Category: Travel

5am came cold. There’s lines to wait in, coffee to drink, and a mountain of enchiladas on the other side of the alarm, so I’m awake. I don’t know what people in Alpine do for work, but as I drive through the three stoplights out of town I come to the realization that it doesn’t start before 6am on a Saturday.

Just across the border from Big Bend sits Boquillas Mexico, which has occupied them mind of anyone that has prodded West Texas looking for something. There’s been songs written about it, myths surrounding it, and nostalgia piercing every sentence committed to paper describing it. Is it the remnants of how things used to be? Is it an oasis in the desert with lovingly made enchiladas? Is it essentially a Chuck E. Cheese existing solely to separate you from your money while appealing to your lowest common denominator senses? Answers are never as straightforward as you would like.

For now I only have enough brain cells firing to know there’s only one destination this truck has ahead of it that matters. With my addiction riding shotgun I squint for the sign through the bug riddled windshield.

The glow of V6 cafe, Marathon Texas, god save my soul. It’s a north star guiding light holding my thread of sanity in a bitter cup I want to melt into. The barista looks frantic. There’s 4 of us in the coffee shop and she says the rush is about to hit, that I’m the whitecap you see on an approaching wave before it crashes down on you. While I have just enough caffeine in me now to be curious about what “being in the weeds” in Marathon looks like, I’m fine missing the show. She’s already my best friend and dealer this morning and I don’t want to give her the chance to fall off that pedestal. A few hills, some dust, and a shifty border crossing are all that stand between me and where I want to go. I push the truck forward towards the empty long stretch of road between here, and there.

No cell reception and the sun breaking over quiet mountains is a surefire sign that I’m on the right path. The first sign of life is a group of 8 people that missed the V6 turnoff and look like if you checked their pictures from the last 5 days you wouldn’t see a wardrobe change. Like us, they’re standing in the cold outside of a wood box ranger station waiting for the door to open and the overnight permits to get released. A meandering basecamp check-in, permit purchase, and glove box PB & J puts us still on time for Mexico. This is an 8 hour journey for a 5 minute rowboat ride reward. Back in the truck and down the road we’re now parked in a dirt lot outside the U.S. customs office. Two guards argue with a woman about the legality of her dog seeing Mexico and wave us through. We’ve given two friends a break from their week of camping, so our rowboat reservation is a 4 top now. We walk down the dirt path to the river reading placards describing this unofficial crossing, which only makes one curious about what an official crossing is.

Somehow, I don’t think I’ll be getting a passport stamp.

Four minutes of walking and two stories later we’re at the river and the scoreboard looks fixed. It’s a $5 roundtrip to cross 20 feet of river. I don’t think there’s much of a Plan B since the water looks like the color of Swiss Miss hot chocolate and I don’t see Wonka anywhere in sight. Onto the boat, paddles over the side, row. Ten good moves and we’re across and confronted with the Boquillas board of tourism.

No we’re not. We’re approached by donkey handlers looking to give us a $10 donkey ride for 100 meters. Pass.

Boquillas is dusty. There’s no way around it. It coats your every interaction. Every step towards town introduces a new spoonful of dust sugar to the insides of your soles. My walking companion has less concern with the dust and more concern with the amount of mushrooms he no longer has. “Cuantos años tu” breaks up my mind drift as I hear, before I actually see, six John Wayne’s passing me on my right trying to impress their donkey handler. The handler looks back at them like a poker player seeing his mark. “Treinta”.

Boquillas has three industries of commerce. Two restaurants, ten stalls selling the same apron, and a bar that should remain closed.

Jose Falcon, table for 4, looking at the river. I get what Robert Earl Keen was talking about in “Gringo Honeymoon” now, and my cynicism evaporates with each view of the water. The guy playing the beaten down guitar may as well be Elvis. My companions haven’t seen humans in a week so they’re a bit overwhelmed by the cruise ship and “one tequila, two tequila, three tequila, floor” crowd now swimming upstream into the restaurant but I chalk it up to mushroom fringe effects and continue paddling on my wave.

Enchiladas Montadas por favor.

Enchiladas Montadas. Seeing it arrive on the table it’s as if someone was in my kitchen in Brownsville with my mom and I as a kid trying to make enchiladas. Try as I might I could never roll them right and always cheated with toothpicks, so instead I would stack one lightly fried tortilla on top of one another. Tortilla. Chicken. Tortilla. Cheese. Tortilla. Chicken…like the ratatouille of a 7 year old border town kid’s dream. Jose Falcon sees my tower of gluttony and raises it by smothering it in salsa verde and a fried egg that could bring you to tears. Life is so good and I am so transfixed on being 7 again I order a Mexican coke while beers are clanked. Oh that real sugar don’t you play with my heartstrings like that.

“Cuantos años tu” even arrives and are given the “best seat in the house” by their now full time well-tipped handler. This guy could sell them dust at this point.

Tab paid I float out. I believe everyone else followed. What happened next could only be described as my “getting braids on the Cancun beach” moment. I spot a bar that looked suspiciously like a place I would like, walk inside, and watch a bartender pour me a shot from an unmarked bottled. I’m charged before tasting, and ingest everclear with a splash of vanilla. Sotol, it was not. If I had any internal open wounds they are now disinfected. I reassemble what’s left of my hollowed-out body, follow the dusty trail back to the rowboat, slosh across, and walk past the phone booth sized U.S. customs office.

Boquillas, what you choose to enjoy, and what you choose to ignore, will always tell you more about yourself than about the place.

It probably wasn’t a great sign when the maitre d’ had an AK-47 around his shoulder, but that’s a side note.

It was late on a Sunday. Not late as in “I’ve been partying all night” but rather, later than I should be here, on this street, on this road, up this hill.

I’m hungry, and through word of mouth I’ve heard that this place has the good stuff. Lots of meat, lots of pork, lots of cold cold beer, and lots of warmth. The catch? It’s a few paces and a twist in the road into a favela. I’m too tired to care. We’re on day 15 of little to no sleep in Rio de Janeiro and I’ve made my mind up. This is happening. Alone.

The road is dirt, and the streetlights are either lower than needed to serve any real purpose or they’re completely out. Maybe they didn’t even exist in the first place and I was just looking for specs of light to focus on.

I can see the bend in the road ahead. The bend where I have been told this holy grail of pork fats and tenderness via a bowl of beans exists. Just a few more short paces and the dirt road will be behind me and I’ll be in the emotional shelter I’m looking for while undoubtedly doing something stupid.

My walk is only disrupted by the cackle and lights of a walkie talkie I hadn’t noticed in my haze. The cackle again. Looking over the cackle has an owner, this owner is sitting in what during the daytime could pass as a suburban elementary school lemonade stand. The cackle owner can’t be more than 15, and now I realize he’s pointing something at me as he responds to whatever is being shouted at him from the other side. I look for a glimpse of what’s looking back at me and it’s not his gun (that’s securely strapped over his shoulder), it’s his cell phone video camera. Table for 1?

I make it. Two tables inside, four tables outside, four other people at the restaurant. It’s 8pm and they close at 10. There’s a huge TV blaring one of those dancing with famous people shows except it’s a mix of famous rich guy’s and extras from that show where you had to pick a suitcase to win a million dollars. It’s hyper sexualized. It’s a distraction.

I sit inside at the open table next to the foursome paying their tab. Maybe warmth has a synonym that more accurately describes the atmosphere. How about tepid. I’m sticking with tepid.

I order the first thing on the menu because it sounds the most straightforward and a small beer. Small beer being important because apparently in Brazil it’s mostly big boys or nothing. Doesn’t matter what I order, what comes is a big beer and a “oh that was way too fast” bowl of beans, collard greens, pork belly, sausage and carne seca (dried meat). If you’ve spent any time in a working kitchen before you know how long a dish should take to make. Any longer and the kitchen is busy, maybe a little backed up. Any shorter and, well, you my friend just got served something that definitely was not originally made for you. Scraps.

My scraps in hand the other table leaves, leaving just me, the cook, the owner, the waitress, and the PG-13 twerking on the screen. Oh and the roadside foot traffic, lots and lots of roadside foot traffic. Enough dark alley roadside foot traffic to make you eat a bowl of over-hyped leftover pork scraps in record time. I’ve already planned the “who what when where and how” of stomach issues this meal will cause and mapped out the best places to exorcise personal demons in my hostel.

Close to the end, the mood changes. I’m eating at a record pace, so they’re still far from closed when the owner quickly puts the tables away, then takes down the awning. By take down, I mean he closes the two table restaurant in from the outside world and shuts off a few lights.

Now in what has become a paper mache panic room there’s 4 individuals  and we’re all staring at my beans. I give the international “I’m good” and the beans are taken but the beer, oh there’s far too much left for it not to be noticeable. Now I’m not sure if every member of this accidental cruise ship is sweating from the heat, the knowledge that there’s a kid with an AK outside, or if we all ate the same meal and if the answer to the “who what when where and how” stomach issue question is “right the f*ck now”.

The waitress falsely insists I stay and finish my beer. The cook bails. I take one more glimpse at the geriatric half hour dancing viagra commercial on the TV and chug. They’ve ran my card and I’ve signed the tab before the bottle hits back on the table. On the speed walk home I notice my YA book section browsing friend has been replaced by two much older, much more empowered individuals. Their demeanor states they don’t need to video tape me in order to justify their decisions.

I decide the pork and beans weren’t that great.

That night laying in my hostel bed I heard the fireworks that my friend had told me about. The one’s without the pretty lights.