Book Armor Because the Empire never Ended

Journey to Tapachula #2

Twenty-three months ago, BookArmor reported on a trip to Tapachula, made in the company of a Canadian, Gary (who I later fell out with over the matter of him literally running for his video camera to record The Gallo Girls). It was a trip that featured a six hour ride over bumpy roads with a shotgun on a fellow passenger´s lap aimed at us, a bodybuilding couple on a beach being oiled up by a teenage gimp, and the ensuing photoshoot being overshadowed by the arrival of a detachment of the Mexican navy (real Benny Hill stuff, all we needed was a busload of nuns...)

***

Today, I am returning to Tapachula. This time, I will be in the company of Luis, a friend from Peru, from Cuzco. Luis has a keen interest in inexplicable phenomena and ancient cultures and regularly asks me for my thoughts on The Loch Ness Monster and what the energy was like at Stonehenge ("A flowing warm green energy, Luis, that began in the left cheek, like the onset of an attack of neuralgia...")

Perhaps in anticipation of meeting Luis today, this morning I woke from a powerful dream of an OVNI (Objeto Volador No Identificado) or UFO. I was in an unknown house, with an unknown friend, when, from a downstairs window, looking on to an English street, a UFO rose from behind the houses opposite. The unknown friend then revealed himself as a science nerd and I crushed his thought processes by choking him, terrified that he would draw the attention of the OVNI. ("File under Spousal Abuse...")

After the event, the nerd revealed that he had been working on a project that turned the entire room into a camera via use of a special light, and that the image of the UFO was now latent upon the rear wall of the lounge. Nice work.

The next night, there was a procession through the street, hundreds of people, and a TV anchor came and banged on our door. I waved her away. As she retreated, I saw that an enormous piece of space-age material, presumably jettisoned by the OVNI, was being carried on the shoulders of the citizenry. It passed and passed in a silence a hundred meters long.

The next thought I had was that the tourist office in Tapachula may be closed when we arrive today, and that it would be a sound idea to research hotels before leaving... because, yes, I was awake and it was morning.

***

I met Luis in the Tica Bus station in Guatemala City. Raining. He was sat there, as, he had presumably sat there, since 8 a.m. (only three hours), due to the strangeness introduced into all of his scheduling by a chronic lack of funds. I sat next to him and we both saw a man with an idiotic beard, a thin plaited bell-pull extending half a metre from his chin. Clearly a man of peace.

I went to check out the Subway sandwich place and there was a line of six (counted them) tourists. I gave up. I can no longer wait anymore, and waiting behind people trying to assemble a complex Subway sandwich in broken Spanish is not desirable. On the way back to the office, I passed a pet shop with a rabbit in the window and thought, "I could go in there with a knife and a pan of boiling water and ask how much the rabbit is..." (would be faster than Subway).

"Oh no, no, no, Senor (horrified, naturally), es solo una mascota, no es comida..."

"Ok, ok, (producing a blowtorch), show me a mouse..."

Luis gave me some crackers to compensate for the lack of a sandwich and that brought to a close that phase of my life.

***

The bus left at midday and Luis started talking of his wish to go to San Cristobal de las Casas. Because of a television show. Such innocence!

Sights outside Guatemala City included :

- All sorts of home-made houses that answered the basic question - What does a house built with no money look like?
- A hand-painted sign for a computer repair shop of Homer Simpson´s computer exploding in his face
- A former police observation point painted over with Pepsi logos
- A profusion of maize growing through an abandoned church of recent construction

***

The last time I went to Tapachula, I travelled in no style, on a chicken bus that was running a Guantanamo Special - the chance to spend seven hours in a stress position. All that was missing was a shroud and some crocodile clips on my nipples.

This time, with Tica Bus, another side of the Guantanamo Experience was provided - the endless noise that facilitates sleep deprivation.

It came in the form, as ever, the most tolerated form of torture in the mass society, it came in the guise of entertainment. Five hours of Hollywood movies. It was appalling. I found it hard to sit there and accept that the needs of bored people (the other side of the entertain me! equation) to be entertained outweighed the needs of tired people (or contented people) to rest or pursue the path of their own thoughts without being attacked by pre-recorded sound and pre-recorded images.

"I am alive, and for me, that is entertainment enough!" I thought.

The movies were ultra-violent. The first had a wholly generic title, something like American Gangsters (this could be a good series of movies - American Cowboys, American Kids, American Soldiers, American Shoes, American Tablecloths...") and featured Denzel Washington. He began proceedings by dousing a man in gasoline, lighting him up, and then executing him with a handgun (three hours or more into the forced exposure to this marathon, I would find myself wishing I was that burning man, dead, but spared this sort of suffering).

Washington later executed a man in the street in daylight.

Washington later killed off a family member using a grand piano. (I won´t spoil things and tell you how)

Russell Crowe spent three hours fifteen minutes conducting the undercover operation that finally put Washington away.

***

 There then followed an annoying interlude when the driver´s assistant, who was as enthusiastic about movies as Barry Norman, came out and wrestled with the menus of a Ben Stiller ´comedy´, The Heartbreak Kid (I know, me neither). The basic problem was that the subtitles refused to appear, were steadfast in their decision to remain in hiding, and so, the captive audience was treated to repeated plays of the opening sequence of the movie (waiting until the first line of dialogue came up, Stiller and his dad, dressed preposterously, of course, walking down a hill in SF, to see if the Spanish subtitles appeared...) To get to this moment, it was necessary to endure one of the most annoying songs I have ever heard, something about a frog (it sounded like Mercury Rev or Flaming Lips). When this process yielded no fruit, we were then plunged back into the DVD main menu, where the driver tried once more to apply Spanish subtitles to the movie... Does this sound like torture?

I could not believe anybody would try so hard to watch a Ben Stiller movie.

"Not even Ben Stiller would try so hard to watch a Ben Stiller movie..."

The man gave up. (I had given up long ago).

***

Outside, a mountain range and volcanoes materialised with the sunset, forming a blue analogue of the slow drift into darkness...

***

For Tica Bus passengers, however, this was not enough. We needed more movies. The next movie (in place of The Heartbreak Kid), was predicated on the notion that three distinct movie markets exist:

1) The "We want to watch Christian Bale with his shirt off" market
2) The "We want to watch dragons" market
3) The "We want to watch Christian Bale with his shirt off fighting dragons" market

Please note that market 3 is formed from a subset of markets 1 and 2.

The movie is/was called Reign of Fire and is set in England. There was one funny moment, a caption, over a carbonised hill, that said - "Northumberland, England, 2020 A.D."

Please remember, if you are considering investing in property in the region, that this is only how Northumberland will look if the boyhood Christian Bale accidentally released a dragon from an underground chamber while visiting a construction site with his mother (mother killed by dragon - now it´s personal...)

What followed was a Mad Max type thing, where people live underground in clans, and the family car has been replaced by the clan tank - the clank?

Men shouted, dragons roared, women screamed, children wailed, it was really a lot like being in economy on any long-haul flight (minus the dragons).

At one point, women and children wailed in agony for a full minute and I thought, "How loosely defined entertainment is, that you can present the audience with images or sounds that are usually construed as unpleasant, repulsive even, and yet, under the banner of entertainment, they are consumed, provided they are seen as necessary to the story."

I bet nobody would guess that, finally, the dragons were vanquished by Bale, and he then appeared transformed, as a smiling woodsman-type, building a house above ground, joyously, in a dragon-free England. Marvellous.

***

We finally arrived at the frontier, El Carmen. And it was here, at El Carmen, that the problems began for Luis. Poor Luis. While I had no problems being processed, Luis, as a citizen of Peru, required a visa to enter Mexico, a visa he did not have. What he also did not have is any common sense, and he was soon surrounded by a bunch of money-changers and other petty (and perhaps, when darkness falls, not so petty) criminals, who were offering competing explanations of Luis´plight and producing all manner of fake documents, certificates, IDs, each available for a price, and guaranteed to secure entry into the promised land, Mexico.

I warned Luis not to keep being corralled by these people each time he approached the passport control, he just wouldn´t listen.

In the meantime, I changed some pesos with a money-changer. Firstly, it was ok, and I was prepared to swap a 1000Q. I said, "Ok, make it 1500" and then the money-changers calculator spat out a conversion figure that was hopelessly low. I pointed this out, he laughed, his cronies laughed, and out came the correct figure. 1875 pesos.

He counted it out and I watched him do it. He put the money in my hand and I got on the bus.

Once there, I counted it again and there was only 1250 pesos! SCAMMED! I was mad.

"Tramposo! Tramposo!" ("Cheat! Cheat!")

"Go and reclaim your money," suggested a Guatemalan woman, and I wondered if she was simply interested in seeing the results, rather than being concerned for my well-being, be it financial, physical, or both. Would I be laying on the floor, covered in stab wounds, and she´d be sat there, watching, and muttering, "Again... always the same..."

I could not let it go, though. I jumped off the bus in a rage. The money-changers cronies fanned out and I took a grip on his shoulder. "Eres una artista con las manos, amigo, pero quiero el dinero..."

This made everybody laugh and they started repeating that he was an artist. He made no attempt to argue, counted out my money and we shook hands. "Buen trabajo, amigo, y con el proximo bus, el proceso inicio otra vez..."

Luis was having less luck. Finally, he came back on the bus, explained that he had not been able to retrieve his passport from the officials, and asked me to wait with him. In El Carmen. In a dangerous place. With a whole bunch of money (whose existence was now common knowledge). With a WHITE FACE! Por Dios!

I said "No" and gave Luis 300Q, enough money to take a decent bus back to Guatemala City and work things out from there.

So that was the last I saw of Luis and on we went. One hour later we were in Tapachula, Mexico. Time to find a hotel.