MAYA-HO DOS!
_{To Central America, 2005}

DIA NOVENTA DOS:
Jueves, 19 May 2005 - San Pedro Celestino I
Taxco, Guerrero - Anniversary Thursday evening.

More skyrockets this morning. Every day we witness explosions that, in the states, would have SWAT teams and anti-terror squads scrambling like speed-freak yellowjackets. Here, as in Chiapas and Guatemala (which have actually experienced armed insurgencies in years past), it's just the same old same old. You may draw your own conclusions about national-cultural stress levels.

We celebrated our 26th anniversary by strolling over to the hotel dining area for a 'continental' breakfast, not as good as last time, then returning to the room and resting. I sorted images on the computer. Whoop de [expletive deleted] doo. I can hardly stand the excitement.

Midafternoon, we crawled out and over some slightly different streets, wandering aimlessly through platerias etc. (In one silver mall, while Maureen viewed the goodies, I sat and played a vagrant guitar. Nobody told me to stop, so I guess I sounded OK.) Tortas and sodas in the zocalo; replenish our supplies and return. What a day.

A funeral procession passed us. The white coffin was about 10x10x20 inches, borne on the small shoulders of four small boys, steadied by some adults. No horns, no drums, just a large silent somber following.

Tonight the disco crowd is screaming, voices and rhythms resounding across the night sky like a loud S&M party gone postal. We'll ignore all that, try to sleep early; tomorrow we'll drive through and around this preposterous ant-heap. The adventure continues.

BUSINESS UPDATE: We're told that selling Taxco silver ornaments on eBay ain't such a great idea, that the market consists solely of bottom-feeders. OK, we have other ideas. And there's a basic rule for would-be traders: don't buy anything that you wouldn't want to keep, because you may have to. Hmmm, one of the editors of THE PEOPLE'S GUIDE TO MEXICO wrote a trader's guide; I guess we'd better read that.

DIA NOVENTA TRES:
Viernes, 20 May 2005 - San Bernadino de Sierna
Taxco, Guerrero - busy noisy Friday morning.

No problem with getting up early enough for today's adventure — the skyrockets of course, and the traffic noise starts and peaks early, and continues unremittingly all day. Constant flatulent traffic. Walking up the hill each afternoon is painful not just because of the steep slope and our old flabby muscles, but the narrow road's high walls contain the exhausts of the innumerable ill-tuned VWs that fart their way past us. Walk but don't inhale. Right.

Now consider that 80% of Taxco's residents work in the silver trade, according to somebody authoritative. This means that, once you've seen the few nice (and other) churches, and paid admission to the silver-history-art museums, there ain't much to do here except shop for silver.

Combine silver's hegemony with the traffic's toxicity, and you'll see why Maureen and I are ready to leave town. Yeah, we're paid up until Tuesday. We'll last that long. Oh, did I mention the cicadas? Their overpowering whistle-hum is like a really bad smoke alarm cycling over and over. Aren't there birds enough to eat them all?

MIDMORNING we loaded ourselves and the Logan-Jill-Sean gang (excluding Scooby) into el coche and took off for a cruise. We first went uphill, onto what I guess is the Panoramic Road, taking us to great heights above Taxco. Splendid vistas, fascinating road, partly paved, partly not. Into a zone of pines and bay laurels and wisteria-like trees and giant maguey agaves. The pine-and-cacti zone is on the next ridge.

And we learned the secret of the big-water-bottle guys, which is that they load up at springs above town, great stake-side truckloads of 50-liter bottles all being hand-filled at pipes issuing from the hillside. The pipes are numbered, so maybe they're inspected occasionally, maybe.

We rode along a rural ridge over to the adjoining hill, site of some failed high-end construction projects and the successful Hotel Montetaxco, its villas and splendors and golf course. One can spend a fair amount of pesos taking the funicular (tram) up to the Montetaxco and enjoy the views, or one can drive over and peruse the landscape for free. Don't miss the concrete Mayan pillars, only slightly defaced by grafitti.

We swooped down the mountain, squeezed through Taxco, and headed down to our next destination, Taxco de Viejo, Old Taxco. Silver refining was done there centuries ago, then everybody moved uphill to the current Taxco, maybe because it's hot and miserable down there. The famous Spratling Silver works are there, supposedly with a museum, but the gate was locked. And there appeared to be little else around Old Taxco. So, onwards.

IGUALA: We'd heard that the downhill city of Iguala hosted goldsmiths, a gold market, and a modern supertienda. Of the first and last, we found no trace, but there IS a gold market of sorts, with most everything imported from Italy. Little local work. At the doors are pictures (mugshots) of persons not allowed to enter. Hmmm.

We were quoted a price for finished work of MX$160 (160 pesos) per gram. (28.5 grams per ounce, 10.8 pesos per dollar, you do the math.) But considering that dealers in Taxco quoted silver prices for similar work ranging from MX$4.2 to MX$8.5 per gram, that gold quote could have been anywhere in the spectrum, or beyond. Fortunately, I'm immune to gold, so the day didn't cost much.

Well, it would have been cheap, except that I backed into a car whilst unparking. It was a slight bump, bumper to bumper. The other driver and a traffic cop buddy got out of the old Dodge, and the driver claimed that I'd caused severe damage to his bumper. On the (left) side that I couldn't have hit, because my left tire was jammed against the curb; the bump was on the right side. Another traffic cop motorcycled over. Logan got under the car and pointed out that the damage there was many years old. (Thanks, Logan!) Everybody conferred. The cop buddy wouldn't return my drivers license until we paid the lying rat-bastard driver MX$200. (What was the cop buddy's take?) Then we got out of there.

I should note that Iguala de Indepencia is a charmless busy all-concrete mini-metropolis built around an interesting domino zocalo surrounded by the usual commercial mess. On a hilltop overlooking the city flies the world's largest Mexican flag, I think because some old revolutionary leaders were executed here. Midday temperatures hovered above 100°f. AND NO SUPERTIENDA TO BE SEEN! It was a very good place to leave.

"All cities are Iguala, but some are more Iguala than others."

AFTERNOON: Just uphill from Taxco de Viejo we stopped at a pleasant roadside comedor, the wind blowing past us as we overlooked a vibrant river valley and munched our first full meal in several days, for Maureen and I anyway. Sated, we climbed back to Taxco, saw our first (local) flamboyant transvestite, resupplied at a minimart (spilling cider), and collapsed in the hotel.

Maureen and I crawled out later, down into town to check the platerias. Maureen got a couple more pieces, but not her dream set, not at the MX$8.5 per gram price. And we climbed back uphill right into the first thunderstorm in several days, a good downpour that rinsed my shoes and glasses quite thoroughly. Whistling traffic cops try to direct the flows, a Sisyphusian effort.

NIGHTFALL: No loud party sounds from the disco, not even under the canopy. Most of a moon peering through the mottled dark clouds. Traffic is subdued. What kind of Friday night IS this? Ah, the air and streets are cleaner. The weekend awaits.

And on the weekend, starting today, the touts are out. At every turn as we drove back through Taxco, guys hopped out in front of us waving their bandanas or badges or whatever, trying to direct us to some favored hotel or shop. Gracias no, nos vivimos aqui. (No thanks, we live here.) Where were they the Tuesday we arrived, when we NEEDED some direction?

And now a spectacular lightning storm rages around us, filling the night sky with infernal electricity.. A direct hit on the nearby radio tower, and yet it's still lit! Must be well grounded. Is the hotel? Maybe I should unplug the computers. The Lord of the Rains wins again.

Song of the Day: Stormy Night In Mexico

DIA NOVENTA CUATRO:
Sabado, 21 May 2005 - San Constantino
Taxco, Guerrero - Saturday morning.

Maureen has been figuring. She figures that we have three days' extra money left, so when we leave here Tuesday, it's time to head back to the states. So much for overstaying in Guanajuato and Zacatecas. Guess I'd better pull out the route-planning software, plot the shortest course. And she's figured what goodies she needs to sell, and for how much. Always figuring, figuring, figuring...

I ask if this is really about a desire for french-fries, or that we've run out of books to read, or fatigue with polluted countrysides or early-morning explosions. But no, it's all budgetary. QUICK, somebody send us a publisher's advance! Don't let the story end early!

Maureen says that if we sell some old arty stuff at good prices, we can turn right around and come back to central Mexico, or head straight to Machu Picchu. That's a mighty big if. For some of that arty stuff, click here.

CONCERNS: First it was me tortured guts. Then for a few days I had headaches. Now it's my mysteriously-bruised right forearm, the strange skin texture and color above the bruise, the pain. I hearken to my left thigh's dead zone, likely damaged 30 years ago by the bite of a brown recluse spider. Everyone here I've described that to, blames a brown recluse spider, evil little monster.

But the signs (leg and arm) are dissimilar. A brown recluse bite doesn't hurt anytime soon, and there would be a sloughing-off of necrotic tissue. This is quite different. Still, I'd hate to have my arm fall off. That would ruin my whole day. Another reason for heading homeward?

WANDERING: A late start; down through platerias, etc. Rubi de Tasco runs a beautiful shop. She talked of going to university in Mexico City in 1988, and a month after her arrival came the great earthquake that killed thousands and left millions homeless. Students were drafted for rescue work, pulling the living and the dead from the rubble. A grim time. But at least there were no tornados.

So many of the platerias with the best goods are run by the children and grandchildren of old silver workers, those who apprenticed in their youth at the Spratling works. I don't know the heritage of the junk and trinket shops; nobody brags about that.

So we stomped and shopped and sweated. Like I said, there ain't much to do in Taxco. And there ain't many places to go on foot, neither. There are only so many streets to walk from our hotel before one drops dead of a stroke, or is nailed by a wayward VW, or falls off an edge, or is devoured by vendors, or gagged by fumes. Oh, for a Vespa...

WATERING: We're told that Taxco, like Chichicastenango and San Cristobal and so many other MesoAmerican cities, is facing or enduring a water crisis. Water flow through municipal pipes (if any) is problematic and sporadic. A truckload of residential (non-potable) water costs MX$200 for 2000 liters, roughly US$18.00 per 500 gallons, and that goes quickly. Most houses and all newer buildings have black plastic tanks on the roof, the household supply.

At least this hotel is relatively immune to water shortages. It's an old place on a large property containing three wells. So the fluid keeps flowing here, even if not always heated.

There were no rivers here until Taxco was built. Now, in the lluvias (rains), each street becomes a river. Could children sail down from the heights in plastic-tub boats? Unfortunately the road-river waters aren't usable, except perhaps channeled to irrigation.

So the southern cities swelter and sweat and thirst, and continue to grow. And to grow ever hotter — recent heat waves far surpass those known to memory. Hello, Global Warming, c'mon in, pull up a chair by the fire, make yerself to home, eh? Hey, there goes Florida, sinking into the melted-icecap waves! No loss.

OTHERWISE: I wrote a week ago in a letter that I found Taxco more stimulating than San Cristobal de las Casas. And that is true; but when the stimulation wears off, it's tedious here. I have decided to explore and consider tedium and its role in travel. See BOREDOM; or Why Travel, And What Good Does It Do? (click here).

This evening the boredom was broken by the appearance overhead of immense alien flying saucers, which mercilessly deployed devastating rays to obliterate the helpless city. No, wait, that was the old film INDEPENDENCE DAY aka ID4. Is that on the AXN network tonight? Anyway, Taxco is still here. Darn.

Now let me say some good and hopeful things about Taxco. It's much nicer here than in the adjacent lowlands. The location is indeed splendid and sublime. There are some outlying locales that have been urged on us: a long walk along a river in San Juan (better in a greener season) and the Grutas de Cacahuamlpa National Park, reputedly the best caves in Mexico, but never cool. These and other attractions (like new friends, and museums we haven't visited) will bring us back. If our budget wasn't so slim, we'd stay longer.

See SPANISH LESSONS: Pronumciation

DIA NOVENTA CINCO:
Domingo, 22 May 2005 - Santa Rita de Casia
Taxco, Guerrero - Sunday, bloody Sunday.

SANTA PRISCA: Iglesia de Santa Prisca y San Sebastian is a Parroquia (parish church) not a Cathedral, but grand nonetheless. It's built on a thin plot of hilltop, so is very narrow and very tall, and very ornate with incredible baroque altarpieces and gilt decorations climbing at all angles, hung with huge racy sacred paintings by a gifted indigenous artist.

One side bears a thin, tall and equally illustrious chapel. A back room is adorned with large portraits of dour bishops. The grey stone walls of the outer parapets fall steeply to the streets below and behind. The surreal baroque facade of rose stone is fronted with inverted Corinthian columns and flanked by Solomaic and Classic towers, one now scaffolded, with occasional workers perched or crawling about like industrious flies. Pretty from any angle, unless you're trying to Spiderman your way up a back wall. Watch out for the molten lead pouring down, eh?

A 1758 gift of silver baron de la Borda, the church's patron is 12th century martyr Santa Prisca, protectoress against thunderstorms and lightning; her services are very much needed here. Do those towers serve as the municipal lightning rods?

Packs of tourists lope in and out, some respectful, some not. Tour guides point out the details in various languages, generally ignoring worshippers and other interlopers. Cameras and fingers are pointed. Flashes and touching are banned. Miracles may occur.

[Some of the above was adapted from guidebooks. So sue me.]

WANDERING: We're out at a good hour (thanks to the early traffic wake-up) to stroll now-familiar paths again. Back to Dora's Cafe in the shadow of Santa Prisca for another fine leisurely late desayuno, and long chats with David and Bill (an illustrator as well as sculptor). Bill's got a date and a paranormal story (more on both later, maybe). I snapped a bad picture of Dora — must do better before we leave early Tuesday.

David says Dora's is doing very well, especially for a new endeavor. You can find it at 11 Calle Del Arco, hidden behind Dafna's Bazar. If a sign isn't up out front saying DESAYUNOS or COMIDAS, the food isn't ready yet. You WILL return.

David (and Logan) had remarked about my previous note re: our not noticing serious slums around Taxco. As we saw on our recent drive, the periphery does sport some slummy areas, but not nearly as bad as we've seen elsewhere. I suppose that tarpaper shanties would dissolve in the rains. But I digress.

We wandered further. You can read back a few days for the tale of the misbagged pot. Maureen finally tracked down the seller and exchanged it for the right one, then went hog-wild over other ceramics, and is seriously tempted (but not enough) by more silver. Good thing she can write some of these OUT of the travel budget.

More wandering and resupplying and staggering back uphill. A beautiful day, with cool breezes, blue skies, white clouds, hazy green-blue mountains, occasional traffic jams (haven't yet heard any vehicles scrape against the walls), chattering birds, the occasional braying burro, sunlight reflecting dizzyingly from all the red-roofed white-walled buildings.

There's a reason for all those red-tile roofs and whitewashed walls, a municipal code. This is a historic city and DAMMIT it's gonna STAY looking historic! Antigua Guatemala has a similar ordinance, but the tradition there includes bright Mayan colors, so the old city is much more polychromatic. Whereas in Bisbee, everything is just supposed to look old and moldy. If you look too good or new, the neighbors will turn you in to the Design Review cops.

Opinion of the Day: CAPITALISM AU-GO-GO!

DIA NOVENTA SEIS:
Lunes, 23 May 2005 - San Desiderio
Taxco, Guerrero - Monday morning.

Late last night, an immense lightning bolt, right nearby, blindingly bright through all windows, devastatingly loud, a trump of doom. Fearsome. Yet we survive!

I'm up early, sitting on our terrace with my glasses off, reading a quaint old picaresque novel, LAVENGRO AND THE ROMANY RYE by George Barrow, when I hear a voice calling to me. On with the glasses; on the thin patio of a top-level room, a youngish couple. The woman calls down with an English accent, "Are you a writer?" I smile and shrug. The man says, "We've seen you at the laptop," and makes keyboarding gestures. Not wanting to wake Maureen, I reply as quietly as possible, "Just keeping a travel journal." And I consider the question and its implications.

Perhaps the subtext was, "Are you a FAMOUS writer?" Not yet. Are we what we do? Maureen and I are retired software engineers, i.e., burnt-out programmers. Most of what I've been paid to write has been instructive poetry, to be read by computers only. Never famous.

Now we travel; I drive; we walk around, shop, eat, sleep. Am I a traveler, a driver, walker, shopper, eater, sleeper, snorer, shitter? I don't get paid for any of those activities; do they count? What am I? I photograph, write journals and songs and essays and web pages; am I a photographer, a journalist, songwriter, essayist, webmonkey? Am I just el hombre jubilado obsessed with gathering and recording thoughts, words, sights, sounds, indigenous handcrafts? Perhaps I'm a collector of mostly immaterial stuff. What am I? And when is breakfast?

Charles Dickens was working at his notebook. An acquaintance came upon him, watched awhile, then cackled, "Always writing writing writing, EH? Mister Dickens? Scribble scribble scribble, EH? Mister Dickens?!?!?" Ah well, we scribble because we must, not because we choose to. And I started reading that book because it's the ONLY thing left. Bother...

SEEN ON THE ROAD: A young couple of clean- and earnest-looking internationalist backpackers heading downhill, dodging traffic, throwing themselves against the walls to avoid being crushed, as must all pedestrians here. A plump woman in a long white dress walking uphill, carrying a huge armload of bright orange blooms. More sweet young thangs in spray-on clothes. A combi van and a large water-bottle truck dancing their at-the-narrows avoidance ballet.

A dark-garbed guy with a handmade (stick and rushes) broom sweeping the street before the entrance to the printer's shop. A thin clean German Shepherd (status dog, here) running quickly uphill and around the bend, dodging traffic. A cluster of kids in white-and-powder-blue school uniforms, walking and jostling and joking and giggling and grab-assing. A red stakeside truck loaded with caged turkeys. Somewhere nearby, a burro is braying.

More explosions — no skyrocket blasts are visible, no puffs of smoke against the mist, so these are elsewhere nearby. Logan and Jill say they're bottle rockets launched from the roofs of churches, each church with its own schedule. Some from a church above here land on the hotel terraces, in their back yard, etc. Holy terrorism?

NOONISH: After a scant breakfast we threw ourselves back abed and rested (snored) the morning away. Resting up for the upcoming travel, we are, yes. Upon rising, I scanned recent emailed newsbriefs and found these tidbits. What have we missed? Maybe our next Central America drive should be timed to the end of hurricane season.

> HURRICANE ADRIAN HITS EL SALVADOR
Hurricane Adrian slammed into El Salvador's coast before dawn Friday, cutting off power and forcing officials to close schools and evacuate some 14,000 people. The storm quickly fell apart as it moved across Central America.

> ADRIAN FADES, BUT MUDSLIDES FEARED
Tropical storm Adrian, the first of the 2005 season, slammed into El Salvador's Pacific coast on Friday and then broke up over Honduras with its heavy rains still threatening dangerous flash floods and mudslides across Central America.

A late takeoff, a couple sandwiches, a batch of photos around the zocalo, some fruitless shopping, and into Dora's Cafe for orange juice and talk talk talk. Even sipping naranjada here takes two hours. Visiting Texans take a moment to bash Bush. Bill entrusts us with some stones to mail to a friend. A couple pictures, some fond farewells, a final resupply. No bank in Taxco will change Lempiras. So, back to pack.

AFTERNOONISH: Music drifts out many Taxco doorways and windows, from many streetside pirated-CD vendors, et al. Every so often it's WHEN YOU GO TO SAN FRANCISCO. (You knew that The Summer Of Love was a slick marketing ploy by music and clothing firms, right?) New lyrics spring into my fevered brain:

When you go to Cuernavaca
Be sure to wear some dreadlocks in your hair
Summertime in Cuernavaca
You're gonna meet some dreadful people there

And as we pass by LA CUCARACHA silver mini-mall, more lyrics come to me, a rough doggeral translation. Not that we've actually seen any cockroches for some time, smoked or otherwise.

The little cockroach, the little cockroach
She is looking mighty pale
Because she ain't got, because she ain't got
No marijuana to inhale

At the hotel, a rest; packing; a final visit to Logan and Jill, for some map reckoning and adios, hasta luego; a mean supper; final packing; awaiting the storm; watching the roadshow below us for the last time before the sky blackens and falls. More rain, more lightning; power flickers; cable TV is knocked out, dashing the dreams of many viewers. But wait, it's back! More intriguing episodes to be seen! I return to my picaresque novel.

NIGHTISH: The full moon rose into blanketing muddy clouds as electricity flashed and rain scudded under the terrace's shelter. Then the storm blew by. Now the indigo sky is immensely clear with a few spotty clouds, Luna shining like a big bright spoon, mountains a dark blue silhouette on the horizon. The first star is out.

The city below looks like a lit flattened pyramid, a vernacular arcology crawling with fireflies, topped by a tall antenna that yet survives the thunderbolts. A few suburban lights in the distance; otherwise, just the arcology (Escher's triangle) against the mountains.

The rabbit jumps over us all. Native American cultures in the US SouthWest saw not a man in the moon, but a rabbit. I don't know what Zapotecs, Aztecs, Totonacs, Mayas saw. Hmmm, that sounds like a good research project -- find out which peoples saw what in the full moon. Any takers?

DIA NOVENTA SIETE:
Martes, 24 May 2005 - Santa Susana
Taxco, Guerrero - Tuesday sometime.

Recently I saw that the evening temperature in Bisbee was over 100°f (approaching 40°c). And I received an email from my excellent sister Marsha in Tucson, 100 miles from Bisbee.

> The trip sounds very exciting. The silver sounds great.
> Themperatures in Tucson predicted to be 103 to 108 F by
> Friday May 20. Come on home!!!!!
 
Hola mi hermana hermosa:
 
It's lovely here.  It's 103 in Bisbee.  I don't know how
much we'll hurry to get back.  But you're welcome to head
to Bisbee to escape Tucson.  Enjoy.
 
Sus hermano intelligente

Yet return to Bisbee we must, and without too much delay (unless we find CHEAP lodgings in Guanajuato and beyond). But with temps like that, I don't know how long we'll stay there. Hey Carolina, our dear neighbor, how are you holding out?

And another email. Before we leave Taxco (immediately), Maureen wants me to insert (here) her last letter to her mother and sister, dated a week ago.

Martes, 24 May 2005 - Santa Susana
Lagos de Moreno, Jalisco - Tuesday.

MORNING: A fast lean breakfast, and we're gone. Taxco's hillsides are notably greener than when we arrived a fortnight ago. The ride down the mountain is scarier than the climb, maybe due to those early taxis and combis, eh? I'm driven to drive, so we sail across the states of Guerrero, Mexico, Queretaro, Guanajuato, and into Jalisco -- but that's later.

[You may note that in many Mexican states, the names of the state and its capitol city are the same. OK, a flash quiz: Name any USAnian state or Canadian province whose capitol bears the same name. For extra credit, explain why English- and Spanish-speaking nations have different naming customs.]

Somewhere downhill, we stopped at a Pemex to refill. We might have been ripped-off on the gas -- I didn't verify that the pump was zeroed before the attendant started pumping. Afterward, it seemed like too much fuel, too much money. ALWAYS CHECK THAT THE PUMP IS AT ZERO!

Crossing the state line into Mexico, the landscape looks somehow lusher, greener, more prosperous, higher. Horsemen were left behind in Guerrero. Roads here are fancier, state cops more evident but we haven't encountered any military checkpoints for a long long time. However, the roads are infested with stealth topes, big fat dark speed bumps that arise from nowhere. And they're angled, to maximize the shake-rattle-and-roll effect. Maureen is turning green, as green as the landscape.

NOONISH: We climb into Toluca's high (8600 feet) wide green valley, a busy city with thick air surrounded by vast agriculture. Take Sonoma County's lush valley, stretch it out and toss it a couple klicks in the air, add more volcanos, and you've got it. In one town we see a young girl in traditional long dress and apron and straw stetson, herding turkeys with a broom. We have pavo tortas in a country comedor -- the turkeys across the road are waiting their turn.

We drop off Toluca's high wet altiplano into lower, dryer plateaus lined with cactus trees (arborescent platyopuntias), then back up a bit, through rocky country to der autobahn, one of Mexico's busiest roads, looking like a vast expansion of I-40 east of Flagstaff. Down into Queretaro, low and hot and under construction, and along the libre (non-toll road) through its western satellites, like taking old US50 around Sacramento, but more so. A wide valley, all looking good except the bit along the road.

We reach Irapuato, claimed to be the Strawberry Capitol of the World. Like Gilroy with garlic, like Taxco with silver, the roads are lined with strawberry vendors. They're fresh, or rum-soaked, or crystalized, but mostly they're Fresas con Crema. And most of the Fresa con Crema stands are shut down. Bad season, bad day, what?

ESCAPE: We escape Guanajuato's maze. It's getting late. We arrive in Leon, a major city, the footwear capitol of Mexico. (A woman is passing out 'newspapers' to traffic stopped at a light; advertising supplements for Peugeot.) Looking for a reasonable room there is a waste of time; everything we see is either cheap-grubby or gringo-pricey or cinderblock-atrocious. We take the highway northwest at twilight, as the evening rainblast commences. We discover that the only safe way to drive here at night is to get behind a truck. If anything comes out into the road, the big guy will crush it first.

And miracle of miracles! By the road in the town of Lagos de Morena, a motel! The El Reloj, with cheap clean quiet suites, fronted with juniper! And an open eatery next door! The simple meal tasted especially good, seasoned by our hunger. (They closed up after feeding us.) Today's drive was too long, but necessary. Damn, how I hate necessities.

Later: Well, it WAS quiet, until somebody nearby started setting off firecrackers. They can't go on all night, can they? (Yes they can, until someone calls the cops.) And the high-security doors, especially the bathroom, tend to howl like baritone banshees when moved. But the water gets hot, the toilet has a seat, the overhead fan works.

SONGS:

All The Way To Taxco

Fading Away

Not Fade Away

DIA NOVENTA OCHO:
Miercoles, 25 May 2005 - Maria Magdalena de Pazzi
Lagos de Moreno, Jalisco - Wednesday morning.

See SPANISH LESSONS: Translations

See the next page for today's notes.