by Josh Gates
In bed, I look over the map by flashlight, working things out in my head. Baja California tears away from the west coast of Mexico like a thousand-mile-long splinter. But the map doesn’t tell the whole story. The orderly looking pink line that flows down the paper is, in reality, a writhing two-lane road, unnervingly narrow and badly damaged. It’s also clogged with everything from industrial trucks to donkey carts. Our average speed has been maybe forty miles per hour so far. Factoring in these conditions, which I can only assume will get progressively worse, I realize our trip is going to take significantly longer than we anticipated. We’re not even a quarter of the way to Cabo.
“Jon, I’m starting to think this might not be the best idea.”
“Are you saying you want to quit?” he taunts back from the darkness.
It’s exactly what I want to do. “No. I guess not,” I say. I click off the flashlight and close my eyes. I have a bad feeling about our predicament and toss and turn all night in the sticky heat.
Day two. Things look better in the morning. Not the town, mind you, but our general confidence. I get behind the wheel cheerily and we set off, bolstered by the promise of a new day.
This lasts about an hour.
By ten a.m. we’re about a hundred miles south of the city of Ensenada, and the road, which hugged the Pacific Ocean all morning, has now turned sharply inland, where it will trap us for the remainder of the journey. We are now hemmed in by desert. As the ocean breeze slips away, it is replaced by torturously hot air. Vast, featureless hills of scalding dirt seem to redirect the sun’s heat back into our tiny car like a magnifying glass. The temperature climbs to well over a hundred degrees. By noon I’ve unbuttoned my shirt and am coated with a sheen of sweat; my lips are starting to crack.
The road is awful. Huge swaths of it are unpaved, and our car kicks up torrents of dust as we swerve around potentially fatal potholes and apparently suicidal Mexican children. Our progress is further hampered by an hour-long stop at a gas station, waiting for the attendant to show up. I’ve had a Dwight Yoakam song stuck in my head all day and hum softly as we sit on the hood of the car, baking in the sun. I’m a thousand miles from nowhere / Time don’t matter to me . . .
We finally arrive at the border between north and south Baja, where a shotgun-wielding guard at a checkpoint instructs us to shut off the engine. He motions to roll up the windows. I look over as a man in a full hazmat suit wearing an aluminum pesticide backpack from 1938 approaches the vehicle. He looks like the Rocketeer. Jon and I quickly crank up the windows as he starts pumping a lever and spraying the entire car down with a noxious chemical that’s either designed to kill insects, Americans, or both. We cough and futilely wave at the air. The guard motions us on. The liquid cooks on the hood of the Beetle, creating a permanent stink inside the car.
Jon takes over driving in the afternoon. Once the sun sets, it becomes intensely dark. There are no arc lights over the road and fewer and fewer towns along the way. My head is resting against the passenger window, and I’m just starting to nod off when I hear Jon whisper, “Shit.”
I look up to see red and blue lights reflecting off the dashboard. We’re being pulled over. “Stay calm,” I say. “Just pull over.”
I watch as two police officers armed with machine guns exit the SUV behind us and saunter up to the driver’s-side window. “Buenos noches, señores,” one of them says. “You make illegal turn.”
“We haven’t made a turn all night,” Jon objects.
It’s a shakedown. Plain and simple.
“Step out of the car, señores.”
We’re asked to stand next to the vehicle, and I gaze out at the infinitely gloomy desert with my arms crossed, trying to guess exactly where we’re going to be dismembered and buried.
“You want to go to prison?” the cop asks me.
“No, Officer,” I say. “I want to go to Cabo.”
“You make illegal turn,” he says again.
“We certainly didn’t mean to. We don’t have much money on us, either,” I add meekly. “I’m sorry.”
He walks away and talks with his partner.
“What are they saying?” Jon asks.
“Something about money. I think they believe us.”
We stand outside for more than half an hour. Eventually the cops realize that we are what we appear to be: two morons with very little cash. They return to their car and simply drive off, leaving us standing alone on the side of the road.
“Let’s just find somewhere to sleep,” Jon says.
In the next town we come to, houses are in various states of disintegration, and the few roadside restaurants have all been boarded up. There’s one hotel sign, and we follow it down a dingy side road. The hotel turns out to be a motel—or at least most of a motel. We drive into the dirt courtyard of a two-floor U-shaped building. The entire right side of the complex has collapsed, taking with it a third of the rooms. Chickens and a goat dawdle out of the way as we pull in and shut off the motor. I get out of the car and promptly set my shoe down into at least two inches of sloppy, wet mud and animal feces. “Son of a bitch,” I whisper.
We step up onto the cement porch, wipe our shoes, and follow the fluorescent light of the manager’s office to the far end of the building. The door is locked, and I rap on the frame a few times while Jon cups his hands against the glass. Finally, a half-stoned guy whose face is mostly obscured by a scorpion tattoo shuffles in from an adjoining room. He unbolts the door without opening it and just walks over to the desk. We ask for his best room and exchange five dollars for a key.
We head back past about five identical doors to a room situated about twenty feet away from our car. We tiptoe down into the mud and wearily retrieve our bags from the backseat. The only modern convenience on the Beetle is an aftermarket alarm, which I engage before locking the car.
I have to throw my shoulder into our room’s metal storm door to get it open. It bursts into what smells like a condemned slaughterhouse, and a few flies desperately escape to freedom. In place of beds are two poured concrete slabs, each with a quarter-inch mattress on top. There are no sheets in sight, just a few ratty pillows, and one pathetic window looks out through metal bars onto a brick wall. I hear a creak and look up at the slowly turning blades of a slumped ceiling fan. Exposed wiring is stapled loosely along the ceiling and leads to a switch by the door.
We throw our bags down. I walk into the bathroom, which seems to be the source of the terrible smell. The mirror above the vanity is smashed into a spiderweb pattern and reflects my face a thousand times. The faucet coughs out chalky water that dumps down through an open hole in the sink and spills onto my feet. The stink of sewage wafts up from the toilet, which is little more than a hole in the corner.
Jon and I don’t speak. There isn’t much to say. I shut the front door hard and make sure to lock the dead bolt. The heat in here is like a sauna, and we both strip down to our boxers and lay on our cement beds. I swat away another fly and close my eyes until sleep eventually finds me.
I wake sharply to the sound of a shrill electronic cry. The alarm. Someone is trying to steal our car. I hustle to my feet, stumbling as I misjudge the height of the bed. Quickly regaining my footing, I grab the door handle and suddenly scream out. A surge of electricity explodes up my arm, and I collapse to the floor. My hand is still clenching the knob as my muscles contract in agony. Jon turns on the lamp and sees that the wiring from the ceiling fan is caught in the frame of the aluminum door. He takes a pillow and swats the wiring out of the jamb, which allows me to retract my arm and get to my feet. Cradling my fried fingers against my chest, I use my good hand to grab my pocketknife from the table and flick out the blade while Jon throws the door open.
As two mostly naked, screaming, barefoot Americans rush headlong into the motel courtyard, three would-be thieves give up on the Beetle and flee around the corner of the building. My feet are under the power of pure adrenaline, and as I leap heroically from the stoop my leg shoots o
ut from under me. I slip like a clown on a banana peel and land on my back in two inches of chicken shit and mud. I lie there groaning, waving a knife haplessly at the moon.
Day three. Dawn. Neither one of us has slept much since the attempted carjacking. I have visible burn marks along each finger, and despite Jon’s extensive medical training, the best he can think to do is wrap my hand in a dirty white T-shirt. Both of us stink vaguely of feces and insecticide and drive away from the motel in focused silence. There’s no going back now. I’m like Clark Griswold. This is no longer a vacation. It’s a mission.
We drive to Cabo as fast as we can, honking past meandering trucks, stopping only when necessary, and pushing the car to its absolute limit. We finally arrive just past noon and head straight for the row of expensive hotels along the coast; I point us toward the most lavish driveway of the bunch. The Beetle comes to a squeaky stop in front of the lobby, pry bar marks along the driver’s-side door and caked mud along the once white side panels. The valet looks horrified. “Don’t scratch her,” I say, throwing him the keys. As we approach the front desk, sunburned and limping, I note a barely disguised look of terror on the front-desk attendant. “I want a room on the water,” I announce. “A room that opens onto the beach.”
“The charge will—”
“I don’t care what it costs,” I say, smacking down an American Express card on the marble counter.
The room is as requested. A white-walled suite with blue tile accents and French doors that open right onto the sand. Jon and I tip the bellman and clink together the two flutes of champagne waiting for us on a glass table.
We immediately put on our swim trunks, throw open the doors, and run down the ivory sand toward the indigo-colored surf. The warm, frothy water is like a baptism. We laugh and yell out in relief to have finally made it to Cabo, having prevailed against all the many obstacles of this peninsular gauntlet. I take in a mouthful of water and spit it victoriously in the air. Slipping under, I swim hard against the strong rip current. But just as I surface, a huge wave clocks me right in the face, tumbling me to shore. I pull myself up on the beach, unclogging my ears and adjusting my shorts, which are halfway up my ass. I sit on the sand, half dazed and surprised by the force of the hit. A jewelry seller with an arm full of cheap necklaces strolls behind me. “Big waves, eh?” he says.
“Ya. It’s rough as hell out there.”
“Big storm coming,” he says as he passes by.
“Wait,” I call after him. “What storm?”
He doesn’t look back. “Big storm.”
I turn out to sea with new eyes. The surf isn’t just rough—it’s monstrous. Ominous clouds are gathering above, and I notice for the first time the massive cruise ship that appears to be changing direction offshore. “Oh, no, no, no . . .” I whisper to myself. I run up the beach as fast as I can, leaving Jon in the waves. Heavy rain suddenly erupts out of the sky.
Throwing on a T-shirt, I fly through the lobby and into the business center, where I commandeer the only computer and navigate to CNN.com. The page loads slowly, the telltale rainbow palette of a weather radar map resolving line by line on the front page. I don’t bother waiting. The top half of the satellite picture is enough. A massive white spiral bearing down on Baja. We have inadvertently driven straight into the grip of an enormous hurricane.
I catch an American couple at the front desk.
“Do you have an update on the storm?” I ask, looking at the rain coming down in sheets outside.
“It’s bad. Category three and gaining, we heard. The airport is closed. The concierge says if you want to get out of town by car, you’ve got to leave within the next few hours, because the road always washes out.”
Back to the beach. Jon is standing in the rain, watching rowboats from the cruise ship come ashore to unload passengers.
“Gatesy . . .”
“I know. We’ve got to get the hell out of here.”
Back in the room, we repack and head for the front desk. We wait at the end of a ten-person-deep queue. I finally sign the receipt, paying $300 for a hotel room that I have occupied for under an hour.
“You drive,” I say. “You’re better on stick.”
We get in the car and peel out of the hotel parking lot like we just robbed the joint. At the bottom of the driveway, Jon slams on the brakes. The city ahead of us is in chaos, and the street is already under nearly a foot of dark brown water. The roads are jammed with fleeing tourists, boats on trailers, and thousands of people trying to get away from the coast. Jon grips the shifter and swerves out into the fray. I look up at the hillside to see rivers of water pouring down into the streets, and raw sewage bubbles up from the drains.
Jon puts two wheels on the sidewalk to avoid a boat trailer and then drops back down onto the street. “Turn!” I call out, spotting a side street, but it’s too late. The main road dips down, and the water level rises halfway up the car. Chocolate water pours in through the doors, bringing with it an unimaginable stench. Our feet are well underwater by the time we shift gears and speed up an alley to higher ground. I can’t believe the car is still running. We link up with the main highway and drive north until the rain tapers out. Hurricanes may be dangerous as hell, but one thing they’re not is particularly fast. Within an hour the rain relents, and the black clouds are well behind us.
At a gas station I pay four guys to help us tilt the Beetle on its side and drain the water out onto the sidewalk. We use a hose to spray out the interior, but it’s a lost cause. The car is saturated with sewage and will never smell right again. I actually miss the insecticide.
I start the engine up and peel out onto the road. The plan from this point on is never discussed; it’s simply understood: we’re going home. Other than refueling, we don’t stop at all. When one of us gets tired, the other silently takes over, driving the 1,200 miles straight on through the night.
Day four. Twenty hours later we arrive in Tijuana, return the car, catch a cab to the border, and walk back across the bridge. A customs agent stamps my soggy passport and hands it back to me with a knowing wink. “Welcome home, boys.”
The stomachaches and diarrhea arrive in waves by the time we get to Los Angeles, and both of us have fleas that take a week to kill.
Our trip to Mexico was nothing short of a living nightmare. Jon and I don’t talk about it very often, not unless we’ve had enough to drink to bear the memory. Despite my insistence that improvised travel is one of the most rewarding ways to see the world, it sometimes goes tits up in a truly spectacular way. But then again, that awful week provided me with a great story, a killer wedding toast, and a chapter in my book. So maybe not a total loss after all.
12: Threes and the Christmas Miracle of Whore-Dice
* * *
Friendly competitions of strategy and chance have been around since man first learned how to whittle crude game pieces. Variants of checkers are more than one thousand years old. Mancala, even older than that. In present-day Iran, archaeologists unearthed a five-thousand-year-old backgammon game and the oldest dice ever discovered.
A history of games is a history of fraternity. Games are the inspiration for many of our most important bonding moments and a lightning rod for our most arbitrary fights (I’m sure caveman game night never ended well). In my childhood, we played factory-made favorites like Monopoly, Scrabble, and Trivial Pursuit. Today, video games are quickly supplanting the classics, but no matter the platform, be it a wooden board or a Play Station 3, games are still a prominent feature of our upbringing. A familiar touchstone that brings us together. They’re home.
Which is why, thousands of miles away, we play them on Destination Truth. Also, we like to gamble. A lot. Since nearly the beginning of the show, the crew and I have been playing something called Threes. It is, in my humble opinion, a nearly perfect travel game, and in just about any scene on D.T., there’s usually a small pouch of dice tucked in my back pocket. I reproduce the rules here for anyone bound for ports unknown. If
you aren’t interested in such things or are morally opposed to betting on games of chance, feel free to skip to the next chapter. Actually, feel free to skip to wherever you like. You really don’t need me telling you how to read a book.
I’ve read that the game is also called Tripps, but the origin is completely unknown to me. It came to Destination Truth courtesy of our second-season audio guy, Ponch, who had picked it up from the crew on Survivor. Where they learned it, I have no idea.
Threes requires five dice and a flat surface. That’s it. Hell, even the flat surface is negotiable. We once played on the lurching deck of a fishing boat.
The rules are simple. Every side of each dice is worth its face value, except for the three side, which is worth zero. The point of the game is to get the lowest score. The player rolls all five dice. Then, leaving at least one die (if there are any threes showing, the player would obviously want to leave those), the player collects the remainder and recasts. Once the player is out of rolls (if he leaves only one dice down after each throw, he could throw a maximum of five times), he adds the values of the dice to calculate his final score. A perfect round would end with five threes (and zero points).
Play then passes to the left until everyone has a turn. The player with the lowest score wins the pot. The winner rolls last in the next round (the person sitting to his left goes first).
A few important side rules:
1. One round of Threes costs the equivalent of one dollar in any currency. The use of obscure money (including shells or livestock) is encouraged. Lying about the conversion rate of foreign currency is also encouraged, if you can get away with it.
2. The game is best enjoyed while consuming copious amounts of a locally produced alcoholic beverage.
3. No touching dice that you intend to keep in play. You touch it, you reroll it. Arguments will ensue on this point.