Big Pelicans Abound

Hello all,

We have reached mainland Mexico and are now mainly concerned with avoiding the deadly swine flu. Strapping iodine-dipped masks to our faces we sought out the smallest, most secluded village we could find and began laying low and watching Sub standard Billy-Bob Thornton films while the pandemic passes over.

Allow me to fill in the gaps between then and now. Arriving in La Paz we rejoiced at completing the Mexican Highway 1 which, according to Diane, our one time hostess and owner of the orphanage, is the 19th most dangerous road in the world. This is not surprising given its windiness, elevation and the calibre of the crazy drivers that go along it. Regularly will you see people overtaking on blind corners and hills. Almost as regularly you will encounter roadside shrines for drivers departed of this realm. One dedicated to 'Hector' sticks in my mind. His name spelt out in flowers, ornaments and trinkets, a cross and a virgin of Guadaloupe, and a model of a truck all decorated the side of the road where Hector had plunged off, the ragged gap in the barrier still unfixed. Driving in Mexico leads to you driving slightly madly also. You will very quickly stop indicating for it is a sign of weakness, and instead you will smile vindictively as you repeatedly cut up middle-aged couples on your way to the beach. Horn tooting frequency will increase to the point where you know not what constitutes a just horn toot, and simply deliver one at every stop sign and traffic light. Motorists will either be completely po-faced or laugh and shout as they meet you careering erroneously down poorly signed one-way streets.

The car has been performing well. On a desert road in the night I slowed to walking pace and looked intently as the milometer reached and passed 222,222.2 miles. Since the cowboy welding job there has been a prevailing smell of oil in the car which, strangely, peaks as we traverse speedbumps. Transmission fluid drips slowly from the point where it was dry-welded. In a moment of foolishness I attempted to seal it once and for all with some chewing gum and duct tape. The chewing gum melted on the hot engine and spread itself all over me as I lay supine under the car. The motorway also brought a tire bursting incident which is worth mentioning. I confidently began rooting around in the boot, bought out the jack and jacked the car up, then produced the spare wheel which appeared to be for an entirely different car. It was much smaller and thinner, like that of a clowns car. When attached it made the car look very odd, and from the inside you could actually see the tilt of the dashboard where the car was leaning down to the left. This wheel held up bravely for a few miles before exploding with a modest pop. I don't know why it was in there.



At La Paz we applied for our tourist visas. The atmosphere in the Immigration Office was what could be described as 'relaxed' - staff with feet up on tables, calmly and openly watching soap operas. After being overcharged for our visas we found they had been printed on scrap paper, meaning that on the back of mine I had a fine photocopy of a Mr. Ralph Peschman's passport. Don't worry about that said the immigration officer, drawing a lazy line across the image. John found later that he had all of Ralph's personal details on the back of his visa. The standard of professionalism here is shocking, quite shocking I have to say.

The next available ferry being three days away we decided to go to Cabo St. Lucas where we couchsurfed with an architect named Marco. Marco's flat was impeccably clean and he served us a chicken curry. Come the night we visited the local gringo bar drolly named Squid Roe. It is difficult to tell whether Squid Roe's pithy moniker pulls in such large crowds or if it has something to do with the shameless booty-dancing American girls there and their legions of drooling admirers. Probably both. We didn't stay long.

The ferry took five hours. I repeatedly purchased choco milk from a vending machine. There was piped mexican music - piercing, warbling trumpets and oom-pa-pa bass - playing relentlessly at extreme volume. A girl working in a gift shop wore her swine-flu mask and played solitaire for the entire journey. I can think of nothing else remarkable to say about this ferry journey.

On the mainland we drove to Mazatlan, and then on to a small fishing village of 450 people called Barras de Piaxtla where we had arranged to stay with the mom of my friend Peter, and that is where we are now. The village is small and dusty but beautiful. There is usually some sort of building works going on somewhere so the noise of an angle grinder or an intermittent banging melds with the cockadoodling of roosters who converse with one another throughout the day. I didn't know such emotion could be conveyed in a cock crow, but the ones patrolling the path are very proud, as they should be, and I once heard a depressed sounding rooster under a bush.

Half of the residents here are Jehova's Witnesses, and all of the rich people are somehow associated with drug smuggling. The village's one bar, or cantina, doubles up as a brothel. The proprietor himself is a prostitute, and yet he is one of the few men who regularly attends sermons at the catholic church. This is perhaps something to do with the fact that he identifies more as a woman. The brothel is within spitting distance of the church and the doctors surgery. So, one can stumble quickly from the whorehouse into confession, or the clinic, depending on the urgency of matters.

There are other gringos in Barras; surfer dudes who pay $1000 a week to come down from California. They are given as much pot as they can handle and then driven in motor boats to some nearby point break. Pleasingly as I cross them on the path they acknowledge me with an Ola. Yes I have abandoned the moustache plan but the tan and a surly visage seem to do the trick! Perhaps I was a daring drug runner, back from a 6 day trip up the Sea of Cortez, or an honest fisherman's son? Or, rather, a clueless British tourist flip-flopping his way around town, an object of mirth for small children, just back from the lighthouse which he tried to go up but was scared by the sound of shuffling feet somewhere halfway up the very narrow spiral staircase, and so instead walked around the side and stood on an awkwardly shaped black rock for a while looking at where some straw in between two rocks was flattened down, maybe a bird had made a nest there.

So we're sweaty and bitten here, and kinda looking forward to returning to San Francisco, which we will do within two weeks. I hope you are all well. Tell people about the blog if you think they will enjoy it.

chard x