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It's Best to Swerve When Bull are Charging
Jon Coen
Every
piece of Mexican travel literature offered the same
advice. Carl Franz’s classic guidebook warned of
the dangers of nighttime navigating. Lonely Planet’s
Mexico simply stated, “try to avoid intercity driving
at night.” Our Mexican liability insurance handbook
was even more emphatic about traveling after sun down.
So, what do we do? Of course, we’re exploring impossible
back roads long after dusk! It’s a certain hubris
that comes with extended travel. Maybe we were feeling
a bit savvy, a little overconfident. After all, we had
already conquered Mexico’s two worst dangers: gastrointestinal
civil war and extortion. We’d spend the required,
harrowing day of physical torment, exorcising the bacterial
demons from within and had confronted a swindling gas-station
attendant who had shortchanged us. Eventually, we were
able to enjoy Mexico’s unforgettable roadside cuisine
again, and the clerk refunded us for his “mistake.”
So, why shouldn’t we be driving at night? We’d
just spent 10 days camping on the beach, guests of a
charming alleged Mexican “Mafioso” member,
in the heart of what those same travel publications
refer to as “bandito alley.” Simply driving
without sunlight was cake, or flan, in this case.
Starting in our coastal NJ town, in the heart of the
developed world, we’d piloted our giant, gray,
gas guzzling 6-cylinder Econoline beast across most
of the US, into the darkest of Mainland Mexico. My childhood
friends and I were well immersed in third world living,
where the line between M-16 toting “federales”
and M-16 toting “banditos,” was quite blurry.
All of us surfers, and childhood friends, Dan was quickly
learning all different phases of construction, and was
on the verge of becoming a contractor. Mike was in the
midst of an eleven-year college career. I was an aspiring
writer and a bartender, although I spent much more time
slinging suds than writing the great travel novel.
Just two days earlier, we’d cruised through Acapulco.
A man had approached our van as we sat at a light. He
wore a very official Mexican tourism polo shirt.
“What do you need, my friends,” the jolly
man asked us.
What did we need? Well, let’s see. Dan needed a
safety manual. He’d already torn his meniscus,
been grated across sharp rocks, and vomited for a day.
Mike needed a class in map skills. Didn’t they
offer that at one of the four undergrad schools he went
to? I needed-sniff, sniff- a bath. I had been sweating
for two weeks straight.
“Where are you from,” asked the tourism representative.
Something in his demeanor let on that he wasn’t
as official as he looked.
“You need a hotel? You need a restaurant?”
He could sense that we weren’t tourists who’d
just stepped of the plane.
“You need, …some smoke? I can get you some
girls.”
It always struck me that in beautiful places in Latin
America; the first person to greet the budget traveler
was selling weed or women. Anyone who knows more Spanish
than “gracias,” and “donde esta el bano?”
knows you never travel with dope. As far as the prostitution,
it broke my heart that so many travelers exploited one
of the third world’s most precious resources, it’s
young females.
“B.C.,”
Dan yelled from the driver’s seat.
I played along, “We’re from Vancouver Island.”
“…Aye,” I added.
We
had learned to lie in a friendly manner to those we
didn’t trust. We had also learned that the world
likes Canadians more than Americans.
Now, as the van bumped along the desolate, one-lane
dirt path, I was wishing someone was asking what we
needed. Acapulco wasn’t the place for filthy van
creatures, and we passed through the resort after a
meal at Subway (hey, we’re from New Jersey, subs
are a staple.) We’d turned off the highway somewhere
near the border of Guerrero and Oaxaca in search of
a surf break.
The surf guide was overtly vague. While 15-year-old
female bodies can be rented for cheap, surf spots are
cautiously guarded by the ex patriots who surf them.
The hope of enjoying a cool drink, in a comfortable
ranchero, near a promising wave at the end of this road
was fading. The sun had dropped from the sky over four
hours ago. Long after the heat of the day, rivers of
sweat ran down my back.
I was seated on the cooler. We had outfitted the van
in our last few, cold, days in New Jersey. It featured
two comfortable captains seats up front and a two-tiered
platform in the back. On the top tier was a bed, forward
of that was a carpeted platform. This seat was fairly
comfortable, but felt no breeze from the front windows.
Therefore, if you weren’t driving or navigating,
you were sitting on the cooler. As much of our driving
was done with the side sliding door wide open, the cooler
man also had the role of “goalie” to ensure
that cans of food, soccer balls and CD’s didn’t
fly out of the van.
As our mood downgraded from tired frustration to misery,
we pressed on, through the unlit wood, hopefully toward
the ocean. On the road ahead, appeared two figures.
What appeared to be a “campensino,” walking
his horse, turned out to be two bulls.
Any third world traveler becomes quite accustomed to
livestock in the road. Cattle and automobiles seem to
coexist on these roadways, although some of the carnage
we’d witnessed on the highway suggested that at
least one fence in Mexico needed fixing. There was something
different about these animals.
Our surroundings weren’t fields, but thick jungle.
These bulls weren’t wondering around, grazing.
It was clear that they were charging.
“They’re charging!” I screamed.
My companions would later ridicule my observance of
the obvious.
Both animals were striding at near full speed, toward
us, on the narrow path. Dan veered us into the embankment
to the right, but the ferocious charging animals would
not stray from their course.
Rarely, do we in the developed world consider the size
of these animals. A full-grown bull is bigger than a
dairy cow. These animals are used for manual labor and
are well strengthened from it. In our headlights, we
could make out the defined muscles of the pair.
As they neared, we braced ourselves for the head-on
collision. I would love to brag that we stared into
the wild eye of that bull, but we all flinched, ducking
with our eyes closed.
There was a horrendous crash. Our vehicle, our home,
shook, and suddenly, it was over. The charging mass
had collided with our rearview mirror, inches from Dan’s
arm. The bull careened off the side of the van, never
breaking stride. Bits of glass filled the cockpit area.
We wore shards of what was once our mirror. The metal
was bent and the van showed where it had absorbed the
crash.
There was silence. The engine cut off. The sound of
hooves disappeared. We released our breath. Expletives
filled the van, and laughter followed. We roared like
madmen for twenty minutes. What else could we do? Our
adventures found us lost in the unknown, facing the
most treacherous dangers of rural Mexico.
We had survived. Many perils would follow, but for now,
we were lost in the woods. We found plenty of surf on
that trip, but none at the end of that road. All we
found on that path was laughter.
Jon
Coen
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