The Morning After
January 1st, 2008
And we are back. Back to San Cristobal, for the third time now. It was easy enough to choose the place to celebrate New Year and the sixth anniversary to our snowy encounter, before wrapping up all 14,000 miles of this Central American GreenGo road-trip. If we ever open a hostel/gallery/internet café in Mexico – we both agreed that it will be in San Cristobal.
We love this town, I’ve said it before, but it reeks of ganja. It’s part of the vibe, just not part of us. Ever since the Jungle Trip (see Ecuador tag) my New Year resolution was to never touch this crap. Maybe I should have added to it: never visit a Mexican prison on New Years morning.
The party was just the way we expected it to be – jumping literally and figuratively. Dreadlocks and simple curls flying about like flames at a fire spinning performance and the night soon became only a drunk recollection of laughter and dancing. Surprisingly, the morning didn’t bring headache – at least not at first. Ecstatic the hostel didn’t run out of hot water, we showered and were ready to finish up shopping for birthday presents for our mothers, when we met Quetzal at the bottom of the stairs. Messy haired as usual, he was fiddling the scar on his face in confusion and desperation. “Chicos! Do you have any money? Mario is in trouble… He’s in jail!” I vaguely remembered the twenty five year old hostel owner Mario partying hard last night and trying to get into everybody’s pants, including mine, with playful bites. Mario was good people, and although Quetzal’s plea for cash automatically produced a knee-jerk negative reaction, we couldn’t pass up finding out what Mario got himself into.
We jumped into GreenGo, Quetzal nervously fidgeting in the back seat, and rode up to the local police station/jail. All three of us approached the gates, but I was the only one allowed to go in. Do I really look this harmless? They didn’t even search me… I could have had a bazooka hiding under my Guatemalan shawl!
The jail room stunk of urine. Mario was crouching next to one of the jail cell benches wrapped in a blanket. Shocked to see me, he clung to the bars and the blanket fell off his shoulders. A movie moment. Nobody was stopping me, so I walked across the hall and stood out of reach in a classical boy-you’ve-been-bad pose. “Nu?!” I exclaimed trying as hard as I could to keep myself from bursting out laughing. “Oy, Mammacita…” Mario hugged the bars like a harp and began pleading in Spanish way to fast for me to understand – something about me being oh so beautiful and the police oh so unfair.
His bail, for getting drunk on the street and then refusing to leave when the police arrived, was eighty bucks and the police let me rummage around in his wallet at least for part of the money.
Quetzal and Shurik met me and the “jailbird” at the gates. Now free, we could have a good laugh at Mario’s expense. But GreenGo was not even one wheel out of the jail’s parking lot, when Mario pulled out his recently confiscated wallet and extracted a joint. I was surprised it was still there, but didn’t say anything until Mario started making himself comfortable and placed the butt in between his lips. “HERE?!” my voice filled up the cabin, and Mario swallowed his charred doobie.
——————–
Enough amber in our pockets to please our mothers and 3,000 miles away from the land of interviews and oaths for a US citizenship (Florida), we left San Cristobal and backtracked to the border. The ride was mostly uneventful and only our last morning in Mexico brought an unexpected thirty bucks from a elderly retired woman, traveling to Oaxaca from the States, who shoved the money into Shurik’s pocket for letting her use our computer and teaching her male companion, Penny – a professional declutterer, how to use Skype.
The US-Mexican border must be the most massive traffic jam either country experiences at any time. The bridge (neutral territory, I guess) is bumper to bumper, inch by inch for two hours with every single driver and passenger loosing their mind from car cabin fever. As we got to the US side the wisquil arose suspicion and we were sent to the “toss’em” line. “What is it?” an immigration officer asked wrinkling his nose. “A wisquil. Doesn’t it look like a constipated zucchini?” I smiled. The officer smiled back, but still couldn’t let go, “And you need it for…?” Food, genius! but I only said “To show my mother in law, of course!” The officer chuckled understandingly and waved us through.
Six month started and ended within a blink of an eye. We are back on the same roads and all three of us are dirtier and I would like to think, happier, this time around.
In and out of South America, and now Central America, I all but have forgotten about culture shock, though it came back haunting in Texas. The gallon tubs of potato salad did not faze me anymore, but I did jump of the toilet at a rest area – startled by the automatic flusher. Somehow, breastfeeding women in brightly colored wraps and furry skirts now surprise me much less then sixty year old men all dressed in white from the embossed pointy boots to the enormous cowboy hats, with only the belt buckle (the size of his hat) shining in accent to the stark ensemble with a glorious image of an eagle. Here, on the radio, the merengue was replaced by talk-shows with a main objective of selling a gun to a degenerate: “…so if you are thinking about purchasing a handgun or a rifle, and you thinking ‘but I’ve got these kids…’ Don’t worry! He-he… We’ll talk you into it… — khhhh… — …so Hilary wouldn’t necessarily mind being a VP considering the latest presidential assassination statistic… khhhh…”
We are back to the land of the free thought and the home of brave radio announcers. If all goes well, it ought to take me less then a month to get a US passport.
Tags: new year
Posted in
Places»North America»Mexico |
No Comments »