Mexico
Joining in (Drive Day 21 minus 14 years)
I am dancing on a tile floor covered with pigeon shit, some fresh. I didn’t expect to stumble upon an indigenous Nahua dance circle in the town of Tonala. The leader is calling out the steps in something far from Spanish. But the language of hand drum and pan flute is universal to modern dancers and I kick off my shoes and let my feet follow the patterns.
Gary has started keeping a journal. Like my mom did, he notes the conditions and details of each stopping place – temperature and altitude. Unlike my mom, he also describes what he sees. Like how my dancing reminds him of Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz.
But he joins in too. Not the dance class but a first communion. Back home I doubt even the proudest parents would spot a stranger with a camera and spontaneously pose their children for his lens. We must exude passing through-ness, the anonymity of travel.
Or as Gary’s notes describe it “Wipeout got sick and life goes on.”
Follow this bonus-material blog and ride along on a one-year road trip that inspired the memoir The Drive: Searching for Lost Memories on the Pan American Highway. On sale now. Get yours through the buy-the-book links at the bottom my teresabrucebooks.com website landing page or here or here. Like The Drive’s Facebook page and tweet back at me @writerteresa.
Don’t be a licker (Drive Day 20 minus 14 years)
Campgrounds are getting lonelier by the day. In the cool hills above Guadalajara, Mexico’s third-largest city, we have one all to ourselves. Even the pool is empty; weeds peek through the cement cracks. But there’s a convenient bus route from here into the city and twenty minutes later we’re inside the Governor’s Palace.
The father of Mexican independence thunders down from the walls. A tour guide explains Hidalgo was the priest who inspired the Mexican people to rise up against their Spanish conquerors. “Never be a licker,” he tells us. The boot part is understood.
Follow this bonus-material blog and ride along on a one-year road trip that inspired the memoir The Drive: Searching for Lost Memories on the Pan American Highway. On sale now. Get yours through the buy-the-book links at the bottom my teresabrucebooks.com website landing page or here or here. Like The Drive’s Facebook page and tweet back at me @writerteresa.
Choosing Detours (Drive Day 19 minus 14 years)
I keep expecting a director to yell “roll camera.” This town is movie-set charming but it’s not on the map, in any guidebooks or mentioned in my mother’s journal. For the first time since beginning this road trip we have abandoned the highway and randomly followed an old man riding a donkey down a dirt road. Just to see where he’s going. Just because we have the time. Just because.
Follow this bonus-material blog and ride along on a one-year road trip that inspired the memoir The Drive: Searching for Lost Memories on the Pan American Highway. On sale now. Get yours through the buy-the-book links at the bottom my teresabrucebooks.com website landing page or here or here. Like The Drive’s Facebook page and tweet back at me @writerteresa.
The Old Man and The Sea (Drive Day 18 minus 14 years)
I can’t remember the last time I struck up a conversation with a stranger on a park bench. I’m a writer. He’s a fisherman. Naturally I ask if he’s read Hemingway’s Old Man and the Sea. He seems interested but uncertain, so I launch into a synopsis of the plot. He’s nodding and smiling in all the right places. I think my Spanish must be improving. Until he points to Gary, who is wandering around taking photographs, and asks what happened after my husband caught the big shark.
Follow this bonus-material blog and ride along on a one-year road trip that inspired the memoir The Drive: Searching for Lost Memories on the Pan American Highway. On sale now. Get yours through the buy-the-book links at the bottom my teresabrucebooks.com website landing page or here or here. Like The Drive’s Facebook page and tweet back at me @writerteresa.
My old street corner – and I know how that sounds (Drive Day 17 minus 14 years)
Like every Mexican town, San Blas has park benches in a proper square called a zocalo. But the cool kids hang out on this street corner. It’s where I wasted plenty of time after grad school. There’s a term for otherwise smart, college-educated American girls who stop shaving, learn to surf and drift into Mexican boyfriends: Sandalistas.
Luckily my only permanent souvenir from my Sandalista days was Wipeout: the puppy I later smuggled back to the United States.
Follow this bonus-material blog and ride along on a one-year road trip that inspired the memoir The Drive: Searching for Lost Memories on the Pan American Highway. On sale now. Get yours through the buy-the-book links at the bottom my teresabrucebooks.com website landing page or here or here. Like The Drive’s Facebook page and tweet back at me @writerteresa.
A Tall Fishing Village Tale (Drive Day 16 minus 14 years)
Gary says he got more peace and quiet when I was sick. Apparently I’m chattering so much about the approaching fishing village of San Blas that I’m repeating stories about it. Like how I was scared Santa wouldn’t find the picturesque turnoff my parents took to spend Christmas. And how mom’s journal describes the beach we camped on as “like Hawaii.”
Clearly she’s never been to Hawaii and my childhood memories are suspect. The turnoff is still jungle-splendid but San Blas hasn’t quite recovered from a massive hurricane in 2002. The beach is more drab than dreamy. And the mosquitoes are so intense Wipeout hides her nose with her paws.
Follow this bonus-material blog and ride along on a one-year road trip that inspired the memoir The Drive: Searching for Lost Memories on the Pan American Highway. On sale now. Get yours through the buy-the-book links at the bottom my teresabrucebooks.com website landing page or here or here. Like The Drive’s Facebook page and tweet back at me @writerteresa
I’ll take some valium with my Mazatlán please (Drive day 15 minus 14 years)
I vomited through Mazatlán the first time, according to my mother’s journal. And it looks like history is repeating itself. I don’t know how Gary manages to pantomime a woman now fainting as well as puking, but he finds me a clinic. The doctor thinks it’s heat stroke and severe dehydration. Six hours of intravenous electrolytes, Cipro and Valium later I am recovered enough to take a tentative dip in the ocean.
Which is when this happens. Jellyfish tentacles wrapped around your thigh are never fun, but I’m beginning to wonder if I can handle this road trip. What would people think if we turn back barely a week after crossing the border?
Follow this bonus-material blog and ride along on a one-year road trip that inspired the memoir The Drive: Searching for Lost Memories on the Pan American Highway. On sale now. Get yours through the buy-the-book links at the bottom my teresabrucebooks.com website landing page or here or here. Like The Drive’s Facebook page and tweet back at me @writerteresa.
Paying for my sins (Drive Day 13 minus 14 years)
Gun guilt ravages my intestines all through the night. The heat inside the Avion doesn’t help. Or Wipeout’s wet nuzzle inserting itself between my chin and the toilet seat as I vomit. This is not the first night I imagined.
At least I’m prepared. Meet my portable hospital, stuffed with everything from snake bite kits to antibiotics. All it needs is a cure for traveler’s paranoia.
Follow this bonus-material blog and ride along on a one-year road trip that inspired the memoir The Drive: Searching for Lost Memories on the Pan American Highway. On sale now. Get yours through the buy-the-book links at the bottom my teresabrucebooks.com website landing page or here or here. Like The Drive’s Facebook page and tweet back at me @writerteresa.
South of the Border (Drive Day 12 minus 14 years)
None of the officials taking our money, stamping our carnet or scanning our passports asks to see Wipeout’s painstakingly Photoshopped canine visa. It probably helps that she’s sound asleep on the back seat. And Gary’s calm “nope, just a camper, nothing to declare” satisfies official interest in the Avion.
There’s no way we’re boondocking on the side of the road in 110-degree desert, so we push on for 13 hours to a campground in the beach town of San Carlos. The gin is warm and the tonic flat but no cocktail has ever tasted better.
Follow this bonus-material blog and ride along on a one-year road trip that inspired the memoir The Drive: Searching for Lost Memories on the Pan American Highway. On sale now. Get yours through the buy-the-book links at the bottom my teresabrucebooks.com website landing page or here or here. Like The Drive’s Facebook page and tweet back at me @writerteresa.
Jitters (Drive Day 11 minus 14 years)
I’m no Mexico novice and other than getting caught with the gun I’m not scared of crossing the border tomorrow. But this is our last night on U.S. soil and I feel like I’m seven years old again, the boss of only my little sister Jenny.
Follow this bonus-material blog and ride along on a one-year road trip that inspired the memoir The Drive: Searching for Lost Memories on the Pan American Highway. On sale now. Get yours through the buy-the-book links at the bottom my teresabrucebooks.com website landing page or here or here. Like The Drive’s Facebook page and tweet back at me @writerteresa.
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