El Gringo Perdido: Part 4
Wanderlust and Cartel Sharks
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No idea where I am, but making myself at home.
BLOG POST #021 - El Gringo Perdido (The Lost Gringo) Part 4: Wanderlust and Cartel Sharks
How I learned to ride a motorcycle, speak Spanish and not die. Riding solo in search of adventure from Detroit to Argentina.
“Being lost in Mexico doesn't bother me as long as I know I am safe. Having no information about crime or cartels in the area, I wasn't really sure about that."
My GPS showed what road I was on, but little towns dotted on the map nearby meant nothing to me.
I needed to find a place to sleep for the night where I wouldn't get harassed, mugged or murdered.
As I paused by the side of the road, a raggedy passer-by approached. I wasn't sure if he was drunk, senile, or the bewildered village simpleton. It didn't seem like he was all there.
I could tell he was an old man from the silhouette of his slightly bent-over spine. His brown suit jacket looked like it was made out of thick-woolen-yarn from a college dorm room couch someone's grandma donated back in 86’. His movements were labored, as if he were reluctant to take another step. I thought I was watching a slow motion video of someone who hates his job, reluctantly walking to work.
I was in the middle-of-nowhere Mexico trying to not get killed, traveling alone on my long motorbike journey from Detroit to Argentina. My days were a tricky combination of joyful wanderlust, mission advancement, tourism, and safely getting the hell out of there to the next country on the list.
Although I assumed that town had a name, I had no idea what it was. The internet fails completely in those kinds of places. Phone signal was always spotty. Even if I did get a few bars, Google maps would stare back at me blankly when I searched for "hotel."
Thankfully, no matter how remote I am in the world, there always seems to be a place to lay my head. Every town has hidden guesthouses, rooms for rent, or some ratty corridor of numbered doors on the second floor above a street-front restaurant.
The problem was that I needed to be off the road before dark, which was closing in quickly. From what I have been told, narcos are everywhere and nowhere. They are a normal part of the fabric of society, and tend to colonize new areas every few years. Once they occupy the region, it becomes a no-man's land of Wild West jungle-law, administered at the hands of the newly arrived cartel warlords.
Some people disappear in a cloud of mystery, but the demise of others is meant to be seen. They are beheaded on a blogDelNarco_com live stream or have their dead bodies splashed all over the front page of rag-sheet tabloids, right out in the open. In order to make a point, these sinister men set a tone of brutality early on. Nothing projects power like ruthless atrocities committed against those brave souls who dared to make a stand.
Violence in full color, "Assassination of four merchants..."
Dead bodies sell newspapers and advertise cartel brutality for free.
Mexico's "drug war" is on a repeating cycle with moving targets. The federal police make the rounds and eventually raid each of the hot spots one by one. This causes a spike in bloodshed that lasts for weeks. Once the criminal gang takes enough losses, it moves on. Things settle back to normal for the old town, while the violence starts all over again in some new town.
It is a game of “narco-whack-a-mole.”
A friend told me about her relatives that had their land taken by some bad fellows. The family didn't leave in a panic at gunpoint or sneak away under darkness of night. They were told to go to the local registrar's office during regular business hours and sign over the deed or they would all be shot. So they did. After the dust settled years later, that family had no claim to their former land because the transfer was all done legally.
Societies are complex. While the dangers are real here, there is some room for humor as well. As Halloween and Day of The Dead celebrations approached, I saw a few houses and storefronts putting out decorations. I passed an automotive repair shop where two bodies wrapped in plastic tarps were hung by their feet off of the roof. Seeing them out of my peripheral vision at thirty miles per hour I did a double-take and performed a subtle emergency stop. Once I got a better look, I could see that they were obviously fake.
Wow, that is a pretty savage joke.
Fake bodies and uncomfortable laughs about real dangers.
Humor and trauma are often linked in this way. It allows us to face the truth, while suspending the unbearable pain, for only a moment or two. That dead body prank was hilarious and tragic all at once. At first I was worried that this might be dangerous for the store owners, but then I realized that the local banditos probably laughed hardest of all. Jokesters often get a free pass. Like I said - it is pretty complex.
As a random dude on a motorbike passing through, I am fairly neutral and under the radar. There's no reason I'd get arrested by the police because I'm doing nothing wrong. There's no reason I might end up with a noose around my neck, swinging from a highway overpass bridge because I'm not doing business with cartels. Drug violence is, by and large, related to drugs.
Regular townsfolk are often cool about tipping me off when bad things are coming, but in the end I only get surface knowledge about any particular place.
I think of this travel-risk similar to swimming in the ocean with large toothy fish all around. Whenever I am in the sea there is likely to be a hundred sharks within one mile of me. A majority of the time this is not a problem. After all, I don't look like a baby harbor seal - well, unless I haven't been working out and have put on some extra holiday-blubber. To be on the safe side I ask around at the beach, don't swim with open wounds that weep blood, and generally pay attention. By taking a few precautions, all is well between the sharks and me.
Well, cartel sharks are the same as ocean sharks.
The sluggish old man in that little town was probably not the best person to ask for advice, but there was no one else around. Alongside the poorly lit streets, run-down shops, and total lack of people out, I could tell that this pueblo had bad juju. As he approached me on the sidewalk, I asked the guy if there was a hotel nearby.
"¿Hay un hotel cerca, señor?"
The canyons of deep wrinkles on his forehead furrowed into a look of annoyance and distain, as if I had asked something perverse about his wife.
He paused to look up at my face and then kept walking towards the fading light of the dusky yellow evening.
I thought maybe I should simplify the question, so the second time I said, "¿Hotel?"
I might as well have been a mangy street dog barking at him, because I got nothing back. I started to second guess whether I was saying it wrong. The letter "H" is silent in Spanish, so the word is pronounced like, "otel." Still, I wasn't sure where to put the emphasis, as in "OOO-tel" or maybe "oh-TELL."
Even with the all the possible variance, how badly could I mispronounce "hotel" that he wouldn't figure it out? I think the word is literally the same in every language, just like "taxi" or "condones y lubricante."
I wasn't saying anything obscure like, "I beg your pardon kind sir, but do you know of a reputable pet shop that sells captive bred cockatoos of the highest quality?"
I was simply asking about a bed for the night.
"¿oh-TELL, amigo?"
He kept sliding his feet along, never said a word, and side-eyed me with an evil squint as he went on his way.
There is no photo of this short interaction. I don't know who that old man was. I'm not even sure I recall what part of Mexico I was in. It was just one of a thousand random memories from the vast, lost-nothingness of the first leg of my motorbike journey.
Sometimes I take a lot of photos and write notes, to make sure I get all of the facts right. Even so, for every written story, my mind is filled with scores of other tall tales, wrapped in a romantic haze of emotions and half-faded details.
One of the many horses I passed in Northern Mexico
One of the streets I had to navigate on my Kawasaki KLR 650
Hopped on a vintage Willy’s Jeep for a sunset ride.
Never having been a great collector of material stuff, I value experiences. My goal in life is to see, taste, and smell everything in the world before I die.
Flashbacks of wild-eyed adventure playing out in my head give me joy. I chuckle like a pirate sifting his fingers through coins in a newly plundered treasure chest.
Raw images and noises wash over me at random moments while I'm driving to work or waiting at the doctor's office.
New friends and favorite places are the jewels of my life. These memories are my gold.
NEXT POST COMING SOON: August 20, 2025
