Today we are driving to Acapulco with Fito’s friend Angel. I am sitting in his jeep, typing and listening to music. It we’ve been driving for a couple of hours and only have another 6 to look forward to. I am kind of glad that we are spending the day in an air-conditioned car, as it is currently 47 degrees outside! That is a new record. Our previous record was 45 and was set when we went to Acapulco last year. I don’t understand why Acapulco is the hottest place because we have been to places much farther south but they are always less than this. We just stopped at a small town for a snack. The basics for every restaurant in this country are coca-cola tables/chairs, a blender and a TV playing mostly commercials. Even most street stands have these. Blenders are so important that there are old men at all the markets that do nothing but sell blender pieces like new blades and motors. People make aguas de frutas, licuados and frijoles with blenders. I wonder if Magic Bullets would sell good here? Or even Slap Chops? Last night I watched some Mexican Lucha Libre on TV. It was like a train wreck, so bad that I couldn’t look away. There were the clown wrestlers that the crowd loved that were beating on the “evil” Russians. A clown would kick a Russian and he would go running across the ring and fall off the other side. At one point a chair was broken across a Russian and the chair exploded with flour. I don’t know if they were being bad on purpose or if this was only an amateur league but I thought Mexicans were really serious about this and they had world-class actors.
We just went by a 100-foot tall waterfall and a military checkpoint. 5 guys point machine guns at us as we go right past their “complete stop” sign without slowing. The bypass for one town seems to just go through another one, filled with speed bumps. The rubber chicken hanging from Angel’s mirror is staring at me. Some of these speed bumps are like mountains, 2 feet tall. Dad sits in the front telling stories in broken Spanish to Angel. The highway decays into a dirt road covered in speed bumps as we go past a huge army base, uniformed teenagers sweeping the dirt outside. At another checkpoint Dad just smiles and waves and we go through. I bet that we will get stopped at least once before we get to Acapulco. 2 checks down, probably 20 to go. The temperature has dropped to a mild 42 degrees. I cant hear above the headphones but I can tell that dad is telling Rob’s “chicken head” story. He is acting it out with the rubber chicken up front. The last time we were at Acapulco Rob and I were swimming in the ocean when rob ran out of the water screaming, “CHICKEN HEAD, CHICKEN HEAD!!!!!!” and sure enough there was a rooster’s head, feathers and all, floating by. We didn’t swim much after that. I think we will have to this year because it is so hot. There are a lot of vultures along this road. I can see about 20 right now. They all circle over the cow fields, waiting for one to die. Luckily the road goes along the flat coastal plains instead of the mountains on the horizon to my right. I don’t think I could take 8 hours going through mountains, the most we have done was 6 hours and I threw up on that trip. We just got onto a new highway. It is straight and smooth. We didn’t have to pay a toll so I don’t know why the road is so nice. Angel usually has huge speakers in his car and an amplifier but he had to take them out so we could fit our baggage in. He says his kids like it when the car shakes from the noise. I wonder what the hearing loss statistics for Mexico are. We are stopping for lunch soon.
