The other way is to see if from the ground. Walking can give you a sense, but not so different from anywhere else. Driving, on the other hand, is a great way to really get out and see this mess, up close and personal. I know this, because of the amount of times we have gotten lost while driving. I dread to think of the cumulative hours and gas I have wasted being driving while lost in the place.
Take the other day for example. We wanted to go and see a lady about taking care of our dogs. She has a dog care service and it appears to be pretty decent. According to her, we were not so far away. Tonya spoke with her on the phone and set up an appointment for late afternoon, 5pm to be exact. The instructions were lengthy, but according to her, not as complicated as they seem. When Tonya finished the conversation she comes and tells me, “We have to go print out the directions. It is a whole page worth, it is too complicated to tell over the phone”
We took off and went to the local internet café to print out the directions. As we walk to our ‘local’ we see it is closed. Right, today is some goofy holiday, so now we backtrack and go to our stand by place. Tonya prints it out. It is one sheet. One sheet with an address, a logo, and the main body of the page is one solid run-on paragraph of how to get to the place that is not so far away. Tonya gets the sheet, looks at it, then me, and laughs. “Right” she says.
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| "...not as complicated as it looks" |
We give ourselves about a 45 minute leeway. We get in the car and head out. I know the basic direction and how to get us to the part where we don’t know how to go from there. In no time at all, we are exiting off into unchartered territory. Notice; I said we exited…that is about it. No sooner had we exited than we are greeted with a sea of red taillights. Traffic, loads of traffic. There had been a wreck up the road and everything was clogged. Luckily for us, it was on the other side. We ease into the crawling mess and assume the position. Slowly we inch along. I look at the clock and the gas gauge. A quarter tank. I tell Tonya. We inch along slowly.
We had been sitting in this traffic for about 20 minutes when I see a gas station up ahead. I tell her we should get case, ‘just in case’. We fight our way over one lane, get off on a beaten up feeder road which has taken the role of main road, due to massive construction and general Mexican chaos. After our attendant gasses us up, Tonya asks him about the first segment of our long list of directions. He says it is about 8 kilometers ahead, passed two more gas stations, exit right. We pull out of the station and continue on.
I ask Tonya what our landmarks are we are looking for. “What do the directions say?” I ask her. She looks down to the sheet and quietly reads. “We are looking for the ……exit, then we go right, on to the toll way.” She says. I ask her to read the directions out loud, so I can get prepared on places and streets to look for. She starts to read. After a few minutes I am agitated by all the nonsense she is saying. It sounds like one long run on sentence. I glance over and when I see her rambling through the solid black paragraph, I am reminded of this jumbled mess called directions. “Are you serious…is that what is actually printed there? She says that stuff?” I ask. Tonya looks at me, halfheartedly raises the sheet of paper, “Yes.”
So, our instructions go something like this; “If you are coming from this direction, go here take this and look for that-but, if you are not coming from said direction, then don’t look for those things, but these. Take this to this, exit either here or there. You will be on the old highway which takes you to this place. You will pass the restaurant so and so. You will see these roses and a beautiful house, but you are not going here, so keep going” Obviously, this is all paraphrased, and about 143 sentences too short of the actual instructions. The funny thing is, the last line of her instructions read “Don’t worry, it is not as complicated as it looks” I can’t believe it. We are heading into unchartered territory with instructions given by someone who definitely has multiple personalities clamoring for the honor of giving proper instructions.
I have often tried to politely tell Tonya, this is not the place to slow down and stall for whatever reason. In Mexico City, you keep moving! In a car, you move exponentially faster. When you have a knotted mess of run on sentences telling you about sights along the way which is actually supposed to be directions…you can imagine what happens. We are moving way too fast for Tonya to decipher the code and get us to the location. She manages see something about a toll booth right as we are upon it. ‘Here! Here!” she says while trying to eye the directions and the road at the same time. My Steve McQueen instinct kicks in and we swerve towards the toll booth. As we slow down, she continues reading, “Ok, it will cost us 12 pesos…” I pull up and the guy says “30 pesos” I pay him. Tonya looks at the paper and then says again, “Wait, this is wrong. Why is he charging us 30 pesos when she says we will pay 12 pesos?” I am the wrong person to ask, and I am sure as she looked at me my eyes were just completely glazed over with indifference. She leans over and asks the man in the tollbooth if we are in the right place. No, we are not. By the motioning of his hands and the broken Spanish I know, we have to turn around, continue down the highway and take the next exit. So, we trudge on.
As we are driving, Tonya finds a line that says “You will drive about 8 minutes” I eye the clock. We will definitely be late. “Here! This is the one! Exit!” she says and she anxiously motions to the right. Typical the exit sign is posted exactly on the street you are to exit on. There is no for- warning. There is no lead in or exit time, with a sign placed at least 30 feet or so ahead of the actual entrance or exit. You see a sign, you jerk the wheel. We pull up to another toll booth. The guy holds his hand out and says “12 pesos please” Now! We know we are headed the right way. We pay the guy and pull onwards…to a round about. There are no street signs, just a round about. “What does it say about roundabouts?” I ask Tonya as I pull the car over and put the hazards on. She stares at the black lines and punctuation, the simply moans, “Nothing”. Great! We are we? Which way do we go? She tells us about roses but nothing about the round about after the tollbooth!” I am obviously getting perturbed now. Tonya pulls her phone out and gives the lady a ring. I stare ahead at the outlying mountains and the sun going down. I have an ominous feeling that we are going to get deeper into unknown territory; something this gringo does not like experiencing. She hangs up and looks at me and with a blank looks says, “She doesn’t know where we are” My immediate reaction is to cuss and yell, “How can she not know where we are when she is the one who gave us the directions?” Tonya yells at me to not yell at her. ‘Pull over there. I will ask someone in those shops” she commands.
She comes back out and point upwards, towards the hill behind us. “Go up, you will see another round about, take the so and so exit from the round about”, she says is the latest correction to our madcap adventure. We trudge upwards until we reach the second round about. We circle slowly…and once again, there are no signs naming any streets or any direction, “Great!” I say with loaded sarcasm. There is a guard booth up one of the roads. Tonya gets out and goes to ask for help. She is in there a while. She later informs me that the guard wants to help and tries to read the whole page of instructions. Obviously he gets scrambled and has to restart a few times. She comes back towards the car and quietly gets in. “He says go up that road, turn left and just keep going. It will all be on that road”
We head up that road and take a left. This is the start of our journey into places we should not be in. For the next hour and a half, we will pay a friendly visit to countless barrios and trashed pueblos. Tonya is diligent though, she keeps trying to decipher the mess. She says we are supposed to look for a Corona sign. Seriously, driving down these packed jumbled streets through Mexico City and a key point is a Corona sign? Do you know how many Corona signs you see in a 2 minute period??? She also tells me to look for this and that…words I cannot say. This irritates me to no end. We repeat the same scenario, I am frustrated and snap, “What!?” and she snaps back “(whatever the word is in Spanish)!” “You know I cannot understand you, so why do try and be Mexicano #1 when we are in situations like this? Why can’t you speak slowly and not roll your ‘r’s and speak to me the way you do to someone who can’t understand this language?” Undoubtedly, a nice volley of accusations and curse words bounce to and fro and we drive along these trash lined streets, piled as high as fences. We are driving through places where the streets are so narrow you can almost touch the buildings on both sides. I forgot to mention that the dogs are in the car too. They are tired of riding around for almost two hours too. Every time we have to stop for a pack of wild street dogs to wonder in front of us, our dogs go nuts and start jumping over seats, howl and gnash at one another. Of course, this does wonders for our already frayed nerves and patience. It also helps to draw attention to the slow moving car with the gringo driving and sporting an obvious look of worry on his face. We wind further and further down winding roads, and the sun sky goes from to yellows, to pink-ish and then to light purple. We are going down, down , down and the sun is too. I am starting to freak.
Tonya thinks she saw something mentioned in the directions, and tell me to take a right. I do, and so does a long line of other cars. We slow our pace. There is a line of cars in front of us too. As we wind around a corner, we start a slow descent. I notice that we are on a street outside of the neighborhood. To left of us, just shanty town as far as the eyes can see. To the right, dirt and stone walls. Then I see cars parked on both sides of this skinny road. Along the cars are countless guys standing around, leaning on the cars, drinking, and talking. We are moving way too slow for my liking, especially when we now have to move at a snail’s pace through this inspection line. There are lots of eyes on us (at least that is how I feel) I just know that someone gang member has phoned ahead, and his muchachos are waiting for the easy prey. “Just look for the bickering couple with dogs going wild in the car” It is obvious who their target would be. Seriously, I was very concerned for my well being. I knew, without a doubt, we were in a place that no decent citizen of this city should be in. As we got to the bottom of the hill, Tonya tried calling the lady again. Once again, the lady says she does not know where we are. Tonya says we should try going this way, and I shoot down the suggestion. “F*ck that! We are heading back!” I turn the car around and start back the way we came. At a fork in the road, Tonya says I should go to the left. I do. We are now in another bad place we should not be. “Just stop! Just stop and I will ask someone where we should go”. We’re on a busy, crammed street and I am paranoid about drawing anymore attention to us than necessary. I see a guy working on his van, right on the curb. Good enough for me, I pull over and put the hazards on. People are staring at us because of our abrupt pause. Tonya gets out, WITH the instructions in hand and approaches the guy with the van. I cringe. That is not someone lost at all is it? Stopping on a busy street, directions in hand and as she walks up to the stranger he just glares. I know for a fact, if you don’t want others to think you are lost and a gullible foreigner, don’t look and act like one! Walking around with a flimsy paper with directions, going up to complete strangers is not the sign of a real insider.
Tonya plops back down and says, “Go up the way we came, at the Kentucky, go right” I turn the car around and try not to make eye contact with the spectators hustling along the crowded street. We head back up when suddenly Tonya says, “Turn here, he said turn here!” I slow down and turn in behind some cars. An argument erupts because I am confused. “Did you say ‘turn at Kentucky?’?” Tonya keeps rattling on like a broken record about taking a right and following the road. “I know, I get that! Did he say turn right at the Kentucky?” She doesn’t answer, but just keeps arguing. I am sure there is a small stream of black smoke coming form both ears. I am livid. I am staring at the red tail lights in front of me, “What the hell does Kentucky have to with any of this? Who mentioned Kentucky? Did he say Kentucky or did you?” I assume he meant Kentucky Fried Chicken. I look back over my left shoulder, and there is a Kentucky Fried Chicken. I push my interrogation onwards, “Did he or did he not say to turn at the Kentucky!” Finally Tonya yells back, “Yes! Yes! He said to turn at the Kentucky!” We sit and fume as we twist our way back upwards. It won’t belong until it is completely dark. Over two hours and counting now and I am at my wits end. I think Winston is a bit shell shocked too, from all the yelling and the chaos going on outside.
As we get to the top of the hill, I make my way back the way we came. Tonya says, “Wait, the directions say something about the median in the middle of the road. Stop, I think we should go the other way. We are supposed to follow this road until we see the roses!” I turn around (against my will) and head the opposite direction. She says to pull over at the pharmacy and she will ask the girl inside. I sit and lean back into my chair and close my eyes. I turn the music up and try to relax. Not too long though- as I do not want to get car jacked. Every few seconds I crack open an eye to peer around and make sure there isn’t a bandito creeping up beside the car with a knife between his teeth. She comes back and informs me that the girl inside has no idea where we are supposed to be. She pulls her phone out and calls the dog lady. Tonya tells her a few names of places we see in front of us, and the lady tells us that she knows where we are, stay put. Watch for the red pick up. We are at a paint store, Comex. We will now sit and wait for our rescue. After about 15 minutes, Tonya calls again. It is at this point that the lady says she has no idea where we are…but are obviously in a strange neighborhood where we should not be. Tonya is frustrated and mentions landmarks we passed as we drove for the last two and a half hours. She mentions a hospital and the dog lady knows the place. She says she will meet us there in a few minutes.
It took more than a few minutes and a handful of stops for directions to finally get to where we actually needed to be. There are only rare occasions when ones eyes light up seeing a hospital, and this was one of those occasions. Now, we just had to find the way in to the hospital parking lot. As we do a circle around the premises I notice a red pick up behind us. Tonya starts to call the dog lady to ask where she is and how we get in, as she is calling, I look over and see two people in the red truck, telling me to pull over. I do. It is the dog lady and her helper. Tonya gets out and talks to her. Tonya then flags me to pull up and over a little further up. As the red pick up pulls in front of me I notice a sticker, “caution: dogs on board” and I know this is our mark. I then notice a Canadian flag. “Ah, it figures…she is Canadian” I say to myself. She and Tonya come to the car and she says hello and apologizes for the mix up. She greets the dogs and talks with us about her place and how the dogs will be cared for. She and Tonya stand beside the car and then Tonya pokes her head in, “She wants to know if we want to follow her now” My reply was a simple two word reply, one an expletive the other ‘no’. Tonya pulls her head out and the Canadian dog lady smiles and asks, “We are only about a half hour away. Would you guys like to come over and see the place?” I politely decline. As she and Tonya finish their talk, I mumble loads of colorful language to myself, kind of like a one of those crazy people who are yelling at no one as they wobble to and fro in the street.
We say goodbye to the Canadian lady and her red truck. She tells us that she will lead the way back to the main highway, she will go right, and we go left. It is deep purple above us now, and will be black in no time. I do not want to be lost in neighborhoods like we just visited under the cloak of darkness, no sir. We follow her to the splitting point, and the Canadian sticks her hand out her window and points to the left. I honk and we wave as we pass them up. Tonya and I don’t say too much on the way back. We hit traffic, some of the traffic we saw on our way up. There had been a wreck and they still had not towed one of the cars away. “Awesome” I said as we entered into a line of red brake lights. I think we only said three words while we drove back; “Awesome” and “Over it” We repeated these like some sort of mantra to help ease our minds.
A few days later we are having coffee with one of Tonya’s oldest friends. In fact, he was one of her teachers when she was in school. We told him of how we got lost. I asked Tonya the name of the neighborhood we found ourselves in. She told the name to her friend. His eyes went wide and face froze. “Oh…”he said, “that is bad” and he shook his head. Tonya mentioned the name of another neighborhood we had visited too, he shot a stare back and repeated the two names of the neighborhoods and put his head in his hands. I knew form this that we were definitely out of our league. He raised his head up laughing and said, “Even I know not to go there to those neighborhoods. How did you do it, a lost gringo driving through those parts?” he shakes his hands as if he just touched something hot. He cocks his head while still laughing. This reaffirmed my thoughts, “I know now I have been to neighborhoods that even Mexicans are afraid to venture into in Mexico City” I said. He laughed and nodded his head. “Yes, that is true” and then let out a small squeal.
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