evasion

The morning as beautiful as the evening, with a brisk walk and fumbling through the wreckage of our water destroyed crap. I have a briefcase that has spent the last week submerged, all the cardboard boxes are dissolved, their contents strewn into a garbage pile. I pick Kim’s earrings and other jewelry from the exploded kitty chow, oatmeal, and kitchen ware. It is like an archeological dig, the treasure mingled with the offerings of food for the gods. In a micro moment of inspiration, I devise a method to tweak the trailer. Placing blocks found about here under the front frame, and putting a board up on the tongue, I drive the truck up the board and bend the tongue down, thereby giving more elevation to the trailer front. Works fairly well, get some bendage, then the blocks crush to powder, as they are made of a bad mix of limestone. Well, everything helps. Sorted, packed and loaded, we press on. I would like to stay another day, but there is the issue of the animals, who have only a 10 day vaccination pass. We are on day 14 or so, past the time limit, but have it from the quarantine people on the Belize border that an overage of time is OK. Out into the highway, and off into the deep unknown of Mexico.

We have perused the map extensively at this point. According to it there is a windy road through the coastal range that cuts off before Veracruz where a main boulevard travels west to mexico city. The 101 coastal route dives straight into the Veracruz city. Ok, dosen’t take brain surgery to figure what that’s gonna be like. A major local police fleecing roadblock as we enter the city, then likely one on the way out, possibly one in the middle. Who knows? Who wants to find out? This inland route may take a little longer. But the worst driving is better than the best fleecing. My nerves just can’t take it anyway, not to mention the rapidly dwindling money reserves. Of the three types of road blocks, two are actually benign. The military check points are heavily armed, often with machine gun nest emplacements. If they should decide to shoot you, there is little Bonnie and Clyde chance you’d ever get out of there in a hail of bullets looking anything different than swiss cheese. But they’re just about finding out who you are, and if you have a load of AK-47’s for the Zapata’s that will eventually shoot back at them. So no reason, if a body could in these situations, to think you’ll be intimidated into paying these kaki full uniform itchy finger troopers. The Federallies, are again benign, and equally sinister in appearance. Often they wear black ski masks and are always in full flak dress, weighted down with grenades and numerous murderous paraphernalia hanging off them. They must be roasting in all that garb, enough to take on a frontal assault at a moments notice. I worry that the irritation of this preparedness will have an effect on our encounters, but it never seems to. They are generally business like, and perceptive that we’re not on Mexico’s top ten list of desperadaos. Although I always feel like I am, and of course my imagined guilt crosses all the language barriers. The local police are a different story.

How the government of Mexico can be intent to shoot a pack of well meaning revolutionaries or some enterprising drug dealers who are holding the economy together, is beyond my cognition ... while letting these uniformed bandits run wild on the public streets, intimidating cold cash out of the innocent population. It is beyond disgraceful and criminal. On the main thoroughfare of every major town, they set up and wave not only the obvious easy mark like us, with all our crap and stupid Amerikan license plates, but also most others, big trucks and equipment, poor bastards just trying to get to work. Then they’re robbed. For what? What recourse do they have? None? Pig with gun .. hello … what the fuck are you going to do? Pay. That’s what. Sick as it is, this (literally) highway robbery is an accepted social condition. Why don’t the revolutionaries gun these fuckers down? I’d join that cause. Why doesn’t the Military or Federallies stop these bastards? So we learn a few things. Always there is some sort of infraction for which a “tickito” is in order. There is no paper exchanged for the tickito, except for the bucks you hand through the window. I’d like to ask one of these bastards for a receipt, which would never happen. So they usually want to see your drivers license, as if they are doing their job, but that is more like a hostage situation, ie: you don’t get it back until you pay. I’ve heard to never give them your passport, as they will ransom that for 500 or more. So then the invention of the crime. Dog in the front seat. No flags on the trailer. Driving through town. No sticker. Parking in the wrong place when pulled over. All crap. All payable instantaneously with out the hassle of paperwork. Often my annoyance overwhelms my reason and I commence to argue with these assholes in broken chopped Spanish. No, no tickkito. Todo Bueno. Rarely this has any effect, but in some cases negotiations are a bit fruitful. So I wouldn’t exactly call it reasoning with them, but more like if your bravado can overwhelm theirs, they’ll accept a lower price. The Transmigranties who move stolen cars down to Guatemala on a regular basis, have this all worked out. It helps to be able to argue in Spanish, and they claim they rarely have to pay more than 20 pesos, about enough for a beer, at any one of these fleece spots. They weigh this against a longer less direct route and calculate the graft as being less than the cost of gas. I sure wish I had that local ability. The smoothest ride would be a rental car, Mexican plates, nothing visible inside, a good line of Spanish bullshit, and for me, maybe some skin dye.

We veer off before Veracruz, getting on a boulevard/freeway thing heading toward Mexico City. Where the hell is the road south. No signs, nothing on the map in the way of connecting roads. These maps are made by elementary students. I have never seen such a cartographic catastrophe. I am used to the detail of US maps, every side road and loop delineated, maps made by people who care about detail. We realize we’re being sucked into the wrong direction and take a “returno” before things get too weird. Heading back toward Veracruz, we see a paved unmarked road off to the south, which we cut into. Through a village in a gully, then into the mountains, as an after though a bent over sign says #127. We have found it by luck, once again, the bypass road around Veracruz. This road is the windiest narrowest yet. Snaking through lush hills, climbing for miles and miles, the vegetation changing to more flowering trees with coffee bushes growing underneath. Every small casa seems to have a dozen coffee bushes on the edge of their place, small paradises of flowers and fruit trees. These mountain people seem to have nicer well kept places, the fruits of the land treating them better than the rats that infest the sides of the main highway. On and on we go, winding and winding up and down. In the deeper canyons are shrines cut into the hillside, often with some christian bent, but obviously there to revere the spirits of the gully, with offering of fruit lain before them. We skirt the edge of a city somewhere there in the middle, now at a few thousand feet elevation. Coffee warehouses are along the road, the traffic piles up ahead and behind at various times. Then a long and endless descent back down to the plain.

After 4 hours, we come to small town we think is near the Toll road. This toll road will take us across the bottom of Mexico, into the city of VillaHermosa, out the other side, north again to Escarcega, and then a straight shot east to Chetumal, the border town with Belize. We are anxious to find this and get on it. No, this was not the connecting village, but a pre village of a pre village. On we go, not sure if we are on the right road now. Finally we see a sign indicating Fortin is ahead, the place of connection. Weird name for here. What you would expect to find in the Midwest. Traffic is backed up behind us as we plod along. Suddenly, I see in my mirrors a police car has somehow muscled it’s way in behind us. Here we go again. In short order, the lights come on. Pull over. Don’t even try to get out, as that threatens them. As he gets to the window, I have my wallet out, making a show of getting out my license while flashing the 200 pesos in there. Some blither commences about how we need these triangular flags that stick out the sides of larger trucks. Infraction? Quanta Costa? (how much). Tres Cinto. 300 pesos. I try to hand him the 200, explaining it’s all we have. Some back and forth about that but he’s not budging from the 300. Ok. Kim would you get a hundred out of the glove box. She pops it open where a lot of loose bills are stuffed. Cover em up, I try to whisper, but as always, we are exasperated. She hands me one, which I add to the others and hand over. The pig steps back in surprise. Passo? I queri. Si, Si passo. But we must stop down at the next road block to get the triangle flags. Yeah right. On we go. Even though the traffic is thick, the cop vanishes with his car. How much did you give him, she asks, 200, what did you give him. A 500. What? That was way too much. You told me to grab some money, so I grabbed some. How the fuck was I supposed to know? We gave him 700 rather than 300. Well goddamnit, I just grabbed the money like you said to do. It’s OK. It’s Ok. We’re past him. That was about 75 Bucks US. Now look alive, we’re coming into this village. Ahead we can see a road block of about 5 police, a few cars, all drooling as they look up the road at us coming. We can see the toll road behind them, the elevated freeway whizzing with fast cars. This blockade is where we’re supposed to get the “flags”. Fucking fleeced and filleted is more like it. I’m sweating. What to do, what to do? “QUOTA” Kim shouts. What the fuck? TURN RIGHT! Quota Road! I am already partway past but crank the wheel maniacally. The lumbering load makes the turn, partly in the oncoming lane. We were a block away from the check point. Quota means toll down here, and although there was not a single other sign indicating any other city or direction, clever Kim picked up on this and saved our ass. Down under the freeway where we hit a massive tope in the darkness, seeming to rip the back of the truck and trailer right off. Recovering from that is the on ramp to the quota, also totally unmarked. We’re up and on it. Big clean 4 lane freeway. Two all to ourselves. I see the police down under the bridge, wondering where there victim got off to. And off we are. We’re outta here suckers. Now hundreds of miles of freeway, unblockaded (we think), a fast route to Belize now.