They burned my barn and stole my horse

I saw the beard before I saw Greg. He was driving towards me and I had to stop and look twice to make sure my eyes weren't decieving me. But sure enough, it was my good pal. I had spent my last night in the US with Greg and Nicole, crashing on their futon in Chicago about 11 months ago. And now I was heading to their new place in San Diego to crash on their air-mattress. It's funny how the life takes you around full circle some times.

It was strange being back in the US. I cringed at the rows of cookie-cutter condos I scattered from Chula Vista up into downtown. When Greg and I went to the grocery store I marvelled at how one single store could have 30 different varieties of orange juice.

I had managed to make it into town 3 days before the Dylan show, earlier than I originally thought. But I was feeling ready to go home. The next few days were a blur of submitting resumes, arguing with the DMV, looking for an apartments, and trying not to let my spanish slip out at inopportune moments.

I talked to Bill and he told me of his idea to head to the northern beaches of Brazil. I talked to Sean and he told me he was heading back to Colombia for the holidays. Yanet was finally off to Mexico. And I started to wonder what the heck it was I was doing back in the US. I wanted to run, it was all just too much, too fast. And no matter how many times Greg and Nicole told me to just calm down and take it a little slowly, I just couldn't.

Nicole fed me with her excellent cooking and Greg did his part plying me with beer and his famous fried eggs. It was nice to be somewhere that felt a bit normal again. Greg was even generous enough to let me borrow his car while he was working, which happened to come complete with a copy of "Modern Times" my new favorite CD.

And soon enough the night of the big show was upon us. As Greg and I excitedly rushed off to the Cox arena to see the man in person. Before the show I told Greg, I need to hear "Working Man Blues #2" I wasn't a working man as of yet, far from it, truth be told, but when Bobby told me about the declining power of the proletariet or his inability to give away what he had, I felt it too. He played Watchtower, Like a Rolling Stone, Cold Irons Bounds and just about everything else I wanted to hear.

As we pulled away from the arena I couldn't wipe the smile off my face. And I knew without a doubt why I was here and what I was doing. It wasn't going to be easy, but there is just no price you can put on the company of a few good friends who get it.

Homeward Bound

I don´t know exactly when it happened, but at some point between shrimp tacos in Sayulita and ceviche in Mazatlan I decided it was just time to go home, wherever that was. Swimming up and down the Pacific Coast of Mexico had proven to be lots of fun, but it was getting a bit tiring. Sure the water was perfectly warm, the food was generally excellent, the people nice (except for whoever nicked my bag while I was swimming in Sayulita) and the scenery beautiful, but I was just kinda done.

I decided against exploring the Copper Canyon from Los Mochis or reliving the history of Hermosilla. Instead I hopped a plane to Tijuana, perhaps the crappiest city in the world unless you happen to enjoy street prostitutes or 18 year olds drinking and yelling ¨woo!¨ It made a lot of sense at the time, I figured as soon as I had enough I would just head up to San Diego and get started on this whole return to normalcy thing.

I knew íf I gave myself a couple days to get used to the idea I could probably get started with all the stuff I need to get done. And if nothing else I´ve managed to convince myself that things truly are going to be alright even though there are about a 1000 questions running through my mind of what´s what.

But I head to San Diego tomorrow, and amazingly enough I even have a place to crash for a few days (thanks Greg and Nicole!) until I get settled in a bit more. And Greg and I have got tickets to the Dylan show lined up already, in just a few short days. A plane ride to Seattle Oct 28th is already purchased and a road-trip back to San Diego with a good friend a few days later is in motion. Thanksgiving in Madison with my family rounds out the plans, although who knows, I might make it back to the Carribean some time in between.

Now if I can just find a job and a place to stay it´ll really start looking like I´ve returned to the real world. But for now, I´m going to be pretty content to go visit some friends and see what the rest of the world has been up to fo the last year while I´ve been vagabonding around. Yeah I´ll miss the amazingly magical sunsets in Mazatlan and the calm tranquil waters of Bucerias but I´m sure there are new, as of yet unimagined adventures to be had as I settle in.

I Get By With a Little Help From My Friends

The two Scotish boys, the Irish boys and I piled into a cab and headed off to the bus terminal. They were heading off to Mexico City, I was going in the opposite direction, to the coast. We all had a brilliant time in Guadalajara, which has the reputation of being the center of the real Mexico. The home of tequila and mariachi bands. We even managed to take in a futbol match, a super-clasico no less (Chivas vs. Club America) and some Lucha Libre. That along with the Orozco murals, street side tacos and variety of cervezas made me feel like I had indeed experienced Mexico at it´s authentic best.

But after spending my last night in Guadalajara playing drinking games with the aforementioned group, along with a few Mexicans and Aussies I´ve decided I´m just too old for this shit. I can´t hang and I don´t really care anymore. A nice relaxing beach sounded just up my alley and that´s exactly where I was heading. Five short hours later I was in Sayulita.

I spent the bus ride like I normally do, staring out the window and pondering all there is to ponder in my life. I watched the landscape change from the blue agave cacti fields set among the low valleys of the central Mexican hills to the drier, more desolate, more sparse jungles of the Pacific Coast.

I`d just recently gotten to the point where the growing anxiety about what my life would be like when I returned to the ¨real¨world was begining to subsist. Find a job, find a place to live, move my stuff to a different city and visit friends and family and start a new life. I was trying to figure out how I was going to manage the logistics of all these contrary needs. I´ve spent much of this trip relying on the kindness of strangers to get by, and while there have been some really rough times it´s all worked out. But as of late a few good friends have decided to go to extraordinary lenghts help me out, levels which have suprised and humbled me.

Somewhere deep inside I had a sense of calm. Things were going to be ok, I reminded myself. They always had been in the past. I remembered to breathe and thought to myself as long as I can make it to the next stop in the road, everything else will work itself out. I idly glanced out the window and wondered where I was. I asked the elderly Mexican gentlemen next to me and it turned out this was my stop. I could see the warm welcoming water´s of the Pacific right around the corner and the next thing on my agenda was to go for a swim. Everything else was going to be alright.

Back in North America

Mexico City gets a pretty bad rap from most travellers. Most people associate it with rampant over-population, shockingly polluted air and being quite literally one of the most dangerous cities in the world. Given all of this I wasn´t too excited about the prospects of coming here.

When Katie asked me if I was sure I needed to go to Mexico I replied with a less than confident "I think so..." And as I rode in the cab toward the airport in Cartegena I seriously pondered what would happen if I just turned back around and went to the hotel.

Katie and had met only 4 days earlier, but we hit it off right away. Maybe it was because our paths crossed on a boat heading to paradise. Well it was actually Cabo San Juan de Guia in Parque Nacional Tayarona, but within about 30 seconds of getting there we both agreed it was paradise.

Maybe I was just hoping that as a practicing psychologist she could provide some free psychotherapy. But if she managed to figure out any of my many pathologies she didn´t clue me in, which is probably for the best. She didn´t even bat an eye when I destroyed her camera, for which she has my eternal gratitude and admiration. In any case we spent the next 2 days with our hammocks strung up next to each other, enjoying the sun, water and fresh fish that came with paradise.

After a hop, skip and a jump we were in Cartegena and it was time for me to leave. Throughout my travels I´ve noticed that some goodbyes have taken far too long while others have come with such haste one cannot even process the surrealness of that one instant.

With all of this on my mind as my flight began it´s descent into Mexico City I cringed at the fact that I was now here. It all seemed like such a good idea when it came to me about a week ago. Mexico is close to the US. I need to go back to the US at some point, so why not just go to Mexico instead and somehow make my way north???

I knew nothing about Mexico City of course, except all of the things that were now turning me of to it. And I had no idea where I was going to spend the night as usual. But I found a pretty nice hostel fairly quickly without incident and spent the next day exploring the town.

And much to my suprise I´m finding I kinda like it. It´s full of beautiful colonial architecture, wide tree-lined streets and monuments to seemingly everything and anything even remotely related to the nation´s history. And after a few months of complaining about the difficulty of finding a good cheap meal in South America I´m absolutely in love with the culture of street food, although needless to say there are some drawbacks.

And there is something comforting about looking at a map of Mexico. It´s like Bob Dylan or the Grateful Dead laid out a song book right there in our neighbor to the south. Cities with names like Durango and Acapulco, Oaxaca and Ixtapa, Tabasco and Tequila just excite the imagination. I don´t know exactly what route I´ll take, but I already know the destination.

No later than Oct 22nd I will be in San Diego. The thoughts of how exactly to put the pieces of my life back together and what exactly this wonderful insightful "plan" that everyone assumes I have already figured out are bouncing around my skull. But for the time being I´m going to try to enjoy this, the last leg of what has been a wonderful journey, a long strange trip indeed.

PADI Certified

I´d finally figured out the secret to Scuba diving, which it turns out is the same as the secret to life. Just keep breathing. But things were getting a little more nuanced under the water and I was feeling like maybe these guys should be teaching me a thing or two about Scuba diving since I was taking a scuba diving course through them.

Taganga is a little fishing village about 1/2 bus ride from Santa Marta, set inside a beautiful bay. It has about 1000 people, 1 paved street and 5 of the cheapest Scuba Diving schools in the world. I picked Oceano because they had the most expensive boat and the cheapest tractor. The first two course days had gone great. Moments after showing up the first day I was falling off of a boat backwards and marvelling at the wonderful world of Jacque Cousteau that lay before me.

The 6th dive was a little different. We descended to 70 feet inside the boundries of Parque Nacional Tayarona, the premier diving spot in mainland Colombia. It started out fine as we cruised along admiring the colorful reefs and fish all around us. Then the Spanish guy and I bumped into each other. I think it was his fault, but since he´s a certified dive master and I don´t know what the heck I´m doing, I´m probably wrong.

He was fine but I started to ascend. I never had managed to figure out how to stay nuetrally buoyant. As I fumbled with my gear I tried to release some of the air out of my BCD but mistakenly pumped it up instead, which speeded my ascent. I watched helplessly as the coral reef we had just been enjoying disappeared below me. I felt the current almost immediately. It was strong, too strong to swim against.

Faced with this situation I tried to think back to all the instruction I had recieved. But as I tried to form a mental picture of those 3 seperate 1/2 hour DVD sections which constituted the sum total of my training all I could see in my mind´s eye was Roberto, the proprietor of Oceano, saying ¨it´s all just a lot of blah, blah, blah. Let´s go diving!¨

I knew panicking wouldn´t help. I couldn´t see any evidence of my fellow divers below me. I´d finally managed to duck down below the current sweaping me away but had no clue where I was. The ocean can be a dark and lonely place when you´re alone. I knew I should never have rented that stupid move ¨Open Water.¨

The next section of the DVD was supposed to cover decompression. Up until now I had just followed the instructors and assumed they knew what they were doing. So I waited an agonizingly long time, which I assumed to be 5 minutes about 10 feet under water before surfacing. The current had pulled me out past the cove we were exploring and I was heading to open sea. I could see our boat in the distance skimming around. I knew I should have learned to whistle louder, but instead I just shouted ¨hey!¨ a couple of times. I had plenty of oxygen left so I wasn´t too worried, but I really didn´t want to swim all the way over there.

But soon enough they were over to pick me up. It turned out that when we seperated the other 3 divers had surfaced and started hunting for me. ¨Was it scary¨ asked José? ¨Yeah it actually was¨ I replied honestly. ¨Well at least now you´ll have a story to tell you´re kids¨ said the Yalel. ¨It´s ok¨ I told him ¨I´ve got better.¨