4 November 1999

Since Tucson we have seen mostly black with white and yellow stripes, road that is. Naturally, everything happened later than we thought, if it happened at all. Because of the pre-Halloween festivities we had to wait until Sunday noon to connect at the Library of Congress Cyber Bar in Tucson. Then,their internet connection had a bad hangover and decided to make it a day as we were uploading. Just after sunset, we finally made it across the border. Except for the temporary vehicle import permit control check, 13 miles past the border, we did not stop until we got to Hermosillo. We had us some delicious hot dogs in front of the university, as a midnight snack and parked Vagalosa in a little side street for the night.

On Monday we finished our download at the Hacker'z Cybercafe and moved on down the road. We passed Ciudad Obregon (if you ever come through here bring a respirator) and stopped in a safe distance from the sulfur, acid and other foul emissions of the local industry. The village where we landed is called Bacavachi. We went on foot to explore what had looked like a giant bed of smoldering cinders from the freeway. It turned out to be the local cemetery. It seemed the entire population of the area had come out and lit an ocean of candles. There were stands offering food and refreshments. By then we realized that it must be the Dia de los Muertos celebrations. We were almost right. It was the Dia de los Angelitos, the day the children who had passed away are remembered. In the locals' belief children automatically become angels when they die. The Dia de los Muertos celebrations for the deceased adults are held on the 2nd of November. I felt uneasy about taking pictures of this sacred ritual, although the people generally seemed in easy spirits. I decided to invade and sure enough, my Sony camcorder was not built to deal with otherworldly energies and refused to function when not plugged into an electrical circuit. Thus, I was not able to get any shots of the Grupo Laberinto who played as the main act at the after party. We did get to dance to their rancheras and cumbias, though,  together with the more than a thousand locals, mostly cowboys all donning the same exact hat.

At four in the morning we were woken up by knocking on our door. It was the cops advising us to park at a toll booth instead of in the village, as there had been gunfire nearby. The passing trucks did not allow us much sleep and we decided to make our way to Mazatlan. Counting crosses and dead dogs along side the road and aiming just to the right of the oncoming trucks' blinding headlights on the last 120 miles through mountainous terrain were the themes of the day. Our tension was finally relieved when we passed the sign "tropico de cancer" and saw the lights of Mazatlan down ahead of us. All of a sudden the wind shield fogged up and we were envelopped in beautiful tropical humid  heat. We were all excited driving into the city, especially as I had the fondest memories from a previous visit, seven years ago. Especially since it was my first time arriving by car, I was amazed that I was able to find the way to my favorite hotel in Mazatlan, the Lerma. With its huge courtyard I figured it to be the ideal lodging for us and Vagalosa. They were all booked up though. After checking out all the overpriced trailer parks in the touristy part of town, we just parked along the boardwalk, grabbed a late dinner and fell asleep happily to the sweet rumble of the breaking waves. The morning traffic shook us out of our sweet dreams way too early, but the warm pacific waters quickly washed away the remaining tiredness. We spent the day strolling through old town. Towards the evening we checked back with the Hotel Lerma and got a room with private bath and court parking for less than half of what the cheapest spaces in the trailer parks were going for. We finally enjoyed more than six hours of sleep in a row.

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