Deluge in Guadalajara
On Monday, I took two friends with me to Guadalajara. My doctor gave me the address of a female Ob/Gyn who spoke English. It had been three years since I'd seen one and knew it was time for a mammogram and that other exam we don't talk about. I needed to understand whether I should be taking hormones, so English was a prerequisite.
I said to Betty and Sharyn, "Drive in with me. After my 4:30 appointment, we can have dinner at Sacromonte." They agreed. We'd all heard what a wonderful restaurant it was.
Driving in Guadalajara is not for the weak-hearted and three sets of eyes are helpful--one set on the road (mine), another on the map and a third to identify those non-ubiquitous street signs.
We found the street and drove up and down looking for number 2375 until it was 4:35 and I stopped to phone her office. The address was 2675, but what's a digit? After waiting for 45 minutes, I had my exam, asked the receptionist for the address of Sacromonte and we were off, anticipating a fine meal.
Betty navigated and we ended up in front of a restaurant called Santo Coyote. Close, but no cigar. I said, "Let's go. I think I can find the other restaurant. We drove down Pedro Moreno twice with six eyes searching for the restaurant. We asked five well-dressed Mexicans, got several sets of wrong directions and resorted again to the telephone. We were within walking distance.
The restaurant was decorated tastefully with bright Mexican colors and we ate a delightful meal. The portions were a little small, so we convinced ourselves dessert was in order. Just as we asked for our check, the heavens opened up. "Buckets of water" is an understatement. The lower mezzanine of the restaurant was quickly flooded and customers were ushered upstairs. Betty said, "Let's wait it out. The rainstorms seldom last more than half an hour and we're parked nearly two blocks away." Sharyn and I concurred. None of us wanted to brave the sheets of rain pummeling the sidewalks.
Forty minutes later, it slowed down to a pour. One of the waiters escorted me to my car with his large umbrella. I drove back, picked up my friends, and we headed off. "It's a good thing you've got this Explorer, Blue," Sharyn said. "It's a perfect vehicle to negotiate these rivers!"
I was glad I didn't have my low-slung Mazda. Streets gushed. Stalled cars everywhere proclaimed their predicament with emergency lights. Police sirens screamed and the traffic, normally careening around Guadalajara streets in a game of blind man's bluff, now crawled, every driver vying for the high road.
"Do you know your way back to Chapala from here?" Betty asked.
" Mas o menos," I said. More or less. Silence from the back seat. Neither friend had been willing to brave ankle-high water to sit in the front seat.
My wipers barely kept up with the increasing wind and rain. As I sliced through the water, spray shot up in ten-foot waves on either side of the Ford. I would have preferred daylight. There was no way to see street signs now. Water fell in curtains from the overpasses. It sounded as though a train had just roared over my car.
We made it to the Chapala freeway, feeling very good about our accomplishment--until we pulled into the Pemex for gas. As trained, I turned off the engine while the attendant filled up my tank. I paid and took a deep breath. We were out of the city and it would be smooth driving from there. Not! The Explorer refused to start up again. No dashboard lights, nada.
Pemex stations don't have mechanics. They just sell gas. We asked the next fifteen or twenty drivers if they had jumper cables. Maybe it was the battery. Maybe something got wet that shouldn't have. We had no luck with the cables and I kept trying to start the engine. Fifteen minutes. Half an hour. It was now 10:30 p.m. A taxi pulled in next to us. "Can you take us to Ajijic?" I asked. I was feeling guilty, because Sharyn needed to beat the rains to Ajijic and move her birds inside. We should have been home by nine.
The taxi driver was a quiet, gentle man. He opened our hood and looked inside. A mechanic, he wasn't. We needed to move the car. I thought perhaps we could push it out of the way and I could deal with it the next day. We were thirty miles from home.
As despair settled in, Sharyn asked one more driver for cables. The lady in the car was Norma, her manicurist and her husband, Javier, spoke perfect English. We'd managed the entire day with our limited Spanish, but it was late, we were tired and frustration lurked just below our good cheer.
He decided we'd push the car over by the mini-store that's part of so many Pemex stations. About that time, one of the few nasty Mexican's I've met came out. He said he was the station manager and said we'd have to push the car out by the freeway. Javier said, "No. The car won't be safe there." He, his father, the cab driver and one other man pushed the car to the lighted store. The rain continued.
I was perplexed. Calling a tow truck was useless with thousands of cars stalled throughout the city. We'd be there until 3 a.m. I told the girls to take the taxi home and I'd wait. They refused. Then Javier's wife said, "Let's call a tow truck from Chapala."
"It's eleven. Will they come this late?" Betty asked.
"Yes, they're open twenty-four hours and he's a friend of mine," Javier said.
So, our guardian angels, Javier and Norma, called the tow truck. We refused Javier's kind offer to let us ride home in the back of his pickup. After all, we did dress up for dinner. Our taxi driver said he couldn't wait that long, so we thanked him, gave him some money and called another taxi from Chapala. Javier and Norma insisted on waiting with us. He told us we wouldn't be safe there alone at night and my car would definitely have disappeared if I had left it.
"That nasty station owner would probably have called a couple of his friends and told him there was an Explorer waiting for them," Javier said with a smile.
At midnight, as we stood huddled together for warmth on a day which had earlier topped ninety degrees, the tow truck and taxi arrived. The truck driver agreed to take my car back to his secure lot for the night and he would deliver my car to a garage the next morning.
We said our "thank you's" to Javier, Norma and her father, pressed some money into an unwilling hand, and climbed into the taxi. At 12:40 a.m. we were home. We beat the heavy rains by about ten minutes and Sharyn's birds were still dry.
The next morning, Betty drove me to the garage where I paid 850 pesos to the tow-truck driver (about $85 U.S.) and arranged for the car to be repaired. A bi-lingual man offered to stay and interpret for me and I took him and Betty to breakfast in return for their help. At four in the afternoon, the mechanic had isolated the bad electric connector and fixed it for $35 dollars. I called the insurance company and arranged for the paperwork I needed to submit the tow charges. All was right again with my world.
Many things take longer in Mexico, but the warmth and concern of the people for one another and even for us foreigners is, in my experience, without parallel. What a better world it would be if everyone stopped to help their fellow human beings when they are in need.
Viva México!
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