The taxi ride becomes bumpy. Colors become brighter, more vivid. What has been a somewhat barren landscape in transit from Leon to Guanajuato becomes more alive with people and trees, children and street vendors. All of a sudden the hills are surrouding us. We enter into a valley that 15 different colors of paint spilled onto.
The clouds thick and voluptuous as they sit still in the sky above the town.I am not sure where to have the driver drop me off, because he seems to have no idea where my street is, we have something in common besides our excitement to be out of the airport.
I have plans to meet Carlos when I arrive. Carlos is a name without a face. All I know is that I am planning on living in his house for the next month. I am running close to five hours late because when I entered into Mexico from the states, I forgot to pick up my bags and take them through customs. Because of this mistake I missed my connecting flight from Guadalajara to Mexico City, and was searched from head to toe, all of my bags unpacked and riffeled through and then had to wait for the next flight. The taxi driver, named Natividad, thought it would be best to drop me at the main market, Marketa Hidalgo. I agreed this would be central enough and it was done, I was left in this new town, this beautiful and fascinating new town, with my worthless spanish, and a deep hunger for fresh Mexican comida, as well as a curiosity to meet my new roomate.
I called Carlos and while deeply struggeling to describe where I was and what I was wearing, I understood nothing he said in return. I just waited and imagined the most hillarious situation possible about to happen. Each man who met eyes with me and carried a cell phone I assumed must be Carlos. An older man with a scowl and a limp was surely him as he searched the benches in front of the market. I stood up and he passed without interest. A scrawney middle aged man with a dog, smoking a ciggarette stopped to search for something and I thought it might be me as I imagined what his home was like and where I would be staying.
My nerves were shaking a bit and close to twenty minutes later I became sure that my attempt at describing my clothes was actually a description of me standing on a blue tree with white pants on. This is when a younger, slim, quite handsome man walked up with a huge smile, greeting me with a hug, a "mucho gusto Leah," and let me know my pants were not white and I was in front of a different market than I had said.
I fell calm and filled with joy for who was in front of me. He had on ripped jeans and cowboy boots that I later learned his brother gifted him, and hand made, long black culy hair quite similar to mine and a very friendly sincere, presence. He truly looked like he came straight from the Bay Area. Everything felt lighter and as we walked up, and up and up to his casa, perhaps because he was carrying my extremely heavy bag, but even more because although he spoke no English at all, I was somehow understaning his spanish and he, my broken spanglish. We stopped to buy some cervesa to celebrate my arrival.
