ERIC BALDAUF PHOTOGRAPHY

Montezuma's Revenge

I'd just turned twenty. To celebrate my maturity I bought a ticket and hopped on a third-class train from Nuevo Laredo on the Texas border to Oaxaca City in Southern Mexico. On the 48-hour journey I consumed ten cold greasy tacos, a half-dozen chile rellenos and an enormous bag of over-ripe mangoes. To cleanse my palate, I sampled a case of warm Carta Blanca beer, a half bottle of tequila and a bucketful of a disgusting cactus drink called pulque that the caballeros kept passing to me from across the aisle.

Maybe it was the drink or the fact that I'd hardly slept in two days, perhaps it was a residual case of youthful stupidity, but upon arrival in Oaxaca I stopped at a taco stand outside the train station and ordered a half-dozen of the most rancid, maggoty-looking tacos in culinary history. By the time I found a bed in a cheap pension a few blocks from the plaza I felt the first rumbles of gastro-rebellion. A few hours later I was face down on the filthy floor of the WC, hugging the toilet bowl, too weak to raise myself up and puke into the already overflowing loo.

That floor was my home for the next three days. By the third evening I felt as if I'd vomited or shat all my bodily organs into that evil little tiled cubicle. Finally, in desperation, I swallowed the two extra-strength Imodium pills I'd brought with me, washing them down with the discolored water provided in a dirty hotel pitcher labeled, "water purificada".

Miraculously, just after dawn on the Sunday, my fourth day in the city, I was able to drag myself out of the hotel and see Oaxaca properly for the first time. Its beauty was a revelation. I made my way to the main plaza where I watched the sun rise through the zocalo's ancient trees. A gang of shoeshine boys and Chiclet vendors huddled beneath tattered panchos, ignoring me as they tried to catch a few last precious moments of shuteye. The sidewalk cafes surrounding the plaza were deserted.

I meandered my way through the empty cobblestone streets to the nearby market, desperate for a drink to quench my insatiable thirst. Alas, none of the food stalls had yet opened. Stray dogs howled in the distance as the entire town slept. Just as I was about to give up hope, I came across a tiny wooden hut. In its doorway sat an old man surrounded by torn brown coconut husks, tapping his machete on a fresh green nut. Across from him sat a young man, his sombrero pulled down over his eyes.
"Qué quieres gringo," the younger of the two asked without looking up?
"Un café," I pleaded in halting Spanish.
"No hay amigo," he chuckled, taking the cowboy hat off, running his hand through his flattened hair, sizing me up at a quick glance, "but Coco Locos, we have many."
He seemed friendly. I thought, sure, why not, if it's liquid it can't be bad. My new amigo, Juan proceeded to empty half the milk from a young coconut, uncork a glass bottle at his feet, and refill the green fruit with a powerful smelling spirit.
"Mescal, hermano," he smiled, as he plunked two straws into the nut and passed it my way. Three Coco Locos later we were friends for life.

Juan decided to take me on a tour of the marketplace cantinas, Illicit little wooden shacks with mescal bottles stacked up to their ceilings. I was given the honor of slurping down the gusano, a worm that floats at the bottom of a mescal bottle, followed by the additional distinction of buying and uncorking an even fouler smelling brew with an even larger worm floating at its base.

The market was packed now as we staggered from bar to bar. As we stood at one particularly sleazy cantina, toasting each other's mothers and cousins and countries, I noticed a drunkard to my left pissing into the urinal that ran at the foot of the bar beneath our feet. In my shock and revulsion I knocked against a full bottle of mescal the barkeeper had just placed on the counter. It seemed to fall in slow motion, glancing off the man's penis and shattering on the floor in a spray of glass and liquid, the gusano somehow landing on his bare toes. Time seemed to stop. The silence was absolute.
"I think you're a dead man," Juan whispered, as I suddenly realized how hopelessly drunk I was. Juan wisely reached into my pocket, pulled out my wallet, plonked a wad of peso notes on the bar and hurriedly dragged me from the premises. The next hour was a haze of market-life psychedelia: squealing pigs, Zapotec Indians, tourist trinkets, papayas, sombreros. I couldn't take it all in as I wobbled, swayed and tottered my way through the crowds.

Eventually, I found myself back in the main plaza. Juan had mysteriously disappeared and I was sprawled on the pavement, practically comatose. The world spun with a malicious vengeance. Church bells reverberated in my ears. Sunday mass had just finished and families surrounded me, dressed in their Sunday best. As they promenaded in a wide birth around my prone body I began to puke my guts out. At that moment I realized what a horrible, self-inflicted hell adulthood could be.
But I didn't have time, nor was I in any position to reflect. I realized that if I didn't get out of there pronto, the Federales would come and scoop me up, drag me off and toss me in the genuine hell of a Mexican jail. I could hardly move, let alone get to my feet, so I began the slow , tedious and horribly embarrassing process of crawling on hands and knees across the plaza towards my hotel. Only when I reached the curb did I realize I'd crawled in the wrong direction, so back across the plaza I crept, to a mixture of laughter, pity and outrage.

It took me almost two hours to slither and vomit the two blocks back to my hotel. I crawled through the front door and past reception without being noticed. After a Herculean effort mounting the stairs I made my way back to the grundgy toilet where I spent my few remaining days in Oaxaca in gastro hell.