Fuentes Georginas, Guatemala

The water smells of just slightly of sulfur and is murky green in the early evening light. A thunder storm moves through, pounding the rocks and leaves with heavy drops. When it leaves, the sky is luminescent. I enter the springs slowly, unable to see its depths or contours. The water tastes sharp, like metal on the lips. It’s hot but not too hot: a warm bath. On three sides of the rocky pool, there’s a sheer cliff, maybe three stories high and ornamented with a carpet of moss and ferns. Looking up to the sky from this angle, feels like peering through a periscope from the underworld.

An old man comes up with massive, multi-colored umbrella, a towel wrapped around his neck and a long hose, with something attached to the end. He sticks one end in the water and another in his mouth, as if he’s going to siphon away the springs with me in it. Instead, he takes long breaths, eyes closed--for half an hour or so, moving from place to place around the edge of the pool. He told me what he was doing. I just wish I’d understood.

 *   *   *

La Mesilla, Guatemala 

We’ve made it to Guatemala. The border crossing was wild, but painless--hardly the bureaucratic nightmare I’d expected. We arrived at La Mesilla on market day, which meant that the border was not so much a check-point as a bazaar. Everything was for sale. The street was not a street, but a pedestrian walkway for mothers with babies slung across their backs. Vendors sold everything from Levis to plastic Chinese parasols to women’s panties. We navigated through the crowd and too-narrow side streets until we reached the border--an un-gated, seemingly unmonitored causeway of pedestrians--and us.

On the Mexican side of border, we canceled out vehicle permit and had our tourist permits and passports stamped. On the Guatemalan side, we were instructed to change our pesos to quetzals with the help of bill-fisted man on the street and to pay about $5 US to have Dolly decontaminated with a spray wand. There was no explanation of what they were decontaminating against, but the process was painless. Then there was the migracion, where we paid just over $2 US for our passports to be stamped. Then the customs (aduana), where we checked our car into the country for another $5 US. It was a hokey-pokey to be sure, but it only took a half and hour and $12. Not bad to get a whole new country notched on our bedpost.

 Hierve el Agua, Oaxaca

For the first time in months, I'm cold. There's a chill in my fingers that go down to my boots. Just yesterday, in the low, simmering plains of Oaxaca State, Tim and I watched Dolly's thermometer climb to 102. Tonight, I'm sitting on the porch of Posada 5 in San Cristobal de las Casas, unable to get warm. My sweater, my boots, my socks and jeans--they don't do a thing.

The rainy season has hit. On our long drive down from Oaxaca, we took what we thought would be a brief detour to dip into the "hot" springs at Hierve el Agua, over the mountain from Mitla. The road was dirt switchbacks and cheese-grater rough. Supposedly only 18 kilometers, it took 45 minutes. The pools were tepid, but gorgeous--strange mineral sculptures built into a hillside, overlooking a valley. We were alone and the scene surreal: the sky was like dusk in the middle of the day, rain came diagonally across the corn fields, the darkened mountains were ominous and the water opaque and ice-blue, like glacier pools. 

 *   *   *

Isthmus de Tehauntepec, Oaxaca

Somewhere along Hwy 190 south, Dolly blew a fuse. With the fuse went power windows, windshield wipers, radio and warning lights. Then, as we cruised into Tehauntepec, just as it was getting dark, a storm hit. Water poured through our open window. Our windshield was a flood plain. There was nothing to do but park under a tree and wait. Finally, the rain let up and we found an over-priced room for the night with reasonable secure parking. The next morning we spent two hours in the 102 degree heat of the low, hot lowlands of the Oaxacan isthmus, waiting for a junkyard mechanic to figure out the cause of our troubles. Thirty dollars later, we were on the road to Chiapas, windows down, music blaring.

IV. I love the night life, in two acts

Act Two: The night I only sort-of remember

Tim tells me I was a social butterfly, that I'd disappear and come back with strangers as new friends. This is how we met David, the "filmmaker," and his "famous" friend, a sort-of producer. When pressed, both were young and aspiring more than anything else: David worked in production, in some secondary capacity. His friend, whose name is nowhere in my brain, produces commercials. But they had a lot to say about their chosen field -- about Mexican film past and present -- and about their own big dreams.

David had been to Arizona. He lived there and worked in restaurants while he dated an American hippie girl. He says he loved her and he has a baby with her now, but he came back to Mexico for his "career." He didn't want to work in a kitchen for the rest of his life. When he talks about his time in Arizona and his would-be family there, he has the sort of remorse that hurts even the hearts of strangers. Now, he sees his kid only once in awhile. Most recently, it was just a couple weeks ago, when his ex-girlfriend came down. These are the stories we hear over and over from this side of the border.

After his Big Time friend left our little 2x1 bar in Roma and final call was called, David led us to a place around the corner. The bar was nameless and invisible during the day, the way so many New York bars are, but at night is was overflowing onto the streets. Couples made out in dark corners, friends sipped from shared flasks, cigarettes lit drunk faces. I spoke Spanish the way everyone thinks they speak when they have that loose, boozy tongue. It was a blast. I had entire conversations in a language I only sort-of know. For hours I talked about family and work and travels and then, the next day, I only sort-of remembered. But even if my tongue was loose and my skills ultimately lousy, I still spoke to strangers for hours in a language I don't really know.

The DF subways stop running at 12am, so Jonah ended up staying the night on the floor of our hotel room. We've heard stories of drunk gringos being driven to Walmart instead of home by opportunist cabbies, forced to buy their driver a computer on credit. In contrast to that ridiculous scenario, our filthy carpet seemed a perfectly decent option. The hotel's night guard was reluctant to let Jonah up, but after listening to this logic he relented and we were asleep just before dawn.

IV. I love the nightlife, in two acts

Act One: Tequila for beginners

We had every intention of making it to Roma / Condesa for a night of debauchery. We'd spent almost a month in the Wilds of Baja, then another month on beaches and in small towns along Mexico's Pacific Coast. The city was calling, and Mexico City is a Big City. No, it's not the crazed, 24-hour spectacle of New York, but it's still (arguably) the largest city in the world. It was time for Tim, Jonah and I to make like the unemployed vagabonds we are and do some serious rockin'. Or try to.

But somewhere between our run-in with the world's most maddening waiter at a Centro Historico cantina--where we were twice charged for our one plate of chile rellenos (because, mysteriously, it featured two chiles instead of the usual one)--and the long debate that followed about how we should have handled our minor fiasco, we lost time and motivation. But on our way back to our hotel, defeated, we walked by a spectacle that begged to be joined.

Too old for youth hostels or no, the hostel next door to our Isabel was packed with kids dancing sexy and pouring tequila down their throats--and I love to dance (also, tequila). It was the usual international hostelling crowd: French, Argentine, English, Polish, others. We were the only Americans. We spoke our stilted Spanish to an Argentine as he nervously guarded his new flame from a fellow countryman, who was determined to make her his own. Then we talked politics and the origins of ska with a Brit who had a funny, drunken way. It was fun.

The bartender hopped onto the bar with a massive bottle of cheap tequila, while a line formed beneath him. The thirsty crowd moved forward one at a time, opening their mouths like baby birds waiting to be fed, as the bartender poured long lines of booze down their throats. When it was my turn--when in Rome--I worried I'd gag on the stuff. But I made like a baby bird and drank my long shot down.