Preface: It just occurred to us that two of these three stories are about negative and/or dangerous experiences. We just want to clarify that the people we have met here in Mexico have been overwhelmingly nice and helpful. Unfortunately stories of friendly people and smooth sailing usually aren’t as interesting. Enjoy.
Scammed (James)
Day one, hour three. We are zooming down the highway just outside of Monterrey to pick Reed up from the airport for a week of climbing. Just that morning we crossed into Mexico from Texas, which seemed suspiciously easy. We hit the highway and after passing through two police checkpoints where we joked with some friendly officers we were feeling pretty cheeky. Once we entered Monterrey we started navigating some heavy traffic and obviously were driving like gringos. We started a turn and I happened to look in my mirror just in time to see the driver of a junker taxi speed up, swerve and (lightly) hit Beatrix’s rear right corner. What the FUCK!
The taxi zoomed in front of us, and waved us to the side so we both took the next exit and pulled over. The driver of the taxi got out of his car and with a smile asked if we were alright, shook my hand, and led me up to his car to check the damage. His front left fender is pure carnage, and the damage is clearly old and had been covered up with spray paint. I laughed and told him that wasn’t me, but he didn’t seem amused and after a few more attempts at convincing me it was he eventually points at a tiny brown paint scuff and says something to the effect of,
“You swerved into me and did that. The whole thing needs to be replaced. Call your American insurance.”
“No tengo seguro Americano” I responded. That was true, I canceled it effective that very morning.
“Pues, seguro Mexicano.”
“No tengo seguro Mexicano tampoco.” That was a lie, of course I had Mexican insurance but I wasn’t about to wait around to deal with police and insurance while Reed was sitting at the airport with no way to get a hold of us, especially for what was most definitely an insurance scam.
I continued laughing off the driver’s attempts at extortion, offering to clean the paint with a sponge and dish soap,which he didn’t find as amusing as I did. Throughout this joke of a chat the driver’s friend was standing on the other side of the car holding a piece of paper, dialing numbers on his phone like he was calling the police. After about 15 minutes of arguing with these guys in my very limited spanish I finally caught a glimpse of the phone- it was completely shattered and obviously not working. It became clear that they were all bark and no bite. At that point I changed my tactic and pretended I couldn’t speak any more Spanish, I was all out of words except “no entiendo”. Finally after close to 30 minutes of arguing they got frustrated and/or bored and took off.
I got back in the van and had a good laugh about it with Steph. In the end we decided since there was no damage to our vehicle and we didn’t end up paying anything except a bit of time, we would take the free spanish lesson as a positive. Thanks buddy!
Fiestas Peligrosas (Stephanie)
We got accustomed to climbing on limestone fairly quickly in our first week in Mexico with our visiting friends Higgins and Reed. Basics were, put your feet on things that look smaller than should be possible to and watch out for loose rocks. Pretty standard. Through climbing we met some friendly people also visiting the gorgeous Potrero Chico to climb their hearts out, some of them had been there months.
As we were chumming it up in the Virgin Canyon one morning, we got invited to a party from another fellow gringo with a live jam band the following evening at her host’s house. She described the location as somewhere on the road heading into El Rancho Sendero (where we were camping). Fairly vague, but the area also wasn’t that big so we figured it wouldn’t be too hard to find.
The day of the party, we decided to roll over to the other side of the canyon and check out another climbing wall, La Osa. Shortly after we started climbing, we were joined by a group of locals from Monterrey and their large pup, Ejor. We cheered each other on through the day “¡venga venga!” As the day grew dimmer and we all were feeling fairly worked, we mentioned to the locals that they should join in the fun that evening and head over to the jam. One of the women made a bit of a face at that moment, and asked us to clarify who we got invited by and do we know this is a “gringo party”. Curious about the reaction, we urged her to spill the deets, and so we listened intently to some local history of Hidalgo and the beautiful Potrero Chico.
A number of years back Potrero Chico was a major destination for all, locals and climbers alike until the cartels showed up in force. The area became increasingly dangerous and so tourists stopped coming. The once vibrant Potrero Chico fell from grace and was somewhat forgotten, climbers stopped coming and the toll booths at the park entrance closed. Eventually, the hype and violence started dying down, and a slow trickle of tourist and climbing life started back up. Residents of Hidalgo seem apprehensive in accepting that there is still a problem, and deny that cartel violence still exists. They just want to live peacefully.
A mere two years ago, a cartel had a little gathering at one of their nice houses just outside of the park with a mariachi band that they hired. Something at that party happened, whether it was an opposing cartel raid or the band pissed off the host, I’m not entirely sure, but the entire 18 piece band was slaughtered and thrown into a pit somewhere in the area. One loan person survived, waking up in the pit with his fellow band mates’ bodies, was able to crawl out and find help. Moral was, don’t go to parties with live mariachi bands—as this is always the type of music cartel gatherings have play, and generally don’t get in the way of potential cartel cross fire. This included avoiding rodeo’s according to our new friends.
[Editor’s note: While cartel violence is ongoing in Mexico, the reality is that tourists are never targeted and overall Mexico is a very safe country for travelers. That being said, it is still a good idea to avoid certain situations and when a local gives us such a specific and vivid anecdote and warns us to avoid that situation, we take it seriously. We would do the same in any country.]
We finished the day as usual strolling down from the cliff to the road, got some Edgardo Margaritas (~5 shots of Don Julio, a splash of squirt, 3 full juiced limes, and tajin)—for sure to get you feeling GREAT—and then post margarita tacos from Taco Loco, a family-led food truck on the way back to camp. Once back at camp, we made some more margs to get really well sloshed before heading to the party.
Music could be heard from our camp, so we felt inspired and decided to head out, following the sound of la musica! We headed down to the main road, as you would use heading into El Rancho Sendero, as the woman had described, crossed the stinky trash pit, and onto the road the music was obviously coming from. As the music grew louder I started noticing some suspiciously nice cars parked and some nicer houses than were normal for the area. Also as we got closer it was obvious this was mariachi music.
I became instantly sober and immediately went into mom mode as the boys all were getting excited to find their way onto the property. There wasn’t an obvious entrance and there looked to be guards walking the perimeter… drunk climber boys thought about jumping the fence… I put my my mom voice on and my foot down and said in my most serious tone “We need to leave immediately this is not the party we were invited to.” I took the whining and complaining that I was no fun from all and 3 against 1, I was the winner. We headed back to camp.
The evening wasn’t a total bust though. We had more beer, and there was a crew of climber locals hanging out at the fire pit we chit chatted the evening with. Eventually Higgins disappeared to bed, and later James and I followed. Reed however went on and continued with our new found friends to the actual party we were supposed to go to, which was definitely in the opposite direction to where we went earlier that evening. Close call or paranoia?
Weekend Playground (Stephanie)
During our first couple weeks in Mexico we kept hearing from friends that were in Nuevo Leon this past winter, stories of a mountain oasis- El Salto -with a whole lot of hard climbing up in some high canyons. We decided we should probably check it out since it was only a few hours south of Potrero.
We embarked on our journey up into the mountains one afternoon, not really knowing what to expect. As we drove further from the main highway, leaving the small cutesy tourist town of Santiago, our jaws dropped. The road quickly turned into a squiggle of hairpin turns on steep roads with the ground cascading down both sides of the van. The landscape morphed from prickly desert scrubland into gorgeous pine and budding deciduous trees of purple and yellow. Hello Spring! Every curve yielded new views of green hills with patches of orange limestone cliffs and the blue hazy outline of endless mountain peaks down the valley in the distance.
Our destination was a bit quirky: Dona Kika’s Mini Super… a convenience store. Kika, this sweet old woman who owned the tiendita also owned quite a large gated yard off to the side where campers were welcome for 50 pesos (~$2.60) a night per person. She had set up a small, very sparsely stocked shared kitchen area and a hut with 2 toilets and a moldy shower that was in disrepair. The place wasn’t the Hilton but it would take care of our needs for a few days.
A few very pleasant days passed with easy living in this quiet, beautiful town. We meandered through the huge canyons that were a short walk from our camp and climbed on bright orange cliffs with bulbous mushroom tufas growing out of the rock like blistering tumors. There were only a few other climbers in the area who were camping out at another spot called Rock Camp- where they apparently had hot showers and nice bathrooms– we decided we should probably check it out… when we had time–there wasn’t any reason to rush things out here. Meanwhile we let the days pass living at Kika’s with a tiny black kitten that loved cuddles and cans of chicken.
Saturday rolled around and a climbing rest day was greatly needed as James and I both were struggling with finger injuries and tired muscles. We woke up to the normal rooster crowing in the yard, but soon to follow were sounds of hoards of cuatrimotos (4 x 4’s) and their loud engines ripping down the streets of the once quiet town. The weekend warriors of Mexico had arrived.
After breakfast we decided to have a productive rest day, so James pulled out the van manual and went to work fixing a tenacious oil leak, while I took that time to set up a privacy curtain so we could finally use our solar shower for the first time! As we worked we enjoyed the sounds of the cuatrimotos zooming through town over and over and over again on some ride circuit blaring their mariachi music. After several hours, the leak was fixed and the curtain was finished, so we took lovely showers in the middle of the day on a busy weekend in a yard next to a convenience store that was right off a highway. It was awesome and kind of liberating.
As the day grew dark, music started up all around town, or maybe it was just one location echoing through the canyon, I’m not really sure. But damn, those weekenders can party! Amidst all the activity we decided it was time to finally venture out so we headed to a little restaurant called Chuy’s that is notorious for having huge burgers. A few minutes after sitting down a local caballero stumbled into the restaurant and sat at the end of our table. He looked smashed, but very dapper as he was wearing his best suit, which he told us multiple times.
He was super friendly and seemed very excited to be sitting with a few gringos. The delight was visible across the entire restaurant and staff, obviously this was not the first time this had happened as the mood became palpable with all eyes towards our table like we were about to put on a show. Chuy’s 7-year old daughter in her adorable butterfly fleece pajamas brought over a menu and shyly put it in front of this guy with the biggest smile and slowly backed away.
His name was Francisco, and he was the best. We had only just started drinking a few beers, but Francisco bought us a second round, so we were stocked. Slurred spanish conversation commenced with a few needed translations from Chuy’s wife into clearer spanish to help us understand what this guy was trying to tell us. We soon were calling him DJ Francisco as he had pulled out his phone and was so excited to show us the 5000 songs he had on there. They ran the range of traditional styles of Mexican music, which to the unfamiliar ear –like mine– tend to all sound the same.
“¿Te gusta?” he would ask over and over as he obsessively would scroll through his songs, only pausing on any of them for a good 5 seconds. The hilarity of the situation continued through our meal with singing, more beer, and sniggering from the other families in the restaurant. Never pass up a good conversation with a drunken cowboy.