“Go to Mexico” they told me.
“It’ll be fun” they said.
“Mexico is easy-peasy” my sister said.
It would be the first time I had used my passport in the seventy-plus years I have been on this planet.
I’d be traveling alone.
I was a bit nervous about it.
Nevertheless, on a bright Thursday morning just under two weeks ago, I pulled up my big-girl panties and set off on the first stage of my solo adventure to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.
Traveling anywhere from the hillbilly town I live in is usually many-staged, because it is a long drive to any of the larger international airports. This trip would be complicated by my having to find a place for my un-vaccinated dog to stay while I was gone. My daughter offered to take her, an eight-hour drive for me, which I broke up into two days. The first night would be at my lake house, three hours away.
We’d gotten too much snow for me to make it very far up the 250 foot driveway. It’s a good thing I had good Duckfeet boots to get myself, and a shitload of stuff, up to the house. I prevailed.
I woke up the next morning to this:
Even more snow! It was nothing a shovel couldn’t remedy though, so shovel I did. Then I headed back inside for a good old country breakfast and set off soon thereafter, having trudged through the snow a second time with all of the copious stuff I always have with me, for the second stage of my adventure, a five hour drive to Massachusetts.
When my dog and I arrived there, we were met by my daughter’s cat, who hates my dog. The cat becomes violent toward me whenever my dog is with me. Should any of you have this problem, try the homeopathic remedy Stramonium for the cat, which helped quite a bit! Two days of accustoming my precious dog to her digs for the next five days was the third stage of my adventure. All went well there. My baby girl (the human one) is a great cook, and cooks herself a very wholesome and pure diet! Good for any mom to know.
A tearful goodbye to my canine baby girl, and off Daughter and I went for the two hour drive to Boston’s Logan airport.
Things have changed since the last time I flew, probably a dozen years or more earlier:
I approached with my best slave self on
I shuffled submissively forward and did as I was told with all the others
Children were commanded to be quiet
Papers were clutched in hands
I assumed the surrender position while they irradiated me.
My belongings were searched on a belt beside me.
Finally, I awkwardly stopped to have my very visage scanned and analyzed
All to verify that I was not a person up to no good
Humiliating if you ask me, all of it. We have been conditioned to accept being treated like cattle walking to our slaughters. We will do it whenever a government official asks us to. We are told it is the safest and most effective way for us to get where we want to go. It is only because we submit to these indignities that we can be required to do so.
After ten hours of driving, and three hours of airport bullshit, I was finally in the air.
The flight was fine. Long, but fine. A barely-long-enough layover in Mexico city saw me on the final stage of the journey to my destination, and I landed right on time at PVR airport in sunny and warm Puerto Vallarta,
where I was met by the incomparable @Deirdyweirdy and her brother @RobbieRetard in the flesh! Deirdy and I both recognized the other at first glance, a good 100 feet away in a crowded airport. It may have helped that she had told me that she and her brother would be “the two nuttiest looking buggers at arrivals.” They do rather stand out, not because they look nutty, but because they are brilliant!
I now know, after five days of near constant engagement, that that initial moment was an instant recognition of kindred spirits. A spark from source, if you will. We spent the majority of my waking hours in Mexico together, excitedly yakking away.
There are not a whole lot of people who think in the same dimensions I do, but Deirdy and her bro certainly are two of them. As a plus, my own mother used to urge me to visit Ireland if I ever visited any place at all, and now I have good friends there, two great reasons to go. A trip to Tipperary is on me boocket list!
We were all there to attend a conference, Anarchapulco, and attend we did. Most of the people in my life would consider the presenters there to be whacked-out weirdos. I found the gathering very enlightening, both for the better and for the worse. I’m glad I went. But I also needed some time in the sun and waves and so I ditched the conference for a couple hours here and there to sun on the nearest shore while reading a hard copy book, my favorite vacation activity. I'd be leaving two days before D and R would.
After five days of fabulous conversations, enlightening presentations, time in the sun and surf, it was time for me to pack up and retrace my steps home. How I longed to stay for two more days, two more days to hear the inner workings of D and R's minds, and to open up with mine! I was blissfully unaware that shit was about to break loose in Mexico in my wake.
3000 miles from PVR to BOS, 100 miles in a car to my daughter’s to fetch my dog, 200 miles to central New York State to catch my breath and a final 120 miles to my home.
This morning I woke up to this view outside the upstairs window of my lake house.
More shoveling!
The final leg of my big adventure, my very first international trip, will be a three-hour drive to my hillbilly town. After I shovel the walk and clean the snow off my car, of course. I have no idea how much shoveling awaits me at the other end.
You may have heard that Puerto Vallarta was central to violence in Mexico a few days ago. I managed to leave two days before that BS started, the very same two days I longed to remain there. Deirdy and Bro were not as fortunate as I; the violence broke out the morning of the day that they were supposed to fly out. Their experience during the “lockdown of Mexico” was very different from what you may have read in the news. Despite being told that they were likely to be shot if they were out on the streets after eight pm, those two intrepid souls headed out of the hotel and away from all those quests cowering inside. They walked openly in two different neighborhoods well after 8pm, where they discovered the usual small businesses open, had their fills of local cuisine, and found streets teeming with the usual pedestrians. They saw no violence at all. This was in the very place the BS began, mind you, Puerto Vallarta!
Lesson to learn – only if we all comply are we in true danger. Question everything!!! (here’s my favorite subject again!
This is my entry to The Ink Well's prompt of the week. Come join us!
All photos are mine.