This site has now been retired. I've moved to my new site Silverknife, where you'll find new blog posts and all my latest projects and photos. These pages will remain for at least a while, as I know some of you are still looking through the archives, but I'm reposting my travel journals and many other articles on the new site. Come and check it out.
I wake to find that my new media software has, for some inexplicable reason, wiped all my mp3s. My tunes are the things that keep my spirit up during long waits hitchiking, and I feel pretty lost without them. I spend the morning in the restaurant grabbing back a few albums and munching on more molletes, and finally head out about 1pm for the highway.
I decide to walk to a hitching spot in order to see more of the town, and I don't regret my decision. Away from the town centre and heading out to where Mexico Highway 85 leaves Victoria, the town is beautiful. It rises out of a valley on green slopes covered in trees. The road winds up through multiple loosely-connected settlements, and behind and below me I can see half the town with rolling hills and mesas in the background, misty in the distance.
It's hard work going uphill with my gear and I stop in several places just to sit and look over the view. It's not good to stop anywhere for long, as it's pretty much impossible to find a spot where giant ants don't immediately start trying to climb my legs.
Finally I follow a long curve of the highway to where it straightens out and widens, and start my day's hitching. The highway is pretty rough, the tarmac broken and potholed, and the verges are a jungle of bushes and trees, but there's a well-used path running along the side which is easy to follow - people actually walk here, and I pass many little groups of children and adults going to and fro with shopping bags and boxes.
As usual it's impossible to go anywhere there isn't food and commerce, and every couple of hundred yards there are groups of stalls and carts selling food, fresh fruit, drinks and snacks. Clouds of aromatic charcoal smoke from grills and ovens drift across the path. I stop in a given spot for maybe half an hour, and if I have no luck I move on, mainly to keep ahead of the midges. After an hour and a half I'm sweating and dehydrated and my water's running low - it really is incredibly hot out here - so I stop at a tiny cafeteria for a bottle of fizzy fruity something and a refill of my water bottle.
I sit outside on a plastic chair, slowly cooling to a comfortable temperature in the shade, exchanging a few words with the owner, and his son of two or three plays peek-a-boo with me under his dad's huge stetson hat. At the urging of his mum (who's been watching with amusement), he brings me a pear, and I give him a purple rabbit finger puppet I've been carrying in my pack since San Francisco with which he's very pleased.
Finally, after a few more stops out along the road, I'm picked up by Hugo in his remarkably battered station wagon. Hugo speaks no English but we're able to put together a conversation with a lot of pointing, mime (I'm becoming almost completely unselfconscious about performing intricate games of charades to get my point across, with sound effects when necessary - "Moooo....carne asada!") and referring (and adding) to the collection of words in my notebook.
Once we're out of town the scenery is just stunning. I'm expecting dry yellow landscapes, striking but harsh, but this is the sierra and the landscape is an emerald green I've rarely even seen at home in England - more like Ireland than anywhere. Mile after mile of beautiful rich vegetation, trees and big cacti stretch around us, the horizon puncuated with round hills and mesas themselves carpeted with thick greenery.
Hugo drops me in the tiny town of Zaragoza at a petrol station, and I step into the cool to rest up at a plastic table over another bottle of something fizzy. The humidity here is pretty high, and any movement starts the sweat pouring off me. When I walk back out to the highway, I'm picked up within twenty minutes.
I'm riding with Octavio and his wife Valentina, whose little son gazes at me wide-eyed for the whole of our short trip while he munches messily and with much apparent enjoyment on a fruit tart. Octavio speaks a little English. He lays tile for a living, good work in this country where two out of three buildings seem to have tiled floors throughout. Apparently marble is very cheap here, quarried in huge quantities near Monterrey, and that's mostly what he works with.
They drop me a few miles on at the turnoff to Ciudad Mante, their destination. It's totally empty out here, just miles of sierra on all sides, and the sun is approaching the horizon. The distant mesas are gathering thin layers of mist, glowing faintly in the rosy light of sundown. I begin to wonder if there are banditos out here, and whether anyone's going to pick up a lone stranger this far from civilisation.
Time stretches on, and it's definitely starting to get dark. Nobody who passes shows any intention of stopping. I decide to call it a night and walk toward Mante, however far that is. If worst comes to worst I can sleep out here, and hope the snake and scorpion populations won't pay me undue attention if I'm not moving. I knew I was going to have to sleep outdoors at some point, and I've known other people who've done it, so it can't be that dangerous.
As it turns out, I only get about half an hour down the road before a brand new SUV passes me, gets a little further down the road then stops and backs up next to me. Luis is pretty surprised to find me trying to walk out here, and urges me into his truck, pushing aside a black case and stethoscope to make space for my backpack in the back seat. There's a white coat hanging over the back of his seat; he's a doctor working for two of the hospitals in the area, and living in Mante.
Luis speaks a pretty good smattering of English - he used to work on a hunting ranch near the border, he explains, "And I listen...and repeat. Listen...and repeat." His brother in law speaks much better English, having travelled in America, and he announces "That is where I will take you now, to see him".
Ciudad Mante turns out to be a long way from the turnoff, maybe forty-five minutes driving. We work our way slowly down numerous winding, interlocking back roads, following a little rio in a concrete trench. Here and there alongside the road are small settlements, clustered shacks with braziers and bonfires glowing red in the gathering dark.
When we finally enter Mante it's a riotous, noisy town, more energetic than what I saw of Victoria. Music pumps out from all sides, from Mexican, US and European contemporary music to seventies and eighties pop (very popular here) and surprising bursts of progressive dance and drum and bass. One of the Axxo corner shops has speakers outside pounding out salsa music at a deafening level and beautiful girls in skintight leggings and shirts dancing, promoting Tecate beer.
We stop at a house on a dark side street and Luis disppears through a tall iron gate, but returns after a few minutes alone "He is still sleeping. We go to my house. You will meet my family."
Luis's house is at the end of another roughly-paved and narrow side-street, and is a clean, new-looking flat-roofed building painted a cheery peach colour, with decorative wrought-iron grids over the windows. Inside is a small living room packed with stuff - two big soft couches, a tall unit of carved wood holding a big TV and surround speakers, numerous craft items, a kids baseball launcher for batting practice (his son, two years old, is a baseball fanatic).
He shows me some of the items he's made himself - a wrought-iron frame stretched with dark brown, richly textured leather like a shield, cut through with cross shapes, a lamp base made from the inverted trunk and branches of a cactus, naturally swiss-cheesed with evenly-spaced holes, a beautiful carved wooden frame for a mirror. He also has a collection of blankets made by the local indian tribes, and immediately hands me two little place-mat sized blankets, cream woven with multi-coloured designs and tassles. "Here, to remember us by." I'm speechless.
Soon Luis's family returns and I'm introduced to his wife, Lupita, slim and quiet with long hair in a ponytail and a wide smile, his two-year-old son Luis Fernando who has a thin link gold bracelet and matching necklace and a very grown-up debonair air about him, and his eight-year-old daughter Valentina who is already putting on a lot of eye-rolling teenage attitude, particularly when urged to use her limited school English by her father.
Luis insists I must eat with them, and we go to a local taqueria to get food for dinner. He drives with little Luis sitting calmly on his lap, gazing around at the night streets and yelling out whenever he sees a cat. "Gatta! Una! Una una!" One of his toys, a rubber scorpion, is on the dashboard, and I find a rubber spider in my pack to accompany it which seems to bring him a lot of joy.
Dinner is wonderful, and my hosts want me to try everything - grilled onion, charcoal-broiled bisteck (beef steak), flame-grilled whole jalapenos (fortunately not too hot), a big bowl of frijoles charros (beans with little bits of bacon, chicken, peppers, lemon juice and garlic), the ubiquitous little tortillas, spicy green salsa and of course bright red hot sauce.
Over the meal we have a complicated three-way conversation with Luis translating between myself and Lupita whenever my Spanish is inadequate (which is still most of the time). I keep my notebook next to me and take a note whenever I find a new word, and Luis is endlessly patient with my enquiries. We talk about travel, then get onto philosophy and religion, and only wind down when Luis begins to look as though he's going to fall asleep on the table - he's been on long shifts and had about five hours of sleep in the last two days.
Lupita insists that I stay the night in their spare room, and Luis clears the bed of the children's toys, brings me a fan and bustles about worrying that I have everything I need until I flatout order him to go to bed - he's swaying on his feet. The generosity of these complete strangers brings me almost to tears. I lie on the bed with the window open, crickets chirping outside as the breeze slowly cools, reading until my head begins to drop onto my arms and I drift off.
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