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've decided to stay one more night in Tampico as I'm still feeling a bit weak and sickly, and after a fine breakfast of torta con pollo (with tender marinated chicken) I go to the bus station to take out funds for my rent...and my request is rejected. Insufficient funds. Deja vu.
I really can't understand it this time. I checked my balance before I left San Francisco, I've been keeping obsessive track of my spending, I should have another 250 pounds in there, enough to keep me going until the start of November at my current rate of spending.
I go back to the hotel and check my balance online - bottomed out. Crap. I check my transactions, and slowly the cause of my lack of funds becomes apparent. I checked the exchange rate from pounds to dollars when I first came into the States, and foolishly I didn't think to see if it had changed since then.
It turns out that the pound has been steadily falling against the dollar, and where a pound fetched just under two dollars last year, now it's worth only 1.6. This part of my funds has been coming from the residual balance in my UK account and some web design work I did recently. The difference in exchange rates, which I've then factored into my calculations of pounds to pesos, has left me considerably shorter on money than I thought.
My first reaction, of course, is panic. But that quickly turns into rapid planning and some comfort. I still have my emergency 100 dollar bill zipped into the hidden pocket in my rucksack lid. That'll keep me going for a good few days. All this means is that I'm going to have to leave for Yucatan immediately instead of tomorrow, and live very rough until (if) I can find work somewhere.
I quickly pack up my stuff, sketch a couple of maps of the major roads I need to hit, and walk out across the city towards highway 180, southwest to Cancun. The day is hot and humid but still threatening more rain, and I have to pause at intervals just to let some of the sweat evaporate. I work my way down parallel to the beach it doesn't look like I'll get round to seeing after all, and then out on avenue Alvaro Oberson, which runs out of the main part of the city.
I pass by the familiar franchises and chain stores, then come to an area of small blockhouses, separated from the road by a kind of moat, an angled concrete trench about twenty feet deep. Some houses are connected to the road by ramps, some are raised and accessed by a suspended walkway. They look pretty rundown and dilapidated, but the neighbourhoods are busy with women hanging out laundry, kids playing football in the still-muddy roads.
Finally I come along under a tall road bridge which, I realise when I see that it rises into the heavens to my left, is actually the underside of the Puente Tampico, the Tampico Bridge which carries a serious amount of traffic over the Panuco river on the main route in and out of this busy city.
I take a break before crossing, and I'm glad I do. The bridge is almost a mile long, and pedestrian traffic is via a very narrow (maybe three-foot-wide) path at the side, separated from the road by a shin-high concrete wall. The day is still hazy and there's no direct sunlight, but I can still feel the rays steadily burning my arms and neck. No space to stop and get out my sunscreen, though, I just have to keep trudging.
The view is worth it, though. I rise steadily above the shanty houses packed between emerald stretches of trees, seeing the tiny figures and cars milling around. Some streets are still like rivers after the rain - the backroads are pretty much just dirt, with little drainage. Then I'm above the river bank, still slowly climbing the curve of the bridge, with pocito hombres dotted along the concrete wharf below me with their fishing rods.
The river itself is huge, slow and thickly brown like hot chocolate, occasional little boats or drifting pieces of debris rolling past on the waves. To my left I can see through the hazy air to where it opens out into the bay.
I pass under the huge suspension cables of the bridge, past the uprights with their tiny metal grid inspection platforms which give me a wave of vertigo, and descend the other side. The opposite bank of the river is much less developed, mostly yards of rusted metal and little clusters of houses amid a sea of trees.
With relief I descend a worn flight of stone steps on the far side, passing through a cloud of huge dragonflies with black and white striped wings so broad I mistake them for butterflies at first. I sit on a damp grassy bank to rest, spray on sunscreen and guzzle water before coming round under the span and up the bank on the other side, next to the outgoing lane of traffic on the motorway. I perch myself on the crash barrier with my backpack at my feet and start hitching again.
It takes about an hour to get my first ride. Four teenage girls crammed into the cab of a four-by-four give me an exhilarating ride of about five miles out to Tampico Alta. I'm really going to regret it when I get back to lands where riding in the back of a truck isn't allowed. They drop me by the main tourist area with a warning that I'm looking red. I check in the glass of a shop. Yep, I'm looking like a lobster. No pain yet, that'll come later. For now I walk down the road to the edge of the settlement and start hitching again.
This time I'm only there ten minutes before another truck pulls up, with three guys in the cab. Fernando is the youngest-looking, clean-shaven with shaggy hair and a long chinese-looking ponytail under an engineer's cap, and speaks a little English. Rafael has the standard scrubby Mexican moustache and a baseball cap, and Giorgio is big and quiet and a little aloof.
The back seat is loaded with packages, toolbags and bike frames, so I sling my backpack into the bed and vault straight up there, and we move off. Giorgio drives with speed and no evidence of fear, and it's quite an adrenaline rush as we weave between tanker trucks and buses, horns honking, the trees rushing by on either side. After a few nervewracking bounces over potholes I sit down in the bed of the truck instead of perching on the tailgate.
A few miles on we pull in beside a side road, and I assume this is their turnoff and I'm on my own again, but apparently they've mistaken my manic grin for a rictus of terror and they're clearing the back seat for me. I'm rather disappointed, but it is cooler inside and I appreciate the soft seat. It's nice to have a bit of conversation too.
We travel on south through the long afternoon towards Poza Rica, where, as it turns out, the guys will be turning off for their destination in Puebla. We're into lush, tropical country now, almost jungle, the hills we climb and wind around thickly forested with huge palms, the calling of birds all around us.
The truck has seen a few miles, and begins to play up after a couple of hours - when we're stopped in traffic it sputters, and when the engine's turned off it clatters worryingly before starting. The smell of hot metal or a serious short drifts back to us at times. We stop a couple of times for the guys to fiddle with it - Fernando is a mechanic of some degree of experience, travelling with his tools, but seems unable to identify the problem.
We do make it to the edge of Poza Rica by dark, but when we pull over for another inspection it's clear there's a serious problem, and this time the engine won't start at all. With Rafael in the driving seat me, Giorgio and Fernando manage to heave it back up the slope onto the road and in the middle of busy traffic, pouring sweat and shouting curses in two languages, get it bump-started on the third try. It's a frantic sprint to get back on board - Giorgio makes the passenger door, Fernando and I get hold of the tailgate and scramble into the bed, a bus honking its horn at deafening volume behind us, for a nervous half-mile drive through traffic before it cuts out again and we have to repeat the procedure.
We roll stutteringly along the road through the edge of Poza Rica, looking for a mechanic who's still open. As with all the larger Mexican towns I've passed through there are a plethora of workshops - on the average Mexican wage few people can afford to get a new vehicle every couple of years, you just have to keep what you have working as long as possible - but we pass a dozen before we find a small, muddy yard with the worklights still lit and two pairs of boots protruding from under a lorry.
Carlos is skinny, with a grey moustache and a mass of short wiry greying curls beneath a pair of gold-rimmed glasses, and currently covered in drying mud. He looks over the motor, tutting through his teeth when he pauses in a continuous flow of chatter, then tells the guys what seems to be bad news before seguing into a story with a lot of arm-waving and graphic mime. The only word I can make out is "pinche" repeated at regular intervals, but that doesn't tell you anything except that Mexican guys are having a conversation.
Finally the owner of the yard, Signor Balderas, arrives. He's got a pristine white t-shirt tucked into his pressed blue jeans, clean-shaven and slow-speaking with an air of great gravity about him. He looks over the engine too, tut-tuts, and tells the guys he can fix it in the morning - they'll have to stay here tonight.
Everybody introduces themselves, and when Carlos and Balderas find out I'm English they're immediately interested. Fernando, Giorgio and Rafael are left standing against the truck with increasing expressions of boredom while the mechanics quiz me about where I'm from, my family, and how much Spanish I've learned. There are tests. I have to recite the basic verbs (of which I still know only a few), the numbers, answer questions. By now I'm swaying with exhaustion and my head's throbbing, but Balderas insists I repeat back the days of the week with perfect pronunciation before he gives me a big grin, slaps me on the shoulder and says "Very good! You learn fast." I seem to have passed.
He goes back to chatting with the guys, and Carlos takes me aside. "Did you eat? You want tamal?" he takes me to the low building which is the yard office, where the remains of his dinner sits in the white light of a loose mercury strip, swinging slightly in the cool wind, and gives me a tamal still wrapped in its palm leaf. He puts his arm round my shoulders; "I am your friend. You call me Charlie. Amigo, yes? Anything you want, you tell me." He gives me a big grin, showing two shining gold teeth to match his glasses.
We talk about my journey while he clears out the cab of his own truck, an ancient and battered machine parked to one side of the yard under the trees. "You sleep here tonight. Now, you still hungry?" British to the last, I tell him I'm fine, really, the tamal was great. Actually I can't tell if I'm hungry any more, I haven't eaten since about seven this morning and it's eleven now. He narrows his eyes with concern. "Is not enough! You will get sick. Come. You will have tacos."
He takes me along the road to the corner, where a little taqueria is still open and doing a steady trade. We take seats at a plastic picnic table and he orders me a plate of five little tacos, full of coriander and marinated pork fresh off the griddle. We talk about our families, and he tells me about his daughter with a father's pride "She is nineteen. Very beautiful." I ask whether he keeps a close eye on her boyfriends. "Not the eye, no"; he mimes pulling out a gun and pointing it with an intimidating expression, then dissolves into chuckles.
When I get back Balderas has gone home and the guys are lounging in their truck. Carlos goes back to work under the lorry with his assistant, a tall skinny guy with short-cropped hair and a permanent slightly bewildered expression, and I climb into the cab of his truck and stretch out on the seats.
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