Great Bloody Days - The Gringo Trail 1991-92

By Tightwad Economist

A lust for travel and adventure drives the Messiah of Budget Travel and his unwitting disciples to extraordinary lengths as they strive to journey a bit further and a bit longer. None more so than the Tightwad Economist, who has just $3000 and ten months to get from Los Angeles to Santiago de Chile. Budget about $10 a day for transport, food, accommodation, visas and booze. This tale chronicles the adventures of Tightwad and his Gringo mates on the Gringo Trail in the early 1990s when post offices and the Gringo grapevine were communications bread and butter for travellers. Much of Central America was just emerging from civil wars and ruthless dictatorships, while South American countries struggled with drugs, and poverty and a reputation for violence and corruption. Tightwad and his mates dispel some of the myths as they irreverently ply the trail and open their eyes to the magic of Latin America.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Feb 23, 2024
• ISBN: 9781446140765

Book preview

THE LONDON WINTER

LONDON, UK- LOS ANGELES, USA Thursday 4th April 1991

I left London, Gatwick on Thursday 4th April 1991. The long four-and-a-half-month stint in the Star and Garter at Putney was over. So was the freezing old Blighty winter, which at times had seen me huddled up all night in a passionate embrace with the centrally heated radiator.

The Star and Garter was a pub right on the Thames by Putney Bridge in a four-story historic building. The annual Oxford – Cambridge boat race starts on the river right next to it. It was fitted out with a quirky 70's décor that included a myriad of random objects hanging from the ceiling that gave it a special character such as art deco lamps and spray-painted silver sculptures of flowers, and signs with uplifting slogans such as A quitter never wins, a winner never quits. The walls were adorned with arty photos and mirrors. Above the bar was lined with wooden beer barrels with stockinged manikin legs protruding from them. This was all juxtaposed with the traditional pub carpet and the quaint 19th century windows.

Putney was a mainly upper middle-class area in southwest London. It was a pub very popular with the huge numbers of au pairs that lived in the area caring for the children of those upper-middle class locals. The au pairs were mainly European, so there were plenty of Scandinavians, but also Germans, Dutch, French, Spanish, Italians and even your odd Brazilian and Antipodean. The plethora of au pairs was like a honey pot to the local male population, so the pub was usually heaving and very popular, especially Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights.

It was also usually a very peaceful place, given that the punters were mainly of a certain civil disposition. That is why a curious engraving in one of the cubicle doors in the men's toilets used to make us laugh. It said, PUTNEY BOYS, WELL 'ARD. That is an English expression that means very tough and has no double-entendre and has nothing to do with erections. We laughed because Putney boys seemed to be quite posh and polite and the only scraps, they would get into would be on the Rugby pitch and were not the well 'ard Londoners that you might find in Brixton or the East End.

Later I learned that there was a part of Putney that was not of the same character. Up the hill near Putney Green, there was a housing estate which was the least salubrious part of the area. We used to get our fair share of drinkers from there, but they usually behaved themselves and adapted to the international good vibes of the pub.

Rather than share a room with another barman I had chosen to live in an old room on the top floor of the four-story building which had been abandoned and filled with junk, including a bed which was literally broken in half. The windowpanes were not well puttied after years of neglect and so it was very breezy on those freezing nights. The balcony window did serve as the perfect environmentally friendly refrigerator and kept my beers icy cold, and on some occasions, completely frozen. The view out the window, through the giant leafless maple trees of the ebb and flow of the Thames under Putney Bridge and on towards London was priceless.

Mykonos Dobell had left for Ireland and was then headed out to Portugal. Big G, the Messiah of Travel, the Velvet Talking Taxman and the Prowling Protégé had already departed for Mexico. The Kiwi connection in the pub, Snickers, Andros and Hells Bells were all leaving for Spain, Portugal and Morocco in a couple of weeks. Of my best mates, it left poor old Busty Eames in drab London to continue her much loved accounting career and only the prospect of improving weather and new barmen to shag to maintain her sanity.

I had a farewell spliff at the robotic bar couple Jim and Laura’s place over the Putney Bridge in Fulham and stashed my big backpack in their dungeon like basement. Luke the dog was quite cheerful but not his usual lively self and he didn’t even try to shag my leg. We were able to watch the latest repeat episode of the Time Tunnel without having to shake him off my leg or push the soles of my big boots into his head to shoo him away and calm him down. On a recent trip to Wales with his masters, the frisky young mongrel had been out and about in the fresh Welsh air and had discovered the real thing with a hot young bitch and so now it seemed human legs just didn’t appeal to him like they used to.

The ten-hour flight from London Gatwick to Los Angeles was easy to cope with and the stunning views of volcanic Iceland and glacial Greenland added to the excitement of flying. Luckily the two seats next to mine were unoccupied so I did not need to conceal the metaphoric travel boner that I found in my trousers.

I had done my travelling apprenticeship in the hostels, trains and big cities of Europe, with a couple of somewhat more intrepid forays into Turkey, Morocco and Thailand, and now I was headed to Latin America, the plan having been hatched in front of the Far Out Cafe on Mylopotas Beach, Ios, in the Greek Islands back in September of 1990. That day, I had just finished a month-long trip around Turkey and had come back to my summer base of Ios for a final fling before heading onto the Oktoberfest, the third point of the infamous European Summer Golden Triangle of Pamps, Ios and Munich. I hadn´t been to Pamps, mind you. On that fateful day, I was sitting all on my own and lonely on Mylopotas Beach, the place where only a couple of months earlier I had been accompanied by a hoard of mates including Dog´s Bollocks the Brentford supporter, Dags with the pierced foreskin, Irish Dee and her sister, the Swedish Girl´s convention trio, the Auckland sisters Zois and Saris and London Samos.

As I sat all alone and observed the movements on the beach, I instantly recognised the Greek – Aussie features of the Messiah of Travel. I first met him five or six weeks earlier on a boat headed from Ios to Samos on my way to the Turkish port of Kuşadasi. On that fateful occasion he had recognised my University of New South Wales Rugby League Club footy jumper and we had sparked up a conversation. We met again in Ölu Deniz where he had led a tribe of backpackers to the rooftop open air sleeping quarters in the campground and then on a walk through the lush Mediterranean hills to an abandoned Greek Village.

As I stepped up to greet him on Mylopotas Beach, the bloke next to him exclaimed Tightwad!

I couldn't see his face behind his reflective Bolle sunnies for a moment, but then he removed them revealing Tappy the Copper, the very same guy I had met on the boat to Crete and who spent a night on the same poxy football field as me in Iraklion a month earlier. Turns out the mate he had been on his way to meet in Rhodes was none other than the Messiah of Travel.

Then, may God strike me dead if I am lying, as Rodney Rude would say, one of the other blokes who had been drinking on Ios with the Messiah of Travel and Tappy the Copper steps up. Blow me down if it is not Big G, one of my old drinking mates from the Uni Bar and the Royal Hotel, Randwick all those years ago during the university days back in Sydney. The fourth bloke was from Melbourne, and he thought I must have been a legend for knowing three people from three different times and places. He was himself the very legendary Velvet Talking Taxman, known for his shining blue eyes, his dulcet tones and smarmy courtship spadework that would make girls melt in an instant. 

There on Mylopotas Beach, myself, the Messiah of Travel, Big G and the Velvet Talking Taxman first planned a rough trip to Latin America. Poor Tappy the Copper was going back to his life with his Mum and life on the Sydney Streets to rort the police working conditions.

Since then, more people had expressed interest, and we were going to be joined at various moments by others. The first was a bloke called the Penultimate Flingster, an accountant and a friend of Big G and the Velvet Talking Taxman from a Contiki Tour. Yes, that’s right, a package tour. They reckoned they were now reformed and were fully fledged independent travellers. They had done enough to prove it to me by living free of charge in a Brixton squat that winter. I was going to meet the Penultimate Flingster in Los Angeles the following day having met briefly in London a couple of weeks earlier. He was going home to marry the love of his life back in Sydney, so he thought he'd come along for a last fling, but he just couldn't help himself. Another, the Prowling Protégé, a grinning larrikin from Newcastle, Australia and another Contiki Tour veteran had departed earlier with the Messiah of Travel, Big G and the Velvet Talking Taxman and were all now somewhere in Mexico.

I was short of cash and could not leave with them at the beginning of March and had to work an extra month in the Star and Garter. As it was when I left I did so with the bare minimum to get me through the 10-month overland journey from Los Angeles to Santiago de Chile. I had my return ticket from Santiago, which might be deemed a bit soft by extremists, but I only had just over $USD3000, which meant I had to survive on about $10 a day for food, shelter, accommodation, visas and drinking.

THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

The plane touched down in Los Angeles at about 7pm local time and I cruised through immigration and baggage collection in good time. In the arrivals lounge I met Jimmy Gooseneck who had a hostel in Venice Beach for a tenner and the car to take me there, so I accepted his offer. He had a long protruding neck and nose and a Neanderthal forehead which sloped back from eyes to hairline at about forty-five degrees. What happened to the shape of his skull after that was a mystery because it was concealed by a scraggly bouffant. He wasn’t thick set like a Neanderthal though, quite the opposite, when standing next to me he made wiry me feel solid enough to pack down in the front row. His driver was Norm, a quietly spoken bloke from Perth, Western Australia with a huge green Yank tank. Norm called it a Cadillac, but I wasn’t sure if that was the American name for this kind of massive family car or a brand. It turned out I was the first paying customer at the hostel. Norm, the kind of polite Aussie who when you least expect it is capable of cracking biting and sarcastic one liners that can cause a decent old belly laugh, told me he was travelling with his mate Fraze also from Perth and Don, a Geordie from Newcastle in England were all staying for nothing, but their job was to pick up punters from the airport in their vehicle. The Gooseneck hunted for more clients but had no success, so we rolled on to Venice Beach on the wide streets, lined with tall thin palm trees.

On arrival at the hostel, I discovered that it was just a house the Gooseneck had rented and filled up with mattresses and beds, but it was situated nicely on the road backing the beach, so it was a quick stroll down to the Pacific sand. I met Fraze who, had he not been from Perth, would definitely have been a prop forward, a very thick set and muscular ginger head of Scottish origin. He was introduced to me as Fraze and I assumed his surname was Fraser, but it wasn’t until he wrote his address down in my address book a week later in Ensenada that I discovered that his first name was Frazer. Don was a spritely bright blond English traveller, who had been away so long he looked more like a local surfer than a pasty working-class Englishman from the northeast. Unlike the true Geordie that he was, he was tanned from his years in Australia, South East Asia and the United States from coast to coast and now sported a discreet butterfly tattoo on his right shoulder blade. He was on his way to South America, like me, and had an itinerary roughly similar to mine, expecting to spend about a year getting to Argentina. He was called Don, but he was quickly christened The Don by us. It was not for his cricketing ability, mind you, as a working-class Englishman from Newcastle upon Tyne he may have been good at football, but he looked like he had never held a cricket bat. No, he was a legend in the travelling game and as time would show us, there really was only one Don. The Don.

I had heard countless times that in America with my Australian accent that I should have no problem pulling the chicks. All I had to do was open my mouth and they would be all over me like a cheap suit when they heard the exotic accent. This was the typical line from those who had passed through the States and returned with stories of how the girls had been all over them so impressed with their strange accents. Typical of the stories Bluey McCrea had arrived in London with. Being Bluey McCrea, a ducker and diver and exaggerator from way back, I should have smelled a rat, but the truth was that he wasn’t the only one I had heard it from. Now I had the chance to test the theory or to prove that it was an urban myth. I had planned to go out with the boys that night, but time slipped by, I passed out on the sofa after the long flight and nobody else got motivated. Lack of motivation on the part of Fraze, Norm and The Don was a clue to reality. If the theory was true there is no way they wouldn’t find motivation, but these were experienced American travellers and they chose to stay at the Gooseneck Hostel and laze about on the sofa in front of the cable television on a Thursday Night, a traditionally big night back in Australia and also in London.

LOS ANGELES; USA Friday 5th April 1991

The next day, a Friday, I hiked up to Santa Monica via the beach, dodging the buildings, car parks, piers, lifeguard lookouts and four-wheel-drive vehicles that jutted out and tainted the beach. Without that human intrusion it would have been a huge length of pure Pacific beach. I was excited by trivial sites like palm trees along the beach front promenade as it brought the classic line blood stains the roots of the palm trees of Venice from the song by The Doors.

In my eagerness to stick to the water's edge, I missed most of the promenade of loonies and posers, but it did not really matter because I was going to have an overdose the next day.

Santa Monica city was a grid of fancy shops and banks by the sea. I looked inside a few shops, but the only purchases my finances would run to were a couple of pairs of imperfect Reg Grundies from Woolworth’s and a 69 cents plus tax cheeseburger from McDonald's. Shock, horror, sin. Yes, all my principles were out the window, spending my hard-earned cash in a filthy, low-down, capitalist establishment. I could say when in Rome... But here more appropriately when in the U. S. of A, eat at McDonald's and drink Coke. And that was the last time I ever spent my hard-earned cash in that icon of fast junk food and inexistant quality. And what better place to see the light and break out of the years of marketing brainwashing than California.

Heading back from Santa Monica I shed my shirt and paid the price of spending the winter in England working on my pasty white tone of skin.

In the afternoon The Don, Norm, Fraze and myself drove to Von's twenty-four-hour seven-day supermarket to pick up some tucker for the evening pig out. Later, Don, Norm and I cruised out to LAX international airport to pick up the Penultimate Flingster. Like a good lad he was into the arrival hall early, we also picked up a couple of English sheilas, so the Gooseneck had some more business in his Pack 'n' Sack Hostel. That was his name for it, but by now, after twenty-four hours of larrikin banter, he was without a doubt the Gooseneck and his establishment was without a doubt The Gooseneck Hostel, baptised and immortalised. None of that poxy Pack ’n’ Sack piffle. It was just a house, after all, with up to three double beds crammed into one room and lined up all neatly in a row, with no room to walk between them. The only way into or out of bed was via the foot. He had a television and a counter set up in the entrance hall and a couple of video games as well, and of course a kitchen complete with cooking utensils.

It was Friday night so there was much more enthusiasm for a night out, so we went to the Oar House up towards Santa Monica. Was the bar going to be a rowing theme bar or was it a double entendre, the best little oar house in California? Did that mean the boys were a chance with our Aussie accents and The Don with his legendary Geordie accent?

The decor was somewhat reminiscent of the Star and Garter in Putney where I had spent the English winter working. The only difference being that the objects hanging from the ceiling here were much more up-market, more Americanised, much, much bigger and nowhere near as dusty. There was, for example, a Harley-Davidson and a stagecoach. One bar was full of video games, pinball machines, table soccer and even a basketball hoop and balls. They were missing the dartboard, though.

We drank pitchers, as they call jugs, of cat's piss beer. It was so light and watery that it took about six glasses before there was any feeling. I had just completed a winter stint drinking pints of Guinness in England, so I was in good beer drinking form and accustomed to something with a lot more body. We all knocked them back quickly to get a hit and eventually, after several visits to the dunny, it worked. We met a group of blonde American chicks ranging in age from about twenty-one and nubile to forty-five and wrinkly. All the Bluey McCrea et al stories about they love your accents.... jump into bed.... easy proved an urban myth on this first night out. They seemed to be lacking in the art of conversation, or was it that we did not offer them drinks and we looked like a group of dirty war-torn refugees? Whatever it was, all of us walked home kicking stones at different hours and stages of drunkenness.

LOS ANGELES; USA Saturday 6th April 1991

The Penultimate Flingster and I walked up the beach front promenade and dodged the crowds of beautiful people in up-to-the-minute style costumes. Even the healthy skaters and cyclists were out-fitted perfectly. Bikers had luminous pants and shirts and Oakley sunglasses, all matching the colour of the frames of their latest model mountain bikes. Roller skaters were all aboard state-of-the-art four-wheel mono track skates and similarly prettily dressed. We also came across numerous street entertainers, glass walkers, acrobats, jugglers, a unicyclist juggler who I think was named Marty Coffee whom I had seen in Australia on the telly. There were also artists, fortune tellers, tarot card readers and not to mention a great range of other loonies. There was the skateboarding grannies, a roller skating turbaned electric guitar playing old black bloke, a dope head who balanced precariously on a fence swaying and singing and who thought he was Jim Morrison, but he was actually an insult to Jim and then there was a dancing dwarf of about two feet tall who was also a thalidomide. Some people have all the luck. I felt far too ordinary to hang around there with such a wide variety of special people, so I decided to spend the rest of the afternoon relaxing at the Gooseneck Hostel.

LOS ANGELES; USA Sunday 7th April 1991

On Sunday we took the Duncan Fearnley cricket bat which had been beautifully styled from a picket fence post taken from the Gooseneck Hostel front garden down to the beach for a full-on game of cricket. I think we confused the Americans, but it was certainly great to get some outdoor exercise. There were also quite a few VW bonnets to be seen soaking up the sun, so it was quite a pleasurable day.

That afternoon we again visited Von's and this time enjoyed a meal of chicken legs marinated in something with mashed spuds, zucchini and gravy. It was all washed down with bulk beers from Von's. Already pissed the Penultimate Flingster and I went to a pub called The Red Onion with Tina and Torunn, two Norwegian girls who had arrived at Gooseneck Hostel. The Red Onion was the only bar within reasonable walking distance. We had walked for an hour to get home from The Oar House two nights previously. However, this bar was pathetically empty, apart from the odd senior citizen here and there and the beers were over-the-top expensive, so we only stayed for one. Back at the Gooseneck Hostel everyone played cards except for Tina and me who sat out the back and discussed politics, socio-economic reform, 13th century history while we surveyed the surroundings of the basement room which may have been a laundry but came well-equipped with yet more new mattresses piled on the ground. Certainly, a good start to the America’s tour.

LOS ANGELES; USA Monday 8th April 1991

The next day involved a bit of administration including buying some traveller’s cheques. We said goodbye to the Norwegian girls who were on their way to Hawaii and New Zealand. The Penultimate Flingster got in touch with an old female school friend of his who is working in LA in the travel scene. We arranged to go to the Whore House again because it is supposed to be kicking on Monday evening. We commenced with a bottle of the duty-free Scotch courtesy of the Penultimate Flingster and proceeded to get blind. We achieved our aim, and we were well on the way when we got to the bar. The place was jam packed. They wouldn't let us into the bar decorated with the Harley until our ticket numbers came up. Eventually the Penultimate Flingster and his friend got in leaving me and Norm outside, still sucking on watery brews. Bored, we pissed off and commenced the long trek homeward. It turned out that whilst we were out, Fraze had turned his charm on the young French-Canadian at the hostel and reaped the dividends. The sly old dog.

Fraze (at front), the Penultimate Flingster and Tightwad Economist (at back),

Tina, Jimmy Gooseneck, the young French-Canadian and Torunn outside

the Pack 'n' Sack Hostel

LOS ANGELES; USA-ENSENADA, MEXICO Tuesday 9th April 1991

On Tuesday we packed up and shipped out, leaving the hostel empty apart from the two Quebec Canadians and Jimmy Gooseneck. We had all grown fond of his imaginative sense of humour, his sharp biting wit and his long protruding neck and the long-drawn horse’s head. Not to mention the numerous quarters he gave us to play video games so that he would have less competition in the spadework department irrespective of whether his target was Norwegian, English or French Canadian.

The Don, the Penultimate Flingster and I were headed for Mexico and Norm and Fraze had expressed an interest in going for a brief visit as well. We decided to go together, the car was easily big enough for five of us and our packs. The green Cadillac set off via the mansions of Marina del Rey and the dried-up rank smelling canals of the Venice of the Americas! Or was the tide out? We cruised down the freeway through the smog and haze with seven and eight lanes of traffic in each direction, headed south for San Diego. We certainly were an excitable group, wolf whistling and yahooing in fine American style whenever we saw a good sort in a car. We got really excited at seeing a California highway patrolman who had almost as many teeth as Ponch from CHiPs, that banal motorcycle TV drama from the 70s. We really knew we were in America because we saw a car spin out and off the freeway a few hundred metres in front of us. And I thought it only happened in the movies. It was all happening.

I also spotted a couple of huge concrete breast shaped structures that I recognised from a movie. I can't remember what it was, maybe the Naked Gun or some other similar thing that makes a lot of smutty innuendo.

In San Diego we pigged out on Chinese all you could eat for five dollars and looked for a motorcycle pipe for Norm out in the suburbs but had no luck. Norm was an importer and collector of Harley Davidsons and had tracked down this dealer, but it was a trip for nothing for him and a brief look at suburbia for us. We did catch a bit more excitement on the freeway when we saw a car which was smoking and seemed overheated and pulled over on the side of the road. We had made a wrong turn and after we corrected and headed back in the right direction, we again passed the car which was now spewing out flames from the bonnet, windscreen and dashboard. You couldn't dream of seeing so much action and stunts in just one day on the freeway, but this was America.

STATS

North America – USA and Mexico

MÉXICO

$US 1= 3,100 pesos

At around 5pm we crossed the paradoxical Mexican border into Tijuana without even having to stop the car to show our passports. Going north, there is a huge mesh fence. There is a wide no-man’s land controlled by choppers night and day and numerous land patrols. We passed by shanty looking residential areas on hillsides just out of town. We took the bypass and headed south on a ridge overlooking the border zone controlled by choppers, past the bullring by the sea with the silvery Pacific glinting in the afternoon sun and on towards Ensenada.

Our welcome to Mexico was getting stung three times with the road toll, but the view was quite stunning along the coast with beautiful cliffs and beaches and the sun sinking over the golden Pacific. In Ensenada the plan was for two people to check into the Motel Pancho, the other three of us would sneak in later. The Penultimate Flingster and Norm checked in officially. The Don and Fraze thought it would be a breeze and thought the best tactic was to stride in confidently. In order to get to the room, they had to go past reception. They waited five minutes before they cruised in brazenly, but the Mexican owner was not stupid and questioned them and they had to play dumb and pay up. We were not the first tight fisted Gringos to pull into this town in a Yank tank. I stayed outside and wandered about and waited until it got dark, and I was able to jump the small wall to outwit Don Pancho. My efforts, when split five ways, did not result in a huge discount for me personally.

We went downtown and ate tacos from mobile hand pulled taco carts in the street but we paid in American dollars so I couldn’t feel the true authenticity of Mexico. We did find a cantina and drank the massive nine hundred and forty millilitre bottles of Tecate beer until we were pissed yet again. We tried to converse with some of the locals. They were friendly enough to offer tacos with a topping of chilli sauce and lime juice and which had a serious spicy kick to them and meant we had to suck back the beers more quickly. I paid the price. The next morning, I had a full-on Johnny Cash burn, burn, burning ring of fire to accompany my hangover.

ENSENADA-DESIERTO DE VIZCAINO, BAJA CALIFORNIA, MÉXICO Wednesday 10th April 1991

On Wednesday I changed one hundred dollars which seemed like far too much money. All this Gringo style consumerism was blowing my budget and my outdated Mexico Travel Survival Kit guide being well and truly past it. The bus from Ensenada to La Paz was ninety-four thousand pesos, which was about thirty American dollars which was not much for a 1600- kilometre journey but more than double what I had expected.

We said goodbye to Fraze and Norm and their green Cadillac who were returning to USA. The Penultimate Flingster, The Don and I jumped on the bus for the long journey down the length of Baja California. The coast road was quite beautiful, tainted only by the bodies of thousands of car shells, wrecked and abandoned. The houses were short and squat and small and square. Paradoxically many were crowned by the huge California version of the satellite dish, a huge dark mesh bowl pointing skyward, probably receiving American television. The massive dishes made the little houses look even smaller.

The Tightwad Economist, The Don, Fraze and the Penultimate Flingster

in Ensanada on the green Cadillac.

The last stop before nightfall was El Rosario where the coastal highway made a serious detour into the mountainous desert interior of Baja California. I ate an enchilada de pollo in a roadside bar, broadening my cultural experience which until now had consisted of only beer and tacos. The bus headed inland and just before dark I got very excited when I spotted a few isolated cacti, the classic kind immortalised in the Road Runner cartoon and numerous Western movies. They have a tall broad central trunk and numerous arms reaching upwards from about halfway up the trunk. They are pale green colour faded by the relentless sun and very prickly to touch with huge spikes emanating from trunk and arms. My excitement was dampened by darkness and tiredness. The steady recent alcohol intake had taken its toll, and I was able to pass the night sleeping in the bus as it continued through the Desierto de Vizcaino and further south.

DESIERTO DE VIZCAINO - LA PAZ, MÉXICO Thursday 11th April 1991

My cactus induced excitement of the previous night was just a teasing taste of what was to come as I awoke to millions of the cactuses spread all over the dry mountainsides. What's more, they dominated the landscape all morning until we reached La Paz at 11am after a twenty-one-hour bus ride.

Curiously, with American immigration on the Mexican border so tight, we had been waved through the American border post and then through the Mexican side in Tijuana without stopping. Now, about one thousand seven hundred kilometres further south our first duty on arrival was to visit the immigration office to check into the country, so to speak. We were undecided about the next step on our quest to catch up to The Messiah of Travel, Big G, the Velvet Talking Taxman and the Prowling Protégé. I didn't know where they were, just somewhere further south. The Messiah of Travel and I had selected a few key points for leaving messages about their possible next steps. My main objective was to reach them and travel together through the perilous sounding countries of Central America like Guatemala and Nicaragua. They didn't sound like places to be alone and so green. Until now my travels had really only been beer drinking adventures and Museum visits in stable European countries, with the odd diversion into modern Islamic countries or eastern Europe. My first goal in the catch-up quest was Puerto Vallarta. We did a bit of research at the tourist office and the ferry boat office before deciding to stay the night. We checked in at the very Mexican San Miguel Hotel and spent the afternoon at the town beach. The water was lovely, clear, blue and warm. It was my first immersing in water, apart from the scungy Star and Garter bath, since my dip in the Atlantic in Portugal six months previously and it was very welcome. We chose food from the supermarket for a cheap meal, the choice seemed limited and expensive.

After noshing we wandered around the colonial town in the early evening and there were many Mexicans out for a paseo. There was an abundance of lovely women, and the town was very casual and us blonde Gringos we were not hassled nor were we novelties.

LA PAZ – MAZATLAN, MÉXICO Friday 12th April 1991

We got up early and went to town to buy some ferry tickets which proved no problem. We stocked up on some food for the eighteen-hour journey and decided to indulge in some tequila on the boat. We found the cheapest available which was a plastic one litre bottle of Viva Villa that cost us five thousand six hundred and sixty pesos or less than two dollars and paid homage to the Mexican Revolutionary Pancho Villa, who had started out as a horse and cattle thief and rose to prominence as a charitable businessman who traded in horses and cattle. He was an important revolutionary leader in the north of Mexico from 1910 to 1920 and his later claims to fame include a raid across the border into the USA.

When the ferry trip got underway, we lick-sip-sucked our way through the salt, lime and tequila. In order to make it more palatable we timed each other with the Penultimate Flingster's watch, the competition made it easier to stomach. Record time for the evening was two and a half seconds set by me and also claimed by The Don but under protest that there had been an equipment malfunction which was very likely because the timing mechanism was the Penultimate Flingster's pissed eyes and the second-hand on his watch. We met a modern-day American hippie called Marcus from Oregon who was headed south with his ten-tonne pack and long alternative locks to do the Mexican thing.

We found a quiet corner in the boat's cafeteria area and crashed out for the evening. The tequila was a fine sleeping pill and despite the fact that I was the odd poor man out with no sleeping bag or rug, just the linoleum floor and the Pacific swell to keep me comfortable, I had a good night's kip.

MAZATLAN, SINALOA, MÉXICO Saturday 13 April 1991

In Mazatlán we decided to leg it from the port to the old town. At last, I thought we had discovered a place devoid of tourists. That was until a possibly pissed American tourist-come-con artist asked us for some money. I told him I had sod all and to sod off, but Marcus Oregon, being a kind-hearted soul and perhaps imagining himself stuck alone and penniless south of the border forked out a cool one thousand or so.

In town we hunted for a cheap hotel. The best we could do was thirty-five thousand pesos for all four of us at the Hotel Lerma, a rambling soulless old blue painted three-story concrete box built around a central concreted car park. We had more luck in our quest for food and found a sensational comida corrida for six thousand pesos. The comida corrida is the classic standard working class man's lunch. It consists of maybe a soup, followed by some rice and meat and possibly some salad or vegetables. It is accompanied by the staple Mexican corn flour tortilla, or better said, a pile of them wrapped in a tea towel to keep them warm. The tortilla is a flat round soft and flexible piece of cornbread fifteen centimetres in diameter. That enables you to make countless tacos of meat and rice and to fill up thoroughly. As the Messiah of Travel had preached on many an occasion You never know where your next meal is coming from. My first comida corrida was a wonderful pig out as the hospitable waitress complied with our request for "mas tortillas por favor." You learn the essentials of a new language very quickly, and another tea towel wrapped around an even bigger pile of warm tortillas soon appeared on our table.

La Perla del Pacifico, as Mazatlán is known by the locals, is a resort city and a major fishing port, so we decided to spend some time in the afternoon at the beach and were soon approached by three young girls who wanted one of us to take a photo for them. I later realised that this was a good Mexican excuse for sparking up a conversation with someone at the beach. The girls were young and probably had not reached twenty, but they were very nice, and we spent the afternoon practising Spanish, the dictionary close at hand to express ourselves and the sand a convenient writing and drawing implement. I fell in lust with one of them after a few seconds of talking, but as the sun set over the Pacific, they left us in the sand. However, it had given us a sniff of the delights of the Mexican beach and after several days of constant movement we communally decided that it would be a good idea to stay around and enjoy the sun and sand.

MAZATLAN, SINALOA, MÉXICO Sunday 14th April 1991

We spent all day at the beach. It didn't take long for some Mexican chicas to start eyeing us Gringos up. The old Can you take a photograph for us? line was used by the girls on The Don, who with his bright blonde hair always attracted plenty of attention. Soon we had another intense Spanish lesson with something good to look at in the meantime. Mayela and Claudia were from Durango, a big town north-east of Mazatlán more famous as the location for several John Wayne westerns than its history of nearly half a millennium.

We chatted for hours, and we learned many groserias, as they called them, or naughty words. That was a good sign. There were four of us and only two of them so there was quite a bit of foul spadework and shifting of positions and angles. At first, I thought The Don was a certainty as they had first been attracted to his blonde hair, but he had not accounted for the energetic spadework of Marcus Oregon who cut his grass and left The Don on the outer. They were both talking to Claudia who spoke some English. I concentrated my attention on Mayela who only spoke Spanish, so it was a pretty tough day's spadework with a dictionary and the Penultimate Flingster's dodgy phrasebook as our interpreter.

Claudia, The Don, Marcus Oregon, Mayela and the Tightwad Economist

on the beach in Mazatlán.

Towards sundown, Marcus Oregon and Claudia, and Mayela and I went for walkies. I was following the girls without realising where I was going. They led us to the bus station so they could buy their return tickets to Durango. Meanwhile, the poor old Penultimate Flingster who had supplied the phrasebook, and the means of communication was left on the beach to mind all our stuff. We were gone for over an hour and he was rightfully spewing when we got back. We took the girls back to the salubrious surroundings of the Hotel Lerma and indulged in several tequilas before the two newly formed couples ventured outdoors for a nosh up. We returned to the humble restaurant Tijuana, our regular in Mazatlán, and ate some tostadas which were another taste sensation. The only sour taste left in my mouth was having to fork out for the girl. One of the local customs that I just can't get used to having grown up in a land where women demand equal rights, I am only too willing to comply.

After dinner we bought some beers and sank them in the hotel until Marcus Oregon and I had to walk the chicas to their bus home. In a romantic goodbye gesture, I slipped the old tongue down the motorboat. I just hate that traveller's dilemma, when things start getting interesting and you have to say goodbye. I did not want my passionate embrace to end but when she finally had to get on the bus, I felt that I was receiving many evil glares from the local blokes. Apparently cutting in on the local talent is not standard recognised diplomatic practice although it was probably just excitable paranoia.

MAZATLAN, SINALOA - PUERTO VALLARTA, JÁLISCO, MÉXICO Monday 15th April 1991

We left old Marcus Oregon behind in Mazatlán and decided to hitchhike further south, rather than take the expensive buses. We made our way to the Pemex gasolinera [petrol station] on the outskirts of town on a local bus with a comedian driver who had all the men on the bus grinning and chuckling and all the women looking slightly embarrassed but trying to force out a smile. Thanks to my groseria lessons from Mayela and Claudia I managed to pick up a few words.

The hitching started off slowly. Our first offer was not even a lift but a watermelon. Since we had not had breakfast, it was chopped up and it went down very well. We ended up with a lift in the back of a pick-up with a closed cabin. We had a couple of brief stops for prawns at a small-town prawn market and then at the ice factory to fill up the couple of eskies in the back of the pick-up. He took us on to Tepic and left us at the turn off on the main coastal highway. Our first ride was a very successful stint in which we covered over two hundred kilometres. Luckily there happened to be a taco stand at the turn-off and we scoffed a few overpriced tacos for lunch. Tepic was in a large valley, and we could look down over it from our vantage point on the highway, it had a huge volcano overlooking it, but the view was obscured by the smog and haze which shrouded the city.

The Don and the Tightwad Economist hitchhiking in a police pick-up near Tepic.

We were soon picked up by a bloke and a youngster in a police pick-up truck. At first, we thought we were in a bit of strife as we piled into the back, but when they threw in a bag of home-made cookies and headed towards Puerto Vallarta we were laughing. We were dropped off down the road and were not long waiting before a bloke, with yet another pick-up, stopped for us. The Don got the comfortable front seat in the cabin with the driver whilst the Penultimate Flingster and I climbed into the back with three forty-four-gallon drums, some boxes of tools and equipment all covered in oil and petrol. We got comfortable amongst the oil and grime, and we headed out. He stopped along the way to fill up the truck of one of his workmates and then in the village at a small house to top up a couple of drums. Despite the fact that my head rested against the rim of a forty-four-gallon drum that vibrated with the Mexican road I still managed to nod off now and again until the next pothole when my head cracked against the oily rim. We were left in a small town, but we got a lift quickly in a flash white Chevy pick-up with blue trimmings and shiny silver roll bar. We jumped into the back, and he flew into Puerto Vallarta. By the time he dropped us off at the airport there were quite a few grotty fingerprints on his rollbar from hanging on desperately on tight corners.

From the airport we caught a local bus into town, which was quite nice to look at. The signs of packos were everywhere: ritzy shops, rent-a-Jeeps, huge five-star hotels and porky middle-aged Westerners. A woman from Mexico City who claimed to be an opera singer, she certainly had the figure for it, took us under her sizeable wing and assisted us in our quest for a hotel. The Messiah of Travel had said he would leave a message at the Hotel Chula Vista, but that hotel had disappeared, so we moved in across from its supposed location.

I went down to the post office and picked up a letter from the Messiah of Travel himself. He wasn't making things easy for his disciples. The Penultimate Flingster and I were already a week behind schedule and his note informed us that they were two weeks ahead of the rough plan and in two weeks’ time would be four weeks ahead. That means the Penultimate Flingster and I had a lot of ground to cover to catch up. To make matters more complicated we were going to have to go to Belize to find out where they would be in Guatemala, we could not take the shortcut straight from Mexico down the Pacific coast. With hindsight, it would not have been too difficult, but we were green and a bit nervous about what awaited us south of the Mexican border.

The restaurants in Puerto Vallarta looked out of our league so we cruised the streets and had a mixture of various streets snacks all from street vendors. I tried some tamales de pollo which was chicken wrapped in a moist maize flour batter and packaged and heated in maize ear husk. I also had some standard tacos and quesadillas which are like cheese and meat tacos.

A waterfront walk in Puerto Vallarta was a money-saving substitute for staying off the piss. It was definitely a tourist town, and the street entertainment was aimed at the Gringos. We observed some spray paint artists at work for a while before meeting and chatting to a pissed American sheila who was lost because she had jumped out of the Jeep in which she was riding. Not being one to want to stereotype people, but when it comes to Seppos it is uncanny. Even the novelty value of chatting to a female wore off pretty quickly on this occasion. Then we met her sister, and it was a case of deja vu. They had a horde of Mexican kids hovering around them and as quick as the Yanks could dip their fingers into the purses, they were handing out coins to all of them because she is cute or "Oh, he has got some chiclets for us". No wonder the poor kids' minds get tainted by the lure of the almighty American dollar. The bloody kids turned on us and