I decided to start my travel day off slowly. I lay around and watched television for an hour or two before having breakfast. Oh, I forgot to mention that there was soft-core porn on a majority of the channels the night before. Is it normal for Mexican children to be exposed to that so easily? Maybe most of them don’t have cable. Yeah, probably not. The bus to Tepic left every hour so I figured I would take the 10:00am bus and get to Tepic just before noon. I was sure there would be a bus going to Tucson around noon. The plan seemed to work out well. There was no bus that went directly to Tucson so I booked a ticket to Nogales (on the border of Arizona) at 1:30pm. I checked my bags behind a cashier and went out side to stock up on food from the fruit stands for the trip. I arrived back at the bus station just after 1 to see that my bus had arrived. I got my bags and began to board the bus. I got midway up the stairs when I heard the driver yelling at me from outside to get off the bus. I thought that he must be cleaning the bus and I boarding it too early. I also noticed a Mexican woman with her 4 children and bags waiting to board the bus. Just before 1:30pm, the driver boarded the bus. I stood up and picked up my bags as the driver backed up the bus and took off. A Mexican woman ran up beside me screaming and cursing the driver but he didn’t stop. This woman and the one with the children got a hold of a manager and went nuts. The screamed, pleaded, and pointed to me and explained my story for me. They made a few references to me so they must have thought that an American getting screwed would make a good point in their case. The manager led us to his office along with another fat Mexican who kept silent as I did while the women went to work. There was a lot of fast talking so I really had no idea what was happening. It ended up that I was to be put on a bus headed for Tijuana that left at 2:30pm. As I was waiting outside, the Mexican lady with all the children began talking to me. She spoke as much English as I spoke Spanish so we were able to somewhat communicate. She told me she had a beautiful daughter that was 20 and liked Gringos. She was quick to add that Americans weren’t for her. She insisted that she get my email address for her daughter. She also pointed out that her daughter was a bitch in every sense of the word. A few examples of how stubborn her daughter is left me no better word to use. She also added that her daughter doesn’t like to bath. I couldn’t believe it. This was exactly what I was looking for: a girl who lives 1,500 miles away, doesn’t speak English, is very bitchy, and doesn’t bath. As I was planning my wedding date, the bus arrived.
I sat next to the fat Mexican that missed the last bus and was heading to Nogales as I was. He mumbled and didn’t put much effort into trying to understand my Spanish so we had a lot of one word conversations. It’s only fair that I would get the only broken seat on the bus as well. The seat didn’t recline so I prepared myself for 24 hours of sitting straight up. Just as we started to leave, all of the Mexican woman’s children were screaming and yelling at me and pointing out the window. I looked out and there was the Mexican woman with her daughter. The whole bus erupted and everyone was cheering and making me wave and blow kisses to my future wife. My darling was standing out there with her arms crossed and a very moody look on her face. She was exactly as her mother had described and was in no mood for the public humiliation she was forced to endure. It was great.
The bus played a wide range of movies. They ranged from old Mexican classics to new movies like Bewitched in English with Spanish subtitles. I even got to watch the hitcher, which was one of the worst movies I have ever seen. It’s right up there with Cellular. The bus stopped every hour or two and I would get out and stretch my legs and eat a taco or two. I noticed that I was being watched at each stop. There was this Mexican teenage girl that had her eye on me. The fat Mexican had brought my confidence with the Spanish language down by saying he couldn’t understand me so I didn’t humor the girl and talk to her. I could only ignore her for so long. She eventually came over and spoke decent English. She was the only one on the bus that could speak any English. She was kind of an awkward girl but it was nice to talk to her. She seemed a little crazy. She was talking to her mom after one of our conversations so I ducked into a restaurant to grab napkins for the road. As I was gathering the napkins I watched out of the corner of my eye as she jumped into the doorway to see where I went and then jumped back to her mother to continue her conversation. She would tap me on the shoulder or something every time she got on or off the bus. The people around me took notice of all this. At one point, I was looking in my Spanish dictionary to find how to ask her a question and the fat Mexican held the book up and everyone applauded my effort with her. On several occasions after she would walk by he would put his hands up to trace her ass and say, “muy grande.” I would elbow him in the side and say, “te gusto.” He loved it. I tried to tell him she was only 15 but he didn’t seem to care. I also had a crew of Mexican children that would hang around me. They would always walk by and smile and one little guy would offer me cookies. Mexican children are so great. And this is how the bus ride went for the next 20 hours.
We finally got to a place where I was forced to leave the bus. I hoped we were at Nogales but I wasn’t so lucky. My 15-year-old girlfriend told me that I had to get on another bus for Nogales. She put her hand out to shake mine and I gave her a hug instead. I let the fat Mexican take care of all the details for arranging our new bus. We were on the previous bus for 25 hours! The trip should have only taken 21 or 22 hours but the driver thought it was necessary to talk his face off everything the bus stopped. The fat Mexican liked to say, “Habla grande.”
The new bus was terrific because my seat actually reclined! The ride was only 1.5 hours so there wasn’t much bonding with the patrons of this bus. When we got to Nogales I shook fatty’s hand and said goodbye. I found that there were no buses to Tucson but I would have to take a shuttle instead. This option had never occurred to me because I thought it was expensive. I had no other options so I paid a taxi 70 pesos to take me about 2 miles to the border. A little pricey for Mexico, but I didn’t know what else to do. I walked across the border and a man walked me to the shuttle place. The shuttle was just $10 and left in 15 minutes. If only the rest of the trip home could have been that smooth! Paul, my neighbor, had locked himself out of his side of the house so he was very happy to pick me up where the shuttle dropped me off. I made it home at 9pm, which makes the total duration of my trip home a consecutive 35 hours. I took a shower and collapsed into my sweet, comfortable bed. The next morning I woke up with a paralyzing cold and was not able to move for 2 days. Ah, Mexico…
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