This passport takes me to 2021, well past end of the world forecasts.
Closing in on Belize, an airline steward passes out forms to be completed in ink for Customs and Immigration Officers in Belize City. These days all travelers need a Passport and are asked to provide one as a prerequisite for International travel.
The Passport is an odd document, more legal than personal, more business than pleasure. If you really want to know about someone you shouldn’t ask for their Passport; you should ask for their diary.
These days the Passport lets me move about the world in anonymity. Governments, who can barely keep roads paved, are not going to get to know me well enough to know if they are safe from me by looking at my Passport.
I complete forms because I am told I have to.
Do people run the State, or does the State run people?
If I don’t belong to myself, to whom do I belong ?
This trip the window seat is mine.
It is most difficult to be in the middle seat with a window passenger on one side and an aisle passenger on the other. Invariably those seat passengers are overweight, have to use the lavatory, don’t speak your language or want to talk about their kids. The window seat is good because you can look out a spyglass porthole window, see the wing shaking and try to guess what state or country is below you. If you grow weary you can lean your head against the plane’s thin skin and feel it vibrate until it puts you to sleep.
For most of this flight I don’t even see Earth.
When you see a break in the clouds you get to look at water, fields, cities, freeways, runways. Occasionally a fantasy pops between my ears about landing the plane on clouds and taking a hike, but that whim goes quickly as it comes.
Only angels walk on clouds.
In the air is the most boring and least risky period of any trip.
In the air your only concern is landing safely.
On land, your concerns multiply exponentially.
Sunday morning the Albuquerque, New Mexico International Sun port is a grocery cart rolling down a hill.
Jets jockey to gates as ticket agents fire up their computers, troubleshoot, load passengers and baggage. This time through security there is a change that makes me wonder whether security has to be all or nothing to make the country secure, or whether exceptions make security Swiss cheese – dangerous and full of gaping holes.
I am given a TSA Precheck, randomly chosen.
This allows me to walk through a separate screening station where I don’t have to take off my belt or shoes. I still have to put my carry on bag, computer and pocket’s contents into gray plastic tubs on a conveyor belt that rolls them through inspection, then walk myself through an x ray tunnel extending my arms above me and clinching my hands above my head.
I don’t argue with security officers and proceed quickly through the gauntlet to have pre-flight coffee, check e mails, check my passport and connecting flights, and slip into yet another travel itinerary.
Exceptions to rules make us less secure, but gives us our humanity back.
I am, despite my hate of security inspections, working on my fourth travel ring for the forefinger of my right hand. This will be another Scotttrek’s journey outside the U.S. where it is still easier to enter illegally than leave legally.
Every journey has an end.
The Mazatlan aeropuerto is small. U.S. Airways charges twice as much for a ticket as they should and the fact the airplane is only half full going down and three quarter full returning tells volumes about the state of tourism in Mexico. Years of gang killings, drug wars, and poverty in Mexico have taken a toll on traveler’s psyches. No one, except the most resolute, would venture across America’s southern border into a country that so many people die trying to leave.
A sign in the airport says, “End of the Road.”
Alan, Dave and I are waiting in shorts and T shirts to go back to the United States. Winter is going full blast there.
I can see why ancient tribes followed the Bering Strait into the America’s and kept moving till they found more hospitable places to live. Even then each journey had twists and turns and adventurous souls took chances for better results.
Mexico has become the third international ring on Scotttreks right hand but us travelers sometime have to go home to catch our breath.
Roots won’t keep me from packing my bags again when time, money, and imagination conspire.
We are flying back to Arizona where I drive back to New Mexico, Dave drives back to Colorado and Alan drives back to Texas.
Living far from friends and family isn’t a viable excuse anymore for not doing things together.
On the way to the beach at the Hotel Playa de Mazatlan, there is a mural painted on a hotel wall by some unknown Mazatlan artist.
The characters are easy to recognize.
There are homages to traditional lifestyles when women wore non-revealing clothes and carried baskets on their heads heading homeward after a day of laundry or working in the fields. There are mustached musicians strumming guitars and wearing huge sombreros. There are tourists taking pictures and children playing with turtles. There are bright, bold colors and exaggerated poses.
It is all in good fun, if not questionable taste, and full of contradictions – just like Mexico itself.
There is poverty in Mexico and unbelievable wealth. There is violence and lighthearted fun. Some people work hard and others little. There is pride and lack of pride, crumbling infrastructure and modern architectural wonders. There is sun and surf and family outings and beach vendors selling hats and trinkets for a pittance.
This mural is one of the first things we see when we go to the beach, and one of the last when we leave on our way back to our rooms.
Whether you cry, or laugh, depends on you, the moment, and how much beer you have had.
ThIs mural is a Mazatlan postcard painted on a wall.
All you need is a stamp and a mailbox.
In the hotel lobby, each day, this artist/craftsman unfolds two tables.
He is dipping his brush into color and applying paint as I watch. When done with one color, he cleans his brush in a glass of water, wipes the residue off with a towel, then switches to another color on the bowl he is working on.
These little bowls are finely detailed.
The one I purchase has turtles swimming on the inside. Any of these will look good on a coffee table and put conversation in motion. They make a good place for rubber bands, hard sweet peppermint candies, wandering coins.
An ancient God, playing flute, dances around the inside of another finished bowl.
Whether his muse is Gods, or money, is a question only he can answer?
On the walls of his home he might have spectacular canvases of Incan jungles, ancient costumes, and wild untamed animals, or reproductions of Diego Rivera’s murals, posters of soccer stars, or photos of his wife, children and grandchildren.
Modern urban life can take the spirit right out of you, if you aren’t vigilant.
This is a conundrum.
At first glance these are footprints on the beach. At a second glance you discover the footprints are not pointing the same direction.
At first thought, I wonder how this happened?
Maybe a man with a peg leg twists his right foot, in the opposite direction, and lights a Cuban cigar as his Labrador Retriever plays in the surf? Maybe a couple with a devilish sense of humor indulge passions, before the sun is truly awake? Maybe Big Foot is on vacation in Mazatlan and is showing Little Foot how to confound humans?
On our last day in Mazatlan, this is fit for a call to Sherlock Holmes.
If anyone can figure it out, it will be him.
Some of the grandest moments on a trip to the ocean are when you wake up and when you go to bed.
First thing in the morning the sun pushes itself up onto its throne and has its cleaning staff sweep away darkness with stiff brushed brooms. Last thing in the evening the sun falls tired under the waves like a huge prehistoric creature grabbing one last breath before diving to the deep.
You walk the beach and see clouds tinted with reds and yellows and pinks. The sand and water meet like opposing armies and you can look far to the horizon where sky dissolves into water.
On a morning or evening walk, you feel breezes tug at your shirt sleeves and sand grabs your toes.
Sleeping on the hotel balcony with a blanket and a pillow for my head, sunrise and sunset are always welcome.
Waves roll in and out like drum rolls and it is okay to be insignificant.
One of the first things I come across on this Stone Island beach is a handwritten message scratched in the sand, still hours away from being erased, by the incoming tides.
It brings up an old question – “If no one hears a tree falling in the forest, does it mean the tree didn’t fall?”
It brings up a newer question – “If no one sees our messages, does that mean we weren’t here? ”
Soon enough, this author is going to get all the reviews he or she ever wanted.
My comment, not written in the beach margins, is, ” how can you be sure? ”
They should have left their phone number.
Writing always raises more questions than it buries.
Our tour boat docks, by a grouping of mangroves,and we disembark into a thatched eating area where a local family will serve us lunch in a few hours.
While they prepare our tour’s meal, we are taken for a look at this island’s coconut farm, watch Polo skin a coconut using a metal spike stuck in the ground.
There are chickens roaming free around the homestead, pecking each other in territorial disputes. In one cage is a crocodile, and, in another, snapping turtles fight over fish in a small bowl.
When done watching the coconut skinning, a gray haired man in a ball cap loads our group into the back of a long wagon, with wood seats and a canvas top, starts his tractor, and we are pulled up a winding sandy path to the uninhabited beach on Stone Island.
“Be back in an hour,” Polo says to us, as we hit the beach, then he looks for a chair and a shady spot to talk with the tractor driver, a couple of young men renting ATVs, the skipper of our boat, and a few tourists who don’t care about seeing more sand.
The beach here stretches unimpeded for miles, in both directions, and coconut trees tower over all. It must have been what islands in the Pacific looked like to our father who fought in World War 2 , as a LST Captain. He didn’t talk about the war but I’ve seen old black and white filmstrips of action in the Pacific and it was never a tourist vacation.
Members of our group spread out along the beach according to their interests.
The island has been protected by an order of a past President of Mexico – Felipe Calderone. He decided that the island, once owned by a rich family, would serve the public interest by being left protected. This simple decision has probably had a more lasting influence on his country than some of his more lofty calculations. Presidents can do many things but not all of them are right, or necessary.
After our beach jaunt, we are taken back and have lunch on a big covered patio.
On our way back home, Juanito, Polo’s tame pelican, revisits us again on the Acutus.
It is a memorable expedition. No one gets lost. There are plenty of refreshments and diversions. The price is cheap, thirty U.S. dollars, our guide is informative.
It would be fun to spend a night on the beach and have a bonfire made of driftwood and listen to pirate stories.
I would pay to go on that one too.
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