We weren’t ready to move yesterday so I called for a rest day and Layne agreed. I still find it difficult to believe we can simply stop moving without consequences. We are answerable to no one except each other. Imagine deciding to not leave your home today, a whim you choose to indulge when you wake up. Absolutely no one expects anything from us. We are totally free of consequences for any action we take. It’s extraordinary in a world as regulated and demanding as the one we live in. This life is utterly brilliant.
I can paint myself an idiot and no one cares. My reputation means nothing. I have no job, I am answerable to no one. I can make a face on the street as I chew a handful of grasshoppers and I am not late for anything anywhere. No one expects me to show up or decide anything for them. My wife laughs as she makes the photograph and we are two totally anonymous shadows on a street in the middle of nowhere. In the middle of everywhere.
They were emptying the pool of some of the water yesterday to do some sort of cleaning and one worker was holding a hose spraying pool water on the lawn. Could I wash the van? He smiled.
I asked Jim, another newly arrived camp resident, if he wanted to have a go. He shook his head. He thinks a dirty van will protect him from bandits. Huh? It turns out he believes he will look less like a target if his van looks shoddy. Really? Oh yes he nodded his head firmly. Okay then I said puzzling his theory out in my head. I’m going to find twenty pesos ($1) for the guy with the hose. Jim the Scotsman got frantic saying I shouldn’t give him anything. Mine was the van of a rich man ripe for robbery. I even hosed the underside to wash off any accumulated crap. I still thank Wayne in my head for insisting I get GANNET2 undercoated to help slow rust. We did that in Miami and I’d not tell Jim it cost five hundred bucks lest he have a heart attack.
Jim the European it turns out is no more free of irrational fears than any of the US travelers he mocks. On travel forums about Mexico I read of people who want to visit Mexico but fear cartels, mysterious bogeymen who lurk south of the Wall waiting to pounce on innocents from the US as they cross into lawless fearsome Mexico. Jim believes Mexicans view him as a target, an ATM to be plucked and a clean vehicle tells bandits he has cash on board.
Thirty years ago I’d have torn strips off him for being an idiot. Luckily I am older and if not wiser then more experienced so I say nothing and keep my own counsel. As an example of trying to blend in he has no clue. He tells Mexicans how to live and like the Lone Ranger he rights wrongs and overturns injustice as he travels through foreign lands. I find it exhausting to imagine dealing with all the drama.
One example: a Swiss guy on a tent camping tour, parked his car and set up camp next to the carpenter’s shop in a campground as Him told the story. The carpenter apparently felt hemmed in and that morning made a lot of noise, as only carpenters can, so much so the hammering drove the Swiss guy to move to another spot. The hammering stopped. At this point Jim proudly told me he gave the carpenter a dressing down telling him he is a poor ambassador for his country. I was curling up with embarrassment. Not your business I wanted to scream. I am a grown up so I said nothing. Thank god I wasn’t there to witness the dressing down!
In speaking of our plans to travel South America Jim fell into the usual trap not of celebrating our hopes but of trying to crush them and I admit I was disappointed. Ruta 40 will tear your van up. Oh I said when I was waiting for 911 calls I would travel the world on Google street view. The phone signal has improved here even as WiFi has vanished and I pulled up street views of the famous trans-Patagonia Highway - now neatly paved. Oh he said, changing tack, the winds down there will render you mad. Low hanging wires will catch in your van. On and on. I dream of Patagonia’s wide open spaces, the cowboys, the hazy mountains in the distance, the little villages on the way…Jim says we’re going to wreck our nice van. Sigh. The locals wear masks but the gringa doesn’t. She belongs to the Jim School of Mexican Travel.
I am used to people tearing me up for wanting to follow my own dreams and I even got a little of that on this page. But to get it from a fellow traveler was rather annoying. Especially as he thinks very little good of Americans. He mocked us for exercising, the self deprecating mocking where he says he himself is too dissolute to be disciplined enough for exercise. I showed him photos of the Catastrophe, me in a wheelchair, the motorcycle pretzeled on Highway One and Trauma Star flying me to Miami. He shut up. Layne has a new shoulder I said. The doctors said she’d never raise her arm that high but she can thanks to diligent exercise. Nothing more was said. But I ask myself why need I explain?
Jim has run out of van life and he is pining for the familiar. He masks it by saying how cheap Mexico is and he wonders why there is so much poverty. I mentioned the export of wealth from South America, the looting by Europeans over centuries and he looked blank. He spoke of India as his next country and I recoiled. Indians he said are friendly for friendship’s sake, not like Mexicans who are friendly for money. Well, I thought to myself aren’t you in for a shock. I told him I had been to India when I was twelve and didn’t much like it. He had no interest in my experiences. Layne remarked mildly later that he doesn’t really understand how much we have traveled. Oddly enough there are Indians in the campground walking each evening after a day of sober working in the Volkswagen factory in Cholula. They and their families live in rental apartments at Las Americas campground. They won’t speak English to us but speak only Spanish to create a barrier. I wonder why, but Jim doesn’t. Especially I wonder when I watch them smile and wave to Layne. She likes Indian food and it must show. “They’re very friendly,” she said. I fear I was accidentally tarred by Jim’s brush of social indifference. I sat too close to him.
We retired to watch a movie in our newly cleaned van, the bandit’s target. Rusty sprawled in the sun at ease ignoring the occasional fire crackers bursting over the city. We lay on our bed with the iPad Blu- Tacked overhead in an eccentric viewing room of our own design.
I am glad we are nomads for there are no consequences to an encounter with loneliness, it’s not like moving in to a grump next door; here today, gone tomorrow. I have no answers to the poverty or unhappiness I meet along the way but I don’t fool myself that I count for more than I do and yet I do try to be respectful in my own small way of the customs I meet along the way even if they make no sense to me. Jim interferes and tells people how to manage their lives. Rusty took a dump on the grounds yesterday and a voice started remonstrating which wasn’t real smart, dogs shut when they have to just like us. Yelling don’t stop them. I called out in Spanish to anonymous and said (rather snarkily it must be said) “I’m here, a gringo with a plastic bag. All is well.” The voice said nothing as I picked up Rusty’s eggs. No anonymous voice called out thank you but I didn’t make an issue of it. I could have pointed out the owner’s huge dogs wander free with no plastic bag in attendance but that’s life in a van. You have to work twice as hard as sensible people of substance in homes to be half as good as them. It’s a choice I make happily. Jim seems to carry resentment and it’s a shame he berated locals as he goes. Perhaps it is travel exhaustion.
I have known for some time that dogs aren’t allowed in National Parks in Chile and Argentina and that came up in conversation. “Oh,” Jim said and my heart sank in anticipation. “You can ignore that. There aren’t any guards”. I said nothing but I just don’t see the value in travel as an outlaw. He told a story of being told to leash his dog in a US National Park and the stupidity of the rule. Of mocking a neighbor who crossed the street with her dog to avoid his dog running free and his pursuit of her to annoy her when he was staying with a friend in the US. I don’t have that certainty that my way is best. My way works for me but I have no desire to run others’ nose in it.
I have my gringo moments! I shout at the moon asking myself why there are so many topes in Mexico and why do few trash cans when signs litter the countryside telling people not to dump trash. Mexico is chaotic Jim says, but it works and he shakes his head in wonder. It only works as long as you obey the hidden rules first among them to mind your business and let others mind theirs. It’s a tough lesson to learn but he is ten years younger than me and time is in his side. I hope he uses it wisely.
I have learned patience and resilience and avoidance of drama from Rusty. I ask myself: what would Rusty do? And always I seek the path of least drama. I guess I have matured.
