Mexico

​MEXICO:
Borders are funny places. They’re like the geographical version of New Years Day. Out with the old and in with the new. Crossing into Tijuana Mexico is something vaguely monumental. The border infamous for its illegalities; drugs, immigrants, border patrol shootings, border rushes of crowds of a thousand strong that the police can’t deal with.
Off the tram from San Diego, some helpful directions from a woman I could happily have diverted some time with, up a convoluted concrete walkway complete with iron bar windows (very Kafka-esque) across a road and down more ugly twisty stairs fit for herding cattle through. I go through a football-ground type turnstile cla-cla-cla-cla-clank, and thats it; me at the beginning of Central America; of probably unbearable heat, unfamiliar food, fearful wolf-men following my every rich white man move, slavering at the mere sight of a camera or wallet, ready to befriend me, and then lure me to some nasty end. Speaking a language so ill-understood by me, I might as well try to perform Shakespeare to a shed full of excited turkeys. Mosquitoes and bad food waiting to break me down, empty me out and send me running cross-kneed to the nearest airport home.
Standing there, in Mexico Scary Place, fumbling with my bum bag, my passport in a money belt and trying not to be spotted retrieving my valuables from my supposedly secret places. Paranoid as you like, wondering how it’s going to work out trying to find things out, buy malaria drugs, get my passport stamped, buy a bus ticket. 
I try to get a stamp first. ‘Desculpe, puerde darme un stampe por ma pasaporte, por favor’. Talking turkey gobble that I’ve concocted out of a phrase book fantastically produces results of a kind. I get directed up the ways. I try again. The man asks if I go by bus or plane. By bus I tell him. ‘Go to the bus terminal; they will do it.’ he tells me. I follow a series of further convoluted directions and end up quite unexpectedly at the bus/plane man again in his little sharp uniform leaning back in his chair watching a TV hanging high above on the wall. He’s not very keen to see me a second time. 

‘Err.. I couldn’t find the bus terminal?’ I squirm apologetically.

‘You told me you go by plane!’ 

‘No, by bus’

‘No! Plane!’

‘No – bus’

‘No! Plane! You lie to me! Why you lie to me?!’

This isn’t making sense, so I walk out and leave him to fester in his delusions. The guide book insists that I must get a stamp in my passport at the border, or I’ll get sent all the way back to the border again when patrols check passports halfway down the country. Nobody wants to stamp my passport, no matter how many people I ask. They all tell me it will happen on the bus, in the next town, later on, not now. I guess my whole vaguely freaked paranoia about getting into some kind of trouble in this alien land is much more to do with stories I’ve heard than with what is actually going on. No-one tries to rip me off. I don’t get hassled by scary beggars, apart from the idiot Hitler border guard, every one is nice, and even he doesn’t really count cos nearly all border guards are idiot Hitlers.

 

The first things that greet me once I get into Tijuana proper is lots of little stalls selling tacos and tamales etc and a whole block of farmacias. I try about eight in a row to buy Larium and then give up and get Chloroquine the alternative which you have to inconveniently take every day, unlike Larium which is a once-only dose. 

A chap on the street tries to set me up with a prostitute, which I decline, and then I get a taxi to the bus depot which is very inconveniently somewhere totally other. I guess I could find out where it is and walk, but frankly I am rather baffled and the willingness to spend money to get out of a jam overcomes me. The taxi driver is very decent, is obviously used to baffled visitors, and he sorts out buying the bus ticket for me. My bus is due in twenty minutes and – hey presto – I am on my way to some place that I’ve picked at random that looks like I wouldn’t arrive at two in the morning or something crap like that. 
The patrol that is supposed to send me back to TJ arrives in the middle of the night. They don’t give me a stamp, nor do they turn me back. They check everyone’s bags, and on we go. I wonder whether technically I am an illegal immigrant in Mexico. I quite like the idea of that.

In the morning, in some town I forget the name of, I sit reading my Mexico guide book and Spanish phrase book in the bus terminal for about an hour trying to figure out which way is up, and what I am going to do about it. I eventually go and get some money out of a bank, do some shopping and buy another bus ticket, all in gloriously botched Spanish. 

By now, I am feeling thoroughly touristed out. I feel no inclination to go look at Inca or Aztec ruins or anything like that. I’ve got a couple of farms in Belize that I’m aiming at, and that’s where I’m going. Besides I’m starting to run out of money, so I can’t really afford to hang around pointlessly. 
The ironic thing is, that you can’t hitch hike for free here so I may as well get the bus. The guide book has been trying to convince me that Mexican buses are cheap. They might seem that way if you are used to going by plane or trains. It eventually costs me about 200 US dollars to get down to the Caribbean coast at Chetumal. It’s just as well that Mexican buses are the best I’ve ever been on anywhere ever. (A long time afterwards I discover that I have been riding the posh buses, and not the cheapo pleb buses.)
Mexico City doesn’t seem to be the smelly mad hell-hole that people say it is. Mexico City has supposedly the worst air pollution of any city in the world, but I find the air perfectly breathable and the populace generally pretty ordinary and pleasant. I manage to negotiate my way round the underground/overground metro train system to the southbound bus terminal. It strikes me as a fairly adequate and interesting way to see the city. 

I can’t believe how many Volkswagen Beetles there are here. Most are green and white taxis, there must be thousands (well definitely hundreds anyway). There’s loads of VW campers as well, all of them white. Here’s a travel photography competition for you: see how many VW’s you can get into one picture in Mexico City. It’s not allowed to be of a taxi rank. Form the metro overground, I think I managed six. It’s a bit like hunting gazelles in the Serengeti in a Land Rover. Oh all right then, it’s nothing like.
On, on, on through the night, stopping briefly at Villahermosa for a mid-night bus swap until finally arriving at Chetumal a whole day later. I have missed the 5.30 pm to Belize City by twenty minutes, which is a relief actually, I don’t think my sanity can cope with another bus ride quite so soon. I wander off into the dusk, nibbling spicy tacos from a vendor, do some food shopping at a nearby supermarket and then have to put up with all the shoppers looking at me outside the shop, like they’d never seen a gringo eating yoghurt before. 
I walk back over to the bus depot wondering how I am going to get through the night. I spot a backpacker wearing a please-don’t-shoot-me-I’m-not-American Canadian red maple badge and  a wonderful trilby. We get chatting; he’s called Shelby, comes from Winnipeg and is feeling lonely. A bit strange since he’s only been away from home for four days. We clump together with a Danish woman, Kristen who seems to wear a glum expression I think in order to scare blokes off. 

We sleep in a pile of rucksacks outside the depot on the grass. Morning comes… me and Shelby discover a shared enthusiasm for the English band XTC (which is very satisfying – I’ve never met anyone else that likes them even if they’ve heard of them). Kirsten and Shelby disappear off to Tikal, a ruiny thing in Guatemala and then I get the later bus to Belize City.