“When do we get to Real de Catorce?” I ask the elderly man sitting behind me on the bus. His wrinkled face wrinkles further. “Lo pasemos”. Shit. I shuffle to the front to talk to the driver. I find out that this bus is going all the way to Monterrey (almost Texas) and not stopping in Real de Catorce as I thought. No harm no foul. The driver will drop me in the next village and I will take a Kombi back to Real.
I step down from the bus into Vaduras, a dusty town that looks like a movie set for old Westerns. This is northern Mexico. I scan the faces around me and the faces that stare back are tough and weather-beaten. They belong to older men with rheumatic eyes but strong bearing, wearing cowboy hats and plaid shirts tucked neatly into pleated gray-blue jeans, with leathery calloused hands and the thickest fingers I’ve ever screen, caked in with dust from decades of work.
Ten minutes later, I’m sandwiched in the back of a taxi with two such men as a third man in front speeds through the desert. We make small talk. I tell the men of my travels and the men tell me I will have to hitchhike to the top of the mountain. They reassure me that this is the way it’s done here and I should have no problem. Their counsel proves sage and after a few minutes of waiting with my thumb out, I’m bouncing around in the back of a pick-up truck that’s racing on a hard cobblestone road cut into the mountain range, trying not to swallow sand and holding on so I don’t get yeeted off the side of the mountain. The views are sweeping and awesome. My ass…
