All Hail Mexico

We headed east out of Patzcauro a few days ago. Our destination was the tourist town Valle de Bravo, built near a lake, and once described to Justin as the Aspen of Mexico. We arrived in the afternoon, and the plan was to find a place to park, walk around the lake, then drive out of town to find a campsite. As soon as we pulled into town were we surrounded by Chilangos, rich kids from Mexico City, parading in their polo shirts. It was Sunday of three day weekend, and the place was just swamped. Without even bothering to look for parking, Justin drove back out of town and we decided a short car tour of Valle de Bravo was more than sufficient.

We drove about another hour or so up a mountain, and eventually came to some sort of state park. The park road was covered in red pine needles and the forest was as lush as Oregon's. We found the perfect campsite in a large clearing with ample wood to make a fire. We ate sausage tortas that—due to the heightened sensory susceptibility from camping—tasted as if they were manna from heaven, and made it through a liter and a half of tequila. We got into a long discussion on atheism verses agnosticism with Justin and I stubbornly in the first camp and Zeb in the later. Overall, it was one of the best nights camping so far: best location, best fire, best food, best conversation. And then God bore down his wrath upon us for our blasphemous chatter. It started to hail.

If the Eskimos have eighty words for snow, surely the English language can afford a new word for the torrential storm we found ourselves caught in. Marbles were falling from the sky; Justin dove into his tent and the rest of us jumped in the car. Within fifteen minutes the ground was covered in hail. We were laughing like school children. Once the storm passed we got out of the car and all kept falling over on the slippery hail covered ground. Dan incorrectly thought it would be fun to throw hail-balls at Zeb and myself, and his aim could of landed him a job at a vasectomy clinic. Our revenge is still being plotted. They other boys then cracked open two liter-boxes of wine, of which I was wise enough to not to partake, though it could not be judged uncalled for, due to the festive atmosphere.

The drive the next morning was a little rough around the edges. As we passed through the outskirts of Toluca, a seeming Mexico City satellite town, another hail storm came upon us. The storm fogged up the windows of the Party Car, whose poor defrost system just ain't what it used to be, all while a rather hungover Justin was trying to navigate the most complicated road signage we'd encountered thus far. Both Justin and I got splashed in the face with road water from passing vans driving through puddles, since we had to keep the windows down for visibility. We eventually found the correct libre road and started heading due south on our slow march towards the Pacific Ocean.

In Mexico, the federal government, or some other national body that promotes tourism, awards certain charming small towns the accolade of Pueblo Magico. It refers to them as such in the guide book pages of our atlas, and when in these magic towns you see the phrase written under the name of the town on various surfaces such as newsstands and ice cream vendor's carts. We've been to a number of these Pueblos Magicos, and I keep imagining that if we turn down the right street we'll run into a wizard in a sombrero or that we'll meet a talking donkey. So far no such luck. But we were approaching the Pueblo Magico of Taxco, and we thought we'd stop to experience the magic.

Taxco is an old silver mining town built up on a mountainside. According to our atlas' guide, it is also the birthplace of the margarita. We drove into town, and immediately the car was swamped with children and adults directing us to park at their hotel and to eat at their restaurant. The streets were full of German and Italian tourist. Again frustrated by the lack of parking and general chaotic nature of driving through tiny streets not designed for cars while trying not to run over tourists, Mexican children, and stay dogs, Justin ended up just driving straight through the town. We've driven through more destinations on this trip than places we've actually stopped. It's a pretty funny tourist style.

We ended up camping about an hour south of Taxco in a cow pasture under a radio tower. The owner of the land came by on his donkey, and while he didn't seem thrilled to have us there, he said we could camp for the night as long as we didn't catch his field on fire, which we all agreed a reasonable request. The ground was either rock or cow dung, and I was skeptical we'd find a place to set up the tents. In a field of tall grass next to the road we found two spots where the grass was flattened, making soft beds roughly the size of a tent.

We did not put two and two together at the time, but a tent is roughly the same size as a cow. We put this together in the middle of the night when the cows came to lie down on their beds of grass only to find their homes occupied by our invading army tent encampment. Justin was woken up by a bull chewing the tall grass from under his tent. He and Dan opened the flap to see the cinematic image of the bull silhouetted by the moonlight. A cow muzzled next to Zeb's and my tent, though after the first camping night in Mexico a few weeks ago when I was awoken and scared to death by a cow, I've gotten over my fear of bovines, and I fell right back to sleep. Eventually the cows accepted defeat and both sides made out with very few casualties.

I'm writing this entry from the porch of our hotel room in Acapulco, with a slight headache from the night before and a cup of nescafe almost working. We have a beautiful view of the two taller hotels in front of us. The sky has been covered in thick clouds since we rolled in to town yesterday afternoon, which despite the warmth and near ninety percent humidity of the place, has stopped any of us from actually getting in the bay/ocean past our knees. Acapulco is everything you'd expect for a three-quarters of a million peopled modern decadent never-never land built by a slightly sexually repressed slightly poor Catholic country.

Yesterday was Tuesday, and all the vacationers had gone back to work after the long weekend. We met a man who worked for the tourist bureau who directed us to a cheap hotel three blocks from “Disco Beach”. Of the six or so horrendous clubs that compromise “Disco Beach” only one of them had any clientele on this night after the big weekend. Zeb couldn't figure out how to appreciate this town, ironically or unironically, and opted to stay in for the night while Justin, Dan and I went out into the belly of the beast. By the end of the night we were at the terrible club “Paradiso”. At least it was outside, and an expensive beer in Mexico is still only three dollars.

The highlight of the evening, however, was surprisingly before we went to the club. We actually met and hung out with some actual Mexicans. As the three of us were walking along the beach we came upon a group of ten or so kids of varying ages from sixteen to thirty. Christian was the thirty year old. He had been married in the states to a woman from the U.S. and had lived in Austin for a while. He was a total club dude, but incredibly nice, and regaled us stories of being newly arrived in Austin, blasting Kia out of his car and singing along before he knew what the English meant. Then there was Luis, a nineteen year old queer kid with plugs in his ears, a birthday on Halloween, and a very charming disposition. He was really attracted to Justin, and he found Dan too hot to even consider. It was an interesting mix of kids, some macho and club style with pressed button-down shirts and gelled hair, some metal and stoner, some queer, and they all hung out together. They were into the fact that we were musicians and convinced Justin to sing them part of song. Another guy in the group, a young handsome kid in a pressed black button down shirt and pants, sang us a song in return.