When travels are wide, experience varies. I think this comes from Candide by Voltaire, that merry old romp around the best of all possible worlds that concluded that it was best to stay home and tend your garden. Well… if you’re smitten with wanderlust and you even sometimes envy hobos, there’s no stayin’ home, no matter how sweet, all the time. There’s that mysterious allure wondering what’s just around the bend. That faith, though smashed countless times, that the grass is greener. Perhaps not greener, only different but Vive la diferance!

  I reminisced last blog about passports and good precautions a traveler can take to ensure that even if the worst happens and your passport goes M.I.A. you’ll stand the best chance of recovering it quickly and go back to having fun. So I’d like to continue in that vein and share an experience of mine that was one of my first out traveling alone. And was it ever an eye opener.

  It all started back when I was sixteen living in San Diego with my mom. I’d just gotten my license and borrowed her car for the day, a ’68 Pontiac Firebird. With money burning a hole in my pocket and a surfboard in the backseat, I tried to rouse some interest among friends to go down to Mexico and go surfing. Everybody was either working or apathetic so I decided to go by myself. This raises one of the great questions among travelers. Is it better to travel alone or with a friend? But that’s a whole ‘nother topic…

  I was big for my age, so there was no problem crossing the border at Tijuana. I couldn’t believe I was weaving through TJ. traffic, jazzed to be on my own on this great adventure but worried about a fender-bender in the angry honking flow of traffic. Once out of town and turning left down the coast, the drive to K-39 beach was fast, sunny and uneventful. It was all pedal to the metal singing to the radio at the top of my lungs. Beatles, Stones, Jethro Tull, Bob Dylan, The Band on and on.

  The waves were marginal quality, so I didn’t stay out long. I stopped at Rosarito Beach Hotel and ate lunch, diggin’ on the fact that I could order a beer no hassle. There’s nothing that beats Huevos Rancheros with a Bohemia. So I had several Bohemias.

  It was dark by the time I got back to TJ. My buzz had worn off and I was worried now about getting back home and what my mom would say about being gone so long with her car. Then I took a wrong turn. Then I ran over a broken bottle. Then I was fixing a flat on a dark street. I can’t tell you how I felt when those four policemen sauntered up and asked me what I was doing.

  I had always had Mexican friends growing up in a border town. I loved the language and had taken Spanish since seventh grade. I was particularly close with the O’Dells, Sammy and Larry. Don’t let the wild goose Irishman in their woodpile fool you. They were puro Méxicano and spoke Spanish at home. I loved to eat there because of Mrs. O’Dell’s cooking and always got second helpings due to the fact that I was determined to speak the language because she was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen in my life. Anyway, I answered the TJ cops in Spanish , albeit poor Spanish . “Arreglar la puta llanta.” Which roughly translates into good American as, “To fix this fucking tire,” though puta really means whore. In those days, I only used infinitives because I didn’t like to conjugate verbs. The cops laughed and laughed. But it didn’t stop them from putting me up against a wall and searching the car. I wasn’t worried. I had no drugs on me. So I kept saying, ”¡No mota! ¡No drogas! No pot. No drugs.

  Then I heard those awful words from the cop rummaging through the mom’s glovebox. ¡Ay, que la chingada! ¡Miren que lo encontré! Roughly, “What the fuck! Look what I found!” I learned the connection then and there between high anxiety and the urge to whizz. They made me do it right in front of them in the gutter. No, it wasn’t any easier with them watching and laughing.

  Zipping up, my reason returned. I took a deep breath and faced the cop who claimed to have found something. In his palm was a small pile of assorted pills. Mom’s prescriptions. I felt relieved. I shook my head. “Medicina por mamá,” I said with complete confidence. We went back and forth for awhile but my confident demeanor frustrated them. Finally the sargento in charge informed me that they were going to go have the pills tested to see if in fact they were illicit drugs or not. That was fine with me. So two walked off and returned about ten minutes later. I think they just took a long walk around the block.

  The same cop who made the find pointed out to me that while most of the pills in his palm were in fact medicine, the little black capsule was la droga. It was time to freak out. I couldn’t think to speak Spanish anymore so I just started pleading, like most every presumed innocent facing arrest. Except in México, it’s Napoleonic Law and arrestees are presumed guilty until proven innocent. English was OK now. The cops all spoke English more or less.

  I said it was all bullshit. That pissed them off and they ringed me. I gulped and suddenly remembered something Mr. O’Dell said about cops in México. They have to be so corrupt because they get paid so little. They get paid so little because it’s assumed they’ll shake people down to make enough to feed their families. Corruption is built into the system. But when attempting to buy off cops, it’s dangerous to behave disrespectfully because administering a beating to a sassy gringo is almost as good as payola. So I said, “Saber ir al corte. Poder pagar por mí.” To know to go to court. To be able to pay for me. They understood me. And they became quite friendly again. O course, mi’jo (my boy). Show us whatcha got.

  Well, I had about $12.00 U.S. left. That pissed them off and they said it wasn’t enough. I asked them to look for more in mom’s car. They let me and I came up with about $5.00 more in quarters and dimes. They discussed and wearily accepted my paltry offering. The sargento left me with a small piece of advice, spoken in very commanding English. “You watch you ass in México, muchacho. There are some bad people in this neighborhood.”

  The second they turned their back on me, I changed tires and got the hell outta TJ. When the Border Patrol guy at the window asked me what was the purpose of my trip to Mexico had been I said, “To get back to the good old U.S.A!” He laughed and waved me over to secondary inspection. But that only took an hour or so and they didn’t make find anything to make a squawk about.

  I got back home and mom was pissed I’d been gone so long. I was pissed too. But I couldn’t tell her why. Her prescription pills had almost gotten me jailed in Mexico. So I had to take my ass chewing like a man. Mom was so suspicious at my lack of backsass, she went out and gave the Firebird a thorough inspection and made me wash it next morning.

  So the point of this blog is to recommend that all travelers going overseas who have prescription med’s carry a copy of your doctor’s prescription with you. I also recommend scanning all prescriptions and emailing the document to yourself as an attachment. This way, you can go to strange and exciting new places with confidence and if worse comes to worst, and you’re waiting for a visit from some young State Department bureaucrat from the embassy while sitting in some flea bitten jail dreading a bogus drug charge thinking it’s Midnight Express all over again, you can him retrieve your documents and better your chances. To paraphrase the Father of our Nation: To avoid disaster, prepare for it. Be ready to be surprised. Travel wisely. Go far. Have fun.

Marc Ladewig
Author of Odysseus-The Epic Myth of the Hero