« Feral Green Leaves Baja | Home | Bullfight In Mazatlan »
Feral Green Takes Mainland
By admin | October 1, 2007
Kevin Broderick, signing in…The ferry ride across the Sea of Cortez was interesting to say the least. Here’s the deal, the ferry is primarily used by truckers with nothing to do for the 9 hour ferry ride; so in the true Mexican trucker tradition, they blast the music and drink excessively. Seeing as how the music was way too loud to allow us to carry a conversation within our little nook, we proceeded to watch these future engineers proceed to build pyramids out of their slain beer cans… and get WASTED!!! Rolling blackouts were a common theme. During the ride, we occupied our time watching flying fish go anywhere from 50 to 100 yards out of the water. We also struck up a 4 hour game of Liar’s Dice (LD) and soon had two Aussies (Gabe & Ash) and an English chick with surprisingly perfect teeth playing with us.Â
As we unloaded the ferry around 10 PM the question that had been shooting through our minds all evening was answered; if these guys are wasted, who drives their trucks once the ferry disembarks at port? Well to them this did not seem to be an issue, as they all climbed in their rigs and barreled out of the parking lot. Sean & Eric, who were down on the loading docs with these inebriated maniacs saw a truck crash within 5 minutes of the gates opening. We waited a few minutes to give these locos a head start.Â
Our new Aussie friends, Gabe and Ashley, purchased an around the world ticket, and as a part of it, they bought a truck and camper in LA, and were driving through Mexico. They decided to caravan with us to our first spot in Mainland Mex called Marmol, which is just north of Mazatlan and is said to have some great breaks. As we exited the lot we weren’t sure where to go, and found ourselves lost in the barrio within 5 short minutes. Consulting our map for some guidance, we hopped back on the road with the Aussies in tow. Within 1 mile, flashing lights appeared behind us. Realizing it was not a UFO, and only a federale (Mexican Police), we pulled over next to a swamp rife with mosquitoes. Â
          Â
Two rules to driving in Mexico: 1. Never drive at night (broken) 2. Never stop for anyone (broken). We pull onto the tiny shoulder as drunken truckers blast by us. Being next to the quagmire, we quickly find out the bugs are attracted to our headlights. The cop has found something bogus to pull us over for, and Sean and Eric are arguing with the cop, all the while fighting off the incessant swarms of biting bugs. The cop gives us our options: Pay $240 USD to get back on the road, or sleep on the side of the road next to the swamp and die from blood loss as the bugs devour us. The first two options just were not feasible for Feral Green, so we did what we do best, argue, negotiate and haggle. As Sean threw out his best ninja moves battling the bugs, he and Eric managed to talk the dirty cop down to $47… a great deal to get us back on the road and out of the swamp. We pulled away, a little dizzy from the bug bites and got back on the road. The Aussies to our surprise, had driven ahead, and pulled over on the side of the road to wait for us. Within the first 10 minutes of caravanning together, we had been pulled over, and gotten them lost… they are a trusting pair! Unfortunately, a little further down the road, they pulled off in a truck stop to sleep the rest of the night.
Eric somehow managed to drive us until 4 in the morning to our destination city. I don’t know how, I was asleep, only awoken to us being ushered in reverse out of the tollbooth lane as we had overshot the exit (which was an unmarked dirt road) to Marmol. Although expensive, the toll roads were the only way to go for safely driving at night. We parked it for the night in front of a small school, and set up camp for the night/ morning. We awoke to the sound of little kids yelling and the shuffle of small feet outside the camper. Unbeknownst to us, we had pretty much camped in the school. Awkwardly arising, we gave the kids a “Buenos Dias†and headed towards the beach.  After a little help from the locals, we tracked down the surf break at the mouth of a river that was also used as a fish camp. We parked and locked the truck and made our way out to the breaks. After a good day of surfing Sean and I took out the crab trap, and some fishing gear to try and score some dinner while Guillermo and Hongo de la Gente (Eric) set up a nice camp of hammocks and sun shade. The fishing trip did not go smoothly by any one’s definition. In an attempt to check out a rocky beach we managed to nearly sink the boat, and kill ourselves. Let’s just say that Sean paid the price for choosing not to wear shoes on this little lark. Getting off the beach turned out to be no easier than getting in. After starting the motor, we spent a solid 20 minutes using our scupper to scoop out 4 inches of water from our inflatable boat. We decide to name ourselves Team Scupper International (patent pending) and headed back out to sea. We dropped our lobster trap and started fishing. After an uneventful hour, we decided to head in and wait for the cooler hours of the evening to try again. We headed in and couldn’t make it back up the river due to the low tide, so we buried a stick, tied up the boat and left it on the beach until the tide came up. The camp smelled like the outhouse door on a tuna boat and had more bugs than the Midwest.  We decided it was time for us to move on. Sean and I now had the task of retrieving our homemade lobster “Trap†(patent pending). This task was not easy… for the sake of our mothers’ health, I will leave it at that…
          Â
We packed up camp, and headed for Mazatlan to celebrate the Mexican Independence Day.Â
Topics: Mexico |
Comments are closed.