Intermission: Reno, San Francisco, Albany and New York
I arrived in Nevada, hoping that Cathy would be able to meet me the day before I headed into the desert, but things at home weren`t going well. I finished up my shopping, feeling alone, and packed the bike high with my gear. I had some boxes shipped on a truck to meet me, and was promised water by some friends who were driving in. I went into Burning Man on my motorcycle to a warm welcome from the crowd that I`d left in June in New York City. I wasn`t planning on coming home, but many of my friends had essentially met me en route, which was really nice. But I had a hard time enjoying the event because Cathy wasn`t there. I spent much of my time volunteering as a ranger, and in the end just didn`t enjoy it as I had in previous years.
While I was out in the desert I had a chance to talk to my sister and to a friend of our family, Bo, and both were giving me an alarming picture of what was happening back home. When I got into Reno the day after Labor Day I checked my email and had some from relatives wondering where we were. I started changing my plans, and in 3 days made it to San Fransisco and dropped off my bike at a shop there, and then headed home.
I got home on September 9th, in time to for the grim anniversary. Once I decided I had to go home anyway, for some reason I wanted to be in the city for Sept 11. So I spent 2 days on my family`s farm near Albany, and then came down. I saw some more of my friends. It all seemed a little unreal at first, a break in my day to day reality of travelling. After about a week, the routine of life back home started sucking me in. Later that week I was back at the farm, caring for my dad, who`d had a severe diabetic episode, and was confined to a wheelchair. I was surprised by how fast he`d declined since I`d left. I started arranging doctor appointments, prescriptions and physical therapy. He`d checked out of a rehab facility against medical advice, so we had to talk it out and agree on how he would be treated from this point on. I also had to redo the farmhouse to make it usable for him - from building a ramp for his wheelchair and pulling nails out of the floor that he could get cut on to putting handicapped fixtures in the bathroom. I also rushed back to the city to rent out my apartment. I got things to the point where I felt comfortable that things would be ok until I returned home, and left the rest in the hands of my sister. After three weeks, I felt that if I didn`t get back to my trip, it was going to end. There would always be more that I could do, and I knew that, but it was still hard to leave again.
Cathy and I flew out to San Fransisco October 2, and stayed with Monica, a friend of my dad`s, who graciously put us up in her beautiful hilltop house. Cathy had never seen San Fran before, so we spent some days on touristy things. The city was too difficult to get around to finish preparations, so we decided to head down to Los Angeles as our final jump off point. I picked up my bike, and we started confronting the reality of all of our stuff, made up of a full load of gear that I already had, plus all of Cathy`s things. We started sending things home - guidebooks for South America that wouldn`t be needed for months, clothes, parts, camping gear that had never been used.
We were still too heavy when we left. The bike had a tendancy to fall over its side stand when we stopped at gas stations - I always had to be sure that I was leaning into whatever miniscule slope the concrete might have. We set out from San Fransisco down the Pacific Coast Highway, after an afternoon trying to figure out how to pack up the bike. We were aiming for somewhere on the coast to camp, and we kept on pushing past towns like Carmel that were too expensive or built up. As night fell, we found ourselves on one of the windiest stretches of road I`ve ever driven, for a tense 25 miles. If there had been light we probably would have been able to see how close we were to the cliffs - luckily the night was moonless.
We ended up in Big Sur - having made it that far I didn`t want to push my luck. We thought we`d take it easy our first night, but after checking out the hotels and finding them incredibly overpriced, we decided to camp. We set up everything together for the first time in the dark (though I`d set up this tent hundreds of times) and crashed out in a small plot in the trees. We awoke in the morning to discover ourselves in the middle of a huge redwood forest - we had made a great choice completely by accident.
The next day was more winding road with incredible views, cliffs and ocean, all the way down to Los Angeles. There we stayed with Chris, a friend of mine from high school and college. Chris was incredibly overworked at his film industry job, so we had a lot of time to ourselves. We ended up staying a week as I indulged my tendancy to overprepare. We bought a new tent, I bought lots of accessories for the motorcycle, some of which I never used, and I built a tool carrier for my bike. We bought and repackaged a lot of dried food. I changed my oil and checked all of the fluids, and fixed a bulb on the instrument panel. I knew that almost anything I could find in the U.S. I could probably find somewhere in Mexico, with some effort, but even after several months with books I didnŽt feel ready yet to rely on my Spanish to get things done, so I tried to get anything that could be done in the U.S. out of the way. But inertia was setting in, and both Cathy and I were feeling the need to be moving again, so finally, we headed out.
We were bound for the crossing at San Diego, where by luck there was another couple on a motorcycle, Merv and Ruth from England, who IŽd just found out about 2 days earlier. Merv and Ruth already had ridden from London to Thailand, so I was excited to meet people for whom foreign languages and borders were already a routine. We stopped in San Diego for our "last supper" of Indian food, then headed down to the Kampgrounds of America near the border. It had a mechanical gate, bright lights and concrete RV pads, and it made us feel like savages when we put our new tent up next to the ultrahightech mobile mansions with their satellite dishes. It really put a bullet next to the fact that we were doing something way out of the norm. Merv and Ruth made us some tea, we made plans to meet on the other side of the border, and we all went to bed.
The next day we didnŽt exactly rise early, and took our time getting downtown. I did an impromptu roadside repair with a rubber sanding block and some hose clamps added to the foot of my side stand to keep it from falling over with all of the weight of our gear. We got our tourist cards, and our Mexico insurance, had lunch, and finally headed down to the border.
October 16 - 17 - Tijuana and Ensenada
We entered Baja through Tijuana. Before this, my only image of Tijuana was Crusty the Clown of Simpsons fame saying "Kids, we`re going to take you to the most wonderful place in the world - TiAH juannnaaa!" I expected that Tiajuana would be the trial by fire to enter Mexico. I had images of corpulent, corrupt policia jefes going through our gear and demanding outrageous bribes while we sat over tequila in a concrete barracks lit by a single overhead lightbulb.
The reality was that the crossing was simply a 6 lane superhighway with some small buildings on the side. The Tiajuana crossing is one of the busiest in the world, and they keep things flowing on the Mexican side by checking virtually nothing. We headed towards the border in the leftmost lane, and as we passed the American booths for people headed out of Mexico I started looking for Mexican customs, and we were about 5 lanes too far away for it, and blew by it without so much as a question. Oops, weŽre in Mexico.
Things on the Mexican side were suddenly dirtier and more cluttered. Signs were crammed together, offering to change money, sell insurance, sell knicknacks, food, bad Aztec tourist schlock... We stopped in the first shopping plaza on the other side to look for customs. The whole place was information overload, with signs for customs, if there were any, lost in the shuffle. But weŽd been informed - incorrectly - by our camping guide and other travellers, that since we had stamped tourist cards from the consulate in San Diego, we did not need to clear the bike through aduana (customs) until we passed Ensenada, about 60 miles outside of the interzone at the border. To be certain of this Cathy went into an insurance place to find out where the Aduana office was. The spiteful shrew behind the counter reacted to the news that we`d already bought insurance by confirming that we could clear customs in Ensenada.
So we blithely headed out of town, amazed at how easy it had been, and hopped on the toll road down to Ensenada. The outskirts of Tijuana were canyons where dead cars had been rolled down the sides of hills on inclines near vertical, with the rusting carcasses somehow still holding on against gravity, and small shacks had sprouted above them, clinging to muddy hillsides. The favelas were as bad as anywhere IŽd seen, and we wanted to be long gone before dark. We had our first introduction to the cursed topes at a toll booth - clusters of little round metal speed bumps in this case. A few miles later we met up with Merv and Ruth, an English couple that we`d met via Horizons Unlimited and had hooked up with in San Diego at a KOA campground the night before.
Our ride was uneventful, winding along the oceanside cliffs of Baja until we rounded a final curve, at the top of a hill, that overlooked Ensenada. Long before we could see the city or the fleet of cruise ships clustered around the city like vultures over roadkill, we saw the enormous Mexican flag, one of many that we were to encounter at every major Mexican township.
We decided to camp for the night, and headed to the first place recommended by our book. This turned out to be a dirt lot with a few palm trees, in the middle of town, protected by fencing and barb wire. The ground was packed earth or concrete, and there was a distinctly urban feeling to the place. We started to get an inkling that whoever had written our book was not using a tent. We decided to head out of town for another place recommended, Hotel Joker, that also had camping spots.
Hotel Joker was one of those unique roadside attractions where the personal vision of the owner surpasses all considerations of taste, but in compensation has a lot of personality. There was a castle motif to the complex of buildings, in pastel colors. The main entrance was made to look like a potcullis, and the motel area had little touches that at one time had probably made the place look resort-like, at least enough for the brochure. And Hotel Joker did indeed have a glossy brochure, though after looking at it we had to really inspect the place carefully to find the angles that the photographer had used to make the place look larger and (more) attractive. The brochure provided historical evidence that the low, turgid, greenish reservoir had once been a swimming pool.
The camping area was a large grassy field in the back in an area enclosed by a cinderblock wall. The restaurant and basement bar had been closed by a flood, so we set up our tents, and went back into town to have dinner. Ensenada seemed nice enough, though entirely geered to the cruise ship crowds. We had dinner, and over it Cathy and I figured out what we`d missed to import the bike - Merv and Ruth had a nifty hologram for their bike - and we decided to head downtown the next morning to clear customs.
Naturally the next day we found out that contrary to all advice, customs could only be done in Tijuana. We kept trying to enquire if there was some way we could avoid returning, but our Spanish wasn`t good enough yet to get anything out of the people at the customs house, and in the end it just seemed easier to spend an hour driving back. Even better, while I was trying to deal with the people at the customs house I parked on a steep hill and lost a mirror when the overloaded bike toppled into a car downhill. I reminded myself, this is Mexico - itŽs not supposed to be easy. With enough patience, everything would be fine. We sped back along the road, and into Tijuana. This time we had to actually find something, not just pass through, and we were lost for over an hour in the maze of highway ramps and hidden alleys around the border. In the end, we surrendered and crossed back into the U.S., which cost another 45 minutes. We got some more cash, looped around and headed back through to Mexico. We stopped at the declaration area, where after some prompting the border cop stamped our passports and tourist cards. He then gave us some vague advice about the Aduana office, and I ended up driving up and down virtually every street to find the building. Once I did, the entry procedure took only a few minutes, and we had our own snazzy hologram and permission to take the bike into "the Interior", as mainland Mexico is called.
We happily returned to Ensenada and Hotel Joker, where we ordered pizza in at the basement bar, and drank some beer. Karaoke ensued, and the Mexicans at the bar forced me to do some Elvis songs... thankyaverymuch. The guys at the bar asked (through the English speaking bartender) if this was my first time in Mexico. I answered truthfully, "no, itŽs my second." The day before had been my first... A woman at the bar - who explained that she "was a little crazy today" (turns out she meant she was wasted drunk) wanted to talk for a while, which was good practice for me, and I thought nothing of it because Cathy was obviously with me, sitting right there at the table. The reality of the situation finally became clear to me when the guy next to her, the boyfriend, glared at me and then finally said something like "you can have her." It was time to go, but as bonus IŽd acquired the Spanish word for drunk.
October 18 - Baja
We headed through desert valleys, a dry brown landscape lined at first lined with trash, as the road from Tijuana to Ensenada was, but after a few dozen miles becoming much cleaner as the traffic dropped off. We started our climb into the mountains on a road typical of Baja, two narrow lanes without shoulder in most places, a steep climb, and a drop on one side of hundreds of feet. We`d been climbing for over an hour, when we got stuck behind a tanker truck. Cathy and I were behind Merv and Ruth and another car. I waited for a mile or so as the tanker climbed slowly. Finally at a leftward curve with the mountain on our right, where I could see for a few hundred feet, I decided to gun the bike`s acceleration and pass the truck, the car and the bike. This was the kind of maneuver IŽd been getting away with all summer, and I didnŽt think too much about the changed weight dynamics of the bike now that the backpack and tent were all the way at the back. I gunned the gas and pulled out to the left.
In the next second I realized I was looking up, not at the road but at the clear blue sky - I had pulled a wheelie and we were close to falling backwards. I let go of the gas, and the front end slammed to the ground. Since IŽd been heading left, when I landed the bikeŽs front end wasnŽt going straight and the bike went down immediately, throwing us off of it at around 20 mph. There also was a car that had just come around the curve towards us, which miraculously threaded between us partially in the left lane an the hundreds of feet drop. I got off the ground and checked Cathy out, then got her to the side of the road at a small gravel pullout on the cliff side. After she was sitting I went back for the bike, and Merv helped me get it up and over to the side. Cathy was somewhat in shock - and to some extent, so was I. I was also really embarrassed, since IŽd pulled a stupid move and it had had disastrous consequences, but weŽd been lucky because it could have been even worse. The damage was a little road rash on my arm through my jacket, a destroyed camera in CathyŽs jacket pocket, and the right aluminum box had taken some damage to a corner, with a small hole ripped through along the seam. The rack it was attached to was ripped free of the footpeg mount just as the other had been in Alaska.
I started looking at fixing the box, but realized almost immediately that this wasnŽt possible on a narrow mountain road between the rock wall and a cliff. The box would be able to limp along, and IŽd have to fix it that night. The more serious question in my mind was about Cathy. Our first full day in Mexico, and weŽd already had a crash. I feared she might want to go home. After the initial shock wore off, though, she got back on the bike, though she was more wary about the turns now. In a few hours both of us were largely back to normal. It was another cheap lesson about riding - IŽd been very foolish with a passenger on the back of the bike, and it wasnŽt just my own life in the balance anymore, but somehow weŽd gotten through it unscathed. The incident changed my riding style completely, and we never had another accident together. Amazingly, Cathy continued to trust me, and within a few days my confidence was largely back to normal though tempered with caution.
That night we stayed at the Hotel Sinai, in their small camping area in the back. We had our second place that showed that our camping guide was written from the comfort of an RV. The entire camping area was concrete pads alternating with packed earth as hard as concrete. Merv and RuthŽs tent could only be put up in places where they could get stakes in the ground, which restricted us to a small patch of grass, where a sign in English politely asked guests to "not allow your dogs to shit on the grass, thank you." As we erected our tent next to a lime tree with a football sized swarm of bees, Cathy looked at me, then the guidebook, and said "HeŽs a BAD man. HeŽs a very bad man."
I went to the back of the camping area, and found a pipe to turn the bent part of the rack with. After an hour of tweaking, the rack went back together fairly easily, and this time I still had the expansion bolt, so I didnŽt have to improvise something. Merv meant well and tried to help with bending the pipe back but ultimately I was better off doing it myself because we couldnŽt hold it steady together, though later that week Ruth wrote in their web log that Merv had heroically shown me how to fix it... I guess I hadnŽt realized that he was helping by supervising. I also did the tire pressure, and oiled my chain, which to Merv and Ruth seemed like far too much tinkering. I thought it was basic maintenance... but theyŽd gone something like 30,000 miles, so they were doing something right. My final work that day was going through all of our gear and throwing things away, or giving them away. Merv and Ruth got a set of plates, and many things went in the burn pile in the back. We also started eating our food supplies as an easy way of reducing he weight of our gear.
October 19
The next day we headed down to Guerrero Negro, back on the Pacific side of Baja, a town with a tourist industry in whale watching. The ride was magnificent, taking us through a desert terrain with thousands of rounded boulders, ranging in size from a fist to a house, that were scattered across the landscape randomly piled into formations. It was a kind of desert that IŽd never seen before, one of rocks instead of sand, with cacti in dozens of shapes and colors - my favorite looking like a tree drawn by Dr Suess, with a long tapering trunk and a tiny tuft of leaves at the top.
When we stopped for lunch I bought gasoline out of the back of a truck, since we hadnŽt seen a gas station for over seventy miles. The terrain flattened as we came back to the coast, and we sped down the highway trying to beat the setting sun. Finally we approached with some trepidation the military checkpoint between the states of Baja California and Baja California Sur. This was supposed to be like an internal customs point, and weŽd heard tales of people having everything searched and being held by the military. Of course, our sources on this were Lonely Planet and the Bad Man. We showed our passports and were on our way in less than 5 minutes.
Once again, the Bad ManŽs book steered us to a delightful RV park, which backed up to a salt factory and truck stop. We didnŽt realize these added features until the next shift started, sometime around 11pm. After that, I decided that the next piece of weight that I was going to get rid of was the camping book. So the next morning, I went over to a van parked next to an RV, and offered the book to the two guys who were working on the door of the van. They were two Americans, an older man and a guy who looked about 40. The younger of the two said that they lived in Mulege, so they didnŽt need it, but I should try trading it to the guys in the restaurant for something like breakfast - a reasonable thing to do in Mexico. This was a good idea - I got morning coffee for us out of it, and I mentioned this to the guy and thanked him.
Five minutes later, he came by as we were packing and offered us all a place to stay on the beach at his sisterŽs place in Mulege. His name was Bill, and his sisterŽs name was Sandra. The older gentleman was named Dean, and was SandraŽs husband. They gave us instructions on finding their place, and headed out. The Bad Man had finally found us a nice place to camp.
That day was the most challenging riding of Baja, as route 1 went over mountains of incredible steepness. The trucks were forced to slow down to 5 mph going downhill to avoid picking up so much speed that they went over the side into the canyons over a thousand feet below. We saw a few places where the guard rail had been broken through, with tire marks leading up to and over the edge. Along this road, we also spotted our first volcano.
When we reached the coast, and Santa Rosalia, a town that seemed to be a collection of seaside junk yards. We stopped at a Pemex station, where there was a van of seven drunken Mexican men, in their early 20Žs. IŽd been having what I thought was a friendly conversation with one of them by the gas pumps when his wasted friends in the van started trying to get my attention and started saying some shit only some of which I understood, but all of which seemed hostile. Merv didnŽt seem like heŽd be of much use in any situation, and there was Cathy and Ruth to consider. I figured as long as they acted like stupid assholes from the safety of the inside of their van, we could just ignore them, so I gassed up, paid, and hit the bathroom, and they mooned us and left.
We got further down the coast to Mulege, and passed through it as weŽd been instructed to do, and turned off for the community that SandraŽs house was in. "Development" might be too strong a word here. There was a sign for the community at the front, and a space that another sign promised was going to be a club or a restaurant of some kind, which was the only thing that differentiated the plot from the surrounding cacti. There was a two land promenade with a palm tree divider in the center, which faded off into two separate channels into the sand and rocks that looked something like roads. Bill had given us a pretty vague idea of the distance, and hadnŽt mentioned the lack of pavement. From the point of view of a car driver, this was just a place to go really slow, and be careful about exposed high rocks or gullies, but for us as we wobbled through deep, loose sand, it was a few dozen chances to dump the top heavy bike, girlfriend and gear, which fortunately neither of us managed to do.
We got to the end of the road, and there were a line of houses lining a sand street. We were directed by the Mexican family living in the first house that Sandra was at the end. Cathy and Ruth got off and walked and Merv and I slowly slid the bikes down to the end. It was all well worth it. SandraŽs house looked out on the Sea of Cortez, just north of Bahia de Concepcion. To the west was the open sea, down a beach of rounded stones, and to the south was a channel that had once led to the marina. The whole area had been transformed a few years earlier by a hurricane, which had swept away much of the sand, and filled much of the marina bay area, but the channel still had an island in it with a palapa (palm frond roof) covered barbeque area big enough for a crowd, with a wooden bridge coming back to SandraŽs backyard.
Sandra and Dean's house consisted of a garage area, in which they had parked the RV and the van, a bathroom off of the garage, and a glass enclosed front room that was a sitting room by day and a breezy place to hang hammocks at night. The garage was made of bamboo, and roofed with palm fronds, and at the back of it was an enormous cistern made of stone, five feet off of the ground. The back yard running down to the ocean was sand, where Bill, his wife Laura and two little girls were parked in another small RV, and we setup our tents another 50 yards further away past a low stone wall, only some bushes and rocks away from the surf.
We used the last of our water to cook dinner, watching every drop because Sandra had not received a shipment of water yet. That night they served us margaritas, and we talked about traveling and Baja well into the night. We watched the full moon rise over Tortuga Island, across the sea, and as we talked it rose and lit up the desert again. Sandra and Bill had grown up in Alaska, but now they wintered down here - from frigid San Diego. Bill was a fireman in San Diego, his wife Laura was an ex-pro volleyball player. Sandra and Dean were retired, and Sandra was the unofficial mayor of the community. I told them about my trip to Deadhorse, which I think they found amusing, and Bill said that heŽd invited us there because he liked the spirit of what we were doing, and as he said "WeŽre here for a good time, not a long time." That night Cathy and I pulled back the rainfly on our tent so that we could go to sleep under the stars, and we went to sleep to the sound of the surf. It was the best night weŽd had since the redwoods.
October 20
The next day we started with Powerbars and instant coffee, and watched Bill as he snorkeled in the sea, looking for lobsters. Sandra had mentioned the day before that I should join Bill snorkeling for lobsters but I had assumed she was joking, especially about the part where you could fit one under each arm. She was serious, and I decided to join Bill, donning a snorkel, mask and some heavy gloves. I never saw any lobsters and neither did Bill - it wasnŽt quite the season for them - but it was a great way to sea all of the other marine life, including huge schools of tropical fish.
Around noon, Sandra had to go into town to run some errands, so we decided to catch a ride. Mulege was a nice town, only partly Americanized, with more of a resident snowbird population than tourists. Cathy and I went to the post office, and sent a package of motorcycle parts and clothes home, dropping another 20 pounds from the bike. We got some laundry done, and I made a futile attempt to talk on the phone to reserve us a spot on the ferry from La Paz to Mazatlan. We cabbed it back to SandraŽs and made an improvised quesadilla dinner over the camp stove with some tortillas, some cheese slices, and some ham, which after a few attempts was a success.
October 21
The next day we decided to make for La Paz. This was fairly ambitious - about 350 miles - and we were only going to make it if we hurried and the terrain worked with us. Neither really happened. We stopped in Loreto for lunch, where we got to watch the Mexican tourist industry folks work over the cruise ship people. We had a leisurely lunch, made more so by incredibly slow service, and watched from the second floor balcony as the boat people retreated and the Mexicans went home with their horse carts and donkeys for the tourists to ride on. (This was the point where I decided that since I was going to be in Latin America for six months, I might as well start acclimating, so I had some ice cubes and lettuce, setting off my first bout of turista...) We spotted another Dakar motorcycle identical to mine - without any wear, or even any dust. It was parked in front of the nicest hotel in town, which featured a glass bottomed swimming pool over the lobby, so I assumed that the rider was either breaking it in offroad in Baja starting tomorrow - or it had become a glorifed cruising bike that looked really cool. Merv suggested I should grab one of the mirrors, half jokingly... I told him the bike was too pretty to consider such a thing.
We hit mountains towards the end of the day, but most of the day had been plains, and weŽd done 70 mph for most of it, so we were going through the last of the hills and down to the ocean as the sun set. We had a hairy ride into town, but found our hotel fairly easily, and convinced the manager to let us move the bikes into his lobby and his courtyard.
October 22
The next morning we headed out and found our anti-malarial drugs and then the ferry office. The ferry ran to a few places on the mainland, but we decided to head to Mazatlan. WeŽd heard things about the difficulty of getting on the ferry (Not the Bad Man but LetŽs Go this time) which made us expect a wait of days for the boat. In fact, we managed to get on a ferry for 4 hours later, possibly because we were on motorcycles. We packed up, had breakfast, and headed out to the ferry terminal, and waited. And waited. The ferry was mainly for trucks and foot passengers, so weŽd have to wait until all of the trucks were loaded. We were told repeatedly to get ready, because we were going to get on in 20 minutes. We watched a single truck cab pick up each waiting trailer, and back them onto the boat, disconnect and zoom out to the lot for another. We sent Cathy and Ruth on board to find us spots to sleep, and Merv and I tried to find shady spots to sit in. At last our moment came, and we got on board, and turned our bikes into the corner at the front of the boat ahead of a trailer and tried to park. Merv dropped his bike on the oil on the deck, and I accidentally backed my bike up so it brushed the trailer, coating my backpack in heavy grease. I tried to get them to use the heavy duty rachets on my bike, but the Mexicans had other ideas, fooling around with some rope that I knew would stretch and be useless. It probably wouldnŽt matter either way, so I stopped worrying about it and went upstairs.
After we placed our gear and I cleaned up some of the grease, we explored the boat. Cathy and Ruth had already met some people, who we ended up hanging out with for most of the 18 hour journey. We ran into them drinking some beer in a side passage with some tables and chairs, and once we sat down, it was hard to leave. George was a 40-something guy from Mexico City with perfect English, and Jesus was from the mainland and was a muralist by trade and a surfer who was about to move his family to Baja Sur for his business. George was a wealth of information on Latin American driving, having driven his van to Peru a few years earlier. He advised me on driving through El Salvador - saying when he went it was about as bad as Colombia - and told me that I shouldnŽt fear driving Mexico City, as the cops had been defanged from cruising for mordidas by recent anti-corruption measures. George seemed to be travelling with another guy who he first described as his brother, but later turned out to be from Bosnia. He had also been joined by a girl named Sandra from Holland, who also had excellent English, who was touring Mexico by herself. She had just met George and was getting a ride from him into Mexico City.
I broke away for dinner with Cathy, Merv and Ruth, and went up to back deck, where we met an American named John who loved to take the piss out of Brits, asking Ruth repeatedly to say "banana fritter". Cathy and I enjoyed watching them on the receiving end of EnglandŽs favorite sport. But then I made the mistake of walking inside past the bar, where George, Jesus and the Bosnian guy were sitting, and I got sucked back in for the rest of the night. George started talking a lot about politics - for the most part not anti-American, but saying "You know, to us this George Bush guy seems a little like Hitler." I didnŽt disagree, but didnŽt feel like spending the night talking about it, and neither did Jesus, so instead we started telling jokes, which we managed to keep going for a few hours. John and then Sandra wandered in, and joined us.
I was wondering how Sandra suddenly felt so comfortable taking a ride through Mexico City with George, having just met him, and didnŽt know what to make of his Bosnian friend. As IŽm from New York, I had an inkling what was going on, which was confirmed when George tried to set up every guy at the table with the very effeminate bleach blond waiter. I just laughed at him, and then he told me that heŽd set the waiter up on his last trip with a trucker, who was so embarrassed the next day that he wouldnŽt come out of his cabin long after the ship docked. He next propositioned John, who out of political correctness had no idea to do with the situation, which was also hilarious. Finally I figured I was getting to the point where it would be impossible to ride the next day, and I tore away and headed off to bed, which was a thermorest and sleeping bag between two rows of chairs.
October 23
I woke up hungover from beer and Aralen, our anti-malarial drug, and gradually pulled myself and my gear together. Cathy hadnŽt slept much, and was feeling about the same because of the Aralen. We were up for our 6am arrival, and found out that it was going to be more like 9am. So we waited around. I looked in my back, and found a harmonica that had been a gift at Burning Man. I hated to throw away a gift, but it was an opportunity to lose more weight and I hadnŽt used it in months... I saw a little girl, probably no older than 4. She looked Mayan, and her family seemed dirt poor. I played a few riffs on it to demonstrate, and then handed her the harmonica and its box, while her mother and grandmother stared at me distrustfully, and she looked at me in disbelief. I just walked away once the little girl had it in her hands, giving the mother nothing more to worry about (and no way to give it back), and later as we left the boat I heard her playing away on it nonstop. Somewhere, there is a Mexican mother who hates me.
The ships officers forced us to disembark with the foot passengers and go around, for some state-to-state customs procedures that we got forms for but no one ever collected. Merv and I raced around the outside and down to the truck deck, and loaded up the bikes. We were at the front, and it didnŽt look like anyone was going to wait for us, so we gingerly slipped between two trucks driving off, trying not to slide on the oily metal. We were in the Mexican interior, and there was now only road between us and Panama.
