Pedro and Maria Motorcycle South America!: Xela Spanish Class (day 3)

Just as the day before things started to get more comfortable, again today the same happened.

I woke up to a dream that my iPod was fixed, and even though I kept reminding myself that I could possibly be dreaming, in my own dream I somehow convinced myself that I was truly awake and could clearly hear the music coming from my broken iPod. Yes, that is right, even though it hurts me to talk about it, my iPod will not work. It all happened back a few days ago. A day of riding in much rain with my iPod tucked away in my jacket pocket. I was confident that my Gortex jacket would protect my precious iPod, but to my dismay it got wet and hasn’t operated since. Up until now I’ve been in a sense of denial that I will not have my precious music for the remainder of the trip. Paolo Conte, Manu Chao and Jorge Benjor will not be singing my way through our travels; it is very sad. Each day I held out hope that after it had dried out, it would suddenly be fixed, after that failed, I held out hope that Mike could take it apart and fix it. Alas, yesterday night we did all we could and it still would not come to life. Even now I’m still in denial and don’t wish you discuss it any further.

Mike woke up and even though he too is in denial, not about his iPod, but the condition of our sleeping place, he admitted he was very tired from not having good rest. We had our breakfast of eggs and pan and headed off to our school with baggy eyes.

I keep trying to hold more casual conversations in Espanol with my teacher, but he is a very serious guy and tries to stick with the books. It gets a little dry, although I know the fundamentals are important at first. Today I finally started to feel a bit more comfortable with the language. That isn’t to say that I am comfortable in Spanish conversation, just that I am comfortable learning it!

We finally heard from Guapo (Adam) today. The salty nut has been taking Spanish classes in Xela at a different school, staying with a family. We’re hoping to meet up with him tonight in front of McDonalds (the only landmark we could think of). Let’s hope he shows up as I’m sure he has some good stories from the past week.

Mike found a motorcycle shop with everything he needed to clean the motorcycles chain and change the oil. Yes, the oil. Well, I left him to the motorcycle while I sipped Café and chatted online with my friends and family, and when I returned he was in the heart of the oil change right there in the entrance to their casa. Let’s say it wasn’t a clean oil change. The bag in which he had placed the old oil had a giant hole, and when he lifted the bag it spurted out of the bag all over their garage floor…and yet again where he left it on the side of their house. Okay, it wasn’t that bad, but was a bit stressful for me to watch. Add into the mix the Grandpa Guadalupe and the Father who were standing around in a crazy fashion (they all are a little nuts here). The father had just come home from work and could not put down the cat or dog as he was placing them on top of the motorcycle. Yes, you read that right, he kept lifting them on top of the motorcycle and saying stuff in Spanish I didn’t understand. I just smiled (as we tend to do here) and gave them our thumbs up. I think he somehow was fantasizing about the cat and dog on a great adventure around the world…at least those are the words that Mike and I could grasp. The grandpa was either interested in what we were doing due to boredom, or concerned with the amount of oil spilling all over his driveway. I tried to keep him occupied with my poor Spanish, explaining how big the mosquitoes are here and how it hasn’t rained all day. After Mike’s quick cleanup we sat down for Christina’s dinner of hamburger; some sort of hamburger.

We’re off now to meet Guapo! Prior to that we need to get Mike some more food as the meals here, especially dinner is very small.

Okay, so I must now write about the remainder of our night, as it was quite a night. El Guapo (Adam) is alive! He met us in the square at 8 sharp as we proposed via email. He looked good and healthy and had plenty of stories to share with us. We wandered through the rain (yes, it was raining again) into a bar to order some cerveza Gallo’s and catch up. Adam had stories of riding through Chiapas, running into Ninos and riding through the rain. We shared ours and then continued to a bar called Roca Negra. This is a bar that most would walk by, peer in through their dingy cloth curtain, and quickly pass by as the stench of cheap liquor and pee are enough to make you sorry you even looked. Of course Mike and Adam wanted to order a beer from this place…I stood the entire time. There were a couple guys in the corer who looked like they have been working their entire lives without a break except for large amounts of alcohol and another guy in the other corner asleep in a chair catching flies. The bartender looked somewhat like the Gollum from Lord of the Rings; a cross between that and the bartender from the Simpson’s. He had a wicked hunch to his back and his head, which we discovered later, was due to un ojos no funcion. Yes, and the other eye didn’t work so good. He thought I was a senor; probably good considering the clientele. Mike for some reason had not looked happier in days; my amazement at that kept me standing inside the bar for at least a good 15 minutes. The odor of piss, usually referred to when something ‘smells like’ piss…well, it was actually piss. The pisser is located in the bar in the far corner; the urinal and bar are separated by a small low plank. Let’s hope that there truly was a urinal, as all I noticed was a senor peeing in the corner of the bar. This is the same senor who awoken in his sleep to cough and spit high into the air in which his spit hit the floor, and most likely some of the bar seating. The bartender, Otto Herman, German named by his father who thought the name to be ‘cool’, was quite the character. He was 60, so at least some of his ‘age’ was put on by all his years, but his wicked stare was quite amazing. As he couldn’t see very well, every time you talked, he’d give you the wicked stare. I’m not sure exactly what Mike and Adam talked to him about as the aroma in the room kept me from concentrating. Our first night out on the town! Viva Xela!

Roca Negra