A Mexican adventure…
Despite warnings, young Emma Macdonald was determined to discover the real Mexico
‘Something flashed in the sunlight and I saw it was a knife…’ ‘A trail of shredded knickers dotted the road behind us’
It was 1982, I was in the US and wanted to see somewhere other than California before returning to England. I didn’t expect a stunned silence when I suggested, “What about Mexico?” “Banditos and drug smugglers will slit your throat,” came the reply. But Mexico won. When my schoolfriend Bronwyn roared up in a clapped-out VW Beetle to pick me up, I wasn’t told of the one item in the engine the guy who’d lent it had said we should replace before we left. We crossed the border into Mexico which looked like a cowboy film set with cacti, dry grass on flat sandy land. We were soon driving through the desert. When it got dark, the sky was full of stars and that night we slept on a beach in the car. No banditos here, but we locked the doors all the same. In the morning we went for a swim. Changing into our bathers, we locked the car and took our clothes. I surfaced to see another vehicle next to ours: a utility truck with six Mexicans wearing cowboy hats. It moved towards us. We looked at our pile of clothes where the car key was in my pocket and ignored them. The truck moved slowly away then turned to speed up the beach out of sight. We laughed with relief and I assumed we’d leave, but Bronwyn wanted to take pictures. She walked along the beach while I stayed at the car. She was several hundred yards away when a dot at the other end of the beach caught my attention. The truck was coming back. I shouted to Bronwyn but she couldn’t hear above the surf. I locked the VW and started running after her. When the truck arrived, a man approached us speaking in Spanish. Something flashed in the sunlight I saw it was a knife. He stuck it into what we saw was an edible sea snail, and smiling, handed it to us. Another man arrived, producing a lemon which he cut, and squeezed over the white flesh that the first man had sliced. As Bronwyn and I ate some, the Mexicans looked eagerly at us. Dutifully we said, “Bueno!” They lifted their hats and the truck sped off. “Let’s find somewhere more populated,” I said. We were a mile along the dirt road when the car broke down despite the petrol gauge showing half-full. “It might be the fan belt,” said Bronwyn quietly. “What?” It lay in the dust like a dead snake. I remembered my mum saying tights made a good fan belt, but all we had was knickers. Ten yards later we stopped. Even with Bronwyn’s tied on too it wasn’t enough. Three attempts later, we were stationary by a field, a trail of shredded knickers dotting the road behind us. “I’ll walk and wave down a car,” I said. “Stay inside and lock it.” I walked a mile, the road shimmering with heat. Seeing nothing and realising I’d taken no water, I started back. The last thing I expected to see was another truck full of farm workers. We climbed aboard; they could have taken us anywhere! The truck stopped at a village where women bashed maize into tortillas and fed us, before a man drove us to fit the fan belt, shook hands and left. If banditti means people who cause trouble, the only ones at large that day were two Englishwomen in a Volkswagen hightailing it back to California!