Mexico's Pacific Coast

We'd been together in Mexico for almost exactly 24 hours before we ended up on the business side of a police cordon with or faces painted strange colours surrounded by anti-government banners.  This kind of thing happens to everyone, right?

Our couchsurf host in Hermosillo was a really interesting guy we´d have loved to spend more time with, and took us to a response to the Independence Day celebrations from Yo Soy 132, a democracy focused human rights group in Mexico.  It was staged as a 'funeral for democracy', complete with coffin and stilt walkers, which is why everyone was wearing black and painted like Eric Draven from The Crow.  In general, they're a very cool group worth looking into, and it was really interesting to learn more about activism in Mexico.  The local chapter we got to meet do a huge range of different things, from symbolic marches to direct actions such as lifting the barriers on toll roads.

A good chunk of the journey we've made over the last week (and there's been quite a lot of it so bear with us) has involved drivers choosing between two roads.  It seems pretty common in Mexico to have a toll road and a free one running almost exactly the same route.  And the tolls are VERY expensive.  The free roads are much more scenic and from our point of view great as they're much better for being nosey, but if you needed to travel it could be very frustrating as they take a lot longer and the 'cuota' roads are not something most people can afford most of the time.

Our little funeral never actually got into the main square where the celebrations were going on, due to a large group of police with black masks and guns telling us with impressively straight faces that we might intimidate people.  And in doing so presumably take their job.

There have been police everywhere.  Columns of vehicles, with maskedf and armed cops hanging off the back.  And that's when it's not actual army troops clogging up the roads, in numbers sufficient to invade a small city.  It's not just at the border where you kind of expect it, while passing through the little state of Nayarit, we were confronted with billboards such as this everywhere;

I mean, just LOOK at it.  It says "For the first time in history, a police commited to Nayarit" (that's a google translate translation I will stress).  But look at them.  It screams 'we are the baddies'.  You know when film and game dystopias have police state propaganda on the walls, it looks like this.  Even the Greece's Golden Dawn would probably think it was coming on a little strong.  The little tank thing in the left of the poster is called "The Rock" by the way.  To the left of this poster federal cops dressed exactly as in the posters were molesting drivers and when I lowered the camera, a fully loaded army jeep went by.  And this is the non-dangerous bit.  The whole state had the creepy feeling of the sound of marching jackboots being just on the edge of hearing. - C


Off we hitched on Monday, and made it to Los Mochis that night.  We'd hoped to take the copper canyon railway from here, but would have had to have waited several days a combination of that and cost made us decide against it so after exploring the town which doesn't have a lot of unique parts to it apart from being where the railway goes from we set off again.

One guy did pull over by the side of the road to point out the exact spot where bodies were found, as part of telling us to be careful.  But they were cops, which is slightly different (regardless of how you feel about cops, they're in more danger from drug cartels than most people).  In general, we got picked up by a lot of families and small pick ups, and learned that you don't need fluent Spanish to be able to understand the lecture about how you shouldn't be hitch-hiking because there's a lot of bad people in world and the lecturer in question has kids your age, because its the same in every language.  But everyone has been really nice and we're south of Sinaloa now anyway, and the atmosphere is much more safe and comfortable.

That night after Los Mochis we enjoyed roast chicken (pollo stands are ubiquitous here) and endless fresh salad and stayed in a truck with a driver we'd made friends with the day before.  We ended up waiting most of Wednesday in the loading yard he was at as it took hours for his truck to get loaded.

We were both feeling ready to leave the states and its great to be in a place so completely different, where you can just wander round and talk to people and learn so much.  There's also amazing street food on pretty much every corner which is always a bonus.

Our trucker friend left us in Mazatlan, which was the first proper resort town we'd been to.  Immigrants from the US are a much higher population there (easily recognised by the golf-carts decked out in varying styles of cool.  No really.), and although the town was beautiful and the sea warm it was kind of weird to have two types of buses in the town, some with air conditioning and more expensive running from the big hotels to the historic centre and then normal ones locals actually use to get around.  The migrant women running the English/Spanish library were very nice and helpful though and helped us get our bearings.  We ate more great food, watched weird arty films in the main square in the evening, and hiked back off to another layby the next morning.

Santiago Ixcuintla was our next stop, and it's a bewitching town.  Wonky buildings all squished together and small houses right in the centre of town next to restaurants and yet more cheap, fresh, friendly food stalls.  The light and atmosphere are hard to describe.

There's a cultural centre there for the native people from the surrounding area, the Huichol.  The project is a grand attempt to empower oppressed groups and promote native art.  There are various venues linked to it, but the centre in Santiago Ixcuintla is a pretty run down house without a big sign and most people in the town don't seem to know what or where it is (and instead directed us to the nearest source of Huichol Hot Sauce).  Which is only indicative of some of the problems indigenous people face the world over, of course.

From Santiago Ixcuintla we also took an afternoon trip out to Mexcaltitan, a tiny circular village on a man-made island that's only accessible by boat.  It's possibly Aztlan, the place the Aztecs originally came from.  Also, we saw herons and iguanas and weird cows.

That evening we sat in the square, C teaching J how to make the little flowers from drink cans, selling them for whatever people wanted to give.  We were surrounded by children in no time, one of whom was working selling toys and things in the square and we taught him how to make the flowers too, which made him very happy.

Quick and easy hitching got us to Guadalajara yesterday and we're staying with another couch surf and just heading out to explore the city.  And hopefully resolve the little question of still not officially being in Mexico...