I cruise the streets alone, in search of somewhere to throw down a drink, but I just can’t settle on a place. Sure, there are plenty of bars, but I end up giving them all a pass: they’re either too dark, dirty, and empty, or they have that hipsterfied soft-light look of the modern, artisanal, mezcaleria. The first will be cheap but potentially sketchy; the latter cold, clinical, and surely hard on the wallet. I require a joint that strikes a balance between the two, a bar that feels just right from the outside, and when I take in the blood red storefront and blazing yellow letters of “La Casa de Mezcal,” I know I’ve arrived.
As I pass through the saloon-style swinging doors I can tell that I’ve stepped into a local institution. The bar itself is standing only—there are no stools—while a room to the right contains tables and chairs for customers in search of a sit-down experience. Intricate murals grace the walls, depicting vivid Mayan scenes of pyramids, gods, kings, serpents, and jaguars. AC/DC incongruously blares from the speakers, but as I squeeze my way into a claustrophobic spot at the bar, I don’t mind. I love AC/DC, and it all makes perfect sense.
I shout to the bartender for a bottle of Dos Equis and a pour of mezcal de la casa, since the scores of bottles on display behind him remind me that I don’t even know where to begin when it comes to ordering the stuff. He instead slides a well-worn, double-sided plastic menu my way which lists so many versions of the local tipple that my head spins. As I scan the endless varieties, I recognize the word espadín, a type that I’d sampled the night before and enjoyed. Soon he delivers the green bottle of beer along with a tall shot glass filled to the rim with the clear spirit.
I gingerly lift the glass to my lips and take a sip. The smokey, slightly sweet essence of the mezcal blossoms over my tongue and fills my chest with a vapory warmth as I take it down. I grab a slice of green rind orange from the bowl in front of me, dip it in the salt and chili powder, and give it a good suck.
The citrus dances in my mouth while the salt and chili neutralize any hint of the agave aftertaste. I chase this all with a hearty slug of lager while the jangly opening chords from “Smells Like Teen Spirit” fill the air. The barman looks my way and gives me a nod that says “It’s good, isn’t it?” before clearing more bottles from the bar. I nod back and smile before pinching the glass between my thumb and pointer finger and starting the whole ritual over again.
Before the song is over I’ll be singing along with Kurt...
Travel is a privilege, and a massive one at that. I remind myself this each day that I’m on the road, that I’m lucky to be doing what I’m doing, to dive into a place and drink deeply from its waters, to soak in the rains and the smells and the palpable vibe of wherever I am. Such is a luxury denied to most because of money, time, or most often both.
I`ve pursued and cultivated a lifestyle that allows me to to do this thing from time to time, but it also comes at a cost. I own almost nothing of real value and despite the trappings of a middle class lifestyle, I often feel like I`m just making it up as I go along and am only one slip up away from financial ruin. But that’s the case with so many of us, no?
Oaxaca welcomed me with open arms and was exactly the exquisite city of cobblestone streets and colonial wonder that she had been hyped as. I arrived on a Friday and the whole central town was one ongoing festival of music, strolling, selling, eating, drinking, and an overall wash of joyful Mexicana.
That said, there were also loads of tourists in Oaxaca, and for the first time on this trip, I came across a lot of Americans. Now before you think that I’m looking askance at my fellow countrymen, the Americans I encountered in Oaxaca tended to be extremely well-behaved, cultured, quiet, and moneyed. Not your spring break crowd.
There were a lot of well-scrubbed, smart-looking white people attempting their best Spanish in hushed tones. Professors, tech folks, doctors, teachers, lawyers. We`re talking Obama`s base. These are the folks that stay in all of those expensive, hacienda-style hotels in the city center and eat at the foodie joints indicated by $$$ in the Lonely Planet. These are the folks who do pricey mezcal tours and actually buy the handicrafts that help keep the local economy afloat.
Encountering these particular Americans probably caused me to turn in on myself in enchanting, lipstick-smeared Oaxaca. Not only did I feel like an outsider as a gringo travelling in deep Mexico, but I also felt like an outsider among my fellow gringos travelling in deep Mexico.
I arrived at night, found an adequate, and sawdust cheap hostel, and proceeded to ambulate around the town. The first stop was a little restaurant specializing in tlayudas, a Oaxacan speciality. A tlayuda is a large tortilla toasted over a grill and then topped with refried beans, veggies, and sometimes meat.
Mine came with beans, lettuce, onion, tomato, avocado, and a couple links of fiery Oaxacan chorizo. While I was excited to dig into a new permutation of the national cuisine, I found the tortilla a bit chewy and the chorizo stroke-inducingly salty. I also realized that, despite great regional variety and flavors, so much of Mexican cuisine is just chucking stuff on top of tortillas of different sizes and calling it good.
I made my way down the little hill to the main action, walking along the stony pedestrian way with all of the little colorful flags hanging above the many vendors and beggars, until I arrived at the zocalo, with its cathedral and mariachis and cumbia combos and tables of fat families further emblubbering themselves on beer and huge plates of beans and tortillas and Indians pushing bracelets and scarves and balloons and youngsters stroking and kissing and who knows what else until I became dizzy from the whole vortex of the thing underneath the shadow of the cross that glowers over everything in this country.
I surrendered to one of many mezcal bars in this town, where, for a chunk of your wallet`s glory, you are afforded a nice sipping shot of the nectar of the agave, a seductive spirit that’s a world away from your Jose Cuervo swill. It’s technically different from tequila and is mainly distilled in and around Oaxaca. Mezcal’s roots are pre-Columbian, and after just a couple of glasses I considered myself a convert to that sacred elixir.
I ended up at a boxy boozer near my guesthouse called Bar Enigma, run by a scary looking beef slab named Raul. He had spent a few years in Nebraska and Kansas (where I imagined he worked in slaughterhouses) and despite his murderous demeanor, he proved to be a very sweet and friendly dude.
Soon I was invited to a table with a couple of young dudes (Joel and Manuel) who were drinking from an ice bucket containing ten Indios (una cubeta). They were thrilled to have me and we drank and sang and were eventually joined by two others. They were a bit older than my beer companions; one was amiable and courteous, while his buddy took a deep unshine to me as the night wore on.
This particular hombre took exception to the fact that I wasn’t able to understand everything he was slurring forth at two hundred miles an hour and started giving me the hate eye. He then began grilling me about Donald Trump, whose popularity in Mexico is on par with radioactive cat shit.
I responded by proclaiming my hatred for the man (“¡Es humana basura!” I spat), but this did little to ameliorate his growing bile. This guy despised me for what I represented: the money, power, and arrogance of los gabachos. Even if I personally claimed to abhor Trump, I was guilty by association in his stabby, bloodshot eyes, and the longer we shared that table, the more his antipathy towards me hardened.
I sensed that he may lurch for me or take a swing at any time. He was hate-hammered and looking for a fight, and just when I thought things may kick off, he suddenly turned grey, leaned over, and let loose a cascade of puke that splattered on the concrete floor. Raul shouted from the bar and fined the dude fifty pesos on the spot, which he paid, before stumbling towards the door with his friend, who grinned sheepishly and apologized for his companion’s uncouth behavior.
Raul sauntered over with a mop, shook his head and grumbled, “Pendejo.”
I spent the next two days in Oaxaca wandering and eating; I scoured the stalls of the Mercado Benito Juarez, where I dove into several varieties of Oaxaca’s most famous dish, mole, as well as the local version of a tamale, which was not only larger than the standard type, but came wrapped in banana leaves, rather than the usual corn husks.
I was living it up, but also hurting. The hangover I incurred on that first night was a two-day affair, plus, my guts had been on fire off and on since leaving Guadalajara and were now flaring up something fierce. I’m sure this had nothing to do with the river of beer and shots of mezcal with which I had bombarded my innards, along with the endless train of street tacos and orange habanero salsa that I insisted on cascading over them.
The net result of all of this was the black cloud of the traveler`s blues, which anyone on an extended solo jaunt will have to reckon with. I just felt ravaged. The accumulation of days of movement, indulgence, and relative ostracization had done a number on my body and my guts and moreover, my psyche, and I felt myself sinking into a hole.
This is normal, it’s happened before and it will happen again anytime I set out, especially with no one else in tow. Oaxaca was also an exceedingly romantic place, with couples strolling hand in hand, stealing pecks, and generally basking in the sweetness of it all. And those who weren’t coupled up were travelling in small packs, as friends. I suddenly felt very alone, and more than anything, I missed the hell out of my wife. I wanted nothing more than for her to be at my side.
Welcome to solo travel. This is the gig. Most solo travelers are unattached, but I am married, and Minhee has signed off on these periodic journeys. Every time I meet someone new I have to explain that yeah, I’m married, but my wife isn’t with me, which elicits uncomfortable questions or at least eye raises from the other parties.
Sometimes I want to tell them to go fuck themselves, that my marriage is my business, that we have an arrangement when it comes to me getting out in the world, but then maybe they´re right. Maybe I shouldn’t be doing this. Maybe it’s just an exercise in incurable self-indulgence.
Even if this is true, despite the blues and downs and feelings of not belonging, I love solo travel, because it is the ultimate expression of freedom. I wake up, and pretty much get to do whatever the hell I want. I just let the day blow its breath into my sails, and this, my friends, is sublime.
On my second to last day, in the depths of my funk, I sat in a very civilized corner bar, taking refuge from a late afternoon thunder shower. I felt like raw, raggedy ass and attempted to organize the shards of my thoughts into scribblings in my journal.
Suddenly, I was drawn into a conversation with an English woman and her Italian boyfriend who were sitting out the tempest next to me. For one hour we bared our lives to each other, as the rain washed away the day’s grit from the pavement just feet away. I put down my pen and closed my notebook. I got out of my head and engaged with real people doing the exact same thing as I was: loving Mexico.
The next day I lazed at my guesthouse, sipping cinnamon-infused coffee, reading, and scribbling in my journal. By the mid-afternoon I had grown restless, so I slipped on my shoes and made my way out into the heat, down the hill toward Calle de Manuel García Vigil. As I approached this cobblestone concourse, I could begin to make out the thump of drums and squeal of horns. Now street music was nothing new for me in Mexico; in fact, it seemed to spring up wherever I went, but I soon found that this was more than just another strolling band.
As I hit that main street, I came upon a procession of sorts. In the vanguard were about thirty people in bizarre, multi-colored costumes. Some wore masks with fake beards and sported sombreros and huge, golden headpieces. A few marched along with wooden parade rifles, and one even had the taxidermied carcass of a badger strapped to his back, along fake plastic fruit and vegetables—grapes, onions, carrots, and avocados—tied and dangling underneath.
Next were two giant puppets in the shape of women. One wore a blood-red dress while the other was clad in black, with the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe emblazoned on her chest. These towering figures danced to the beat of the drum corps, and were followed by a couple of spinning white orbs with swabs of red, blue, purple, yellow, and orange material attached to the sides.
In the middle was the band, made up of bass drums, rat-a-tat snares, as well as a line of tubas and trumpets. Bringing up the rear were about a dozen men and women in peasant garb—the hats and simple clothes of campesinos—ambling along on lofty wooden stilts that put their feet well above the heads of even the tallest people in the crowd.
I took the parade to be a religious celebration of sorts, though the military and peasant imagery seemed to carry a political message as well. Like so much during this journey, it was completely unexpected, and I immediately found myself caught up in the euphoria of it all.
This was deep, intoxicating stuff, and for a moment I envied Mexico. I realized that this country had more culture in a Saturday afternoon than we do in a whole year back home, and that I while I come from a place of great natural beauty, my people and traditions, by comparison, were empty and sterile.
Everywhere, Mexico oozed history, superstition, flavor, color, and ceaseless celebration. This was doubly true in Oaxaca, and any remnants of the blues that had gripped me the day before were washed away by this frenetic street ritual. I may not have comprehended what was going on, but somewhere, somehow, I understood it.
This was a good read with my morning coffee. I sure could use some of that stroke-inducing chorizo.
Oh Que bueno. Always a pleasure to read your Mexicana missives. Love too the photo of the stilt walkers. They’re not big in QRoo. I haven’t seen them since I was in Zacatecas years ago. And they, and the instantaneous carnival we stumbled onto, reminded me of your post. Gracias!