Baja, Mexico

I crossed over comfortably into Mexico. Or so I thought. At the border I was informed that i would have to pay $20 for a visa. Now I don't remember paying last time I was over, but this being Tijuana I let it slide. They had had a recent spurt of gun crime victims and beheadings with relations to the cartels and I ahd been warned by Enrique. He said if you are in a club do not look at any good looking girls on tables with expensive drinks or you will disappear. He also told me not to go around asking fo 40 tabs of acid, but that I figured was a less likely scenario than the former. I waited outside the McDonalds as Marissa had told me to do and got chatting with a taxi driver. He told me business was slow now that so many people had been decapitated. That filled me with confidence. In fact everyone I met in Tijuana was surprised I was there because of the violence. Marissa eventually got there half an hour late and we headed back to hers. Her place was immense and I had my own room with a private bathroom and cable tv. This was better than most hotels, even at the top end. I also met her 5 month old daughter who was a little unsure of me at first, but we discussed general travelling and had a good time.

The next morning Marissa dropped me off midway with a warning to be careful and I walked down into Avenue Revolucion (the bar district where all the Yankees go for fun) and I was only solicited twice. This was a much poorer showing than in Havana, where it was every 10 metres. It just seemed quite touristy, not as tacky and seedy as I had presumed. Americans have a funny view of seedy I was beginning to think. Either that or I just don't get shocked very easily. I had to rush back to meet Marissa and she had a few classes to go to. Being a medical student some were in the hospital and I sat as the solo gringo outside the hospital and the university reading peacefully to myself Obama´s ´Dreams of My Father´. The only disturbance was when one guy kept banging a bike on the railings behind my head. On the plus side Marissa diagnosed me with Whooping Cough and I would eventually amnage to get the necessary antibiotics with no prescription down in La Paz. A total cost of $10. Stick that in your fucking medical system America and smoke it. Marissa had asked her medical professor if I could sit in on a hernia operation ans it sounded interesting so I tracked along. As we neared the hospital Marissa informed me they only had pink overalls left so I entered the men´s changing room and got dressed into my surgical stuff. It was then that I was challenged by one of the orderlies. Er shit. Here I was in my pink, too small for me overalls, telling someone that ´mi amiga este una estudiante de medico´and then pointing frantically at the dressing room next door. Got my Spanish sucks and he eventually got over his confusion as to why there was a gringo dressed in pink in the surgical ward when Marissa set him straight. We wandered into the operating theatre and although we had missed the main bit of the operation it was still cool to watch them stitch the patient back up and I had never been in an operating theatre before. The doctor had a joke with me afterwards and we chatted about travel, while he said I was a nomad and I should have a woman in every port like the sailors. He said thats what his father had done as a truck driver.

In the evening we went out to a bar with Marissa´s friends Laura and Nelly. We drank a few Mexican beers as I realised the antibiotics were going to restrict that. The beers were ridiculously expensive, even by Yankee standards (ripping off all those 18-20 year olds). We talked about the ridiculousness of Royal families, which they found amusing. We talked about medical courses over there and compared London to Paris. Nelly said she had to go on a 3 month trek with her family and if she got fed up with them she may come and join me. Ah well in the morning I would move on and hopefully this whooping cough would end soon (apparently it can go on for as long as 1-2 months). I found out that Ollie may have been coming down with it in Brazil as well. An epidemic of something I had been innoculated against.

In the morning we went over to her grandmothers for breakfast. Her grandfather greeted me in his wheelchair and would continue to talk to me about the food in Spanish (and I had no idea what he was talking about, but he did not seem to bothered by that). Her aunt came round with a friend as well and we went through her photos of Mayan Mexico and Guatemala from her trip over that side of the country. We played with the dog (an alsatian/lassie corssbreed) and her grandmother continued to feed me until I could eat no more. The coffee was also sensational with a touch of cinnamon. We rushed to the bus station and I just got on the 24 hour hellhole bus to La Paz where I intended to rest up. Marissa had asked me, when we talked about previous couchsurfers, why I had not stayed with the guy who owned a mansion. I checked the guys profile and he has a yin yang polkadot haircut and lives in a mansion with an indoor pool and waterfall. He was kind of a pimp, connected to the cartels and a former prize fighter. He would, according to some Austrian dudes, always have prostitutes and strippers over and when the Aussie was there he had had a party for 1,200 people in his back garden. Though the Aussie had left when the guy had starpped on a bullet proof vest and taken two handguns because he was out to avenge the honour of one of his prostitute lovers. Would have made for an interesting time, but sadly I missed that one. The bus journey was long and painful. There was a Californian in his 50s who was heading down to pick up his old car, made surfboards for a living and told me about how much of a whore he used to be down in Mexico. I sat through ´The Incredibles´,´Radio´, ´Half Past Dead´ (there is always one shit martial arts one, usually Seagal or Van Damme), 'Spy Kids 3d' and 'Jersey Girl'. I managed to get some sleep and finish Obama´s book. The sense of community was really strong on the bus and linking it with Obama's writings I realised we really did not have any real community sense in the UK. Shame.

I arrived in La Paz in the afternoon and trecked to my concrete hotel. I stayed in Pension California and all the furniture is made of concrete. The shower is ice cold and the room is full of insects and little ant bastards that kept eating me in the night. It was a shithole, but still possibly marginally better than the Parker Spruce. My phone was working in Mexico, but there appeared no way to get credit. At some point I will need to buy a phone here or suss this thing out. I found a supermarket as I hadn´t eaten and I finally found some damn socks, which my feet appreciated greatly. I sorted out some of this blog and then slept. I turned on the overhead fan and it wobbled and seemed to descend towards me. It was a weird moment, like when the granny in Requiem for a Dream sees the fridge coming for her. I was certain it would decapitate me in the middle of the night, but I also hoped it would keep the insects at bay. Fat chance. I opened up my copy of Love in the Time of Cholera and a bus ticket from Mexico City-Palenque from last time I was here dropped out. Wow what a weird coincidence, only this time I would actually read the damn book.

In the morning I wokr up and whacked my head on the concrete door before heading out to see the delights of the town. One hour later I had exhausted my options and I still had 3 days. Shit this was going to be rough. It was out of season for wahle watching and I could not snorkel, dive etc because of my shitty lungs. I picked up my medication and it appears to have worked as I am only coughing 2 or 3 times a day now. The waterfront reminds me of a sort of Little Havana and that effect was magnified in the evening when they had a classic car show. By this point I was very bored. The loneliness was beginning to kick in as a product of boredom, so I went for a waterside walk at dusk with my mp3 player and that helped. I was supposed to meet Katherina in the evening but she cancelled as she had to go somewhere to see an old friend. I sat there watching spongebob squarepants in Spanish while reading my book. This was becoming intolerable. Why had I booked so many nights in the middle of fucking nowhere. I even started smack talking my lung about how his time had come now I had medication and the only consolation was that the Mexican currency had collapsed.

The next morning I awoke, more eaten than ever and still bored. Nothing notable happened. I managed to flirt a bit with the Baja Ferries employee in Spanish which gave me hope I might sharpend it up quickly. I got my 'get out of jail free card' from the ferry company and tomorrow I would escape. They had some beech volleyball in the evening, which I watched for a bit. I arranged to meet Katehrina by the dolphin statue in the evening, because my phone was still useless. I got there and there was a balloon seller and a music extravaganza on this part of the dock. I felt like I was 006 from an early James Bond and someone was about to kill me. There was an amazing taco place just outside my hotel for peanuts I found and I read until dusk. The internet was down everywhere and so I started my Spanish lessons, teaching myself week one in an hour. To be fair I had studied it before and this was sharpening, but it boosted my confidence and I chatted with Yoanna who assured me we would have a good time in Monterrey. I now had five people to stay with or see in Monterrey and I would be off the antibiotics so it could erase my time in La Paz. It felt like my Athens detour inter-railing. It had been a costly mistake in time and money, I did not like Athens that much and I ended up stranded in a port in Corfu for the day. Ironically that would happen again the next day when I decided to go to Pichilingue in the morning, dying to escape, but I would get stuck in a shit port with nothing to do for a full day. I finished my book, but my bloody mp3 broke so I was even more bored.

There were a Finnish couple trying to head to Mazatlan. I informed them no ferry was going and they would have to go to Topolobampo. I tried to start up a conversation, but they were typically cold Scandinavians and they did not even seem to speak to each other. It was funny to contrast that with the French couple who could not keep their hands of each other. Mediterraneans are so much better than us northern Europeans. I was amusing myself watching wasps fly into the wall (I had sunk low) when i got chatting with an American called Jaime. He was a glass blower and weed seller in Santa Cruz (he joked that while the US economy collapsed his business was still going strong). He did not have a passport so was seizing a chance to travel before they became a necessity. He'd manage to procure himself a ticket on a cargo ferry to Mazatlan and wasn't sure what to expect. He told me he had been down in Cabo and then yesterday had to look after a couple of young Yankee kids. It was an 18 and 16 year old who had snuck over the border and hitchhiked down to La Paz. They were there for a hippy festival in 10 days time, but only had 50 pesos ($5) left. He took pity on them and fed them for the evening, but they told him the 18 year old was now wanted for kidnapping the 16 year old. Sounded messy to me. We swapped e-mails and agreed to maybe meet up in Puerto Vallerta as a girl he knew was coming with a friend and they had a time share there. After he left I spent the rest of my time dribbling and brain dead until the ferry got ready to leave. Once I got through to the boat, me and the Finns were told we could not take our rucksacks on board and would have to leave them under a table. For some reason the French people had managed to get theirs onboard. I got to my seat but could not sleep properly, because I was afraid my bag would be kidnapped. As it was, it was still there in the morning and I leapt onto a chicken bus to Los Mochis. I love the chicken buses. I missed them so much. So communal, so crammed, so cheap and so much fun. Ah free at last, I am now sitting in this cafe in Los Mochis typing this up. Tomorrow morning I shall set forth on the Copper Canyon Railway which should be awesome and then I have a string of couchsurfers to unload my pent up conversation. I did in my bordeom translate my book title into Spanish 'Cerveza y grandulear en el pisto de Gringo'. See all was not time wasted and I am now fit enough to drink again when the antibiotics are finished on wednesday. Reading about Ollie's week in Brazil I think he had the better of it so far, but I'll get there eventually lol.