Native American Indians and Mexicans. Because guess what? There's not much. We never stop to think that many Mexicans are just as indigenous as our Native Americans (many of whom have a little white ancestry here and there). The blood that runs through Indians and mestizos living in northern Mexico is related to those just over the border. While American Indians might have higher percentages of native ancestry, I saw many Indians in Mexico who looked as if they had not a drop of Spanish blood. And the land itself doesn't change. Dave articulated my own thoughts when he remarked, "The land looks the same. It doesn't feel like we're in a different country." And it didn't.

How I love going to a new country! It's the small things that I take pleasure in: the stop signs saying Alto, the saran-wrapped sandwiches in convenience stores with small chilies on top. Seeing water tanks atop every home in Cholla Bay, a town surrounded by salt water that gets no rain. Even the double 'll' was fun--having never taken Spanish and lived with Wales' distinctive pronunciation of it, I didn't realise it's pronounced 'y.' I liked how they gave us tostitos and salsa before every meal instead of bread, and how salsa in Mexico isn't hot. If you want it spicy you put some hot sauce on your chip as you eat it. And I loved seeing three Mexican girls sitting in Cholla Bay's calm waters, cutting up a mango and sprinkling brown sugar on the slices, then throwing the rinds back on shore. I especially liked haggling with shopkeepers, convincing myself I got a good deal when they knocked off a couple of bucks. A ceramic lizard's foot was chipped, which I pointed out to the owner. "Very old, very old," he said in broken English. "Antique." Yeah, right! I even liked how, when Dave and I crashed into some volcanic rocks on our way out of the water and cut ourselves, several old Mexican ladies cracked up. Silly gringos!

Things were good back in Tucson, as well. Having lived there for five years, Dave not only intimately knows every part of the city, he also appreciates it. He took the time to drive me up a winding mountain road, my stomach dropping over every dip. We visited my cousin and his wife (and their three-month-old newborn, who fell asleep in my arms), and looked at pictures of the wild peccaries called javelinas that wandered in the gulch near their house. The next day I got to see javelinas in real life, when Dave took me to the Sonoran Desert Museum. When I told my mom she asked if I'd remember being there before. "But we didn't go to Tucson in high school," I reminded her. "No," she told me, "But we went when you were three." Sorry, Mom, I don't recall!


As you can see, I had a delightful time. I'm sure I could write more about Mexico, but this shall suffice. I hope it gives an accurate portrait of my wonderful vacation--one all too short but just long enough to make me want to go back. I hope it's not another 17 years until I see the Pacific once more.