Zacatecas
Getting from Real de Catorce to Zacatecas could be performed one of two ways, the first I would need to backtrack to Matehuala and then again to San Luis Potosí and from there catch a final bus to Zacatecs, that on a map seemed like the longest distance to travel just to get to another town. I decided to take the second option, which I only found out about through the ninja good (read, hopeless) guide book I possess, and the description to get from RdC to Zacatecas only had 2 lines but it seemed like the more interesting option. I boarded the daily Jeep (Wileys Jeep from the 1950’s) to get down from the top of the mountains to the dessert below, 1.5hr of bumping around and we slowly edged our way down the mountain side to the valley below, from there I got another bus by informing the man at the restaurant / ticket office I wanted to go to Zacatecas, he proceeded to indicate that was no possible, but he could sell me a ticket to another destination and from there I could connect onto Zacatecas, fine and dandy me thinks.
Once I reached the next destination it turned out to be somewhat less of another town and more like a restaurant on the corner of the highway where buses occasionally pulled into if you were lucky. Bonza me thinks, hitchhiking it may be. After myself and another traveler, Juan enquired at said restaurant for the availability of buses to Zacatecas we were duly informed that there were no more today. This whole hitchhiking thing, with Alister’s fine white behind becoming a Mexican truck drivers play thing was nearing closer to reality. Juan interestingly enough had just spend 10 days in the desert enjoying the best the desert had to offer while engaging some fairly wild party time and was now on his way home to see his wife and kid.
Back we meander to the side of the road in the hope a bus will rock up sometime so we can flag it down or maybe a vehicle of more repute may venture along the road so that we might be brought towards salvation. Not the salvation a priest thinks he is giving to his alter boys, more the salvation in a walking across the desert one finds an oasis of fine bitches all in need of cock.
Fortunately a bus did turn up after about 40mins of waiting around and it was more or less going in the direction that we needed. Eventually I got to where I needed to be in Zacatecas after taking my bus too far and ending up another suburb, I got the final bus of the night to the centre of town to met up with my CS for the next couple of days, Michael at a Dali themed coffee place for a relaxing coffee after my grand 9 hour adventure to travel about 250km.
The town itself is pretty with the entire centre of town being UNESCO heritage listed, thus no sparkly bling bling signs about. As for the touristing part of my journey, it was a bit lazy to say the least. The only part of the town I really wanted to see was another mask museum that was supposed to be far superior to the crap effort the SLP put forward. First day in town after making the bus ride and 30min walk I discovered the museum was closed. On a Wednesday. What fucking museum closes on a Wednesday ? Sat around in front of the museum for a bit contemplating what else could be done to fill in the time. As much as I love scratching my nuts and smoking, that did not appear to be an option at the current time, a bit too much foot traffic was about. Although the foot traffic did keep me amused as more tourists would rock up, trying to enter only to read the hours of operation sign a bit more carefully and discover, oh it’s closed today.
Later that evening I met up with another local CS’er Claudia and her friends for a couple of beers and some local slang lesson. The first bar was amusing, as it was the lucha themed, the 2nd just being really cool, as it was over 100 years old and full of drunks, students, a dude with an accordion and artwork filling every available corner and space available.
Most Important word learnt that evening;
Pistas – Beers
They told me it was just a Zacatecas thing, as I had never heard beer referred in this way, I was later to discover it was more a Northern Mexico thing than anything else from my quizzing of the locals along the way.
After another day of sighseeing, actually getting to see the Mask Museum and not going to the nightclub in a mine I headed on my merry way to Durango, the city most renown for having a shit ton of scorpions and cowboys (vaqueros).
Durango
The little fuckers could be found everywhere, under plastic for a belt, encased in an ashtray and even for a key rack. Supposedly near the market you could see a scorpion farm, as much as I love furry things seeing these little pricks scuttling about was definitely going to increase my paranoia and not my enjoyment of Durango. The other major reason tourists venture out to Durango, apart from the insects, is to see some of the backlot sets where a large majority of Westerns used to be shot, one of the most recent ones being Zorro. Interestingly enough Pirates of the Caribbean was not shot there, but in one of the previous towns I’d been in, Real de Catorce.
Thus the only major touristing I did for my weekend in Durango was to get a bus out to one of the sets, Villa de Oeste which had been converted into a sort of theme park Mexican style complete with overacted cowboy’s and indian’s performances and some fine thighs in the form of Kan Kan dancers. The rest of the time was spent getting to know the bars and restaurants of the place with a little help from Anaheim, whose cousin, Serigo I had met the year before in Chiapas while traveling, who also had done IAESTE but to Germany and Austria. Thus I had myself a local connection to the nightlife and daylife of the Duranganese.
Interesting thing learned, while in most small towns and some large suburbs it is traditional for the male drivers to drive their cars up and down the main street, in Melbourne one would call them Chap Laps (referring to laps of Chapel Street, a nightclub and bar district of the South East), as the drivers of the VL Commodores and Skylines show off the shininess of their car, and auditory value of their blow off valves (BOV) and the undeniable penis size to over-compensatory relation they had with their vehicles. In Durango, they did things a little bit differently, the above still existed, but on the street itself, there were no nightclubs with skinny bitches waiting out the front nor clean windows to admire Tony’s new chrome. There were bands set up on more or less every block all generally playing banda of some sort, and the occupants of the cars would stop, enjoy a chevy or 3 and then tip the fine musicians for the job they had been doing. Also strangely enough Sunday nights was the time when all the action happened but again I wrote it off as only in Durango.
Doritos – Dime Vaquero
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