Living in Mexico

On today's date in 2015 I traveled to Mexico to visit my girlfriend, Carolina. She and I had been in a mostly long distance relationship for about six months, despite meeting one another at a time when neither of us could speak the other's language. We'd fallen in love after crossing paths in LAX and then carrying on a month's worth of Skype conversations with the goal of teaching each other our respective mother tongues. She'd visited me for a few weeks in August and we'd been eager to reunite ever since.

After spending Halloween with friends I took a redeye to Guadalajara and hired a taxi to bring me from the airport to the bus station. My conversation with the cabby was the first I'd ever had in Spanish with anyone other than Caro. I could only understand about half of what he said but enjoyed his thick accent and liberal use of the word orale, an untranslatable piece of Mexican slang. The best way I can describe this word to fellow English speakers is that it can basically mean whatever you want it to mean, depending on context and inflexion. Guadalajara is a massive and cosmopolitan city and I was grateful for the opportunity to travel through it without having to keep my eyes on the road. In many ways, it was exactly what I had expected. In others, it exceeded my hopes.

As I prepared to board the bus to Tepic, the city where Carolina lived, I attempted to politely decline to purchase any snacks or beverages from the vendor positioned by the door, and was confused by their insistence. Luckily, another employee of the bus company heard my accent and came to my aid, explaining in perfect English that the chips and water were complimentary. I asked how he had come to speak my language so well and he told me that he had grown up in San Francisco before choosing to return to the country of his parents. I wondered if deportation had been involved but it obviously would have been rude to ask.

The journey to Tepic took roughly four hours and most of my fellow passengers immediately lowered their blinds and fell asleep, which I later came to learn is typical of Mexican bus travel. I chose instead to look out the window and soak in the countryside. I was travelling between the western Mexican states of Jalisco and Nayarit, both of which are located in the northernmost part of the Tropic of Cancer. The region is blessed with an abundance of natural beauty, ranging from dense jungle to sparse clusters of agave cacti. We passed many quaint villages which to my eye were as prototypically Mexican as possibly could be, with stucco buildings and unpaved roads. I saw horses and cattle grazing on inclines which seemed too steep to accommodate them, and was utterly blown away by the beauty of the rolling hills as we wound through heavily forested mountain ranges, often perilously close to steep cliffs.

I was unable to connect to the phone number Caro had given me, so when I arrived in Tepic I took a taxi to her address. No one answered when I knocked on the door and I began to worry that I'd be unable to find her. Fortunately, she was a regular at a nearby sushi restaurant and a waiter who knew her approached me after seeing me knock, confirming that I was in the right place and suggesting that I wait for her at the bar. She came home shortly thereafter, to my great relief. I had told her the wrong arrival time for my bus, as I was unaware that Tepic is in a different time zone than Guadalajara.

That evening we dined at the sushi place. When Carolina had visited me in the summer she had been unimpressed with Canadian sushi, telling me that I simply had to try the Mexican version when I came to visit. To my great amusement, it turned out that her preferred sushi was not sushi at all, but essentially typical Mexican cuisine wrapped in sticky rice. I found it utterly disgusting, as ketchup and queso fresco are about as inauthentic as it gets and really do not pair well with seaweed and wasabi.

I had arrived on Día de Muertos, a holiday to commemorate and celebrate the dearly departed, so after dinner we headed to the city square to join in the festivities. It seemed as if the whole city had turned up, and we all moved in a throng of humanity down the avenue toward the cemetery. Vendors and entertainers lined the sides of the street and there was an electricity in the air. I sampled some of the carnival fare and found it utterly delicious, although I didn't really understand the jubilant tone of the holiday. At one point, Carolina pointed out a group of young men and told me they were mafiosos. When I asked how she knew, she simply replied that she's from Obregón. Lamentably, her hometown has long been one of the murder capitals of the world. After paying our respects in the graveyard (despite neither of us having any connection to anyone buried therein) we returned home.

We spent the next couple weeks exploring the city together and hiking in the beautiful mountains which surround the Valley of Nayar. During dinner on my third evening in the country we heard an exchange of gunfire in the distance and she jokingly exclaimed, "¡Bienvenido a México!" It was a little disturbing how casual she was about the violence and crime, but obviously there's really nothing else to do but to try and take it in stride.

I was struck by the police presence in the city and found their black masks rather unnerving, although Caro mocked them as resembling the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I eventually came to understand that the masks are not meant to intimidate, but rather to protect the identity of the officers and hopefully reduce the risk of their being targeted by the cartels. They carry assault rifles and ride around in pickup trucks with heavy machine guns mounted to the back, something which one never encounters in Canada. One day as I walked in the street I saw a little old lady approach one of them and ask for directions. The officer replied politely and respectfully and I realized that corruption aside, these police are very similar to any others. They simply deal with a level of criminality unimaginable to citizens of countries like mine and have been forced to adapt their tactics accordingly.

We had planned my visit to coincide with a school trip organized by Caro's anthropology class, and on the day of departure she and I arrived at the meeting place forty minutes late. I was sure we'd have missed the bus but it turned out that we were far from the last people to arrive. It took me a while to adjust to this cultural difference; when a Mexican itinerary says 2:30, it really means some time around 3:15. More or less.

We slept through most of the eight hour ride to León but the sun came up for the last few hours and revealed to us the central Mexican desert. I found it interesting in that it bore absolutely no resemblance to any part of my native land, aside from sharing the flatness of the prairies. After a quick siesta in our hotel room we traveled the city as tourists. It was neat that Caro had also never been to this part of her country before, so we were both experiencing it for the first time. León is a remarkable metropolis with a distinctive and rather regal sensibility.

The following morning we rose before the sun and travelled to a lake on the outskirts of the city to attend the International Balloon Festival. Hundreds of hot air balloonists from all over the world travel there each year to participate, and it was a unique and beautiful experience to watch them all take flight over the water at daybreak.

That afternoon we traveled to the city of Guanajuato to see their famous Museum of the Mummies. This rather strange tourist attraction contains the mummified victims of a nineteenth century cholera outbreak. We purchased candy in the shape of petrified humans before heading back to the hotel. The village itself is incredibly charming, all cobbled streets and terracotta shingles.

On the way back north our bus stopped for an afternoon in the village of San Miguel de Allende, an unbelievably beautiful UNESCO World Heritage Site. Caro and I strolled around for hours with her friends before returning to the city square for a bus tour as the sun went down. Midway through the tour, a moustachioed man in a leather jacket began banging on the door of the bus. When granted entry, he and the driver engaged in an increasing contentious verbal altercation as the other passengers and I stared at the floor. I couldn't understand a word of what was being said and was admittedly more than a little concerned that we were all about to be kidnapped or worse. Eventually the man stormed angrily off the bus and the tour continued.

A few minutes later, a police car with lights flashing cut off the bus and another pulled up behind us. The moustachioed man jumped out and again embarked onto the bus while yelling at the driver. Carolina said something to the two of them and everybody on the bus seemed to agree with whatever it was. We all began to file off the bus and the man pulled out a massive wad of bills, handing money to us as we left. At the time I had absolutely no idea what had happened but I later learned that the man was the owner of the tour company and the driver was his son, who had snuck the bus out in order to make extra money on the side. The owner was furious about this and refunded our money to us by way of apology.

After another week or two enjoying domestic life in Tepic, Caro and I took a bus to Puerto Vallarta, a small beachfront city located south of Tepic, to visit her friend Hugo. He worked as a tour guide and as such was the first person I'd encountered in a month with whom I was able to converse in English. He proved to be one of the coolest people I've ever met, super mellow and sincerely passionate about nature and conservation. His house was located midway up a jungle-covered mountain overlooking the city and the sea, and his third story bedroom had curtains and a wrought iron railing in lieu of walls. Truly one of the most magical places I've ever visited.

Carolina's best friend, Diana, was in Puerto Vallarta for a conference, so the four of us spent a few days together. The city is reminiscent of a seaside town in the south of Europe and I've never swam in warmer ocean water. Caro didn't know how to swim and nearly drowned me as I attempted to teach her, which was incredibly cute despite how red my eyes got. As we prepared to return from the beach I asked if it was okay for me to get on a bus with an open beer while soaking wet and shirtless, and my Mexican companions looked at me as if I had two heads. Of course it was, in Mexico you're free.

Before heading home, Caro and I took advantage of the fact that I'm a gringo (although some Mexicans would assert that I'm not, seeing as only Americans are gringos) and snuck onto the private beach of a fancy hotel by casually strolling through the lobby as I spoke to her in English and she pretended to understand. It was one of the most serene afternoons of my trip. My Spanish was finally improving to the point where I was able to communicate freely with the woman I loved without relying on the assistance of a computer or smartphone.

It occurs to me that I've thus far neglected to describe our living conditions in Tepic. We were staying in a second floor apartment which Carolina shared with her two roommates, an engaged couple named Stephanie and Aldo. The two of them lived in a separate domicile located on the other side of a small courtyard, although we all shared the living room, bathroom, and kitchen of the main apartment. Midway through my stay, Stephanie's mother dropped off her chihuahua, Taquito, so that we could look after him while she travelled. I despised that dog, he was an irritating little pest with absolutely no redeeming qualities.

Caro's apartment was distinct from Canadian ones in that the washer and dryer were located outdoors, and that in order to get hot water we had to start a little boiler to heat up the rainwater which collected in a basin on the roof. I once forgot to turn it off, causing all the water to evaporate. We had to shower at a neighbourhood hotel for a few days before a rainstorm replenished our supply. Also, as is common in Latin America, we could never flush toilet paper and instead had to discard it in a wastepaper basket next to the toilet. That is likely my least favourite thing about Mexico.

Many of my friends and family had warned me prior to my trip that I would likely experience intense gastrointestinal distress while south of the border (or, more accurately seeing as I'm from Canada, south of two borders) but I didn't have any issues at all and the food was utterly delicious everywhere we ate. Our favourite restaurant was a vegan spot popular among the college crowd. It was called the Burrito Piñata and the decor was designed to create the impression that one was indeed inside a piñata in the shape of a donkey. The gimmick was that there were no fixed prices, patrons could simply pay whatever they deemed the meal to have been worth. I was pretty carnivorous at the time but absolutely loved that place. It surely helped that Caro and I constantly smoked copious amounts of marijuana, which cost less than a dollar per gram. We had to travel to a pretty sketchy part of town to get it, literally crossing train tracks into a seedy neighbourhood with stray dogs and chickens running around dirt roads, but at that price it's hard to complain.

Even when we were eating at home, the food was incredible. Caro did all the cooking, and I did all the shopping and cleaning. Home cooked Mexican food is super tasty, especially when you have fresh tortillas and high quality produce. Nayarit is a largely agricultural state, so inexpensive and fresh vegetables are always readily available at corner stores. The grocers fill your bag for you as you tell them what you want, which proved to be an excellent way for me to learn the words for onion, avocado, and so on. As an aside, the English word for avocado greatly resembles the Spanish word for lawyer, so I once accidentally suggested to Caro that we get some lawyers and chop them up to eat with our quesadillas.

Getting around Tepic is remarkably easy. In addition to a comprehensive bus system, there is a network of vans know as combis which are incredibly inexpensive and are essentially a hybrid between a taxi and a bus. They pick people up like a bus and then follow a general route which they alter to accommodate their passengers. Additionally, taxis in Tepic are unbelievably cheap. Travelling just about anywhere costs 30 pesos, which is roughly three dollars. I assume there's some sort of subsidy in place from the municipal government because otherwise that doesn't even seem to be enough money to cover the gas. I became so acclimated to this pricing that I once haggled angrily with a cabby who attempted to charge me 100 pesos for an hour long ride, before later realizing that in Canada the price would have been at least 10 times higher. It was the principle that irked me more than anything, as he clearly was only gouging me like that because he'd heard my accent. Caro had implored me never to speak while we rode in a taxi so the driver wouldn't realize I was foreign.

I was in Mexico for two parades, one on Revolution Day and the other in anticipation of Christmas. Both were radically different from any parade I'd seen before, despite featuring the typical marching bands, acrobats, and floats. The final half hour of the Revolution Day parade was essentially a show of force by the local police, who rolled out all of their vehicles and weapons and marched proudly down the avenue. It culminated in a number of them joining together in a kind of human pyramid spread across the back of several trucks, which the crowd applauded politely. The Christmas parade was odd in that it was entirely sponsored by Coca-Cola, and just that one detail is enough for you to understand exactly what I mean.

The final major excursion of my visit was to Guadalajara. We arrived without having booked accommodations, and Caro literally went around asking random pedestrians if they knew of a good place for us to stay. Eventually a woman not only made a recommendation but also drove us across town to the hotel. Canadians have a reputation for being nice, but I think it's more accurate to say that we're meek and polite. Mexicans are the nicest people on Earth.

We spent our days sightseeing and our nights partying in bars and nightclubs. The highlights of the trip were an open double decker bus tour during which I became almost impossibly sunburned, and a horse drawn carriage ride around the historic city centre at sunset. We had planned to tour distilleries in the city of Tequila on our way home, but by that time were too exhausted. I love Guadalajara, its architecture is magnificent and it has the same ineffable vibrant qualities as all major cities I've visited in my life, along with the same amenities.

With my imminent departure looming, Carolina and I had to have a difficult discussion. She was pursuing her degree in psychology and I needed to find a career in Canada, but neither of us was enthusiastic about the prospect of going back to a long distance relationship. Living in different countries and time zones had proven extremely challenging for obvious reasons, especially when contrasted with the more traditional relationship we had now experienced. We decided it was better to be friends, which we still are to this day. She's one of my favourite people and I'll always cherish the seven weeks we spent together in her beloved Mexico.