One day in early 1974, Elaine calls me up and says, “Let’s go to Mexico, which we can.” Neither of us has a regular job, so it seems like a great idea. I’m living in that awful house where Richard and I have the whole top floor only we have to share the kitchen and bath with the people on the bottom floor, who have screaming fights all the time, except when they play their TV super loud. I’m desperate for a break, so Elaine’s plan for a week in Mexico sounds great to me. Richard is not invited. Our plan is to find an authentic small village with no tourist attractions whatsoever. We have no idea how to find this idyllic location and end up in Mazatlán.
We haven’t factored in the Easter Holiday nor do we realize it’s like Spring Break on steroids, the biggest holiday of the year in Mexico, and of course being freewheeling girls of the ’70s we don’t think to reserve a place to stay ahead of time. When we arrive, there are no hotel rooms or guesthouses available, so we do what the poor students do, the ones who can’t afford inflated room rates in the big hotels across the street, rent space for our sleeping bags in a parking lot, sharing with a couple of those same students, walking around town during the day, eating seafood chowder and what we laughingly call “dog” tacos we buy from a street vendor. We hope they aren’t really made of dog. We discover that the big hotels across the street from the parking lot offer huge buffets around the pool in the evenings, along with live music and dancing, and they don’t check to see if you’re registered at the hotel. We are set for nighttime entertainment.
We have given up on our plans to go anywhere else and settle in. Now that we aren’t spending money on bus tickets or hotel rooms, we decide to find all the best restaurants and enjoy fine Mexican cuisine. This plan works well until, while eating a seafood stew, I reach my spoon in and it comes out with a fully formed, intact baby octopus draped over the bowl of my spoon, its little arms hanging down on either side. I don’t scream, but I fling the spoon, octopus and all, into the air, horrified that I was expected to eat an entire animal in one bite, or even worse, cut it into pieces. That experience puts me off eating any sort of calamari to this day. Now, when we go out to dinner with friends and they invariably order a fried calamari appetizer, I see baby octopi in every bite. I’ve learned not to say anything. It’s my own particular aversion and I don’t want to ruin the dinner party.
In Mazatlán, we carry our backpacks everywhere since there is no security at the parking lot. Leaving only our sleeping bags to hold our place, trusting in the karma that put us there in the first place to keep them safe. This may be a backward way of thinking, but it works. There is not much to do during the day besides eat, walk around to sightsee, and buy what we think are authentic huipils from a vendor who we are sure is jacking up the price because we are Americans on vacation.
We still long for the vacation we had envisioned, small village on the coast, renting a room in a family home, eating their food and maybe even helping harvest whatever exotic crop they grow. So when a skinny Mexican man in a wife-beater who speaks excellent English approaches us saying, “American girls! I know what you want; you want to see authentic Mexico, a village where they are so friendly and treat you just like family, and there are no tourists at all. I know where to take you that you would never find on your own,” we jump at the chance. Desperate to get out of the parking lot and finally experience the real Mexico.
“How do we get there?” we ask. “Do you have a car?”
“No,” he says. “We take the bus.” We will love it; they will love us. He will call them and tell them to expect us. The bus leaves in about an hour. He walks us to the parking lot and waits while we grab our sleeping bags, then walks us to the bus stop, a few blocks away.
Once we are settled on the bench, no other passengers in sight, he says, “Wait here and I’ll get us some food for the ride. Just give me five dollars for sandwiches and I’ll be right back.” Of course we agree, amazed at our good fortune, to run across this skinny not too clean man with droopy mustache and deep-set eyes who knows exactly what we want and just where to find it.
So we sit on a hard bench in the hot sun for an hour, until it sinks in that he’s never coming back, and there is no authentic town where they treat you like family and no mamacita who would take in stupid American girls, and we trudge back to our parking lot and spread out our sleeping bags once again, disappointed, and go back to searching out good restaurants, partying with the rich kids at the hotels, and deciding to laugh at ourselves for being foolish.
“We are stupid American girls,” Elaine says, “But so what. We learned a lesson, and you have to admire that guy. He’s probably poor, maybe he has a family, and that’s actually hard work, just for five dollars.”
“And we have a story to tell our grandchildren, if we ever have any.”
The ground in the parking lot is still hard. But we are young and our backs strong from hauling packs all over town.
is the author of four chapbooks, most recently Henceforth I Ask Not Good Fortune (Finishing Line Press, 2021). A fifth will be published by Main Street Rag this spring, entitled Viruses, Guns and War. Her writing has appeared in numerous print and online journals such as Rise Up Review, Gyroscope, Writers Resist, Poets Reading the News, The Poeming Pigeon, and MacQueen’s Quinterly, among others. She is the former editor of the Turkey Buzzard Review in Bolinas, California. Now living in Northern California with her husband and two aging dogs, Dotty practices environmental law and helps elect progressive candidates to office. She is working on a website.
