It wasn’t the best of introductions to a new country, and first impressions have strong, and in the short term, lasting, signatures. I’ve never sat down and calculated the score of Latin borders that we’ve negotiated, but it’s fair to suggest that we’ve encountered the full gamut of the various selections on offer. Still, every one is in some way unique, throwing up a new permutation of officiousdom, new ways to to be confused and entertained, all in equal measure. Poor exchange rates, slow queues, hidden offices are the norm, but not what caught us on this occasion:
‘The Crossing Assistant’.
For our final few hundred kilometres through Mexico, we were being passed by convoys of wrecker autos towing totally wrecker autos, invariably with Texas or Californian plates. Then for a piece of variety we would be passed by a US icon: the ‘school bus’, filled not with students but with once-used lorry tyres. North American castoffs travelling south to a new incarnation. So when we start to approach the border it was no surprise to find kilometres long queues of these composite wrecks waiting at customs. We were watching them, and hadn’t fully noted three semi-official men waiting by the roadside. On hailing us, we reactively slowed down. Probably our first error, for we’d nibbled on the bait. The second error was to stop.
It only seemed polite, but the fishhook was already set. Semi-official, in that they had laminate neck tags that they kept flashing and alluded that they were customs officials. It didn’t take them long to start reeling us in. It’s only later that, in retrospect you conjure how you might have handled the situation better.
The one big difference between the rucksack-toting backpacker and the pannier-encumbered cyclist is this: they can haul their kit through the various offices at a border; we have at some point to abandon the bike. It’s a most exposed position to be in. For the ‘crossing assistancer’ has now followed us around the corner where we find a perfectly normal border control. Normal in the sense that there’s a barrier, rifle wielding police, toll both style cabins and obvious lines of procedure. It’s also quiet. A simple, normal, quiet border.
Our ‘shadows’ insist that we need to leave our bikes with him, ‘muy seguro’, whilst we visit the immigration office. By now we know that we’re in a ‘situation’, the only question is: “how much will it cost?” Still, we take it in turns to process and acquire an exit stamp, whilst the other watches the bikes, precisely as we would if the ‘shadow’ was not in lurking, in avaricious attendance.
Part one completed, we push into Guatemala.
Where the ‘shadow’ miraculously multiplies, apparently we will now need a ‘shadow’ each to fill out a very obvious tourist card, still implying that their knowledge will help us past immigration. We’re now in the position that we just have to go with the flow, for its become obvious that they’re in league with yet another shadow, that’s three now, the last of whom wishes to take our passport away to photocopy our entry stamp. This is to supposedly placate the dozing customs official, who’s roused by our ‘shadow’ with a shaken hand. I assume the purpose of which was to imply that his specialist contacts have eased us past a potential problem.
The whole scam was so obvious. The hook was set early, the line yanked tight, the sinker pulling us down, reeling in, reeling-in, reeling-in, all this whilst we pointlessly try to disentangle ourselves. Always knowing that there will be the gutting at the end.
Does a fish know it’s impending demise when it first nibbles on that baited hook, that it will end in a gutting.
An expensive gutting.
Dawdle-day Three: hunt out a cemetery that’s been designated a museum. Where the master mason’s professional title has been mis-translated in one brochure as: ‘pickpocket’.
Dawdle-day Four: Time to go off and do the unexpected. Theme parks are not our normal habitat. That oxymoronic idea, ‘a fun-ride’ – being asked to stand in a long hot queue only to be hurled around a roller-coaster, my burrito lunch threatening to make a second coming, just doesn’t appeal. Which is why we’re sitting on a bus going out of town to a ‘film-set’. Actually the film set used for so many ‘Westerns’: ‘ The Magnificent Seven’, ‘The Good The Bad and The Ugly’, ‘Comanche’, and a swath more of Hollywood’s gun slinging stereotypical celluloids. Only theme-park it is not, no helter-skelters, no roundabouts, no shooting-shies; what we do have is a performance spoof, a synopsis of the ‘ Wild West’, cowboy/Indian film. A tick list straight out of central casting. The black leather clad sheriff, the tight hair-bunn’d ‘madam’ and her bevy of ‘girls’, the bookish store keeper, the degenerate gold prospector, Butch and the Kid as the bank robbers. With the Apaches who get the best lines and the best dance routines. All are present.
Dawdle Day Six: Christmas Day, a day to sit in the parks and watch for all the new toys that have materialised overnight, to join the ‘paseo’ of extended families wandering the traffic-less streets and just relax. I’ve progressed onto my fourth book, which is more than can be claimed by the ‘b-b-bs’ which are still in El Capital.
Still there was a nagging doubt about their shape, a technicality that just wasn’t right. I just didn’t know what the solution was, that and euphoric optimism can out-trump rational thought. Of course everything will be alright once we start riding again.
That night we camped in a stunning location, Mexiquillo’s , ‘jardin de piedras’, a rock garden. One that at first sight had me wondering if it was man made. It’s not, but it has that remarkable feeling that this is the work of a highly talented landscape artist; creating the perfect ‘man-nature’ installation. A symmetry of rock placement, silent green water and knurled, contorted pine trees. Extract and import to the Chelsea Flower Show and it would carry off the gold award. And yet with the best of intentions I just couldn’t settle to appreciating it, with a mind that just wants to churn over the many permutation and scenarios of potential disasters. Eventually into a broken doze, I manage to wake myself; a faint ping… oh bugger, the spokes are snapping of their own accord now… it was probably just a pine needle.
Then out of adversity steps providence.
Update for those in the know: we’re in La Paz, Mexico. Ferry port city at the bottom of The Baja…. that long thin appendage that dangles from the bottom of the western USA.
It’s different, yet very familiar. It’s an hostel not a motel, you can tell the difference by the lack of anonymous numbered doors looking vacantly onto an auto cluttered parking lot, but by the sink full of dirty dishes left for the wash-fairy. We’ve found these places before, 
there’s little pretence to what is assumed to be the requirements of Western visitors, frequented by families, northern snow-birds, students, bikers and parsimonious cyclists. There’s even street food right outside serving all day. What’s not to be happy about?
Long story short….they were build some time ago, the work can at best be described as ‘inadequate’. But it wasn’t ‘broke’ so we didn’t ‘fix-it’. Our fault. Whilst not ‘bleeders’ in the A+E department, they have started to complain and have gone to see the GP, who’s agreed with our diagnosis, now they’re in ‘out-patients’, being attended to by a sympathetic repair shop. Which has enforced a lay over in what looks already like an interesting city. Any place that has street art, a whale museum, indigenous coffee, craft cerveza and cinnamon buns is worthy of investigation.
immediate and so profound.
Real food. For the first time in weeks, we had food that was made for us from the base ingredients, and not something that came frozen from a Sysco truck. Our joy on being presented with a ‘burro’ stuffed with grilled beef, cheese, beans and veggies, was immense. No, it wasn’t a burrito; this thing was made with a tortilla about 70 or 80 cm across, the finished product had about the same size and heft as 2 litre bottle of water, and served two. There may even have been happy noises as we demolished it. Yes, real food can be found in many places in both Scotland and the US; but for a hapless stranger out in the sticks, it can be hard to find. Here, it is everywhere. Yesterday, breakfast of eggs ad refried beans, cooked to order at a roadside stand.
Ripe fruit. Folk in the UK and the US are so accustomed to unripe fruit that it has become the norm. The taste of properly ripened fruit is incomparable.
The presence of cheap and cheerful hotels and motels in most settlements; faded glory or great intentions, these wee places are safe and welcoming.
It’s now that nature steps in and does that which it does best: puncturing Man’s infinite hubris. A wet winter high in the sierras bloats the river, which bursts out and cuts a new channel; not to the sea, but with the obvious aid of gravity, down into all that low lying land. That sump becomes a Sea, The Salton Sea.
All this occurred over a century ago. The Salton Sea is still here.
If the GulfShores were about bleached sand-strands and sprawling resort condominiums and the HillCountry about irresponsible free-wheeling and small cow-towns, then what comes next is an anticipated delight. The portents have been increasing; the beaver tail cactus hidden in the woodland understory, the grit-strewn naked limestone pavements, the juniper trees giving way to the mesquite scrub, the mosquitoes that are now absent. Those rolling hills have been pulled, stretched out, now they’re elongated gradual ascents, and dependent upon wind, warmth or mood can be a toil or a joy. Those flatland rivers that were either deep tannin mysteries or sluggish, grubby and glutinous with sediment, that then gave way to the sharp steel-green clarity of impatient HillCountry rivers are now intermittent aberrations, entirely dependent for the sustenance of thunderstorms. Dry gulches of flood-swept tideline grasses, grounded tree trunks, and occasional stranded, dehydrating puddles. Here today – gone tomorrow.
They really are the most improbable of birds, ones that should reside in the fossil record or at the withered tip of an evolutionary tree. A bird made for easy comical characterisation, lumbering on take-off, landing like a float-plane on touch down. And yet, as I sit on a sea wall, one can but marvel at their grace in flight. A wing of pelicans are travelling the shoreline, heading out to the fishing grounds, a single long line skene. They each rise and fall in easy succession, an aerial graph of the sea’s undulating contours, as if drawing energy out of the breaking waves. Gliding, the leading bird offers a few leisurely wing beats and the subsequent followers follow suit, like a flicked pulse travelling down a skipping rope.
Crest the rise… a flat stretch that gives time to inspect the cattle in the paddocks…. then a gentle falling away…. a long gentle drop down a straight line… set off… the speed picking up…. the novelty of effort-free travel…. faster still…. no I’m not going to brake…. no braking, only this could hurt… hurt a lot if it goes wrong…. hope there’s no gravel at the bottom… don’t want to brake… got to keep the momentum going, see how far up the other side I can get…. won’t brake… good, no gravel…. oh bugger, there’s an expansion joint… bang!…. reckon that made the panniers flap on their hinges…. still I didn’t brake and I got part way up the next rise. Try to remember that on the next drop. Trouble is, I seem to have a very short memory.