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Comin' Through the Rey-nosa - Mexico
by Kris Ruttan | Date >
2005-03-18 | Country : Mexico | City : Ajijic
| Area : Jalisco |
January 09, 2005
My wife Kris, and I fell under the spell of Mexico when we flew down to visit her brother Bob and his wife Loraine in central Mexico last winter. We fell in love with one perfect day after another, friendly people and a very different way of spending a winter. Bob worked on us all year, until we convinced ourselves that we too could drive to Mexico and enjoy three snow-free winter months. We remembered sunrises over Lake Chapala with the mountains as a beautiful backdrop, and we packed our brand new van and fell in behind our guide with alacrity. After a week in Hot Springs Arkansas, we had built up our nerve and Kris and I were psyched for the trip. A place known as Birds of Paradise called us.
As we crossed into Mexico there was no border-crossing as we know it. For veteran border rats like ourselves, back and forth between Canada and US on a whim, this was something totally new. There was just a policeman directing traffic, and since we were not on a shopping spree, we had to fly in the face of his waving arms and shrill whistle, pointing and shrugging our way across the road in front of him to present ourselves to Customs and Immigration. Apart from their complete and total unfamiliarity with our language, and the extreme youth of the children who were in charge of processing us, the process went quite smoothly. I’m sure they must smile to themselves as we insist on pantomiming each noun and verb. At least we don’t yell.
We put the sticker on the window in the specified place, posse’d up, and with the naivete of newborns, we proceeded into the suburbs of Rey(Hell)Nosa. With all the enthusiasm of a movie afficionado who chooses the front row at an Imax show on the opening night of a full effects horror movie, we made a right turn. The curtain went up and the initial 3D image of life in Mexico assaulted our shiny new vehicle. Hordes of urchins armed with no water, but dirty fragments of rags, scraps of cloth, paper towel and in one case, a torn paper bag surrounded the shiny new baby blue Caravan, insisting on sanding any dirt, real or perceived off the windows in return for pesos in any denomination.
In the space of an instant we developed a whole new lingo including frantic waving of arms and shrieking hysterically in both Canadian Official languages. Having knocked the sunglasses off my own face twice, I prayed frantically that the vehicle ahead would just move a few more inches along the dirty, dusty, broken street. We could purchase from the window of a moving vehicle: clothes, drum sets, toys, balloons, pistachio nuts, a Mexico newspaper (as if!), or peanuts, and those were just the things we recognized. There was an assortment of edibles that should never cross the lips of a tourist, and were guaranteed to give a lifetime dose of Montezumas’ Revenge or La Tourista that would follow them for months. Visions of Immodium ran through my head.
Suddenly the crowd parted and we could see a space in front where Bob’s car had been. I stepped on the gas before the donkey cart could win by a nose, and leapt into the breech. A crone stepped out of nowhere, accompanied by something in a wheelchair draped in a serape and sombrero and holding the obligatory tin begging cup. She positioned herself at the left front bumper and we were stopped again. The dry-rag squeegee kids descended once more on our hapless vehicle. Now we had two problems – maintain the comfort zone around our car and FIND BOB. The wheelchair had to go.
Kris checked her side window and saw her sister-in-law, Loraine standing on the sidewalk. She screamed.
I shrieked “What’s she doing? Get out!”
“Money,” said Kris, “there’s a bank.”
I knew we needed Pesos for the rest of the drive to Ajijic. “Take your purse and go. Hurry up!!”
My wife, at my urging, jumped out of the car in the middle of the worst place I had ever in my life, been, and went running up the street. I had gone insane. There was more to come. There ahead was a parking spot just for me. It was just long enough for the van but came complete with a hydrant, guywires, a telephone pole with a No Parking sign, garbage cans and a newspaper coin box.
I prepared for a final approach – there would be no going around for a second landing. Flaps down, mirrors tucked, beads of sweat trickling down my back, I white knuckled it up against the dirty sidewalk. Just as I shut the van off, I saw Kris exit the bank and scurry down the sidewalk, past the vehicle as if it wasn’t even there. It went through my head that she had given up on Mexico and was going to run back across the Rio Bravo to the USA. I began an all-out assault on the brand new steering wheel of my brand new van, and came face to face with the realization that I was no longer driving the Toyota I had owned two weeks ago, and that I had no idea where the horn was in this thing. Desperate for a noise maker, any kind would do, I flogged the horns right off the chrome ram on the steering wheel to no avail, and the only sound I heard was my own frenzied shouting.
Suddenly Kris opened the door and jumped in, pointing out the window. “There they go.”
I was in a time warp. I was in a country-western song. I got my wife back, my guide was back and we could move on. I pulled out into traffic thinking things were normal. Coming out of this silly space which I inhabited for a nano-second, I found myself cross-wise in an intersection jammed with donkey carts, people on horseback, or just the horses - no riders, derelict and broken trucks - dinosaurs from a long ago Detroit, pedestrians, dogs and the ubiquitous wheelchair, again. The donkey stopped for a dump and I made a beeline, desperate to keep Bob’s vanity plates front and centre on my Imax screen.
I followed the dusty pot-holed street to the bridge where we were introduced to another example of Mexican culture. The railing of the bridge was adorned on the south side with a horde of Mexican backsides. Everyone was intently looking down at the water. There were two police cars on site with lights flashing, and we could pick out the khaki covered butts that belong to the officers. For one sick moment I felt the tug of curiosity and reached to undo my seat belt. What were they looking at? Sanity was in the rear-view mirror, smaller than it appeared.
Kris’s brother interrupted one of the watching officers and motioned him to approach his car. We could see our window of escape rapidly dissipating and we found ourselves stopped in the middle of yet another intersection, face to face with an old white truck loaded with men and a driver who was doing his best to flog the horns off the chrome ram on his own steering wheel. Bob & the officer mimed and pointed (Kris tried to think of a charade clue for Monterrey) and they both yelled a lot and suddenly we were off again, trying to keep track of a gold Caravan and stay out of the worst of the craters on the dusty potholed street.
Did I tell you about the dust? Open a bag of all-purpose flour and dump it on the kitchen floor. Walk through it for several days, sometimes in wet boots or wet bare feet, then check the flat surfaces of everything in your house. This is the dust in Mexico.
We beat our way across five city blocks of a slum district of Reynosa without incident. It was the commida hour on a Sunday, when all good Mexicans should be napping so that they can stay up until 2 a.m. Some good Mexicans had not arrived home yet. We made the turn onto the main downtown street and driving was normal until the first red light
We were about the fourth car back from the intersection, Bob just in front of us. Suddenly our vehicle lurched as we heard a crash from behind. We had been rear-ended by a little Senora in her rusted and cancerous old van. It had no head-lights, the windshield sported a head-shaped crater, the bumper was smashed and you could have described it as being about 5 different colors and been right every time. Each piece came from a different scrapped vehicle.
I hurled myself from the van and tried to muster up every accident-investigation skill I had ever used as I raced to examine my wounded van. The adrenaline rush insured that at the very least someone was going to get a severe tongue lashing, and if there was any back-talk, they could get punched out. Reynosa Road Rage, they call it.
I came face to face with a young local housewife and a van full of kids, both sexes and every age, all gesturing and jabbering at once. I could not even make myself heard let alone understood. No habla Espangol!
I set myself to a fine examination of my vehicle. The light turned green and all the cars in front of us pulled away. All the cars behind us knew how to use their horns and merrily did so. With the blood-rush in my ears I never even heard the din, so intent was I on finding damage. The lights turned red again and still we sat. Fortunately my examination revealed no damage and I was relieved to know that I would not have to arrest the little driver of the old van in the middle of Reynosa at commida on Sunday.
Jumping back in my van the lights turned green and I looked up to find that Bob’s gold Caravan was nowhere in sight and we had NO idea which way or where to go. I made a decision – straight ahead was only an option until we saw a retourno. We would go back to Texas and call the whole thing off. My survival instincts were taking over and I wanted to survive.
Two blocks, or maybe two miles later we caught sight of a gold van up ahead. Kris keyed the VRF radio and Bob answered. The trip was back on!
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