There are some words that are the same in both French and Spanish. Differentes langues y culturas pero la même chose en la cœur. They both sound foreign yet familiar to me.

I find myself in a abandoned, mas o menos, house in Pescador, Veracruz, Mexico with nine men that don’t speak my language, mas o menos. We’ve got a Belgian post rock band, two film directors, an actor, some painters, a Mexican hip hop crew, a French circus performer and me. All their talents makes volunteering and writing seem almost passe. They mock my recycling obsession and call me a hippy. I criticize their compulsive consumption habits and call them conquering Europeans. That doesn’t mean I don’t think they’re wonderful, but it may illustrate a bit of the dynamic we’ve created here.

We met because we all wanted to go to the Rainbow Gathering in Palenque, Chiapas, Mexico. Why they ever wanted to go there I have no idea. They hated it before they even knew it. I’d never been to a Rainbow Gathering either, but I had a bit more of an idea what it was about, vegan hippies in the woods, forming ohm circles, meditating with the family, asking for connections, etc. etc. I come from Portland, Oregon, so the new age metaphysical commune idea is not new to me. I knew what it was and wanted to go there for a little peace & rejuvenation, but really, we all know that I probably wasn’t going to make it. I had a lot of plans before the end of December and traversing 3000 miles of land in time didn’t quite seem plausible. That is, until I met the Belgians.

There is a windstorm happening right now that is rattling the whole house. Lacking internet, or really any connection to the outside world beside our choppy Spanish, we don’t know if this is a regular occurrence or a hurricane. There’s no basement and I’m doubting that we have any sort of contigency plan in case of the seemingly inevitable. There is something very large knocking on the the foundations of the house, it is shaking the cinderblock construction. I can feel it in my spine. No one seems worried though, or maybe they were worried about it and discussed it in their respective languages and I just didn’t catch it. If I concentrate I can understand a little more than half of what they’re saying. If I don’t concentrate, it just sounds like vocalized emotion.

Since I first got on the bus most discussions, directions & decisions have been made in French. At first, I couldn’t understand at all. I took a lot of naps during this time. I had imagined, as their ad on Craigslist had implied, that we would be driving day and night to reach our destination. These guys, however, are a bit more, shall we say, French than that. We’ll need to stop for a bit of café, time to pull out the kitchen for a bite to eat, casual long lunches, after dinner smokes and the like. We move very slow. In the two days that I thought I would be spending with them, we had covered no more than 200 miles of Mexico, and thats when the left suspension on the the Blue Bird broke.

I was scared shitless, scrambling to understand the mess of French that was flying around my head, I thought, quite seriously, that this was the end of the road. Somewhere between Nogales & Hermosilla in northwestern Mexico, we pulled into a dark mechanic shop behind a gas station. There were abandoned buses and semis scattered around the yard and three not so happy mechanics, I was sure we were going to get scammed, robbed & murdered, in that order. When we realized that we would be sleeping there that night, I came to accept that this wasn’t going to be the trip that I bargained for. I began plotting my escape from the Belgians and the Blue Bird.

They are killing pigs all over town today. Tomorrow is the start of a new year, from our rooftop I can see all the houses choosing their animal to slaughter, a few goats, a lamb or two, a rooster, but the worst is the pigs. The moment they realize they are going to die, they begin squealing and crying and fighting. It seems to be quite an event, several men with beers, ropes in hand circling and lassoing the screaming beasts. There are tables of elders scattered about town, chatting and sorting through the remains of the dearly departed. I can see it all from the rooftop of our house. Each morning plays out like an artsy short film chronicling the mundane of another culture hoping to expose the humanity in us all.

None of the Belgians seemed all that concerned to be sleeping at a Mexican gas station on the side of the highway. We cooked dinner on a propane stove in the parking lot, and settled into watch Y Tu Mama Tambien on the floor of the bus together. It was then that I realized that everything was going to be just fine. The next morning the mechanicos brought in an ex-pat from Alabama with a special air pressure thingy to help undo the rusty suspension. We made eggs & tortillas next to the highway, and were on the road again by noon.

I stopped getting scared after that, mas or menos. I was completely calm when the windshield wipers broke in a rainstorm and we found ourselves stranded outside a lonely Tecate stand with a couple of drunk mafiosos. I managed to take a nap when the bus wouldn’t start on the side of the highway in the rumored, “most dangerous state in Mexico.” I suppose I did slightly freak out when we encountered a blockade on the highway in the middle of the night outside of Mexico City, but when we overheated traversing the mountains of Chiapas, I seized the opportunity to use the water provided on the side of the road to take a quick bath, and when the tire blew out on the way to the house we would rent, I just set my tent up in the field next to the bus and waited for morning. It was old hat by that point.

New Year’s Eve turned out to be quite an event in Pescador. The neighbors invited me to a bizarre ceremony involving singing, candies and everyone kissing a tiny plastic baby Jesus resting on a styrofoam plate. I sang and kissed and candied with the rest of ‘em, but they could tell that I was confused beyond repair. By ten o’clock the whole town was in party mode–tequila, fireworks, dancing, the whole nine. At midnight, instead of kissing someone, everyone goes around and hugs everyone else in sight, much like the whole “Peace be with you” thing the Catholics do, but with much more excitement and emotion. Feliz Años. Feliz Años. Feliz Años. We made friends with the village that night.

I’ve made friends with the Belgians by this point as well. We had spent Christmas together in Palenque, MX outside yet another mechanico after we blew out some sort of electrical thing trying to get the bus unstuck from the mud at the Rainbow Gathering. In case you were wondering, it takes approximately three days, fifteen people & one Jeep Grand Cherokee to get a Canadian handicap bus out of one foot of mud. I was definitely quite calm during this particular bus issue. I found it funny that they would need to stay with the hippies longer than any of them wanted to; I would go swimming in river and sunning under the palm trees while they feverishly plotted their next attempt to get the Blue Bird out of jungle.

I have really grown quite fond of all of them. We share nearly everything–food, drinks, clothes, pesos– and now we are all settling in together in this village that I will call “Pescador” so as to ensure that I am not the one to ruin its purity. We rented the tallest house in the place and were moved in within moments of arriving. They’ve converted the first floor into a painting studio where canvases constructed from driftwood line the walls. The second floor is the kitchen area where most of the writing, drawing and hanging out is done. The third floor is the music studio housing the piano, drums and various stringed instruments. The balconies have become the bedrooms so that we can all sleep outside, and the bus is now an editing room, which leaves me to the roof overlooking the sea, interrupted only by the circus performer who regularly uses the space to do a very acrobatic version of yoga.

I like it a lot here.

I’m looking forward to the next few weeks, and hopefully now that I’m settled I’ll have more time to update regularly. That is if can find internet that is less than an hour away…