Jake Gordon

The Real Mexico

24 August 2003

Only for the last few days have I been in the ‘real’ Mexico. Hmm… but what exactly is that? Well, desserts and cactii of course… but why? Well, because that’s the way Mexico’s always portrayed in Hollywood, partly because its what the north of Mexico looks like, and that’s the bit that’s next to the US. Or am I just being pedantically cynical?

Anyways, its a good change, and I’m glad I’ve seen it. Otherwise people would be like ‘so what were the cactii like’ and I’d just have to improvise and say ‘They were like, so awesome. Big and green and with spikes everywhere. It was amazing!!!’ Yeah.

Oh, lots of people wear sombreros and all that other typical Mexican stuff here. But not those huge-arse sombreros, but fairly conservative ones which personally I just call ‘hats’. And there’s some weird black stuff they get from the cactii here. Some geezer tried to sell it to me in a little cafe the other morning. Its called ‘peyote’ and its a hallucinagenic - anyone seen that Simpsons where Homer follows the cayote etc? Well, that’s the stuff. Not for me, thanks… not after Amsterdam!

Thought I’d try my hand at hitch-hiking yesterday. I’ve been on so many buses they start to bore me. Plus there weren’t any buses that I could see going the way I wanted, out of Real de Catorce, a little ghost town I stayed in for about 8 hours (mainly to get some sleep after a night bus or two). So a nice fairly elderly group gave me a half hour lift in their little bus/van thing. Nice people, gave me some manzanas and some refrescos and all. But they weren’t going all the way I wanted, so I did a bit more hitching, although this time there were two French dudes who’d already been waiting for a lift for about an hour. Poor guys - I came along and we all jumped on the back of a pickup truck after just a couple of minutes. But be beginners touch.

Or not, as for the next leg of the journey I was waiting for about 45 minutes before I decided to give up and get a bus instead. It was getting late, and I didn’t want to be hitching at night. Then the only bus out of the next time was at ridiculous 3am, so I had to stay in a bus station for about 5 hours. Oh the fun!

Well, I got here, to Guanaguato about 8am this morning. My plane home is tomorrow evening from Mexico City. And I’ve just spend an hour on here writing bizillions of words to catch up. Think I might just collapse now!


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by Jake Gordon, some rights reserved