Seeing Through the Cracks

Chapter 5

  Before we set off, we are given a small hand drawn map from the representative at the car rental station. Nick offers to handle the map-reading for the trip. All four of us agree to remain awake in order to support me, the sole driver. Nick, Jake, and Myles will take turns sitting up front in the passenger seat and keep me company. We have no food with us and our last meal was breakfast. We decide that we will make a stop very soon for gas and food. We have not been given a full tank. Jake suggests that I should consider drinking some kind of super sweet and highly caffeinated beverage like Red Bull to help me to stay alert for the drive. I am a holistic health practitioner; I don't even drink caffeinated coffee. I don't know how my body would react to this, but I consider it for later.

Once we leave the city lights of Huatulco, it becomes quite dark on the highway. It is a narrow two lane roadway that soon appears to be built around a mountain, and we are on the inside lane, hugging the skirt. We have no idea where the next gas stop might be; there are no signs directing this. But there are seemingly endless signs indicating the many sharp turns on the road. The car has six gears, but I am rarely able to get it into fourth gear before needing to gear down to navigate another turn. We quickly discern that the only other vehicles that travel these roads at night are large tour buses and transport trucks. They seem to have a much better handle at manoeuvring the challenging course and move at a greater speed than I. I keep the window open for fresh, cool mountain air that will keep me alert and help me concentrate. My hands are kept busy, shifting the gears up and down as well as signalling my headlights from normal to high beam and back again, as I approach either an oncoming vehicle, a curve in the road, or both. My legs muscles are put to good use switching from clutch to brake to gas, and I feel grateful that I am not sitting still. The focus required, as well as the deliberate physical motion helps to keep me on guard. At no point can I take my eyes off of the road. This is unfamiliar territory and although I have driven along many dark countryside roads in my life, none have offered such treacherous conditions as this mountain road. I begin to think that we're insane for even attempting this, and then quickly push that thought away. I must just keep concentrating on driving.

After the first hour on the road we come upon a petrol station, where we can fill up the tank and purchase some snacks. All that we can muster up are M & M candy and potato chips, and I get myself a Red Bull. As I am manoeuvring the vehicle to leave I discover that I can't get the reverse gear to work. Thankfully we can move around and leave the station without the use of reverse, but I will need to continue to be aware of this as we pull into future stops. This is just one more challenge now, of many.

The Red Bull tastes terrible, and after I swallow it, it burps back up in my throat as a sharp foaminess. It literally feels like I am putting poison in my body, but hot coffee or tea do not seem to be available, and the guys tell me those wouldn't have the kick I'll need to remain awake. I am now concerned that I won't be able to sleep once we reach a hotel. We eat up the candies and chips, satisfying our hunger for the moment. We drive on, really still unsure as to where exactly we are. We come to a tollbooth and are suddenly struck by the fact that we need Mexican pesos to pay. We start collecting what we each have left over from our vacation and pool it for future tolls. We leave the booth and there appears to be a second route that we can take. It doesn't seem to be indicated on our scratched out, primitive map. We decide to stick to the road we were already taking, unaware that it is the longer of the two routes.

The route appears to be taking us all the way around the mountain, up and down and through vacant, dark areas with seemingly no settled towns for several miles in between. And when we do prepare to enter an inhabited place, we must slow down for large speed bumps that are difficult to anticipate until we are almost upon them. Along the route, there are signs to watch out for fallen rocks, and for cows and donkeys. There are no cellular towers, our phones will not connect if we are in an emergency, we cannot update Brian, and we cannot even listen to the radio in the car. It is us against the world, and we entertain ourselves and each other with stories, jokes, word games, and complete silliness; we are all starting to feel punchy, likely the effects of a combination of adrenalin, mountain air and increased altitude.

We manage to get through several toll booths on what little pesos we have, and continue to hope with each one that it is the last we will have to pass through. We require a number of stops for pee breaks, not always able to find an open gas station with available washrooms. We look for roadside shoulders in remote areas. None of us will leave the vehicle to urinate unless a second person is standing watch. It is eerily quiet and difficult to see what is beyond the next bend. Between the stimulants of the Red Bulls and the pressure we're under to continue moving forward, our bladders all seem to be on overdrive. As the night progresses and fill-up stations are closing we start finding what appear to be roadside shacks that sell refreshments. We continue to fill up on caffeine, chips and sweets, and hope that our money lasts us to the end. The trip is taking much longer than we anticipated, and it is now well past midnight.

We enter into the tightest bend so far, and it feels like a continuous circle that we never straighten out from. This must be a smaller part of the mountain that lets us wind around it so quickly. Suddenly, I see a boulder up ahead on the road...and a tour bus approaching us from behind it. I start doing mental math as I calculate the space. There isn't enough of it. We can't squeeze by, and we're running out of road to brake in.

I immediately begin to gear down, my breath catching in my chest as the terror seizes me. I'm braking as fast and as hard as possible, and I can see he is doing the same. Passengers must be getting tossed forwards in his vehicle as we all try to come to a screeching halt.

Then we both stop.

I somehow manage to move my whitened knuckles, giving a little flash of my headlights to the driver in appreciation, and in recognition of the fact that we're all not dead. We all sink back in our seats and exhale a massive sigh of relief. As I begin to drive forward and pass the bus and rock, I realize just how close that was, and how damn lucky we were. We just missed a bus, literally, and we're a bit giddy thanks to adrenaline combining with the knowledge that we're all still alive. But we're not out of the dark yet.

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