CHETUMAL

NOVEMBER 1974

Dear Doris,

I’ve been here in Chetumal ever since my last letter, going on two weeks now, walking along the dock, sleeping in a hammock and reading ‘The Idiot’ which I finally finished this morning, laying in the park, eating shrimp cocktails by the sea wall and playing soccer every day after school lets out with the kids near my guest house. Better friends I never had, though they don’t know a word of English, except “fuck you mother” and to that I reply with a similar phrase in Spanish and we all laugh to bust our guts. I’ll be leaving here tomorrow morning to check out Central America, and if I can’t get on a ship there to Brazil, I’ll head back this way and hitch around the Yucatan Peninsula and north along the Gulf coast to the port of Veracruz to try my luck shipping out from there, since that’s where all the truck drivers say It’ll be most likely for me to find work on a ship to South America. Anyway, I’m almost looking forward to that trip and there’s bound to be some beautiful beaches and little fishing villages along the Gulf coast, just as there were on the Pacific. You can try to drop me a card to lista de correos, Veracruz, Veracruz, Mexico, as I plan to stay there eventually until I get a ship, but don’t send it till after the 7th, as I understand they only hold mail for a week. Please get in touch with Paul and tell him I said hello. You can let him read this letter too. I hope he’s keeping his nose clean, though I don’t wanna be worried about it if he’s not, cuz I’m too far away in body, mind and spirit to do anything about it. Give my love to Grandma and whomever’s still alive of my old friends, and read them some of this if you feel like it, as I’ve lost everybody’s adress.

Your son loves you. J.

CHETUMAL
NOVEMBER 1974

Dear Doris,

Finally I decided to move on and I hitched a ride south. Since then I’ve been staying in an abandoned house with no roof on the outskirts of Chetumal. This is a real spooky old pirate town on a bay on the Caribbean coast near the border to British Honduras, the gateway to Central America. This is also a free port, so I’ve been eating imported cheese and drinking French wine for the price of a plate of beans and rice. I buy fresh shrimp from the fishermen for a few pesos and cook it on a small fire in my ‘living room’ here. The ocean is beautiful here to, emerald green in the morning, and even though it’s always hot and tropical (the jungle comes right down to the sea here) there’s always a nice sea breeze blowing in off the bay and I can hang my hammock between two coconut palms. At night it even gets so cool I have to wrap up in a blanket, also to fend off the mosquitos who are like a pack of invisible vampires, especially right around sundown. I’d like to spend a winter here, just to see what three meters of rainfall is like in one season. Judging from the construction of most of the houses here, the hurricanes must be pretty heavy. Some of the nicer old buildings which have seen lots of storms have window glass that’s half an inch thick. Most of the dwellings here in the jungle villages are made of bamboo shafts with thatched straw roofs. Since it’s mostly all swamp here, it’s hard for people to grow anything to eat, so most people seem to live off of canned goods from the free port of Chetumal, along with a sad little selection of vegetables trucked in from Veracruz and Chiapas. That and the usual red beans and rice and cheap maiz tortillas which are the staple of any Mexican meal. The mosquitos have put bites over every square inch of my hide here.

Today I’m gonna give myself a malaria shot before I go further south into the jungles of Central America to get to the ports there and look for work on a ship. You can buy the vaccine and needles right over the counter in pharmacies here, since doctors are pretty scarce in these parts of the world.

Love,

Jono

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TULUM

OCTOBER 1974

After I left San Cristobal I passed a few hours in a very small village in one of the little valleys in the hills and there was a big fiesta going on there that took over the whole town with a marimba band and costumed dancers with bizarre colorful animal masks, the whole country and people here are like magic to me. I got on the back of another truck just after dark and rode all the way to Palenque.

The road was very cold and I wrapped up in a blanket and lay on my back looking at the sky and I could see every star in the universe as the tops of the big pine trees whizzed by and just when I got to the point where it was so cold I thought I’d holler, the road suddenly began to drop and kept dropping for the next 100 kilometers and I sat up and watched the terrain changing right before my eyes and in less than an hour’s time we’d gone from the chilly high altitudes of frozen pine tree forests, down into eucalyptus groves and down down into a steamy hot tropical jungle, a primeval prehistoric rain forest with gigantic rock cliffs all covered with vines and creepers jutting out above us and out over the road with all kinds of jagged crazy palm trees and banana forests with waterfalls so I had the impression of being completely surrounded on all sides by this thick dense land and every so often the road would veer off through some little town of straw huts and I’d hear the distant marimba music blending with shrieks and whistles of great parrots and all sorts of crazy birds and animals from the trees, fantastic. I arrived in Palenque just before dawn and walked straight out to the ruins of the ancient Mayan civilization. After traveling all night, I wasn’t at all tired. My energy was redoubled and I watched in awe as the sun came up like a red ball of fire silhouetted against the great mysterious Mayan ruins surrounded by beautiful pristine jungle. I climbed to the top of the Tomb of the Inscriptions where I sat feasting my eyes for an hour until the tourists began to come in their pastel colored droves, spoiling the scene.

Finally, I ran off into the jungle and took a cool invigorating shower under a clear waterfall, then I hiked back to the road circumventing the ruins so as not to have to see their ugliness again, preferring to retain my memory of this magical place unsullied by the image of them swarming and gawking and squawking with their cameras and bratty kids. I had seen what I’d come to see, seen that great city almost as must have been before the Conquest and that’s how I would remember it.

I’ve been here a week outside the far south jungle town of Tulum. I feel like Robinson Crusoe, camping out in a coconut grove near the sea there, about 10 km from the ancient Mayan ruins dotting the coastline, all surrounded by thick tropical rain forest, and not a damn gringo tourist in sight, thank god! I’d been living on nothing but coconuts for a few days until  finally I hiked into town and splurged on some eggs and tomatoes. I cooked them with my little frying pan over a fire by the ocean and sat there eating that meal like it was a five-star restaurant meal, I sure had a five star view there, more like a five million star view. I never knew there were so many stars in the sky. The moon was full last night, so I wandered down the deserted coast to explore the ruins at night and it was some experience. I could almost imagine what it must have been like when that place was the center of a thriving advanced civilation thousands of years ago. All gone now. Nothing but ruins after the Europeans came to spread the bloody doctrine of Christianity. I can understand why you always hated the church so. The Catholic church has done more to turn people against God than any medieval devil ever could have.

Your loving son,

J

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SAN CRISTOBAL
OCTOBER 1974

Dear Doris,

I got the itch again, so I left Oaxaca and hitched a ride south about halfway to the Isthmus of Tehuantepec where all the women were exceptionally tall and wore long colorful gowns like gypsy princesses. It was very late when I got there. I was still several miles from the main town where the truck driver dropped me off. I was just walking along the road looking for a good place to lay my blanket down and sleep for the night when a bus came along. It was the first vehicle I’d seen since I got there and it just stopped. I told the driver to go ahead cuz I didnt have enough money for the bus, but he just smiled and shook his finger at me and said it was ok, that I could ride for free. I offered to ride on top with the crates and luggage but he wouldn’t hear of it. He even offered to buy me dinner when we got to the capitol and he wouldnt take no for an answer.

The busses in Mexico look like old broken down 1950’s schoolbusses with big racks on top packed with all kind of luggage, livestock and even passengers when the bus gets too crowded inside. It’s pretty common to have to squeeze onto a bus with like 200 people, plus another 50 on top or hanging from the rear standing on the bumper sometimes when it’s really full, and then you look up and see the sign above the driver saying CAPACIDAD 55 PASSENGEROS. These cross-country busses will stop anywhere along the road for anyone who wants a ride and puts their hand out. The drivers compensate for all the time they lose stopping for passengers by driving those beat-up old crates like they were race cars, disregarding the most basic principals of common sense or sanity even, pulling all sorts of suicidal kamikaze road maneuvers, like passing slow trucks at blind curves at breakneck speed along a stretch of highway called the Spinoza del Diablo (the devil’s backbone). The Mexican busdriver seems to conduct himself with an air of distinguished calm, reminiscent of a airline pilot or something. These cross country Mexican bus drivers are very respected and even have their own copilots, usually young boys who shift gears for them or steer the bus around the most perilous curves at absurd speeds while the driver casually lights a cigarette as if he was sitting at home or in a cantina. Needless to say, Mexicans have tremendous faith in God — especially their bus drivers.

In a village outside Tehuantepec, I spent the night in a jail cell. Often in small towns where there’s no hotel, travelers are kindly permitted to spend the night in municipal buildings in exchange for a few kind words to the mayor or his wife. I slept rather fitfully because the cell door stayed open all night. When I saw the ‘Jefe de Policia’, the Chief of Police, the next morning, he was a wasted old boozer who looked more like a janitor than any kind of an authority. I summised that my ”cell” probably hadn’t been used other than for him and his cronies to crash in for many years. I left Tehuantepec and woke up shivering on the back of a truck. I arrived freezing to San Cristobal de Las Casas in the middle of the night, where I am now. When I’d left that morning, the temperature had been a pleasent 90 in tropical sun. Now here I was walking the empty midnight streets of this place high up in the mountains. I couldn’t wrap enough blankets around me to keep warm, but luckily I found the best hotel in town (the cheapest) where the temperature in the room rose to about 10 degrees above freezing. All in all, not a bad deal for less than a dollar for the night, especially because I could avail myself freely of the fantastic steam baths with hot and cold showers right across a sleepy courtyard from my room. San Cristobal is a marvelous city not far from Mexico’s southern border with Guatemala, hidden snugly in a high valley way up in the mountains. Very clean and quiet and old-worldy. The population is 80% Indians here, and a guy told me the town was named after Las Casas, a fanatical monk who who was famous for his appeals to the King of Spain on behalf of the indians who, to this day, are treated like animals by the gentry. All the houses here are solidly built with red tile roofs, a very old town with many beautiful old churches scattered around from when the church was really really rich , as opposed to just filthy rich as it is today. Overall, the place seems more like a Swiss village high in the Alps than someplace in the south of Mexico. A very nice place.

Love

J

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OAXACA
SEPTEMBER 1974

Dear Doris,

Finally had my fill of idleness and solitude.  I packed up my little bag and hitchhiked a ride about 50 km south to Pochutla where the road goes inland to the capital, Oaxaca. I couldn’t get a ride out that day, so I spent the night right there by the side of the road on the outskirts of the town. I was surprised to wake up in the middle of the night to find the whole town was converted into one huge carnival fiesta with a ferris wheel and brass bands and what seemed like every drunk farmer in the state of Oaxaca with his family. I had a good time drinking with a bunch of traveling carnies and crazy Mexican flim-flam aritists. I stayed up all night with them and drank too much Mezcal, which is made from maguay cactus and sold by old ladies in gasoline tins and gourd bowls and coconut shells, costs like a half a dollar a liter and has definite hallucinogenic qualities, though by the time you’e had enough to really trip on, you’re too drunk to even notice, at least I was.

The next morning I picked myself up off the little cot I’d rented on someone’s porch, and with a splitting head, I started walking along the road leading back out of town. Finally a truck stopped. After convincing the driver I wasn’t carrying any mota (grass), cuz the federal cops are known to confiscate a vehicle if just one passenger has even a joint, the driver said he was going all the way to the capital and I could ride up on top. Some of the travelers I’d talked to in Escondido had told me not to take that ride as it’s over 12 hours along hairpin mountain curves on a bumpy dirt road and just too much to endure.

” Take the plane” they advised me. ”It only takes an hour and costs like ten bucks”.

Those well intentioned more well-heeled travelers didn’t know that ten bucks would be enough money for me to live on for a week, so I just ignored them and took the road trip despite their warnings. I clutched for dear life to the rack on the top as the truck sped off into the jungle and then suddenly started barreling straight up the side of a mountain till I was way up in the clouds. Within an hour, I was totally frozen and the road was curving like something out of dante’s inferno and not even wide enough for two vehicles to pass. I was just beginning to think about that possibility as the truck sped around a serpentine curve overlooking a 1000 ft precipice into the foggy cold darkness below, when the notion suddenly hit me, like a little voice telling me, ”just sit back and relax, you’ll make it.” And then I relaxed and looked around from the top of the truck and that’s when I saw it: the most beautiful awesome panoramic view I’ve ever seen in my life! Behind me, the ocean streached out as far and blue as infinity, and I could swear I saw the earth’s curve from up there. Up ahead, the road wound off crazily around another twist in the mountain, still climbing. Off to one side there was a giant rock cliff leading up the mountainside, and on the other side another cliff dropping down 5 thousand feet, straight down to this huge bottomless pit — and no guard rail! But above me there was the bluest sky with the kind of clouds you only see from airplane windows, so I just lay back again and looked up at the clouds and tried not to think of death. All in all, it was a most enjoyable ride. I made it here in the capital around 1am and set right out to find the cheapest hotel I could find near the gigantic open-air marketplace.

It seems like half of Mexico gathers in the Oaxaca marketplace on Saturdays to bargain, sell, trade, buy, barter, steal, look and generally engage in every form of commerce known to man. I sold a cheap little camera I’d brought with me and never used to a local hustler in the market for 5 times more than I paid for it in the States. With the money, I bought myself a new handmade hand tooled little leather traveling bag to replace my plastic valise, the one Grandma left in the garage, which was coming apart at the seams after traveling all the way across Mexico. My new traveling bag would cost a fortune up there in LA, so for a 5 dollar camera, I got a beautiful hundred dollar hand-tooled leather satchel. Since my travel bag is my only home now, it seemed like an important purchase. There’s so much beautiful stuff to buy here in Oaxaca, but I have to content myself with looking. Even if I had any money to buy stuff, where the hell would I put it?

Only a small part of the huge marketplace is handmade crafts though. The rest of the commerce occupies all these big old buildings, each one like a full city-block long, and on Saturdays, when the Indians come to town from their little pueblos all around the capital, they just lay all their goods down on the ground anywhere they can, and it all spills out onto the streets all around the indoor markets and tents until the whole place is so thick with people and all kinds of stuff that it could take you 20 min to walk a block. People are yelling and shouting and hawking and pushing and shoving and cursing and it’s completely impossible to pass without shoving or knocking someone down and walking right over their body as they curse and smack your ankles with their fists and your foot descends unwittingly on somebody’s face and then some bigger guy comes along and shoves you aside, and you barely manage to keep from falling into a big pile of sparkling red tomatos that some old lady has placed at that exact spot, only squishing one or two with your elbow as you fall, and she curses and calls you a son of a cow, and her raspy curses fade off in the distance as you’re carried off by the surging crowd of moving bodies. It felt like I was in one of those ant farms or something. Crazy. Somehow out of this whole unruly mess, the people of Oaxaca are paid and fed and supplied with clothing and food and all sorts of necessary items for another week.

I found the cheapest hotel right in the middle of this whole crazy marketplace, and I’ve been entertaining myself there ever since. The hotel itself is pretty comfortable, especially for only costing like 25 cents a night, but when I got here there was no private bathroom and they had a whole bunch of hogs living in the public shower stalls. My room had a huge crack in the thin wooden wall with a panoramic view into the next room where fat naked mexicans did unspeakable things. I finally asked for a room with a private bath for another 10 cents, cuz of the animals in the showers.  Now it’s another one of those deals where you have to sit on the john to shower, but it’s better than standing up in a shower with a bunch of huge pigs.

Speaking of pigs, I’ve never seen so much stuff to eat in one place as this market. The food is very cheap here too, even cheaper than cooking myself, so I’ve eaten very well the whole time I’ve been here. You can get three big black bumpy avocados and some nice red tomatos and a bunch of limes and cilentro, enough to make a big bowl of guacamole for less than a peso and you can eat it with your lunch at one of the lunch counters serving delicious hot homemade meals. One whole section of the market right by my hotel is like 40 or 50 of these little restaurant stalls all shoved together under a big long tent, and you can get two big chiles rellenos stuffed with meat, cheese, or chicken in a delicious sauce with rice and beans, and eat that with your peso’s worth of guacamole and it’s enough of a meal to fill you for the whole day, all for only about 40 cents. Oaxaca’s a fine place, especially for such a big town, a city really. I wish everyplace was so abundant, especially when I walk into some little off the road fly speck on the map and see a million flies all fighting over two half-rotten tomatos and a brown wad of limp lettuce for the price of three of these good restaruant meals here.

Well, things are different everywhere I go, but everyplace has its own special appeal and charm for me.

Love always,

J

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Near Puerto Escondido, Mexico

SEPTEMBER 1974

Dear Doris,

It was nice to find a letter from you at the general delivery Lista de Correios in Mexico City. It’s good to hear from you, even though I’m far from homesick as you mentioned. Give me another five years on the road here, then maybe I’ll have a quick thought of ‘home,’ but I doubt it. I thought I’d be homesick at first, like you said, but I’ve been aware for some time now that my home is wherever I am and nowhere else. I don’t really relish the thought of coming back to the USA, but when I do I’m gonna have to decide alot of new stuff, like how long I’m gonna stay. After all this traveling, I know I’m never gonna be the same guy who left, and if I ever do come back, I know it won’t be for very long. There’s still too many places to see and I’m meeting alot of good folks along the road to wherever I’m going and that’s as good a bunch of friends as I ever needed.

Meanwhile, I’m trying to make the money you lent me stretch as far as I can until I can find work on a ship. I’m living very cheap and getting along well by traveling on the top of trucks mostly and sleeping by the road and cooking my own food in a little frying pan I got whenever I stop somewhere for more than a day or two. Living on less than a dollar a day has its good side though, mostly because it brings me in closer contact with people than if I had money for busses and hotels and restaurant meals. Communication is more essential to survival than all the money in the world. I really wouldn’t want to be traveling any other way. Mostly I’ve been staying in small villages off the road and off the map. People are honest and simple and I learn a lot being around them. Even when I’m in the bigger cities, I manage to get by for under a couple of dollars a day, and much less when I’m hitchhiking from town to town. Sometimes people feed me and put me up for the night too. Mexicans are very hospitable generous people, nothing like Americans. I can’t wait to be able to speak enough Spanish to pass for anything but an American. It’s embarrassing being from a country where everything is made of plastic, including people’s souls. I’ve learned real quickly why the whole world thinks Americans are assholes.

On my way down the coast I walked around this crazy old town from 7am till way past midnight, exploring every nook and cranny. Now today i dont even have the energy to get up go out and eat, so i write to you now. This place is fantastic, like nothing i’ve ever seen. The whole town is like one big hyperactive flea market. Feels like Morocco or Hong Kong. But how would I know that, having never been to those places? Ha ha… All I know now is that I wanna go to em all someday. But first I need to get to Brazil. I met a guy from Rio the other day, don’t even know how that happened, just sat down next to him at a lunch counter in an open air Market in Mexico City and I dunno, we just got to talking and it turned out he was a Brazilian guy traveling through Mexico, just bumming around, like me. We hitchhiked down to Acapulco together. Acapulco sucked. Tourist trap. We split up after a day or two there when I realized that, as much as I dug his company and the fact that he spoke better Spanish than me, I really missed just traveling alone. I tried to explain to him that it wasn’t him, just that I needed to travel on solo. He seemed kinda sad, but what else could I do? He gave me his address in Rio for when I get down there, so now at least I actually know somebody there. But I guess I just don’t want any company on the road just now, like I need to sorta just float around on my own and not deal with people other than the ones I meet on the road. I don’t wanna get attached to any sort of comfort just now, not the comfort of having any regular friends at least. I had all that before I left, and where are they all now? Dead.

Ah, what bullshit all these little words are! I wanna tell you of my travels, the things I’ve seen and people I’ve met, but I find it hard to describe any of it now. The words all seem too contrived and poor and primitive, the very idea of even trying to convey what I see and do and feel with words anymore. Maybe when I see you again someday it’ll be easier to tell you about the stuff that’s going on now. But maybe not, maybe I’ll just forget it all. But I just cant get into writing anymore. I much prefer to be with people, talking, or better yet, just living, and feeling the impact of experiences and knowing together that that’s what it is…. The indians in some parts here don’t EVER talk, but they’re heavily telepathic. Anyway, maybe I really can’t tell you much with words, but I’ll try, and if you know the spirit, I know you can dig it. Most of the Americans I’ve run across in my travels are stupid hippie types — just a bunch of long haired touristas with backpacks instead of Hawaiian shirts, but to me they’re all the same. Gringos. I can’t relate to that at all. It’s strange, but I don’t feel like a gringo. More like a refugee maybe, or a Gypsy like my grandfather, your father. I feel like this is where I really always belonged; on the road. Maybe that’s why I was always so unhappy and ill-at-ease in America. It’s weird. Sometimes I think about how you always talked about your life in Italy when you were young, about how sometimes you regretted coming back to America. Now I think I know how you must have felt. Maybe it’s our Gypsy blood? Anyway, whenever I see gringos coming, I go the other way. I got nothing to say to em and I have nothing to do with them, a bunch of mercenary creeps with plastic souls. But that mercenary thing is just human nature I guess. Plenty of Mexicans are mercenary creeps too, of course, but that ugly spirit seems to flourish mostly in places like Acapulco where there’s lots of gringos. Americans just seem to bring out the worst in people wherever they go.

Anyway, after I got out of Acapulco, things got better and better the further south I traveled. Last week I hitchhiked down the coast all the way south to Puerto Escondido, a little fishing village on the southern Pacific coast — in ten years it’ll probably be another big Alcapulco-style gringo trap, but for now it’s still alot quieter and cheaper than other places… still there were too many people for my liking there. I got in around 9pm and after only a few hours, I decided to hit the road again. I musta walked south for 30 kilometers and didnt even see one damn truck. By midnight, I was just about to drop from exaustion when i spotted a small dirt turnoff from the road. On a whim, I followed it in hopes of finding a drop of water and a place to lay my blanket down and crash. But, instead of a drop of water, I found a whole river. After a quick swim and drink, I followed the river down another few kilometers till I came to the ocean. On the way I passed thru another primitive village. Small, about 20 grass huts with chickens and mules tied up and walking around all over, pigs too, and dogs barking as I passed thru in the sleeping darkness. Then I walked along another little dirt path through some coconut groves right down to the sea. Right at the edge of the trees by a deserted stretch of beach, there was a deserted hut with no inhabitants. I went right in and fell asleep and it musta been 6 am when I woke up and walked into the town and bought some fresh eggs and vegatables. I’ve spent the last four days right here, camped out in this hut, swimming in the ocean and bathing in the river, and the only people I’ve seen the whole time are some fishermen who stop sometimes on their way back to the village to offer me first choice of their catch. I had a whole lobster today for 8 pesos, about 80 cents, not bad with lime and coconut.

Your Son,

Jono

10-12-74

Eyes, eyes. God damnit I can feel those dull staring incredulous bovine eyes on me every moment in this place, piercing probing dull idiot eyes like gaping mouths of surprise and there is no peace. I duck into the movies cringing in the midday sun to duck the maddening crowd of eyes. See two movies I never would have seen and come out to a swarm of eyes. Passing along the street two empty looking slugs give me a big stupid looking stare and silently enraged, I can’t help but to turn back and give them a long dirty look. As I pass them I hear an uproar of laughter behind me – assholes. Probably trying to guess how long my cock is and if it’s striped like a barber pole and rotates and glows in the dark. God I hate this place, I really do, but then I gotta know all the while that the only thing behind it all is just ignorant childlike curiosity and that these stupid folks are just kind of simple people who mean no harm by things they say or do, just like the Italian whose ship is already gone, off to some Mediterranean ports. Just simple people. Really very kind and true and I just feel bad out of loneliness and paranoia of being extraño, which I am in truth and there’s nothing I can do about it.

Copyright Jonathan Shaw 1974, 2010