I started this trip alone but I couldn’t have done it without the help and support from many other people. I’d like to say thanks.
Thank you Mom, Dad, and family for always supporting these random trips I go on and for being so excited for me (despite the fact that I go to somewhat dangerous places and do somewhat dangerous things). Not everyone can count on their family like I can.
Thank you Mexico. You took me in and showed me incredible landscapes and sights I won’t forget. Your people took care of me, partied with me, and made me feel welcome and happy. The food and alcohol nourished me to the point that I’ll have to work out a bit when I get back home. All those people avoiding Mexico are truly truly missing out; it is an amazing country.
Thank you friends and readers. I’m really glad I kept this blog and it was nice to know some people were enjoying it and maybe even getting inspired from it.
Thanks to all my travel mates, boat captains, people who responded to my sailing info emails, and anyone else who helped me along the way.
It’s amazing how differently time feels on a trip. 10 weeks is not that long but it feels much longer than that since I’ve been home. My fall Seattle life feels quite foreign now. If I had stayed home and done winter quarter, these past months would have been so different. In all honesty, it was good to be away.
It’s hard to know what I’ll think of this trip in a week or a month from now. A week from now, I’ll hopefully have a place to live and leads on jobs. A month from now, I’ll be in school and have my routine more or less set up. It’ll be interesting to see what I think about my Mexico trip. These last 10 weeks will become a collection of memories. My blog and photos will help me remember, but it will all be in the past.
I can’t really frame this trip in terms of other trips. I had a lot of first time experiences on this trip. I had wanted to try the crewing on sailboats idea for a while. I wanted to see if it was a way I wanted to travel long term, to maybe sail around the world. I sailed for about 3-4 weeks of this trip before deciding that I didn’t want to spend the whole trip sailing. I got bored at those beach towns and didn’t feel like spending my whole trip hanging out with retired Americans and Canadians. I didn’t want to spend my trip smoking weed and sitting on so so beaches all day. I got tired of looking for spots on boats and it didn’t seem like El Salvador or Costa Rica beach towns would be much more interesting. I still love sailing and I want to keep doing it, but just 1-2 week stints for now. I think I have too much energy to hike, dance, meet, explore, work, etc. at this point in my life to just hang out on the water for long periods of time.
I went inland and made a home in Oaxaca for a while. I did several awesome midweek trips out of there. It felt good to know the same people and have a constant place there. I realized how much I like getting to know the same group of people. Oaxaca State has incredible amount of things to see and do and I would definitely go back there.
I traveled alone in San Cristobal and Veracruz. San Cristobal and Chiapas in general are amazing but I wish I would have had more people time there. Veracruz’s Carnaval was fun at times, but again, I lacked good travelmates much of the time.
Mexico City and Valle de Bravo were excellent. I had people to chill with and interesting stuff to see. Guadalajara has been a calm uneventful end to the trip. At 25, with several long trips under my belt, I feel it’s time to work, study, and develop my career for a while. This will likely be my last 1+ month trip for about 2 years.
The trip gave me time and distance from my reality and routine in the States. I was able to better understand what I like and don’t like about my life there. Putting myself through so many new experience gave me a chance to see how I operate and what I’m capable of. A lot of great new things can be embarked on by simply making the first step.
I want to continue to question my assumptions on what I think I’m capable of. Why do I assume I have to be just another “young professional”. Why do I fall back on a fairly predictable scripts? What are my real limits? Who do I assume I am? How do I think I fit in? What’s the coolest job I can get? What can I create? Who can I connect with? Where can I live? What will I be able to accomplish in 2011?
Obviously I’ll need to decide a few specific areas to focus on; trying to do it all will result in a bunch of mediocrity. Nevertheless, I feel it’s time to make big things happen and do great work in the US. I feel ready to keep finding ways to do things I thought were difficult or impossible before.
This is it. My trip is over. I’m now in a hostel in Guadalajara writing my final entry. I stayed at this hostel in September of 2008, had a good time, and met good people. Now there’s just one other guy here and I understand what low season really means. I’m not complaining though. It’s been nice to have the dorm room to myself and have no one to talk to so I can just write and think about the end of my trip.
I got in yesterday on a 1 hour 60$ flight from Mexico City. I visited my friend Rene’s aunt and cousins who happened to live near the airport. It was fun to see a small part of his Mexico roots.
Guadalajara is an alright city but I haven’t found it as interesting this time. I thought I might want to live here but now I don’t see any reason why I would. If I were to come back and live anywhere in Mexico it’d be Mexico City or Oaxaca.
Probably subconsciously/intentionally, I’m tired of travel right at the right time. I did gift hunting for about 4 hours today and I was amazed how much it wore me out. I’ve never been more ready to get back to work, having the same friends and one place for a while. But that’s not to say this trip wasn’t amazing.
I got to Mexico City as the sun was going down. You see a ton of open green land until you cross over the hills surrounding the city. Then begin the miles and miles of lights and you know you’re not even looking at even 2% of the city. It’s fun to meet Australian, Swiss, Kiwi, Canadian, Dutch, Danish travelers who marvel at the fact that their entire countries have fewer people than Mexico City. At 25 million in its greater area, it’s not a place you can take lightly.
I think one thing about the city would surprise a lot of Americans: large parts of it are extremely clean, nice, interesting, cool, and worth seeing. People are dressy and cultured. The city is crazy and dense, yes, but it’s hardly the shithole that so many Americans would imagine it to be. This was the second time I had been here and the modernity of the place surprised me again.
I got on the internet in a tasteful little cafe in the bus station. Couch surfing tells you when people last checked in and at what place. I happened to check my couchsurf account and saw that Matt (former travelmate) had logged in at a Mexico City location 25 hours earlier. I dropped him an email to see if he was still around. I was delighted when he emailed me back right away and gave me the name of his hostel. He had 24 hours left in his trip—I had just caught him.
old travelmates
Matt was at a hostel BBQ on the roof of a very large nice hostel called Regina. I snuck up behind him at the stereo and slapped him the back. It was good to see my old travel buddy. He had worked on a farm in the north Yucatan peninsula and had been having a good time. We caught up and enjoyed the hostel BBQ. He talked music with some friendly Aussie travelers while I enjoyed plate after plate (all you can eat BBQ). The hostel owner was a fat goofy Dutch guy. He started traveling at 16 and somehow became a hostel consultant along the way. At 23 years old, he owned 20% stakes in over 20 hostels in a variety of countries. He wanted us, the roof group, to hear and critique his business ideas. One was portable container hostels for big events like Tomatillo and Oktoberfest. The other was a hop on hop off mobile hostels between Germany and Australia (over land). He was going to effectively mortgage his stakes in the other hostels to try one of his big ideas. His focus group (us) didn’t seem that keen.
I woke up in the night, dehydrated and freezing. The next morning, I was nauseous and achy. There must have been something in all that BBQ that upset my system. I had a lot of plans for Mexico City and it felt I might be incapacitated for a while. I had to meet up with a girl who I was going to stay with. I put my bags on, said a final goodbye to Matt and limped out.
Through some miscomunication, I ended up waiting for my friend Zoe for two hours at a busy location (Bellas Artes Museum). I felt like hell with nausea and the dirty air around that busy location. At one point I literally sat against a building with my two bags next to me. People seemed a bit surprised seeing what looked to be a miserable gringo bum.
I finally got settled in my friend’s apartment and took a good 3-4 hour nap in her bed while she worked. We had danced and chatted on my last night out in Oaxaca and she invited me to stay with her. I washed my clothes, showered, drank, ate, and she wouldn’t take any sort of contribution I offered.
Zoe works as a graphic designer for a television channel. She also does commercials and other freelance work. She had sunken light brown eyes and gorgeous dark hair. She’s fairly tall and does her hair up in fun ways and wears funky colored dresses and tights. She was a sweet and gentle. I couldn’t get her to talk much or joke, but I enjoyed her easy company nevertheless. When a gorgeous girl invites you to stay with her in her cool city, you pinch yourself to see if you’re dreaming.
My first host Zoe
Lovely Zoe
I met with my friend Pablo after my nap. It was student day at his school and some popular bands were playing. The students were going mad. The school (Iberoamericana) is a private school and one of the most expensive in Mexico at 6500 USD a year. I went to a fancy private school in Colombia for a semester. Just like Colombia, private school in Mexico means lots of tall light skinned beautiful people. Among the thousand or so there, there were probably 6-8 guys who were taller than me. This rarely happens in Mexico.
These were definitely rich kids. I ran into a guy who happened to be from Bogota. In his opinion, the rich kids in Mexico are far more elitist and isolated than those in Bogota. Many of the kids at that concert have probably never used the subway. Pablo’s friends were nice to me, we watched the concert and eventually went back to Pablo’s family’s apartment. His friends like all the same music, clothes, and movies as my friends back in Seattle. They are basically the cultural equivalent as city-going Americans but with their obvious Latin characteristics. Many of them even travel up for the Coachella music festival near LA. I’m still not sure what to think about these rich Mexicans.
Pablo, my friend and Mexico City host, is a rare sort of guy. He’s a big alpha-male type with a hot girlfriend and nice Audi but he’s also an incredibly funny welcoming guy. He’s an account manager for his dad’s furniture company but he’s also a talented pianist and producer in the making. I guess he’s an all around Mexican renaissance man. Me and him got along pretty quickly in Oaxaca and he made me feel extremely welcome in his city. After kicking it with Pablo’s friends for a bit in the apartment I had to go meet Zoe across the city. At 10:40 pm, there was finally no traffic. Pablo’s apartment is in a new fancy part of the city called Santa Fe that has malls and shops that would rival anything America offers. The taxi driver told me how Sante Fe had been built on the old garbage dump. In 50-60 years, he predicts the whole thing will sink down a couple feet as the garbage decomposes. The taxi drivers in Mexico City are often very smart and very chatty—it’s a very enjoyable part of the city.
I met up with Zoe in an area of the city called Condesa. Condesa would be the Brooklyn or San Francisco equivalent for Mexico City. If I were to live in Mexico City, it’d probably be there. Zoe’s friends turned out to be very friendly educated designers. One of them, Daniel, had grown up all over the world and spoke perfect English English. He had done quite a bit of sailing when he was younger and was stoked on my crewing travels. He’s been working as a creative director for cool marketing agencies and seems to have a name for himself. He’s moving to Belgium for a job in a couple months. I soaked up the career advice I could get out of him. He thinks that my gutsy sailing trip will give me a very strong foundation for other pursuits in life. The guy was truly happy for me. It was the most genuine compliment.
I caught all my Mexico City people in the midst of very busy times, including Zoe. She was tying off projects here and there and we only really got to hang a bit. I was still recovering from being sick so my friend Romo offered to take me to see his doctor mom. It’s an amazing feeling when people take care of you in their big crazy cities (it happened in Bogota too). Romo’s mom owns three fancy daycares and hasn’t practiced in a while. She still was able to more or less deduce what was up. Since I was getting better so quickly, she suspected I had gotten a Staph toxin but not a bacteria. The toxin had probably been on the food and she wrote me some medications to take if I didn’t keep getting better. It was fun seeing the parents pick up their kids at the daycare and get a glimpse at a little slice of daily life there. Romo also gave me a tour of UNAM, probably the largest university in Latin America at 350,000 students. Romo and his engineering buddies build formula 1 cars and usually end up ranking pretty high at competitions in California. My Mexico City friends are definitely rich kids but they are very hard-working creative rich kids (no silver spoon here).
Romo had his 22nd birthday on Thursday night at a cool club called Rhodesia. Somehow, we were able to cut the line and get right in. We got upstairs and gathered the group. There were a lot of of gorgeous girls in sight. Unlike Colombia, I don’t really have all the advantage in the world with these hot rich girls. I saw a little bottle set up with a couple bottles of jack, mixers, and glasses of ice. I remember thinking “Damn, you gotta be a baller to get that.” It turned out it was ours.
I got the confidence and skills to talk to women late in life so now I go a bit crazy in bars, especially with attractive Latin women. Romo said they saw me from the balcony and were cheering “A huevo Kyle” (fuck yeah). Then I came up. Then I went back down. Somehow, in the last short amount of time, I learned how to not get my ego very hurt if I get rejected in a bar. Without that barrier, I just keep going. I’m not really trying to get anything, it’s just fun to flirt like mad at times. (I think I also had the “I’ve never see you again” thing going). I ended up crashing with a friend I had made in Veracruz who happened to know one of my Mexico City friends. He (Alejandro) had actually had some luck with my English roommate there. I had a good feeling about this guy pretty instantly and wasn’t surprised when it turned out he was ambidextrous. He insisted on giving me his bed and sleeping on the couch.
Alex drove me back to Sante Fe in the morning, I think we’ll become better friends over time. Pablo, Romo, myself, and another guy Chase (Juan Carlos) headed out to Pablo’s house outside of Mexico City. Pablo’s house is in a private neighborhood with a golf course country club set up. I played FIFA (video soccer game) for the first time and wrestled with his 3 border collies while we waited for the others. They eventually came and we made off into the night to Valle de Bravo. We passed an accident scene where a mini van had collided with a gravel truck. I only hope it was the mini-van’s fault.
Each person had told me at least 2-3 times “you’re going to like Valle.” or “You’re going to love Pablo’s house in Valle.” Upon arriving, it wasn’t hard to see why. The house is a probably a 5000 square foot old Spanish style hacienda on a big lot of land. It is classic, tasteful, and comfy. They have enough beds for 12 guests, BBQ, flat screen, speakers, kitchen, enclosed car park, you name it. This combined with a lush garden with hammocks and a jacuzzi (that doesn’t work). This house was a little slice of paradise. You could see the lake and the town central church from my balcony. The bells from the church’s tower clock only added to the charm of the place.
It was an amazing time for me. A bunch of well off Mexico kids and they invited me to simply be part of their group for the weekend. What hospitable people. I saw how they lived, how they joked, laughed, and spoke with eachother. I stopped to take a nap and ended up a very somber yet hopeful blog entry which I’ll publish before this one.
We relaxed, made food, watched movies, joked, smoked hookah. I convinced Denise, a gorgeous sweetheart with lots of curls, to play a card game I had just learned. We all took turns playing chill music on the speakers. Like many other times on this trip, I felt my life had become a movie. I knew it would be temporary so I soaked it up as best I could. It was the best Mexico send off I could have asked for.
Benito
Teaching Denise how to play Conquian
Sunday Brunch
Saturday BBQ
Rough Times
Benito and I
We all got fairly drunk on Jack Daniels and Tequila both nights. Both nights I went to bed at 2am while the others went out til at least 5am. I’ve come to accept that I officially got the sleepy drinker gene my mom had always warned me about. Like my father before me, I can’t drink a lot and stay up. I’ll never be a good drinker and I’m happy about it overall (though I miss half the nights out in Latin America).
Messing with passed out Chase (I wasn't there)
My trip ended up with a little hike up to see the view of the lake. Valle de Bravo has a big man-made lake and 20 foot sailboats putting around on it. You can see why people use it as an escape from the fast life of Mexico City. As I sprung up the mountain from rock to rock I got back into my element–I’m meant to spring up mountains. I was so content there in Valle Bravo while also getting excited for the upcoming one, Washington.
Thanks to whoever made me this laptop, I can write on it and store my music…for a 250 bucks, what a gift from the world…thanks all you Dell guys for hooking me up with this.
I have this time, this body, this music, really just given to me…
I’m in an amazing place called Valle Bravo with my friends from Mexico City. They invited me here and refuse to let me pay for anything. I try to pay for things and they barely let me…They are beautiful, smart, welcoming people. They met me for a weekend at a hostel in Oaxaca, they just took me in and made me feel loved and welcome. We shoot the shit all day, went into town to get salad makings, made a salad, and had a roast. The girls are beautiful. One of them has Lebanese grandparents, she has sort of sunken wonderful green eyes and dark hair. She’s been with her boyfriend for 4 and a half years, he’s a very busy lawyer. He’s going to Columbia for some kind of advanced degree and she’s trying to find a way to follow him to work there.
I live in a medium of love and gifts. The world is just this crazy huge complex place with so many things to learn, people to meet and know, things to enjoy. The whole idea of the economy, dollars, materials, whatever, is just giving to the world. Bill Gates made his billions because he steered a company which gave billions of people the ability to easily use their computers. Sure, I’m oversimplifying that story a bit, but that’s the economy in a nutshell, it’s just exchange, gifts, contributions. Capitalism has it’s ugly sides but how wonderful that we get so much from it. It’s amazing how often we just look at the world for our purposes and see only what we can take from it.
Life is so short but it gives you so so much if you know how to let it. Somehow, with probably a combination of luck and skill I learned to receive a lot from life. I’ve been on a roll for probably a good 14 months now. I get jobs, I get friends, girls, trips, people invite me to come be with them. How lucky I am that people enjoy my presence…
Like I’ve said before, I want to contribute to this universe. I want to help people, connect them, make things that make life better for people.
None of this world is about me and yet somehow, it gives so much to me. I am now realizing my connectedness to it and have an amazing urge to put so much back into it.
Speaking of gifts, I just downloaded an album that is very important to me. It’s called Feliciano! By Jose Feliciano. My Grandma listened to it back in 1968 when it came out and was a hit. It’s only 11 songs, but many of them are simply wonderful. There are good Light My Fire and In My Life and several other covers (maybe the whole thing is covers?). I’m writing this on what I know is my last Saturday night in Mexico. The last song in the album is called Last Thing on My Mind. It’s almost like I listen to this song in order to feel pain or loss intentionally. The chorus goes:
Are you going away with no word of farewell?
Will there be not trace left behind?
I remember listening to the song after a middle school friend killed himself. I looked out the window at my house in Bellingham and saw only one Rhodedendron blooming. I interpreted it as being connected to my friend, some kind of sign and started crying. I also listened to this CD once with my first girlfriend when we were in bed once. I started crying believing that things were going to end between us when she left.
Today I listened to it as I wrote this and broke down. Our beloved dog Ravyn has cancer and we’ll put her to sleep about 5 days after I get back. Several friends and acquaintances have commented on her being basically the best dog they’ve ever known. So it goes without saying that we’re losing a family member and it’s killing us.
I basically took that Feliciano song and applied it to all loss as a sort of catharsis song. The song is actually meant to be from a guy to a girl. He messed something up and didn’t treat her right and now is realizing that she’s leaving him. The lyric right after the chorus is I could have loved you better, I didn’t mean to be unkind But this doesn’t apply to our dog Ravyn. In fact the opposite is true. You couldn’t really find a dog that got more love than Ravyn. And for that, I’m proud and happy…We knew from the beginning that she couldn’t be our family member for very long and yet we still loved the hell out of her while she was here. What else can you do?
Our beloved Ravyn
So I guess that’s it. It’s a friggin wonderful varied world that gives you so so much if you let it. But it’s all so temporary and we lose it all eventually. And I come to a conclusion that is nothing new: you gotta enjoy this life and world while you have it, love the hell out of it, do your best to give all you can to it, and somehow know that you’ll lose everything eventually. Thank god I’m here now, for now.
It was a 65 dollar 9 hour bus ride from San Cristobal to Veracruz. My health was still mediocre and I was excited to get back to warm country. A lot of people were in town for Carneval, so most of the couchsurfs had filled up. There were no hostels in Veracruz and few hotels had online booking. I had secured floor space with one of the couchsurfers but I was warned it would be crowded. The bus got there early and I hadn’t slept much.
The city seemed busy with Carnaval goers and I had no idea where I was in relation to anything else. I sat down in safe clean bus station to rest and try to orientate myself. I made friends with an English girl who happened to be on the same bus. A random girl curtly asked us to watch her stuff while she went to the bathroom. It turned out she was staying at the same couchsurf so me, her, and the English girl headed up there. The English girl couldn’t get a hold of her friends so she tagged along just to check it out.
The couchsurf didn’t seem to be located anywhere near a sort of city center. She mentioned that there might be people camping which seemed odd, but I went with it. The couchsurf host greeted us (she’s a Mexican English teacher), and showed us her place. She prefaced “It’s not luxurious or anything…” That was understating it a bit. She lived in a dirty dark sort of garage. She had said I could sleep on an apartment floor, now I was looking at a dirty garage floor. A dutch guy in his tighty whities was still asleep on the bunk bed when she showed us in. She had two birds in cages and there was a little bit of their poop of the floor. Me and the English girl, Davina, did our best to force smiles. I was tempted to just walk out right there but it seemed we could use the place to hold our stuff. I carry my valuable 5 things (cell, pc, camera, passport, wallet) in my daypack, so I was fine leaving my bag of clothes there. It was very nice of the girl to offer so many poorly planning travelers a roof, but it was amazing how unaware she was of the grossness of her place.
Davina and I caught an hour bus to downtown Veracruz (where Carneval would be). We started to look around for hotels but most were full and expensive. We checked out one called Hotel Amparo. The front desk people told us they were all full. When the other woman who was asking walked away, they told us they actually had one left. It was 3 floors of stairs up and had just one bed. Davina and I sat on the bed to consider our options. We both had friends who were maybe coming but nothing was certain and no one had Mexican cell phones. I whipped out the Lonely Planet the underwear clad Dutch guy lent me and read the entry aloud. Lonely Planet said it was a simple hotel but clean and near the Zoccalo (dead center of the action). Davina and I got along well in the 3 hours we knew eachother so we decided to go for it. Sharing a clean bed in a good area of town with a nice girl seemed far better than a dingy floor.
We still had to deal with our bags and our couchsurf buddies. We met back up with the girl from the bus station and the dutch guy. The girl from the bus station was an Asian girl with tattoos and piercings from San Francisco (named Kiki). She was traveling extremely cheap and said “You just have to ask for the price about 8-10 times. They’ll stay put until about the 8th time.” She would barter so hard with Taxis that we’d usually have to wait til about the 3rd taxi to be able to leave. She’s planing on moving to either Austria, Germany, or Holland after her trip because she’s “done” with America. I don’t see how any Europeans will deal with her. She reeked of selfishness and she’d be one of the few people on this trip who I’d label with F and B and maybe even C words. I couldn’t wait to get away from her.
Davina, my new roommate, seemed like an alright girl. She’s 28 and trained extensively as an actress back in London. She spent a month in Bogota, Colombia and a couple months traveling Colombia. My back was killing me and she gave me some helpful posture advice. She had to study posture and body language in drama because it communicates so much. Having her posture and body language critiqued by her drama teacher helped her understand subconscious emotions and external behavior that she hadn’t noticed before. We watched a few movies together in the downtime during the 3 days we spent together.
The actual Veracruz Carneval consists of 4-5 stages and 2-3 parades of varying size, day and night. At night, there’s music and people everywhere. The highlight of my time there were the salsa, Banda, and Mariachi bands playing near the Zoccalo. Nearly everyone danced and sang. Guys walked around selling big bottles of Sol beer. The first night was communal and fun.
The first night crew
The highlight of the Carnaval is the parade. There were 30 semi-trucks with different themes. Most truck had dancers on top, gigantic speakers on back, and dancers following. A fun group of Canadian guys had come from Winnipeg and we picked up a bunch of other foreigners along the way. We oggled and shouted at the pretty girls on the passing floats and danced to the music pumping out through the speaker stacks. A little 5 year old girl with green eyes and a mask with her mom and brother stood next to me but wouldn’t say much to my holas. When you had to pee, you just slipped under the bleachers and went in the sea that was directly behind the bleachers. A strong gulf breeze refreshed everyone but also blew all the trash around.
Me at the Parade
Floats
Dancers behind float
The streets had been cleared by riot police and Carneval crews before the parade started but they were now starting to fill up. The dancers and the floats still passed but they sides were getting packed with Carnaval goers. People started dancing with the dancers for 20 seconds or so, others stopped to get pictures. Teenage guys in costumes in the parade would steal kisses or grind for a sec with totally willing teenage girls on the side. People let their carnal sides out. It was a raucous but fun. Then we started to see more of the ugly effects of having a couple hundred thousand drunk people together.
A group of salsa dancing Aladdins passed. There must have been 40 of them, dressed up in these thick goofy, for lack of a better name, Aladdin costumes (Arabian costumes). A scrap started and like most scraps you couldn’t really tell how it started. Our group was behind the metal riot divider so we were fine. A guy in a red shirt was fighting with one of the Aladdins and then about 5 of his Aladdin buddies joined. The group of them were pummeling the guy on the ground for a good 5-10 seconds before some other Aladdins and Military Police jumped in. It all happened in about 30-40 seconds. The parade simply went on. A Canadian guy in my group and I joked how odd it was to watch a group of Aladdins gang beat someone. But the parade must go on.
More scraps would happen and they were usually over in 30 seconds. I turned around for a second and could see 4 guys from my group running quickly down the parade. I thought they were joining in something fun but soon found out they were getting back the phone that had been ripped out of our Japanese friend’s hand. Another fight started, and again with that burst of adrenaline, you can’t tell what’s going on. But we all unmistakeably watched a guy pull out a machete and drop it down on a guys forehead. To his credit, he dropped the machete very gently. He could have killed the guy but opted to split his forehead open. Again, it all happened so fast, the parade went on, and I only heard later about someone seeing a guy holding his gushing forehead.
I will usually defend Mexico’s safety level, but the amount of fights we saw startled all of us. There might be even more fights at Mardi Gras or a festival of a similar size and alcohol level in the US (People got beaten to death last time Seattle had Mardi Gras). Big public drunken events usually tend to bring out the worst in people. It was hard not to see a lot of the Carnaval goers as a bunch of animals who wanted to fight, fuck, and leave their trash wherever they dang please. Perhaps if we’d been drunk it wouldn’t have seemed so disgusting.
I went to pee in the gulf and a group of gay guys were sort of half pushing each other on the staircase where I had got to the gulf. I don’t know why, but I stood there to watch for a second, half waiting for the staircase to clear so I could get back to my friends. One of the Canadian guys shouted at me to get the fuck out of there, to use the other stairs. He had been near a fight in Puerto Escondido and taken a bat to the head. The other Canadian guy chewed me out when I got back to the group and it was a good wake up call to just steer clear of any fights (however harmless they look).
We got to a massive open amphitheater with live salsa music. I danced with a hot boring girl for two songs and went to find my group again. I searched all around but couldn’t find any of them. I eventually had to give up and take off. It began to rain for the first time on my trip. My hotel was literally right in the center of the party and I was glad I had such a high obscure room now. I went up to pee and consider my options.
I could have just gone to sleep but I had put a lot of work into being in Carneval on the biggest Saturday night. Sleeping would have felt like quitting. I walked back downstairs and out. I happened to meet up with my English roommate and some friends she had made. A random 40 year old Mexican guy tagged along with us and we found a bar after an hour looking. The bar was a too packed and played crappy music. We we weren’t sure why the random guy was still hanging with us. Finally, after much hassle and waiting, I was able to get back to the hotel and sleep.
The group I had hung out with at the parade had said they were thinking of staying. I was excited to see them again and hang out for the day/night. The next day, I ambled over toward their hotel and bought a bottle of Vodka along the way. When I got there, the front desk guy told me they had checked out. He said the room price would be cheaper that night. I thanked him and turned away, surprised. For a second I thought maybe they had moved to a cheaper place. When I got on Facebook, one of their status updates confirmed they had skipped town. Apparently one night had been enough for them.
My unlucky travelmate streak was going to continue. Carnaval is full of groups of friends getting drunk and watching music and parades together. It’s dirty and humid and about one of the least fun places to walk around alone. I was seething in the disappointment for losing the friendly group. These things used to send me off on a 4-5 hour depression but thankfully I’ve become more resilient. I kept saying “ouch” aloud to myself but not letting myself get extremely down.
I walked around and happened to walk by a group of study abroaders I had met the previous night. I saw them out of the corner of my eye but opted to avoid them as I had sort of walked off to my room the previous night. It was a nice feeling when they ran up after me to say hi. We walked around for a bit and then parted ways as they were heading back to Puebla. It was good to have the company for a bit.
I ran into another group of study abroaders in the main town square. One of the guys had a gash on his wrist so I asked him about it. The group had been standing inside the barrier rails where the parade was. They were drunk and having a great time when a guy snatched their friend’s phone. They went to chase the guy down and got confronted by a bunch of dudes with bats and knives. One of their friends got stabbed in the forearm and others got hit with the bats. The guy seemed proud of his Mexico fight experience. Carnaval seemed even more sketchy now.
My roommate was gone when I got back to the room later. It hadn’t been the best day. I opted to take a long nap and ended up sleeping til midnight. My roommate and her friends hadn’t come back so I had to go out by myself. I was determined to take some video of the salsa area. I strapped the little camera knoose tight around my wrist and began to video. I’ve never been more alert or ready for someone to try something. No one did but instead a friendly girl and her Dad from Monterrey who I’d met on the city bus invited me to come hang with them.
It was a genuinely good last night. When the salsa music ended, it broke up to about 10-15 smaller bands playing at people’s tables. A guy would walk around asking for money while the band played. Latinos know how to go wild. They kept forcing the bands to play song after song, all the while shouting “hey hey hey hey hey, otra otra otra otra otra.” The girl from Monterey was cute and kept the gay guys off me. The transvestites are creepy there and usually try to run their hands down me as I walk by. I got better at dodging them.
Viviana and I
I didn’t really say a proper goodbye to Marina. I spent so little time with her in the end. We thought we were going to have to wait a while in the bus station so didn’t really say goodbye. The goodbye kind of fit the time we spent together. It was great to have a clean very well located place to sleep but I didn’t think much of her at the end.
I think I’ve learned a lesson about solo travel. Solo travel is something I think every person should experience. It gives you a ton of confidence in yourself and trust in the world. But it’s better to do it in short bursts. Lots of places aren’t that cool to wander around for days at a time. If life and travel, things are usually better when you have the energy of other people.
The ride from Veracruz to Mexico City is a gorgeous one (like most Mexico highways). I felt good to leave all the hassle of Veracruz behind. There’s nothing better for clearing my head than a bus or train ride in the day. The countryside was green, varied, and hilly as we ascended to Mexico City area. The city offered a lot of promise of seeing familiar faces, something I longed for after two weeks of very solo travel.
