Don't go Chasing Waterfalls.

by Josh Anderson (Australia)

Making a local connection Mexico

Looking on Google for some waterfalls and a place to camp, I found myself deep in a Jungle in Colima, Mexico. Driving my already trashed Dodge Minivan. The roads had become nothing but dirt, mud, and large rocks. Every now and then I'd find a small village with puzzled children looking at the white boy with a bed in the back of his car and American Plates. As it started to get dark I began to stress, the roads were getting worse and the jungle seemed to go on forever. Going down a hill a jagged boulder laid in the middle of the road. Unable to avoid I went straight over it and heard a large thud underneath the car. I continued to drive, unaware of the large crack in my oil tank. 10 minutes of driving, the car conked out. My engine had blown. I packed a bag and with the help of Google translate I made a sign saying "car is broken, need a lift". I waited about half an hour before I saw the only car. They thankfully stopped and were heading to Manzanillio, which was the closest town (about a 2 hours drive). The people were very friendly and got me in touch with a Mechanic. Thankfully they didn't want to murder me as CNN would have me believe. It was 9pm by the time I got to Manzanillo. I was quite surprised that this mechanic would show up within half an hour and tow my car back for a final finishing time of 3am. It turned out to be a bit of a trap though.. He spoke zero English and my Spanish was pretty poor as well. So, in the morning he took me to his friends house who spoke English. The first thing they did was offer me a light bulb with crystal meth, which I firmly rejected. This was one of the first of many red flags that told me my car was not going to be fixed quickly or very well. But 5 months on the road had taught me to go with the flow. Manzanillo is a town right on some amazingly beautiful coastline. It took a few days cruising around on busses and doing a lot of walking in the hot ass sun before a man I met at a hot dog stand told me about a hostel (which google didn't find because I wasn't searching for "hostal"). The hostel was basic. But, down stairs was a bar was built right on the beach. It was here I met many different locals and interstate tourists. But two people stood out the most. I don't remember their names, so I now refer to them as Dreads and Clowny. They had been living in tents next to the hostel directly on the beach for about a month. Both of them had little hustles which are quite common in Latin America. Clowny always had stilts with him and could juggle 5 balls! Dreads did fire twirling and made beautiful dream catchers which had shells and bones weaved into them. They liked living next to the hostel because they met a lot of people and the bar tenders would come out and share their weed with them on breaks. Since busking had been my only income for the last 5 months I was very intrigued to see these guys do their hustle. We hung out at traffic lights and Clowny juggled on his stilts for the people whilst they stopped. Dreads wore a gorilla mask did some weird reactions and collected the money from the cars, I had the honour of playing Dreads' bongos. It is easy to see why these hustles are so common since we made about 300 pesos in an hour. After 6 weeks my car was fixed and though I was stuck, I still had fun. I learned to negotiate in Spanish with a methed up mechanic and made some amazing hippie friends who I'll never speak to again, since they don't have phones. But mainly I learned to never trust Google and I guess to not go chasing waterfalls in the middle of the jungle without a 4WD.