We were now heading up the West Coast with Cabo San Lucas in the cross-hairs. To be fair it isn't really Mexico, more like Little America – a tourism Mecca to the yanks who flock here for Spring Break, honeymoons and sport fishing. It's found on the Baha Finger, which sounded more like a WWE move than a stretch of land. Its the Penninsula that stretches down from California into the Pacific and creates the gulf of Mexico. After a couple of days at sea spent refining our Spanish and cultivating a few stringy moustaches we arrived in the
Cabo San Lucas Marina which was a shocking experience in itself. The Yanks were everywhere. We arrived to the drone of jet-ski's and parasail-boats, had to dodge our way between cruise ships and finally docked along-side a couple hundred fishing boats. It was chaos and by the time we were tied up to the dock everyone was a bit nervous to step off into this pit of sin.
The vibe in Cabo is all geared towards giving the common American an experience of what he thinks Authentic Mexico is. Everywhere you go you swaggering yanks can be heard shouting “American Dollar”, and the locals’ eyes will light up as they reel in another victim who ends up walking away saying to his wife “but where else would I get a Mexican hunting bracelet, like the one the red Indians used to wear!” The first thing we saw when getting off the boat was a Hooters. The second thing we saw was a Harley Davidson store. It really was every American’s little slice of Mozambique, equipped with just enough of America to make things comfortable. Looking past the stars and stripes on every second wife-beater that passed us did revealed a town with a lot of potential. Epic restaurants, nightclubs and beaches (if you can find a spot), made it an obvious hit with escapees of the USA who could now have a Pina Colada in one hand, a big-mac in the other and afford both.
After a meal with the crew of the only other yacht in town – arranged by our 2nd mate who seemed to know every human in the industry – we had a couple of tequilas. We had prepared ourselves for a barrage of alcohol in Mexico. Especially tequila. Between Calicoes, Tiger-Tiger and the infamous Terrace I had consumed my fair share of the stuff and considered myself a bit of a Maneer, (those blue ones at terrace were shockers though). I had seen Tequila with a worm at the bottom of the bottle and was expecting similar such obscenities in the land of the cactus, but we weren’t prepared for what we got in that first bar. The significance of a fucking rattlesnake inside the bottle was never fully explained to us but I’ll just say that it was an eye-opener. Is it necessary to put a snake in your bottle of tequila? From there we staggered out into the streets which now looked understandably hazy. We found ourselves in some kind of club and felt like rock stars amoung the sea of delicious Latino’s giving us far more attention than we were accustomed to. I must have been looking fantastic. It was either that or my patented “mamba dance” that was becoming a global cult (not really), that were drawing them in. I wondered whether it was the fact that I was now in a coutry where moustaches were cool and these lasses thought my snor was helping to throw out a Pablo Escabar vibe rather than the pornstar that it turns me into back home. The music video was short lived though, and a gloating Hans pulled me aside to tell me that these chicks were all escorts. Columbian hookers. A quick back-hand across the cheek was called-for to wipe the ridiculous grin off my face and bring me back to Earth, and Hans obliged. My South American wingman tried to reason with me that these women were no good, no good at all. In English that 28 Tequilas and a Peruivan mother-tongue was making hard to decipher, he reminded me that I was above this and that I would never think about such things in South Africa. “Same Same as back home”, he said. “But different”. Alas he was right and I spent the night brushing off liberally-dressed beauties that would otherwise have never given me a second glance.
We had a couple of days to kill, thanks to a very chilled captain and itinerary. We rented a few cars and headed off into the real Mexico- we had had enough of the Yanks and wanted to see some countryside. It wasn’t long though before we were being labeled Gringo’s and could be spotted snapping up ponchos, local brews and anything else claiming to be authentic. The group was a salesman’s dream and we must have spiked foreign investment in the region in a matter of hours. Our destination was a little town called San Jose where it was rumoured that the original Hotel California still stood- the one that the Eagles made famous. Yes we were becoming US patriots by the day. The trip also served as a training ground for the crew’s recent photography infatuation which was becoming a pandemic and meant that anything that moved seemed to be showered in light and left dazed and confused in our dust. The town was the kind of place in which you’d expect Antonio Banderas to bust out of a saloon at any moment to engage in a gunfight with 14 bandits while playing a guitar solo behind his back. He’s not unlike me in many ways- mainly the manner in which we both take charge and feel responsible for defending the weak. I’ve also got that husky thing going on.
The sight of Hotel California instilled in us hopes of finding a real landmark, something to make up the substance of stories back home and keep poorly-written blogs afloat. Stuck away in a dark corner of the one-horse town, beneath a dingy set of apartments and across the street from the tobacco store was the sacrilegious-looking establishment. The weeping brass letters across the top did seem to suggest a place of legend or myth, with enough imagination and tequila, and it held an uneasy sense of beckoning to go inside. Excitedly we approached the counter to find out more.
“Ola. Is this the real Hotel California?”
“Sorry sinjor, I don’t understand.”
“Um, well you probably get this a lot. Can we check in any time we like, but never leave?”
“No sinjor. You can leave whenever you want, there are exits located at the front and back of the building”
Worried and a little panicked we turned to the barman and asked him to play something by the Eagles.
“Eagles sir? I have no eagles here.”
Deflated and disappointed we slowly came to the conclusion that this was not the fabled spot. Was there even a Hotel California at all? Over a flat bear claiming to be brewed down the road we decided that this misunderstanding had been the work of a wicked opportunist who had spun the story to attract rookies like ourselves into the desert to fall prey to his bar. Wicked –and wise. On the way out our fears were confirmed when we stumbled into the Hotel California souvenir shop- selling everything from shirts to ancient telephones. The Eagles would have been gutted. We left the bar defeated, all with the same line running through our heads : We could indeed check in any time we wanted, but it was time to leave.
After a quick photo-op at the public telephone to prove to my sister that I had attempted to call for her birthday (unsuccessful), it was time to shoot off. Our route took us up the coast and back into little-America. It was this stretch of country that would become my favorite part of Mexico and the country that I thought we had come to see. Stretches of white beaches that rivaled anything we had seen in the Caribbean, with painfully perfect waves since we had no skills or surfboards. We stopped in at a few of these where even jelly-fish couldn’t break our spirits. Racing through the desert was a bit like driving through the Karoo but with less sheep and more bullet-riddled cars. Debates flared up about the Giant Cacti around us, which we finally agreed fell under the collective noun of “a prickle of cacti”, and similarly decided that they were the most ridiculous things we had ever seen. Seeing a real road-runner also presented a crushing of childhood dreams. The truth is that they are embarrassingly slow and stupid and we almost hit a couple. How that coyote failed to catch it, while wearing rocket-propelled roller skates is just unreasonable. I think I had my doubts from a very young age.
We knew we were getting close to Cabo when the whistles and Kanye West dance-remixes in the distance began to overpower the radio inside our car. Another cruise ship had arrived bringing promises of bad jokes and worse dance-moves. But we had now seen the Mexico that we wanted to experience- where a man’s status was determined by the splendor of his moustache and not by his wallet. We had eaten from rural street cars, although the evidence of such things had seemed to leave us very rapidly. Tequila-distilled rattle- snakes and men with real names like Juan, Jesus and Hose were what we had come to see and we now called them our Hombre’s. We turned our attention to the cruise ships and reluctantly accepted our heading- North, America, to the
Whale’s Vagina.
NB Fact - The word "gringo" does not come from 1800's wartime in Mexico when defeated US army troops wearing green jackets were told "Green Go!" Wikipedia got that from a Blue Moon post. And it's a lie.
With my “students” sitting before me I began to anticipate a few problems. Aged 8, 10 and 12 - One ADD, one autistic and one painfully bored - I was no match for this trio. The fact that lessons were 3 hours each and bathroom-breaks were frowned upon made me more nervous. What had I walked into? I dived in head first, employing every tack and bit of wit that I possessed to keep these animals under control. Before each lesson I would have to carry out a recci to search for anything they could break or use to inflict pain. Sugar had to be hidden, doors fortified and the public warned. Their arrival on the premises was heard, not seen. Keep in mind that 3 hours learning a second language is a prospect that would strike fear into most- but these terrors were not ‘most’. I learnt that it was their school holidays and they had been pawned off by disinterested parents into summer-camps, swimming lessons and the low point of their day: English. They had also been spoilt to death and had no grasp of what an authority figure was. Basically it was a catastrophe. Think matric finals with no breaks and gremlins stapling your tie to your shirt throughout. There were times that people walked past and it must have looked like I was teaching hand-to-hand combat. At the end of one torture session and old Israeli sailor came up and hugged me. He said, “They are evil”. It was for all purposes, a nightmare. I had such respect for our teachers at school. Why would they put themselves through this? I felt like calling up Mr. Amos and apologizing for making his life hell. Was I being punished and if so, when would it end? 
