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8th of October 2008 - Pinche Computadores, Rain on Tampico

I wake up on my first morning here to find that my iPod has gone further amok, and its 80Gb internal drive is corrupted and apparently unreadable. I've been using the iPod's drive as storage to supplement the EEE PCs tiny 4Gb drive, so it's holding pretty much all my data - a few videos which are eminently expendable, my music collection which I lost this week anyway and had only partially rebuilt, but more worryingly a huge collection of text files and random data I've accumulated over the years - basically my life in text files.

Anything from before I left home is still on my old PC, and safe at my parents' house, but pretty much anything since I departed is only on that disk - stupidly I don't have a backup, since I folded my box.net internet backup account when I got an Amazon S3 online drive, and technical problems have meant I haven't got round to uploading anything to that. The problem is not so much that I've lost really vital data, it's that I don't know what I've lost - I literally can't remember how much of that stuff is necessary, and how stuck I'll be without it. I do know that I had my last five blog entries on there, which I hadn't yet been able to upload, and rewriting them will be a horror.

I spend most of the next two days in increasing frustration trying different data recovery software to no avail - nothing is coming back off that drive, and every piece of repair software I try hangs when it tries to work on the disk. Finally I boot a Linux distribution off a memory stick and lo and behold, it's able to access the drive and pull off at least some of the files. I'm able to recover a fair chunk of my text files, all the potentially important stuff including my missing blog entries. Relief.

Other than that I have a pretty good time of my first few days in Tampico. I explore the local area and wander the streets, experiencing again that feeling of texture, of an environment and a people that resist (or at least are so far unaware of) the worst of homogenization and bland modern living.

The houses and shops are a hundred bright, cheerful shades, and mostly impeccably clean. It's achieved largely by hand, too - wherever I go I people working busily with brooms, and they clean the pavements and gutters outside their shops and houses too. The polished tiles of the bus station are scattered with damp sawdust before a team of fast-working staff come through with the brushes, which I suppose helps lift dirt and grime from the surface.

There's more of the now-familiar Mexican free enterprise - numerous little carts, hand-pushed or on bicycle bases, selling every manner of food and trinkets. Outside the bus station are two shoeshine stations which do a steady trade with the commuters and travellers. At one intersection I see a boy of maybe nine or ten, expertly spinning a set of fire poi (petrol-doused padded weights on light chains) to entertain the stopped traffic, then running up and down the rows of cars to grab tips before the lights change.

On Tuesday afternoon, over a torta con chicharrones (slow cooked pork rinds, the kind of tender, tasty offcut I used to love cooking myself), I make plans to go and find the beach in the morning. But by early evening dark storm clouds are gathering, and the forecast isn't looking good.

About nine o'clock I become aware of a new noise over the general din - a soft but rising roar overhead and all around. I look out of the window to see rain pouring down in sheets, near-solid walls of water falling, and at the same moment a brilliant flash of lightning turns the sky white. Looks like the beach is off.

I walk down the hall to the stairs and look out along the roofed courtyard which forms the middle of the Hotel Central. At the open far end I can see the rain sluicing down through the light of the streetlamps. Above, it's hammering on the corrugated plastic roof. Rivers of water are pouring down the walls onto the darkened tile below.

Instantly ten years old again I run up the stairs in my sandals, nearly slipping on a wet patch where the rain is coming in through chickenwire-patched windows above. I find a little lounge area looking out over the top of the stairs to the courtyard, with wicker couches and a coffee table, deserted and in darkness between the electric lights in the adjacent hallways. The far wall is a decorative cement gridwork beyond which the storm rages. The drumming noise from overhead is hypnotic, the rolls of thunder echoing in across the courtyard.

Suddenly I see something skim up the wall from the courtyard, pause for an instant then run along the side of the hallway and disappear behind a chair. I chase after it and move the chair to find a gecko, pale pink with orange eyes, which freezes for an instant before vanishing into thin air.

I sit on the landing for over an hour, just listening to the rain overhead, watching the lightning flashes, hearing the gurgle and splash of water pouring down all around, watching puddles slowly spread across the twilit tiles. At some point I move downstairs and watch from the window at the end of my hallway - the roads have become rivers, and wrist-thick spouts of water are coming down from every rooftop. The air slowly cools from steam-room Mexican heat to freshness, and when I finally sleep, it's deep and long.

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