Half An Inch, page 3

The motel owners threw a Christmas eve party for paying guests and local friends, where we met a couple from  Seattle who were stranded, waiting for a part to come from Salt Lake City for their ailing Jaguar. While we watched excited children take turns batting at a pinata and the laughing scramble for prizes when it broke, the woman said they had been coming to Mexico in winter for fourteen years because, unlike other places they'd tried, sunshine was guaranteed. She dispelled worry about bandits, saying all you had to do was slow down,  without stopping, and hand them some pesos. We enjoyed the novelty and camaraderie of the party, but back in our room, inhaling the essence of fir tree and opening our presents made it Christmas.
I scanned the map the next morning and found the name of the river of our adventure the day before: the Baluarte.
"You know . . . . Guadalahara isn't all that far from here--only an inch or so."
"Don't start that inches business.  What's wrong with this place?  We don't have time to go anywhere else." But after Harry considered what was left to see in Mazatlan, we were soon on our way, after a stop at the government owned Pemex gas station and a restaurant that looked above average.
.
A few miles out of town, we met the banditos. One man stood in the middle of the road, and two more slouched against a worn-out tree.
"Uh-oh," I said. "Slow down and hand me some pesos. That woman at the party said they're harmless if you give them some money--but don't stop." It worked. The smiling bandit could have been a toll collector at the San Francisco Bay Bridge.


Guadalahara's justly-famous fountains gushed impressively at the intersections of wide boulevards, and bright red geraniums tumbled from elaborate iron balconies on tile-roofed houses, their windows framed in colorful mosaics.
Everything had been so inexpensive in Mexico, we decided to splurge and stay at a posh motel we had glimpsed behind a lush lawn and forest of trees. The heavy iron key they gave us--and I kept--should have been in a museum. Our motley assortment of sacks, boxes and suitcases drew half-suppressed smiles and whispers from the three porters who came out to help us unload the car, and they raised their eyebrows at our Ford, even though it was new--and red.
We didn't care. I learned to bargain at the block-square market in the city and brought back an armload of native crafts, among them a tin star set with marbles. It reminded me of our Christmas tree left shedding needles in the trash back in Mazatlan.
"We're not going anywhere but home," Harry said when he saw me at the map that night.
"But Sweetie, it's just half an inch to Mexico City--and we"ll never be this close again. They light up the entire facades of the skyscrapers downtown---animated displays!