a vacation within a vacation

SAN BLAS, MEXICO
March 21st, 2004

That's right, relaxing in Mazatlán was just getting to be too much for me, so now I'm relaxing in San Blas instead.

San Blas is a sweet laidback little town a few hundred kilometres south of Mazatlán (northwest of Guadalajara), to which I came primarily to check out the jungle boat tours....but it's also probably good that I got out of Mazatlán before I murdered the dog across the street.

Took a bus (two, actually) yesterday. There's no direct route, so I had to take a bus past here to Tepíc, and then backtrack north again on another bus. Nine hours. To a town two hundred and ninety kilometres away. Yeah. You do the math.

Intercity buses here are quite the experience. (As are Mazatlán city buses - I'm three for three getting lost on those - but that's another story.) And the experience seems to be mostly about...eating. The bus stops anywhere people are selling anything edible - which is, well, everywhere - and vendors get on the bus and walk up and down the aisle selling grilled corn, tamales, cookies, cakes, raw veggies to snack on, whatever. We also stopped at a roadside rest stop for a meal. The driver said we were stopping for half an hour but it was almost an hour before we got going again. Thank God I took the comfy air conditioned bus - because then.....

Traffic was backed up, and we stopped for about half an hour and waited and wondered what was going on. Finally our young upstart bus driver (he actually looked like you incognito, brother-in-law Sam...similar features but with these crazy gigantic sideburns) decided he'd waited long enough, and passed the convoy of backed up vehicles. driving on the wrong side of a skinny hillside road, squeezing up close to the rocks to let oncoming traffic pass, other drivers pointing at us, shaking their fists, shouting....

I counted sixty pulled-over cars until we got to the cop at the front of the line....who gave our driver a good dressing down and, after another quarter hour or so, waved us through. Two tractor trailers had collided coming around a corner. The cab of the one going in our direction was pretty banged up on the driver's side....and the whole truck looked like it had come dangerously close to getting knocked clean off the hillside. Of course, our driver then sped like a maniac for the next little while to make up time, which was especially disconcerting considering the proliferation of roadside headstones for all the people who've been killed along that way.

All in all a very eventful trip...with an interesting side effect; I got off that seven-hour bus ride understanding Spanish about a million times better. Just being surrounded by locals for that long, everything started to get clearer. At first I thought it was just that they were getting tired and therefore slowing down - and that's partly true, but it seems to be still working! Today I was an absolute champion at Spanish - until my lack of sleep last night caught up with me and I became a moron.

I'm staying in this adorable cheap little hotel a block away from everything, in the cutest, most bizarrely multicoloured room. Very comfortable....I think I was only awake all night because of the imaginary bugs. This town is famous for its supposed epidemic of jejenes, a type of vicious biting sand fly that is so small you can't even see it. Jejenes are one link down the local food chain from shrimp, but apparently the shrimp have been so horribly overfished (overshrimped?) here that nothing is eating the jejenes. I'd been warned, I'd read, I'd read some more....and I haven't been bitten. Even once. Either these flies have gotten way more publicity than they deserve....or I'm just not very tasty. (Also I've been using this repellent that I picked up in Mazatlán which smells absolutely heavenly.) Just the idea of these things, though, was enough to make me feel like I was getting bitten all the time, and I tossed and turned most of the night. Did learn that the word for "bugs" here is "bichos", which I just love because it sounds so much like "bitches", and that seems awfully fitting...as in, "Dem bitches is really bad today." "Dem bitches done bit me all over."

The boat ride upriver into the jungle was quite beautiful. And I did get to see some real live crocodiles, though when I went swimming at the end, not even one attacked me. More evidence that I'm not very tasty?

Back to Mazatlán tomorrow - hopefully not nine hours this time. Fly to Mexico City on Tuesday and then heading back to y'all bitches on Wednesday.

Oh - here's a thought:

On the bus, there was an inflight movie. That's not important. But before the main feature was this ad from the Mexican board of tourism that was like a cheesy music video showing things to see all over the country - with an accompanying cheesy song (with English subtitles) telling you where to go, so to speak. And the refrain was this:

This is how Mexico feels,
This is how Mexico feels,
Like lips on your skin. (oh my!)
This is how Mexico enfolds you,
This is how Mexico tastes,
This is how you wear Mexico on your skin.

(Why Mexico, I never knew you cared!) The "oh my" is mine. But the rest of the lyrics are for real. And I'm thinking that staid old Canada could take a cue here - what do you think?

This is how Canada feels,
Like somebody sucking you off
Behind the arena.
Like a cold beer and a hard cock;
This is how Canada tastes.

Okay, so maybe I've been alone with the crocodiles too long. But think about it.

Adios por ahora, my bunnies,

Lisa