AND THAT'S: when it all started to turn around.
Up out of San Blas, still scratching at our thousands of mosquito bites, bathing ourselves in the anti-itch cream we'd bought at the chemist and which did precisely nothing to help us, we headed back to Tepic.
We'd passed through Tepic twice before and had come to think of it as little more than an overgrown bus station, but there we found blessed respite from the humidity and mosquitos that had plagued us for the past several weeks. For the first time in a long time we could sit outside for hours without coming away looking like we were slowly melting and smelling like we'd been bathing in someone's garbage. Instead we came away with energy and mojo restored, and the next day we decided to attempt to reach Ceboruco Volcano, an active volcano that lay a few hours southeast.
This was the first time since the Sierra San Pedro Martir National Park that we'd done anything even slightly difficult - we couldn't find anybody, anywhere, who knew how to get to the volcano without a car - but after a few buses, a hike and a friendly taxi driver, it worked. And even though the volcano wasn't the most spectacular thing in the world (the endless lava fields, 8-bit and charcoal black, notwithstanding) the entire day had a great feel about it, the glow of starting over again as we made our way through the tiny, beautiful towns and blue agave fields that encircle Ceboruco.
That happened to be the day we were due to head north, on our way toward a farm in the wilderness of Chihuahua state on which we'd organized to work for a few weeks. It was a couple of days away by bus and our first stop was Ciudad Obregon in Sonora state, many miles north. Whatever good vibes we'd managed to manufacture over the course of the day dissipated fairly quickly in the face of a fifteen-hour bus ride that stopped with swearing-under-your-breath regularity for toilet breaks and security checkpoints that involved us all being herded off the bus to wait in the darkness for half an hour, even at 4 o'clock in the morning.
Heading north from Tepic to Ciudad Obregon - the latter of which is still several hours drive from the US border - we were stopped no less than a dozen times for drug searches. On the way from Sonora to Chihuahua, we were stopped several times more, this time at checkpoints that look like something from a middle eastern war zone, all sandbags and rifle towers and twitchy-looking young men holding ridiculous amounts of firepower against their chests. A nervewracking thing, especially when there is as little trust toward police and military as there is in Mexico.
But away from all that Chihuahua was absolutely enthralling. The countryside was as magnificent as we've come across, and we sat in a daze watching it all go past, hour after hour on the bus out of Ciudad Obregon, and in our idiotic stupor we even watched the bus trundle through the town we were supposed to be farming in and only realized our mistake an hour later, many miles away. But even that was okay - everything around us was beautiful, and we spent a while trying and failing to hitchhike under a soft sunshower that blew by overhead, before throwing our stuff into a nearby hotel and sitting on the stairs with a beer, under the stars, looking up and imagining our next few weeks on the farm, wondering whether we'd get through it, both of us excited and hopeful and looking forward to the days that lay ahead.
Of course that entire idea would collapse in a shambolic heap very quickly. But that's for next episode.
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Mexico's Drug Warby TheVivianaHurtado1,719 views
Hahaha. Very interesting. My family is actually from Obregon (well, a small village outside Obregon called Cocorit) but I found you're description of the city painfully truthful. It's pretty boring and the sea of concrete there isn't that great to look at. Anyways I love Mexico and I'm planning several trips there this year. Thanks for posting
patos1984 9 months ago