I’ve decided that I’m gonna stick to the diary format, for a while at least.
I’m traveling with my smartphone and it’s become a habit to jot down my impressions onto it whenever I get the chance. I’ve been keeping my own private journal on paper too but somehow the idea of an audience, imagined or not, lets me focus my writing better. Initially I’d avoided it because I think blow-by-blow descriptions are dry and self indulgent and I was aiming for some broader appeal. But then I was struggling with how to drive home some point or theme without preaching and still describe what I was doing. I feel the subtly of this format suits that goal better, and it writes itself a lot more naturally. I hope you’ll agree and, if it’s too blow-by-blow for you, you can always skim through when it gets dry and the general flow of events shouldn’t suffer! Wouldn’t it be neat if there were a feature where you could select how much detail you want, say 33% for the curious, 50% for the loyal, 100% for my mom, and then it would crunch through some algorithm and spit out a proportional representation of days?
December 31
We flag down a taxi – an old white Volkswagen beetle – and head to Condessa Beach, Acapulco’s party district, to catch a firework show and celebrate the new year. It’s only seven when we get there so it’s still mostly families and little kids running around but you can see the bars and nightclubs getting ready for the night to come. We get tacos and margaritas at a plaza overlooking the beach, wander down the road and grab churros, churros still in hand we stop at a drink-to-go bar that sells one litre pina coladas in styrofoam cups. The night gets a bit hazy but I remember a frenzied conversation with this group of guys. We’d shared beers earlier and I’d tried to explain how I’d sailed here by pointing to the ocean saying “agua” and blowing in a dramatic imitation of the wind. In return they tried to impress on me the beauty of Acapulco’s women to which I had to agree with an enthusiastic “Si! Bonita!” Then there was something about brothers, how we’re all brothers now because we’d rung in the new year together and share an appreciation for the local women. Or were they asking if Seb and I were brothers? In retrospect it could have been that they were brothers, actually that must have been it. They kept trying to drive home some deeper point and at each approach we were converging closer and closer to an understanding and they’d ask “comprende?” and I’d have to shake my head and admit no, I don’t, but we’d laugh and hug and it felt totally natural to jump around like that and it didn’t matter who was or was not, in fact, brothers.
Jan 1
I wake up early because, even though the sun hasn’t been up for long, it’s already sweltering in the cabin. I fix some ramen on the stove to replace some of the fluids and electrolytes I’d lost last night. I feel much better and manage to give the boat a thorough scrub down while blasting “Low End Theory” and “Baduizm”.
Later, Seb and I go into town leaving Nick to recover. We stop for tacos at a little nook in the wall. We’re becoming real enthusiasts and debate the distinctions between enchillada, borito, and taco. I buy a pair of flip flops and a tank top since my usual black tee doesn’t work in this climate. We walk up and down the steep, winding streets with our eyes open for the odd gaping hole in the sidewalk that could swallow you up if you aren’t careful. We wander for hours and stop only for more tacos. It’s a public holiday and the streets are frantic – peddlers push trinkets, women ladle iced drinks into plastic bags, a scruffy trio of guys my age serenade passerby’s with an acoustic guitar and one of those plastic keyboards you blow into. They’re ugly and their instruments cheap but their voices are loud and the lyrics must be about something real because you can hear the emotion in their chests. Watching the road I notice how the drivers don’t follow any discernable code and instead react instinctively to each other, organically swerving and accelerating. Taken as a whole, the traffic is more like a school of fish than the production line that streets back home make me think of.
Jan 2
Just working on the boat today. Try to find the fresh water leak, laundry, refuel the propane tanks, vacuum, clean and dry the dishes, scrub down the galley. I make an inventory of all the food on board and calculate what we’ll need to add to it for our passage to Hawaii. It’s a pretty impressive list:
270L water (in case our tanks fail again)
5kg rice
3kg pasta
3kg couscous
5kg lentils/beans
2kg canned tuna
7kg meat (mostly cured meats that won’t go off)
12kg canned veggies
4kg canned fruits
2kg carrots
2kg onions
1kg fresh peppers
4kg granola/muesli
2kg mixed nuts
1kg sugar
4 loaves of bread
At night we watch Acapulco’s famous La Quebrada divers jump off a 35 meter cliff into the sea.
January 3
Seb and Nick head to the chandlery to find parts for the boat. I opt-out because I have my own mission – to record some local music. I walk up and then down the steep hill that blocks our marina off from the city and stop to buy a drink from a corner store. The shop’s freshly white washed with a bright red coca-cola logo. Inside, the white plastic chairs each have faded writing on the backs, also reminding me to drink coca-cola. It doesn’t take long to notice that the whole shop is a contrasting patchwork of coca-cola logos, all conspiring with various degrees of subtly to convince me to go ahead and drink one. The table cloth, the drink fridge, the walls. Does coca-cola give these things away for free? Paint your walls if you’ll have their logo on it? Or do people here just really love their sodas that much? Either way, it’s a wonder that it all went over my head and I bought a lime soda.
My search for music is a success. First I find a mariachi band on the beach who are happy to be filmed. Content, I start making my way back to the marina when, on the boulevard next to the beach, who do I run into but the scraggly bunch of musicians from the day before! I approach them “buenos dias!” (it’s the evening). They’re having a smoke break but I ask in my pantomime if I can film them when they’re done. They agree and I am soon serenaded by that same combination of kitsch and soul that had grabbed me the first time I’d heard them play. The pianist has a sharp scar across his face, the guitarist is missing more than one button on his shirt, and the singer has slick back black hair and a t-shirt that used to be white. The plastic piano is abrasive and I try to put my finger on what it is I like about them. Maybe it’s that their music reflects who I imagine them to be – unpolished but honest and raw. I get the sense that these guys are dirty, shirts torn, and scrounging for pesos out of a voluntary and uncompromising commitment to themselves. The kind of guys who, in a different life, could have been revolutionaries. Not like the mariachi band, who were technically much better musicians, but trapped in a tired repetition of what you’d expect from a group of mustachioed men on the beach. When they’re done their song we share a smoke and I hand them a pile of coins from my pocket. I think the name of their band is Crystal.
January 4
The mosquitoes that come out at night here are pretty bad. I like to think I’m tough when it comes to these guys, but my body just isn’t used to the tropical version and I keep waking up in the night to scratch at angry red welts. For lunch I take the leftovers from yesterday: spaghetti in tomato sauce and steak with mashed potatoes, and chop it all up into a broth and mix in some oregano, black pepper, fresh cut tomatoes, and green beans.
In the evening we go to Superama and fill three shopping carts with our provisions for the Pacific crossing.
January 5
We clear out with customs, visit the grocery store to get a few things we’d forgotten yesterday, and Ray, who we’d met in town the other day, visits the boat to sell us fishing lures and tackle. Tomorrow morning we set sail to Honolulu, Hawaii!
Gnarly Travels 