Monday, 28th September, Mazatlan: the Gringo and the Mexicana
We’ve made it to Mazatlan. Whilst up in Auburn, Seattle, Mike parked up in front of a bikeshop, leaving me in the sidecar. This is a usual state of affairs as I’m usually buried in stuff and getting out is not easy. But it does mean that I am fully vulnerable to the Ural Effect: people starting conversations. I am happy to do this – and this particular time, I get chatting to a biker couple. When the wife hears about our route, she says that she has a house in Mazatlan, and her sister lives there. So, 2 months or so later, we descend upon the wonderful Barb in Mazatlan. The house is a haven, Barb has set up a couple of interviews for us, and she insists that we actually get some holiday while we’re here.
Our first interview is with Greg and Gude: a couple who have been married for 41 years. She is Mexican (and 6 years older than him), he is a California surfer dude of the 60s. When they met, Gude had never seen the sea, she grew up on a rancho inland and was one of many children of a poor family. In fact, they talked about the first time Gude’s father (now 99) saw the sea (he was 87). Tears streamed down his face and he said that he could never have imagined that God’s work could be so beautiful. He asked Greg what the “little mountains” in the sea were (the waves).
Gude and Greg’s story is about bridging two cultures, about the resistance Greg received from Gude’s family, about the cultural differences which colour their own relationship. Greg talked animatedly about how he had to work hard to teach his kids that they needed to be punctual, how it is NOT OK to be an hour late for appointments, Mexican-style. She talked about how she needed to chill him out – he was raised by German parents who didn’t allow speaking at dinner, who wouldn’t feed any child who was one minute late for 5pm dinner (”this is a house, not a restaurant”). Greg gave us a great piece of advice – never compare your relationships to other people’s: noone can ever know what goes in between two people, and every relationship is different.
Now, this is where the blog must bifurcate slightly (Oh no! I hear you say, not a bifurcating blog!) as we are now in Mexico, and there’s the down right different element to get in – a “travel blog” if you will. I have no plans to bore you with “then we saw the most amaaaaazing sunset” but I thought I’d put down the things which stick out. And the thing which sticks out about Mazatlan, beyond the fact that it’s a gorgeous seaside town, with a seafront boulevard to rival Cannes or Beirut, and the home of Pacifico beer, is the phenomenon of Banda Music.
Banda really has to be heard to be believed. It came from this part of the world – the state of Sinaloa, Mexico – in the 1880s, and if you can try to imagine, it has its roots in the overlapping of Mexican music with German polka music. Yes, indeed, it sounds just like that. Greg had a story that a German ship was shipwrecked, they raised up the rusted and broken instruments and played them like that. It really sounds like a group of muppets hitting, banging and blowing any metal they can get their hands on. We went to a restaurant popular with the locals (and no gringos) to hear it in action. I ended up, in my crappy Italianish talking to a blind guitar player for half an hour, who is a favourite with the narcotrafficantes because he can play at their parties and not see any of their dealings.
