Trial By Water

This weekend my assignment is to attend the state beauty pageant, entitled Nuestra Belleza Jalisco 2006 (Jalisco is the name of the state). Obviously this has its benefits. Although most of the contestants will probably be flanked by their entire families and of course, their boyfriends, it hopefully will live up to its namesake, i.e. the girls should be pretty hot. I will be accompanied on this daring mission by my itinerant sidekick, GT, photographer for the paper, and native of the Mexican state of Nayarit.

The pageant is being held in a town called Arandas, about an hour and a half outside of Guadalajara, which means we will have to drive. In order to facilitate this, my bosses have lent me the company car for the weekend.

I know, it sounded scary to me at first, too.

On Thursday, after we put the finishing touches on the this week's paper at about 10 pm, the four of us (myself, BH, EB, and TH) went out for Uruguayan food in one of Guadalajara's outer neighborhoods. On the way there, I rode in TH's pickup (this time in the front seat), while BH and EB drove in the company car, a boxy Nissan that judging by sheer numbers appears to be one of Mexico's best selling models. After dinner, the three of us (TH had to get back to the office) piled into the Nissan and EB drove us to his house, where we dropped him off.

Then it was my turn to get behind the wheel. It was going to be okay, I told myself, at least for a little while BH would be here in the front seat telling me where to go. We needed to turn around, and only as I attempted a clumsy three-point turn did I realize that the car had no power steering (most cars in Mexico don't). It was quite a workout, but finally we made it on to the main roads, where luckily we saw few other cars. I would say the rest of the ride went smoothly, but only in figurative sense, since the roads in Guadalajara leave much to be desired. At one point during the ride I forgot BH's constant warning to watch out for pesky speed bumps; I pounded over one that was conveniently placed three-quarters of the way down a massive hill.

After a quite pleasant ride we finally reached BH's apartment, and she gave me quick directions on how to get home. Then she shuffled out of the front seat and ran to the gate in front of her house, trying to shield her head from the light drizzle that had just broken through the clouds. I took a deep breath and started the car, trying to convince myself that driving in Mexico wasn't really that different than driving back home. That turned out to be not completely true.

Moments after pulling out of BH's street, the drizzle exploded into a torrential downpour. The severity of the storm wasn't what scared me --we have these every 2 or 3 days in Guadalajara-- it was the fact of being in a car where the windshield wipers could barely scrape off the sheet of water before the next one hit. On my first solo car trip I was trying to concentrate so hard on making it safely to my destination, and this was just another distraction (as was the persistent lightning and thunder). I was so distracted that I took a right too early and soon realized I had to go in the other direction on the avenue I had just turned on to. Luckily there was a glorieta ahead, the Guadalajaran equivalent of a rotary/traffic circle, so I bore to the right in hopes of swinging around 360 degrees. Just as I reached 270 degrees, time stopped. All the streetlights and stoplights and signs suddenly went black; the power had gone out and the city was dead for about 3 seconds until the lights came back on.

The blackout was only the beginning of what soon became a surreal experience. As I lumbered down Avendia Mexico in my Nissan box, all of the storm's lightning and thunder seemed to come from behind me, and this gave me the feeling that I was being followed or even chased. When I finally got to a street name that I recognized, Avenida Enrique Diaz de Leon, I took a right and noticed that on this road, a major thoroughfare, the drainage was, well, non-existent. The road was covered with about 2-3 inches of water, and the cars slowly sloshed through it like we were in the middle of a natural disaster. When I finally got to my street and started to take a left, I am completely certain I saw a wave cresting outside the driver's side window.

Now I turned on to the street parallel to mine (all the streets are one way), which headed downhill and thus felt like coasting down a creekbed, with the surrounding water traveling faster than the car. When I finally reached my apartment and managed to put on my impermeable (raincoat), I stepped out of the car and into the rapids. The water parted around my tennis shoes as I took quick but cautious steps, wetting my shoes and socks and once trying to engulf my entire foot.

I unlocked the door to my apartment and hoped one of my roommates would be home and awake so I could tell the turbulent tale of my trial by water.