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Feral Green Leaves Baja
By admin | September 21, 2007
The last week in Baja produced more highs and lows for Feral Green than a UCLA football season ending with pepper spray. We found out the brakes on our truck were shot the hard way. Pushing them to the floor and realizing we were 14,000 pounds without a way to slow down. Using a combination of downshifting and the emergency brake, we made our way into Guerrero Negro, the first main town in Baja Sur. Before the mechanic’s opened in the A.M, we went to refill our potable water, which had run dry at our last camp. Bill tried to ease the tuck into the parking lot, but ended up having no braking power and smashed into the door to the water company’s truck at a low speed. An awkward silence ensued. The workers came out of the purified water shop and stared at us with wide eyes. After making sure the window rolled up with ease, they began cracking up and told us not to worry about a thing. Relieved, we told them to keep the change for our water bill, and we set out for repair.Â
We took the truck to a mechanic’s shop run by a man nicknamed El Chepe, who we later named El Chepiac due to the fact that he was crazier than Gary Bucci after a seven day bender. Putting down his 2nd Tecate (it was 10AM) and belching loudly, El Chepiac informed us our master cylinder was bad. He laughed and told us that he would have to order the part from San Diego, which would take a few days. Eyeing the dingy town, replete with mangy cur and plenty of trash, we decided to limp our injured rig to a new venue on the beach in search of some tasty waves. Arriving, we found the surf flatter than Jane Fonda’s stomach. Kevin & Bill went for a spear fish, but found only murky seaweed and some mean looking plastic bottles. Eric befriended a local fisherman named Alicio, who gave us some mesquite and cactus to burn for firewood in a land where kindle is scarcer than non-alcoholic beer in a taco shop. We thanked our new friend for the tinder and set up camp in the windy darkness.  Standing around the fire, Bill had two scorpions crawl across his feet in less than 20 minutes… we spent the rest of the night taking turns checking for scorpions on the ground with the flashlight.
We spent the next day working on the truck: painting, electrical work, minor repairs etc. Alicio, the fisherman came by in the evening to check his lobster traps. A spectral shadow, he walked up with his catch of eight healthy looking lobstrocities. Reading our minds and salivating mouths, he offered to share his plunder with us. Like finding $$ in a pair of dirty jeans, our day just became that much better. We gave him a $20 and told him to grab some cerveza and whatever else he needed from town. When he returned, we had already taken the tails off the lobster and he showed us how to remove the intestines and filet them with butter. We ate like kings; lobster, corn, rice, tortillas, beer and enough butter to keep someone on Lipitrol for years to come. We slept easy and awoke early.
Kevin and I took the inflatable boat out fishing with Alicio in the morning and scored 15 fish in just over an hour. We gutted the fish, gave half to Alicio, and took off back to our hovel of a mechanic shop in Guerrero Negro to get our brakes fixed once and for all. Arriving at El Chepiac’s, he and his cronies were already drunker than the 7th inning bleacher section at Dodger Stadium. Yelling at us with a smile on his face, he said the part was in and they would start working on the truck right away. Awesome… nothing like a group of inebriated grease monkeys fixing your brakes in a foreign country. Returning after a few hours of useless internet time, El Chepiac dealt us some bad news. The wrong part came for our brakes and we would have to wait 3 more days for the next part. Being that our truck was disassembled in this madman’s lot, we told him to order the new part and asked him if we could make his mechanic’s yard a motel and sleep there for the next few days. Screaming, he began swearing and finally said “Si, Si, Si. Venga Gringos. Hotel Chepe esta abiertoâ€.
The next three days were like a bad version of the movie Groundhog’s Day, but instead of Bill Murray, we had Bill Boyd. Every morning, El Chepiac would walk into the auto yard (also our hotel at the moment) early in the AM and begin banging on our camper and would yell “pinche gringos†wake up. He would peak his head inside our tent, yell like a maniac, laugh aloud, and would jokingly yell every Spanish expletive I had ever heard of. Laughing with him, we would rise like white zombies out of the auto yard into the dusty streets of Guerrero Negro. El Chepiac and his lackeys would start their day working hard, but drinking harder. We would leave Hotel Chepiac for breakfast at a diner that showed C grade American movies in Spanish and served up a mean short stack of pancakes with tocino (bacon). The real draw to the place was not just the pancakes or entertaining movies, but the fact that they had a bathroom with a toilet seat, a small luxury we had taken for granted early in the trip.Â
The three days in Guerrero Negro were spent reading, logging internet time, interacting with the locals, playing pool and trying (sometimes in vain) to stay out of trouble. Bill, Kevin and I played soccer in the town soccer match (futbol rapido) on Sunday. Everyone had a great time and Bill pretty much dominated the town single handedly. The kids in the town loved us and sent us home patting our backs and asking us to stay another week. Then Eric scored us 50 gallons of vegetable oil from a guy who ran a taco truck. We filtered the Veg into our sedentary truck in Chepiac’s auto yard and taught some people about our Veg Oil System. The correct brake part finally arrived on Tuesday, September 11. Chepiac told us to buy him a 12 pack before he would start on our truck. We hardnosed him and agreed to buy him and his crew beer when they finished the job. Incentivised and thirsty, El Chepe had our truck fixed and running within 2 hours.Â
We scored him some cerveza and cash for his help and three days of madness and went to the local welder for some much needed strengthening on our surf racks. The welder, named BUCHO, turned out to be a great guy. He had a dog that was a hermaphrodite and was very proud of IT. He took a great deal of time showing us what a hermaphroditic dog looked like… I will leave it at that. He welded supports for our board rack and spare tire mount. We paid him with some tools we were not using and hit the road just before dark.  Bill drove us partway to La Paz that evening. We holed up in a hotel parking lot in Santa Rosalia and took a swim in their pool while security was sound asleep. The next AM we were gone before sunup in an attempt to escape the omnipresent heat. By 3:30 PM on September 12 (Happy B-Day Taylor), we were enjoying phenomenal ice cream in an oasis called
Waking up with sand fleas in our hair, Bill and Eric suggested ice cream for breakfast. Smiling, we rushed into town, grabbed ice creams and got back to the port just in time to get our truck on the ferry from La Paz to Topolobampo, in Mainland
SDR – September 13, 4:00 Post MeridianÂ
Topics: Mexico |
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