Road Trips

I’ve been traveling by car since I could remember. I lived on the north of Mexico and my grandparents live way up in the south, it was a four day drive, so most of my holidays were spent traveling from one place to another.

I once heard that there are two ways to really get to know someone, the first is to live with them and the second is to travel together. The first trip I took with friends was when I was an undergrad in Mexico city. The trip was to Veracruz (Golf of Mexico). By bus it was a 5 hour trip to one of the main cities of the state, from there we had to change bus and take one (not very modern) bus to a little town on the mountains. Most of that trip we walked to the places we wanted to visit and camped out, so we could have a fresh start the following morning. At one point my friends wanted to go fishing and we had to look for worms to use as bait (not a very good experience). The landscape was really beautiful, crossing from sugar cane fields to mango tree plantations; picking up fallen mangos and eating them while we passed through, refreshing ourselves on the different rivers we crossed.

With the same guys we then went to Baja California, the main difference from the previous trip was that we took my dad’s car. The weather down there is very different from Veracruz. There we saw how one of the largest deserts of Mexico merges into the sea. It was astonishing to find the variety of fauna and flora you could see in a desert. And at nightfall the sky was completly covered with tiny sparkling lights (I’ve never seen so many stars), the stillness and silence is overwhelming, it makes you feel so small and insignificant. We headed south of the peninsula to see the beaches. This part of mexico has been neglected for a long time (not a bad thing); we would drive for hours with out encountering any populated areas. In the middle of the peninsula there is an Oasis (so cool), the beaches there are just lovely and the best part of it was that we had them all to ourselves. I remember one night in particular, we were camping by the beach, the sky got really clouded, it started raining and the wind was blowing the tents out of the ground, we had to pack everything as soon as possible and get to higher ground before the storm hit the beach, we slept in the car that night. After the storm, I saw the most breathtaking sunrise; it was still clouded, a part of the sky cleared out and a ray of light hit the clear crystal water changing its color. I regreted not having a camera with me at the time, but some things are better left to oneself.

After two weeks of eating, sleeping and traveling together we were so fed up with each other, we couldn’t wait to get home. The ones that survived that trip are now the best of friends.


The latest of these road trips was to Cornwall with to of my friends, Lety and Victor (if you want to know where we went, check the following link, Needless junk and more). We went in Lety’s car, Victor was the co-pilot and I was sitting on the back seat. I kind of screwed the booking of the hostel where we were staying, so we had to travel approximately three hours to get where we originally planned to go (another thing I learned about me was that I’m a really bad planner).

A brief summary of what I really wanted to emphasis about road trips is: you learn a lot about the people and yourself from sharing this kind of experience; after something goes wrong and seems that this will spoil your trip, when you get through them, they are the things that you remember the most and laugh at. You learn to be patient and to see things a different way, you improvise when needed and invent knew ways to cheer or entertain people, silences become bearable and you explore your creative side to impress people with your photographs.

Nogales, city of the border.

Sundays in Manchester are normally spend: watching a movie at NopalJol, doing nothing at all, surfing the net or now that I have a blog figuring out what to write about. But this Sunday was different from my typical end of the weekend. I went to a concert with a friend. This of course brought lots of memory of my days when I was entering puberty.

My best friend (Briseida) and I, local outcast at the time, entered the underground world of music when we were 15 (it seemed the logical step to take). You could feel the uniqueness of each individuals trying to rebel against a society that considered them social rejects, because of there appearance or preferences. Yeah, the feeling of power it gave you being in an old, humid and abandoned warehouse located outside of town. Well, that’s what I felt, but actually I had my dad’s permission and he would promptly pick us up at midnight to go home. Hehe

We met several bizarre and weird people on those nights. Most of them had really rough lives (we were the good kids trying to fit in with the bad kids). Oaxaca (Lupita, but she was from Oaxaca so we just called her that), whom we met when we started going to “gigs”, had left her parent’s house when she was 13 or 14 years old, she worked as a babysitter for a family. On weekends (her days off), she would normally crash where anyone would let her. She had brought one suitcase with her, but all her important stuff were kept on a hand bag that she always carried. It was like a magician’s hat, she took whatever she needed out of the bag, it seemed bottomless. As time past and we became good friends,Briseida and me used to flips coins to see in which of our houses she would stay (not very nice). The last I heard of her, she had crossed the border (illegally) and was pregnant, but that was when I left home to go to study in Mexico city, 9 years ago. Ohh…How time flies!!!


Then there were the local groups, hahaha…at that time I could tell you the name of all the groups, in what order they were playing and which songs they were going to play (not much variety). What is really funny is some groups would try to create a new sound and ended up combining folk songs with metal-punk-rock. At the time I thought it was amazing what they did, but know I realize it was crap. Some local radio stations trying to encourage new talents would play their songs; they specially played one that had the name of my home town “Nogales, ciudad fronteriza” (Nogales, city of the border). Imagine the faces of those who really knew about music. Looking back at those days, I realize I was quiet naive about the things that surrounded me. Okay, still am, but now I can tell you I'm naive,hihihi...

Well, I’ll leave it here, it’s late and I’m not as young as I used to be.

BTW, the group I went to see on Sunday is called “The Secret Machines” check them out.

Ironic, hehehe

Le sens de l'ironie est une forte garantie de liberté.
(A sense of irony is a strong guarantee of liberty.)

Maurice BARRÈS, Sous l'oeil des Barbares, 1888