The first time I drove to Mexico
it was even weirder
Shortly after my house sale in 2019 I headed to a carefully curated list of plans. There was the carriage house in New Smyrna Beach where the owners were such drunks (but wealthy drunks so the recycling bin was full of Grey Goose bottles) that they didn't understand why I took off half way into my stay because they were throwing a huge day drinkers Boomer party on my FRONT PORCH on my 3rd Sunday there.
Oh well you can just be gone a few hours but you're welcomed to join! We do this every year! They set the "DJ" up near my bedroom window. I just laughed and said refund my Airbnb money you goons or I'm writing a review. I left.
I think I went back to Clearwater (my hometown) and stayed at a friends for a minute and then got back on the road and went to Arizona and then to Mexico for a place I had rented in the hills of Jalisco from some gringos who lived in Santa Fe part of the year. The part of the year that wasn't full of smoke from them burning the sides of mountains preparing for rainy season when you'd get malaria. A steal at only $900/mo. Only outdone by their caretaker who had started a pollero (chicken factory) in their absence who had an embarrassment of roosters. Or maybe he wanted all roosters. Fighting cocks brings more money than food. Anyway, they had all lined up on my windowsills. Their cages below for a welcome break to the smoke filling the house was chicken shit. Hundreds of young roosters. I sent a video to the owners and I heard the familiar *ping* of a PayPal refund hitting my account.
I never even unloaded the van. I think I stayed the first night but couldn't shower because the wife of the Rooster Guy had used up all the water in the tinaco for her laundry business. Basically all that said was the Santa Fe folks didn't pay a living wage to their caretakers. Most domestics don't turn your house into a chicken coop when you go home for the summer.
Back in the van we went, Brady, Mr. Ribby (RIP rat terrier) and I. We headed to one last Airbnb that was, upon arrival, not a place. That was the end of Plans and Airbnb for me. At least in Mexico. And I'd rather a hotel any day of the week after this many years of "vanlife" and staying in lousy Airbnbs. You may have an extra room or even an extra house but that doesn't mean you know how to work in hospitality or make a traveler comfy.
In Nayarit, the state where I found the Airbnb that wasn't a rental house, the folks who lived inside were nice enough to direct me to the pharmacy where there was a Canadian who had a cousin who knew someone who might speak English and have a room for rent. The usual yo yo that I laugh about now because it's so Mexico nice and predictably disappointing and 95% untrue.
It was 98 in the shade and jungle humid and I was worried about the dogs in the heat and I was getting all pink and headachey. Another *ping* on my phone from another refund from Airbnb on PayPal. I had money and no place to go. Some skinny American old guy on a motorcycle with a tiny dog said he knew of a hostel.
I'm not built for hostel life. Plus I have dogs, I said.
The place is empty and kind of a dump but she has one private room. I know her husband , we used to sail together. Follow me.
The room was private except for the roaches that poured out of the shower drain each night at 10pm like they had factory jobs.
The guy was Jerry and his dog was Ruby. I saw a lot of dogs riding on motorcycles that trip. Jerry lived on a sailboat and was too far gone and priced out of the US to return. He was 72. I remember I gave him all my solar lights to use on the boat. He used to be a carpenter, he said. But there's not much need for that where he was. I think it was Bucerias area, but Jerry smoked a lot of weed and potheads have a habit of saying there's no work, adequate light, a pen and paper---to do whatever it is that they're supposed to be doing. God love 'em, but Bucerias is a booming area full of snowbirds and other expats. You could totally get a carpentry gig.
I saw a German woman speeding down the road in a mini van that had no side doors. She screamed GET INNNNN!!! to a pack of cattle dogs on the corner and sped off to a house in the hills that I heard she was squatting in. There was so much to take in in a couple weeks in that town that I haven't even really had the memories come up until now 4.5 years later.
Jerry knew I wasn't ready for the long haul realities of living in a not fancy ex pat area. And Bucerias IS a fancy ex pat area. I wasn't ready to live in the "real Mexico" and he was right. He showed me how gates were fortified at homes because the cartel would crash right through the front door. I couldn't imagine that happening at the hostel where I was, but who knows? Another guy in a bus parked out front ran an extension cord into the hostel and pirated power and called himself Doctor C and invited people inside his bus where he had made benches out of surf boards and served Turkish coffee and weed mixed with hash and tobacco. He was looking for other nomads to head to Oaxaca. I was not that nomad.
The hostel lady's husband was permanently disabled from falling off the roof after they sailed across the Atlantic to get there. They ran a coffee roasting business now and I remember she wasted no time asking me to run the roaster and bag up 85 bags of coffee one morning while the husband yelled micromanaging tips from his bed. She was a cranky old Brit, but I couldn't blame her. Let's move abroad to Mexico and run this huge old building as a hostel! Sell everything!
And then arriving and the super capable husband has a near death accident and your whole life changes.
You seem to get up early, she said. We open at 6. Use these twisty ties. It would be a few years later that I stopped telling people that I had restaurant/cooking/building/plumbing experience. No good comes of it. Keep your mouth shut.
She fed 8 cats on my roof and they were all feral and drooling.
One had a rotted tooth. Brady and Ribby, the rat terriers, sat up all night staring at the ceiling. I put a salad plate over the drain in the shower and tried to sleep.