Charly welcomes me at the entrance of Guasave where I'm going to be spending the night at Paul's ranch. Paul had to work, so he'll be a few hours behind me on the Sinaloan highway. Charly says we're going to dinner, so he has me follow him through the streets of Guasave around sunset.
The town is a quiet, close-knit community. It's no where near the size of the other Sinaloan population centers, nor is it on the coast. If you're looking for something away from the industry, away from the crowds, far from the cruise ships, FAR away from the English-speaking tourist centers... Guasave is your destination.
We get to a streetside vendor who sells absolutely amazing food. He cooks on a wooden grill inside a metal / tin hood and all of his ingredients are on a picnic table behind the eating area. A transformer blew out nearby leaving us without electricity, so we turn on our phone lights and set our bottles of sweet tea on top so they glow. The food quality is amazing, Charly and I get to know each other and I talk about my trip and where I've come from. He talks about he and his wife's plans to travel down to the bottom of South America as well on their motorcycle, which is going to be a challenge considering its size. Riding '2 up' as it's known can be challenging. I tell him we can keep in touch so he can ask about any of the places he's crossing.
I also cannot stress enough how well this is going. The fact I said yes to getting help from Erick on the ferry, then yes to staying with Paul, then yes to going out to Guasave-- tack on top of that the fact I can speak Spanish and I have a motorcycle to boot. It's all kind of coming together. I'm navigating in a world that's hardly my own but I seem to have the tools to access it.
Charly says we're going to go down to the "malecón" which is the "town square" of Guasave. Malecón directly translates to seawall or pier. One interesting thing I've noticed about Mexico on the Pacific coast here is that the social centers are not in the "Centro" like I remember in Central America. They're around malecónes.
You see, going back to even PRE-ROMAN times in Spain, cities were built with a church on one block, a central park on the block across from it, and the rest of the city grows in a grid around it from there. That Spanish-style city layout persisted for thousands of years in Spain while also transferring to all of its colonies in the Americas. The city I live in in Costa Rica had that layout, and each of the capital cities of Central America have it. Hell, I even found one in San Francisco, a city founded by the Spanish.
The Mexican towns of Guasave, Mazatlan, and Puerto Vallarta have their social center is along these malecónes.
We take our motorcycles down the malecón for a bit until we find everyone. And I mean everyone. The whole city is down here I see fair rides and street vendors of all kinds. Some are selling proper meals, some have treats, some sell toys, and others are shooting lasers out across the ground or have screens people can play videogames on. In the Midwest, this would equate to one of those summer festivals that cities put on once per year. Not here. This happens every day, and they're even bigger every weekend. I'm floored at the sheer level of community here. Instead of people staying in and watching Netflix to unwind from their day, instead of sitting at home and browsing their phones, they're all out here in public on a regular weekday.
Teenagers wear their best clothes out to the malecón because they're typically in informs in school. This is their chance to show their style outside of their egalitarian academic environment. Couples go on walks with their kids. Free range kids run around in packs, and even some night-owl old folks gather in 'councils of elders' here and there. Charly pulls me up to a coconut stand where he knows Juan, the owner. His wife is also working. They hand me a coconut and ask me to drink all of the milk out of it. Once I do that, they chop it up and dress the thing up in salty snacks and spicy hot sauce. They even take the coconut meat and display it in a flower-like fashion. I'm already so full from dinner but I start to muscle it down.
There are rainbow-painted crosswalks on the street- Charly tells me that the acceptance of homosexuality is on the rise in Mexico and even towns like this, which are far from The Capital, are starting to become more accepting and liberal on the subject. Many parts of Mexico allow gay marriage. Where I am in the Mexican state of Sinaloa it is not yet legalized, as the local government is a little more on the conservative.
Pope Francis has been more open to gay marriage and that's lightened the resistance to gay marriage across Latin America. Many nations of the hemisphere are legalizing quickly.
Then the bikers arrive and park around Charly's bike and Lechuza.
Everyone is dressed up in warm jackets because it's the mid 60s (just under 20C) outside. It's roll-down-the-window weather in MN, but one guy even had a winter coat on. When he introduced himself they said "he's gay" and it brought the conversation to a pause. People were wondering how I would react. I simply nodded as if it wasn't a big deal, but I realized they were looking for a response. He smiled at me and I said "felicidades (Congratulations)" nonchalantly and everyone laughed.
"I'm jealous!" I say and they laugh even harder, "I wish I were attracted to men. Life would be so easy. I understand men. I get men. Not even women understand other women."
We all laugh again because it seemed to thread the needle perfectly and everyone got to chatting with each other again. Looks like I fit in here. Then I find out the guy wasn't even gay.
Seeing as we were parked on the side of the road first, all of the other bikers from Charly's group, and a couple others, come and park next to us and gather around. Before we know it, all the guys are catching up with each other and shooting the shit as I try to eat more of this colossal spicy pile of coconut and snacks. They start passing out churros from the churro stand nearby as well, I eat some of those. I'm starting to really overeat. I try to get to know and remember some of the guys' names. There's a little over a dozen of us.
Also, I should mention that they're not allowing me to pay for any of these amazing culinary delights. Either the vendors are providing food for free in exchange for some looks of wonder and amazement when I see and eat their exotic creations, or my new friends will sneak in and drop money on the vendor as I'm ordering.
The sidewalk is brimming with life with a lot of people walking back and forth, so of course the people watching is incredible. Everyone had their own group, I was in the biker one. I start showing off my bike, allow a kid or two to rev the engine and show off some of the bells and whistles. I of course have EVERYTHING packed onto the bike, my whole life, so they get a look at what I'm travelling with. They're pretty interested in knowing what it takes, what kind of wear and tear I'm dealing with, and where all I've been.
Then we spot another biker group across the street. Looks like there's the rest of the club. We meander over there and they're in a process of conducting a raffle. As it turns out, all of the guys in the motorcycle club had pitched in money to buy toys for kids for Christmas for charity. A portion of that money went to a very nice modular motorcycle helmet. Modular helmets are the kind where the chin opens up to open the face up like mine.
The helmet is full of pieces of paper with numbers on it, all the same size. Each number is associated with a name of a guy in the club. Like a celebrity cameo, they called ME into the center and had me pull them out! The way they did the raffle was pretty interesting and was kind of fun:
The rules are, I pull out 10 tickets. The first 9 numbers I read on them don't win anything, those ticket owners just know that they lose for certain. This made it more intense as you drum-roll up to the winner, the 10th number picked.
So, I pulled out a number every few seconds and you could see the disappointed folks when their numbers were called. Finally, the last one, the 10th number, ended up being Juan's, the coconut vendor! He and everyone go nuts, cheering and happy for him as he puts on the helmet and rides a friend's nearby bicycle away in triumph.
The guys had all got me familiar with the word "Chivo" which is the same as the word "Cuck" in English. They weren't using this word pejoratively or as an insult, they were using it as a term of comradery and companionship. We're all chivos! They would say, laughing. Of course they LOVED when I'd say it, so I tried to pepper it in my speech here and there as I was calling names out of the raffle. "And the chivo who wins is....." They found it super amusing so I tried my best not to overuse it.
Afterward Paul arrived from Mazatlán so we got to talking again and I brought him up to speed with everything Charly had been showing me. I was getting tired (I just rode for 7-8 hours to get to Guasave) so we decided we would retire to The Ranch. Paul's ranch was north outside of town about 15-20 minutes, so we hopped on our bikes and drove through the night leaving the festivities behind. Of course it looks cool to roll with so many motorcyclists. It's the power of numbers, the noise, and the fact that each one of us has our own motorcycle that reflects our personalities and styles. I normally ride alone, so it was a fun feeling to be a member of the pack amongst all the crowds at the malecón.
On the way to the Ranch, it's the first time I've ridden in Latin America in proper darkness. The goddamn speed bumps were everywhere. Charly who rode ahead of me knew where they all were, so he would thankfully point his legs outward to indicate when we were coming up on one of them. They were REALLY hard to see because they were not painted so they blend in with the rest of the road. Having all of my gear on the motorcycle makes it especially rough to go over those bumps.
We get to the ranch and come across Paul's family having a barbeque at about 9PM. I'm still so full from the malecón and dinner that I only agree to a little piece of chicken here or there. I honestly couldn't eat any more. They jokingly offer me a chili pepper, which I accept to wake myself up a little. To their surprise, this gringo can handle some spice.
It's interesting what things can bridge a culture gap- in Costa Rica it was me drinking my coffee black. Here it's spice tolerance.
I introduce myself to Paul's wife, kids, and his parents who I'd say are in their 70s. As I shook his father's hand he charmingly said "now I know where all the girls went, they're chasing you!" or something like that, and everyone laughed.
I fumbled my way in Spanish through each of the introductions and a recap of what I did that night. Charly wanted me to say chivo again but I said that I didn't want to do it in front of Paul's parents because they were older out of a sign of respect. He laughed at still trying to get me to do it. Paul even tried a bit. I was also introduced to some children's candy which was surprisingly spicy. I like to say that the coffee game in this part of Mexico is admittedly pretty weak, but the spice game is strong. We had some beers, laughs, and then finally it was time for me to go to bed. I kept feeling like a party pooper, but honestly after hundreds of kilometers on a motorcycle, eating an ungodly amount of food, and speaking Spanish until my brain was fried, I just couldn't keep it going any longer.
At the time this is posted, Paul's ranch may be ready to accept tourists. At the time, I was shown an incomplete cabin where I could sleep on a mattress on my sleeping bag and I was able to use the shower in the bathroom.
Everyone went their separate ways after I turned in. It was an amazing night. Before I get back to Vallarta and my apartment, however, I had one more day with Paul where HE could show me around too.
-JT
11/21/2022