On my first visit to Mexico, I flew into Guadalajara - a city in central Mexico about four hours south of my final destination. My travel companion and I were met at the airport by a father and son who were, if you stretched the definition of the work, loosely "related" to my fellow traveler. They drove a small pickup, and we were told to squeeze into the front seat next to the father, a man in his late 50s. His son, who appeared to hover somewhere in the 20 – 25 year old range, seated himself in the bed of the pick-up with our luggage. I found this a touch concerning, but was quickly distracted by the fact that the truck cab had not a single seatbelt in sight.
Before I could question the situation, we were in motion. We passed through the city in short order, and soon found ourselves on the highway that we would need to follow for the bulk of our trip. I had not, prior to this point, realized that we would be driving through a mountain range. Had I known this, I might have reconsidered our airport destination. Had I known about the "rules of the road" in Mexico, I might have reconsidered the trip altogether.
The highway was a series of blind corners and curves, and was dramatically accented by the unblocked drop off of the mountain side. As we drove, I stared, horrified, into the abyss to the right of the vehicle. I could see, punctuating the cliff at various heights, a shocking number of vehicles. There were cars, and trucks, and semi-trucks that had obviously rolled off of the mountainside and been stopped by trees or outcroppings of rocks. The logical assumption was, of course, that at the bottom of the mountain one would find the vehicles that had descended the drop without impediment. On the left side of the vehicle, we were flanked by a dark wall of stone. Smashed against this rock wall, every few hundred feet, were more vehicles. The reason for the high automobile death rate was soon made all-too-apparent. As it turns out, driving in Mexico is a highly competitive and aggressive pastime. The goal of this sport is to pass everyone who dares to drive in front of you, and – for maximum points – to honk and gesture wildly while doing so.
It was most unfortunate that the curves and turns of this highway reduced visibility to approximately -25 feet. This did nothing to deter the Mexican drivers. In fact, if I understand the game correctly, it might even have elevated it to an advanced level. Mute with terror, I gasped for air as the truck careened around corner after corner, cresting peaks and rounding turns only to encounter vehicle after vehicle approaching us at high speed – in our lane. If, by chance, they were not approaching us in our lane, it tended to be because we were not in our lane, and were, instead, in the opposite lane approaching someone else at high speed. When I managed to glance at our driver, to see how he was holding up, I was most disturbed to find him chortling to himself, looking into his rearview mirror to admire the latest conquest in the "passing game." This had the added benefit of keeping his eyes away from the road in front of us. From the pick-up bed behind us, I could hear the companionable chuckling of his son, who was most admiring of his father’s skills.
It is a testament to the benevolence of Fate that we arrived at our destination physically unharmed. The mental damage, sadly, I am still working through.
The following week, after a day spent in a different city, my co-traveler and I missed the last bus to the small town that we were staying in. In order to return to our lodging, we had to employ a taxi. It was a fairly lengthy trip, but the driver had no trouble filling the time with chatter. As we approached a particularly long and dark stretch of rural road, the man fell silent. Though I had not known him long, this seemed out of character. After a few moments, he began talking in a subdued and quiet voice. We had to ask him to speak up.
This stretch of highway, he explained to us, was haunted by the ghost of an old woman. Really? We asked, intrigued. It didn’t look haunted. It looked like the rest of the highway – desolate. Oh, he assured us, it was absolutely haunted. He went on to recount the experience of a friend of his, another taxi driver, who was traversing that very stretch of highway one night earlier that year. He was alone in his car, having dropped his passengers at their destination. Prompted by an unknown force, he turned his head to the left, where he saw – seated in the passenger seat – the ghost of the old woman.
By this point, it was clear that the driver had worked himself into a state of mild panic. I suspected that his mental wheels were turning, and that he was already projecting himself into the future, when he would be returning to the city via this same highway, sans us. Had he seen any way to do so, I’m fairly certain that he would have held us captive in that vehicle for the remainder of the night. Fortunately for us, his mental capacities were not all that they could be due to the rather large distraction of his fear.
A few years later, I returned to Mexico, and this time I brought my entire family. As a group, we were five people. To prevent losing a non-Spanish speaker in a Spanish-speaking country, we made every attempt to stay together when traveling. This meant that we would often squeeze into a single taxi – my mother in the passenger seat and the four remaining people packed into the back. This made for an uncomfortable trip, at best. At worst, it was perilous.
Many of the cities in Mexico attempt to control the hazards of driving by placing speed bumps throughout the streets. We quickly learned to brace ourselves for each of these obstacles, as the taxis tended to be deficient in the "shocks" department, and the weight of six people would generally destroy whatever life they had left. Always vigilant for the upcoming event, we began calling out whenever we spotted the telltale signs. "Speed bump!" we’d yell, all five of us. The taxi drivers were initially startled by this, but would often warm up to it. I had to wonder what they made of it, as – for the most part – they spoke no English. We were a motley crew, five people who insisted upon contorting ourselves into a single, overheated vehicle, and issuing a strange chanting cry as we drove about the city.
In Zacatecas we discovered, as we were driven through the city, that the speed bumps were much higher than in other parts of the country. This meant that, with our combined weight, we inevitably "bottomed out" on each one. Our cries of "speed bump!" began to take on a frantic edge, the sound of scraping metal unwelcome to our ears. The driver of our cab seemed unconcerned. He merely adjusted the speed of his driving, causing our slides over the bumps to become long and drawn-out, rather than short and jarring. As we continued, I noticed that his mouth was moving as we drove toward each bump, silently mouthing the words that he was beginning to recognize. "Speed bump" he air-spoke. Gaining confidence as the car lost underbelly, he guided us through the city.
As the car continued and our concern grew, a sixth voice joined our group. Directing us (I suspect deliberately) toward a particularly wicked-looking series of three speed bumps, the driver exclaimed jubilantly, in heavily accented English "SPEED BUMP!" The smile on his face stretched from ear to ear, his delight with his passengers and the experience apparent for all to see.
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