On the Run in Mexico

I spent this weekend out at the Canadian s place. It is a slow time of the year for backpackers and the like, so it was just me and two girls from the class I m taking staying out at the hostel with the Canadian, and one other traveler, a Texan hombre, he s 55 years old and is fond of telling all of us kids that he has tatoos that are older than we are. He s a vietnam vet with a family back home who is now running around mexico rotating between three or four places he calls home. The Texan is a drunk old man with a mouth dirtier than mexican water, he is my kind of guy. He took me around to some other places on the island and introduced me to some of the other boys who all seem to be around 45 to 50 years old. It turns out the island is a veritable retirement community for tough guys and scammers. We walked from one hut to the next each one housing an old american man with a mexican woman where we were offered various recreational opportunities. I knew enough to respectfully decline, these guys come off nice, but thats just all the more reason not to trust them. As long as I don t give them an opportunity and stay cordial, things will stay cool. They all have stories to tell, and I find myself mentally taking notes. I don t know what these guys have done back in the states, but they ended up living on a tropical beach for penny s a day, and you have to respect that.

It was an interesting weekend, the first night out at the hostel, there was a mexican wedding reception in the restaurant next door. We all danced with the family and played with the little kids as they scrambled to fill plastic cups full of hermit crabs. we spent the next day in our swimming suits, climbed a small mountain overlooking the City and the Island, and ate excellent Mariscos at the best beach joint in town. It was good to get back to the Old Woman though and wash the sand from my hair.

hasta luego

Maxwell

The sun was hot today. Surprising, since every other day I ve been here it s been blistering. I spent an hour with the Old Woman last night, it was alright, we talked a bit about our different scams, she filled me in on just how to talk to the banditos down here, and I taught her how to say I want my lawyer in ingles. There s some tough hombre s down here. The other day I was walking around downtown, and found myself in a dirty neighborhood on the side of a hill overlooking the pacific. I saw some trouble up ahead, four punks were sitting out looking like they needed something to do. I walked by slow, to let them know they didn t scare me. As I walked by one of them turned and said something to me, of course I didn t know what he said so I ignored him. The four punks followed me for two blocks yelling at me in spanish. oh well, nothing happened, eventually I made it to a busy street and they slithered off back onto the side streets. I knew I was never in any danger. I just had to tell them I was with the Old Woman, and they would have backed down, but I wanted to see where it would lead.

I spend my evenings at a little open air cafe called The Machado in a park dowtown. Its a nice place where you sit under manicured trees in the shade, and you can watch the buisness of relaxation go down in the plaza in front of you. Beers are 10 pesos there, and the service is good. Mexican parks are nice, the whole community comes out every night and sits on the benches and talks. There is a gazeebo in the center of the park where occaisionally bands will come and play, and on one side of the plaza is a music school. In the evenings the band practices, it s usually pretty good, lots of bluesy tunes. When there are no students practicing, no bands in the gazeebo, and no people playing for money and walking around, then the restaurant puts on their favorite tunes. There are no limits to the kinds of music they will play here, one evening I sat through the entire disk of Use Your Illusion 2 by Guns and Roses, only to have it followed by a selection of Beatles songs sang in Spanish. I hear the john lennon song Imagine quite a bit, and I don t mind.

I go to the little cafe every night, other students from the school know this so there is always somebody coming by, when I am alone, I have a book or I speak with Julian or Pepe, or Louise, all servers at the restaurant. Its a good place to practice your spanish while drinking a Dos Equis and eating a Octopus Taco, (excellent Octopus Tacos by the way).

tonight the school is putting on a party for all the students at the Tec, it is a Foam party, with three for one drinks. Now I have tried to explain to the mexican students the difference between parties put on by the schools in mexico and the parties put on by the universities in America, They don t seem to understand that when you hear about a party put on by the school in the states, it usually means cookies and cool aid in the library, not foam parties and three for ones. I still haven t figured out why they have it on thursday and not on friday.

I m spending time here, and that s good, cause I ve been stockpiling it for a while now.

hasta luego

Maxwell

The Canadian


I woke up the other day and felt the urge to communicate. Since I arrived it has been me and the Old Woman living together, she speaks no english, and I speak spatterings of bad espanol. After a couple days I started to feel like a castaway, lost on a deserted island that happened to hold thousands of cardboard cutouts of people, a city of manequins and I am the only person of flesh and blood. Sometimes I feel like the manequin, moving from here to there always looking for a place to sit and read, or have a beer.

That all changed the morning I woke up determined to communicate. I called up some people I knew and had them enroll me in the local university for a couple spanish classes. It turns out there is some kind of exchange going on now and I got lumped up with a bunch of kids from the states all spending the summer in Mazatlan.

The first night after we met each other, we all agreed to meet at Joe s Oyster bar. It was a good time down in the tourist strip where everyone speaks english, and everyone is your best friend, as long as you buy a pair of ten pound donkey earrings or sandals made of cactus needles. We had a good time and made plans to meet the next day at a hotel called El Cid that rumor has it is run and owned by the Mexican Mafia, whether it is or not, they ve got the set up down. Giant pools fill the courtyard with waterfalls and waterslides, plastic constructions made to look like mountains with little seperate pools for three or four people to sit in and look out over the pool area. A couple swim up bars provide for drinks and food. I knew this was not my kind of place.

I headed off and jumped in a local bus on its way to the ferry. The ferry turns out to be a series of little motor boats. ten pesos or about a dollar will buy you a round trip ticket. I jumped on and crossed a channel. It couldn t have been more than 100 yards wide. A short walk on the other side takes you from mexico to hawaii. The beach stretches off further than you can see with the first mile or so populated by bars and restaurants. This is the natives hideout, people swim, boogie board, surf, and generally frolick in the sun. The sand here is firm enough to drive on, and every now and then a battered old volkswagen bug comes tearing along the beach ready to bring surfers a couple miles past the last restuarant to the big waves. Boats take off and leave from the shore, barreling through the waves mindless of people swimming. I walk a little ways and see a place I had found on the internet before I left, a hostel built by a Canadian named Chris. I walked up and there he was chilling on a hammock reading a book. I introduced myself and told him I had seen his place on the web and he offers me a tour.

The Canadian is a short compact little guy, with a personality resembling a mix between napolean and mahatma Ghandi. He has been living on the beach out on the island for eight years or so, and three years ago built the hostel/campground he calls the twin towers. He talks with a marked canadian accent as he shows me the palm hut cabins raised on posts with netting floors and mosquitoes nets around the beds. We have a beer and he asks me if I play chess. We play a game and he tells me stories about the island. He tells me how pirates used to bury treasure in the hills behind his place and how even right now there are people back there digging for gold. They will find nothing, he explains, because they are looking in the wrong spot, The Canadian knows where the treasure is buried of course. He tells me of hurricanes and spring breaks, of night long parties around his fire pit under the full moon. He tells me about his sweat lodge and the secrets of the universe that can only be found out through a good sweat and some cacti. He gives me the low down on jelly fish, currents and crabs all the while giving me a sound beating in chess. I stay there for three hours and never buy anything from him, nor does he ask me of anything. I take off and come back the next day with eight other students from the university. we do it all over again. This time however, we find the restaurant that The Canadian works at, called Victors. We sit at a table in the sand under a broad palm thatch roof where we are served beers for 10 pesos, and spend 60 pesos on a five star meal of monster shrimp, rice, quesadillas, vegetables, onion rings, and potatoes.

The other students are cool. They assume I m on an exchange program like theirs, and I let them. They are here to party on the beach, spend a ton of money, and do a little studying. I ll probably keep in touch with them while I m down here.

It s time for me to get going, the Old Woman has dinner laid out for me by now and I m getting a bit hungry.

hasta luego

Max

Hola mis amigos y familia,

I guess it s only been a couple days since I wrote last. I found a little internet shop where you can buy yourself an hour on line for ten pesos, that s a little less than a buck. best part is, its less than two blocks away from the hideout.

Well, I came to mexico planning on going to Mazatlan, never knowing that I would spend a night in Hell. That s right, the other night I woke around 2:30 in the morning to a series of surprises. The first thing to strike me was the sharp pain in my back and my stomach. here it comes I thought as I stood up to go to the bathroom. I walked barefoot across the blue and white flower print tiles on the way to el bano, where I turned on the light quickly affirmed my supposition, I should have brought some immodium AD... I chose to think of my illness as my body just getting used to a new environment, rather than a bunch of parasites in sombreros having a fiesta in my estomago.

While I was constructing my comfortable fantasy, I noticed something dark scurry across the floor. Scurry is a good word, don t get me wrong, but I don t know if it is the optimal one for this occaision, perhaps something more like flashed or richocheted, maybe even warped, there we go, something warped across the bathroom floor. I probably could have sat on that toilet for a good while, but in a couple seconds I was back, sweating in my bed. between the sweating, fever, sunburn, cramps, pains, and warping bugs, I knew I was in for a long night. I started to see roaches everywhere, in fact, there was a period of time where I watched glow in the dark roaches crawling on the walls around me. Now I have never seen a glow in the dark roach, but then again, we don t get to many roaches in Souris and Mayville. After a massive mental effort of reality adjustment I was able to convince my sleepy fevered brain that bugs do not glow in the dark, and that what I saw was probably swamp gas, or the lights of Venus. Somehow, I fell asleep.

The next day I went and bought some asprin, tums, and gods own gift to americans in mexico, immodium AD, along with some gatorade. I ate nothing but some soup and gelitin and read an entire book. the next day I was fine, no problemo.

I did learn though, the nightime here belongs to the things that warp in the night, and my best defense against another sleepless night is to tire myself out enough where I will positively sleep through the night.

until next time

buenos noches mis amigos

maxwell vittorinorio

Hola,

Well, I made it to Mazatlan. The flight was alright, I was going to fly first class, but then I figured that might arouse some suspicion and decided to slum it in coach. I met my contact at the Mazatlan air port, a dusty dive crawling with taxi drivers. Listening to the drivers shout for my attention, I could already tell this was going to be my kind of place. }

My contacts codename is Paco. He showed up after I d been sitting for about 20 minutes, I was just beginning to think I should grab a taxi and head into town solo, when a man tapped me on the shoulder asking if I was Maxwell Vittorinorio. Glancing at the throng of taxi drivers around us, I took him aside and told him my name was Erik Kornkven. I couldn t be sure, but i don t think anyone heard his slip up. You can never be too safe, Sleazy E from Souris is a powerful man, with enough money to buy himself a taxi driver or two.

Paco showed me to his car and we headed towards Mazatlan. He has a working knowledge of English but in his own words he is out of practice. I told him that was fine, since I was out of practice with my EspaÑol. We drove for about 15 minutes through the classic Mexican towns that don t have the luxury of being close to a beach or ancient ruins. The kind of towns that survive off of Mango trees and bean fields. In some places it looks like surviving is all they have time to be concerned about. I looked out the window as we drove down the highway made of American Dollars and saw a little girl walk through a doorway with a blanket over it into a house surrounded by trash, machine parts, and wild looking skinny dogs. The little girl was not wearing any shoes, and her dress, once white, was faded to the color of a pillowcase that hasn t been washed in a couple of years.

Finally we pulled into Mazatlan, for anyone who has been to Mexico before, Mazatlan follows the trend of most americanized cities. That is to say we drove through some rough looking neighborhoods before suddenly arriving at the small part of downtown that is manicured and clean. It was in this area that we pulled to a stop outside of a three story white washed building with balconies the width of the building facing the street. After unlocking the steel gate, Paco showed me up to the apartment he shares with his Mother, codename Martha. Martha is an older woman who keeps a clean house. Martha s mother was visiting from Guadalajara. Neither of the women speak a word of English. Martha, however, seems to be adept at speaking ämerican spanish, we can communicate, but i realize that the sentences we speak are probably similar to the ones being spoken at the local kindergarten. It s ok, she understands my situation and agrees to put me up for some time.

I arrived at Martha s home in the early afternoon, and after she fed me a plate of shredded fish with beans, corn, and peppers along with a couple warm tortilla s and some hand squeezed lemonade, I asked her where to find the beach. She pointed at the street out the window and said cinco calles or five streets that way. I took off in that direction with a book and some pesos and sure enough found the beach. I quickly found a beachside cantina and ordered a Pacifico, a beer brewed here in Mazatlan. I paid for it with the money Les gave me before I left. I sat and drank that Pacifico staring out at the pacific. I don t think the ocean will ever cease to amaze me, I watch the rolling waves crashing high against the rock cliffs underneat the worlds highest lighthouse, I watch the huge pelicans floating calmly on the rough seas. I watch the tiny white triangles that are the sailboats sitting anchored near the island beaches. All around me breathes the Mexican culture. Being part of a different culture, I am able to witness the workings of this one more clearly than those native too it. It manifests itself in the breeze, a type of connection between the taxi drivers, the waiters, the families playing on teh beach. There are secrets here that in my short time I will never be able to unravel.

until next time,
buenos noches mi amigos

Maxwell Vittorinorio

June 4: I believe it is Wednesday. I can't say for sure though, lately the days have felt like hours, and the hours like weeks. It wasn't always like this. I've spent the last couple years staying with a family in North Dakota; the Kornkvens, they're good people. If there were more like them in the world, I probably wouldn't be in the situation I'm in right now. I guess you want the whole story, well, you'll have to settle for what I tell you, I don't have much time to waste, come saturday, i'll be gone.

My name is Maxwell Vittorinorio, but for the past couple years I've gone by the name Erik Kornkven. I used to be a small time hustler on the streets of Souris but I ran into some trouble with the Fire Department up there involving the local bad guy's chicken coop and had to high tail it to Mayville. My contacts in Souris had set me up with this family, The Kornkvens, good people. They would tell everyone I was their son and since they had just moved to town themselves, noone would sniff us out.

The set up was cake. All I had to do was convince people I was a teenager, which meant I had to get in trouble here and there, and spin the occaisional attitude, all the while pretending to not take any responsibility for anything that mattered in my made up life. This last was the toughest let me tell you, but you don't survive like I did on the streets of Souris without learning how to adapt to your situation.

Last week I got a phone call, not that strange, but what was strange was that the voice on the other end called me Maxwell when I picked up the phone.

"Hello?" I said
"is this Maxwell Vittorinorio?"
"Umm, could you hold please?" I put one hand over the receiver on the telephone and held it away from me, with the other hand I pushed my heart back down my throat.
"No this is not Maxwell Vittorinorio."
"Listen punk, I know who this is, and so do you, you're gonna pay for my chicken coop buddy. See you soon."

And just like that, my pleasant stay in Mayville was at an end. I understood then that if I stayed I would only endanger the Kornkvens, and they'd been pretty good to me the past couple years and I wouldn't want to see anything happen to them. So I scammed myself a ticket to Mazatlan south of the border where I've got a connection with Sra. Martha Astorga and her son Paco. I'm going to be staying with them a while, just until the heat is off me back in Mayville.

It's tough being a small time hustler in North Dakota, but its the only life I know. Will this stay in Mexico change all that? I guess I'll have to wait and see.

hey everybody This is erik, i'm still in Mayville right now, but am only a couple days away from Mexico. I thought i would create this blog so that whoever wanted to could check on me since I will probably not be able to make many calls back home (first trip to mexico I called lori and talked for 20 minutes and it cost $80!!!). Check here whenever you feel like it, I will try to make entries every other day or so probably.... Ok well i'll get going for now. Thanks for checking my blog out and if you want to email me, by all means go ahead my email address is erik.kornkven@ndsu.nodak.edu ok, talk to everyone soon...


erik