Mexico 1973 ~ The "Magic Bus"

Since I'm in Nashville having a great time, I thought I'd rerun an earlier post (06/22/07) about one of my very early traveling experiences.


Jen at Get In the Car, along with a couple of her girlfriends, recently packed up the kids and headed to Mexico for a vacation. Sounds like she had a great time, and her posts brought back memories of my time spent there. After I left a comment of disbelief that they would drive there, I realized it has been 34 years since I lived there. I am sure many things have changed, one being the safety of driving around so freely. Jen suggested I share a story. I have so many, and some crazy ones that have surfaced in the past few days since she jogged my memory.

I was 18, just graduated from high school and lived in middle class burbs of Detroit. I was a "hippie" type chick ... loved the look, but thankfully had definite hygiene addictions. I met Bob, at the Aorta, just before my senior year was over. He was 21, a pot smoking, vegetarian, anti-anyone over 30 hippie, raised by a nice Catholic very well to do family, father being a top executive at Ford.

We decided to go to Mexico as soon as I graduated. I think the farthest I had ever traveled was up north on "vacation" when I was little ... about 200 miles away. And so we were going. I bought hiking boots, a back pack, got a passport and we literally stuck out our thumbs on I-75 in Royal Oak, MI ... headed to Mexico!

Like I said I have tons of stories, and maybe I will pepper the months ahead with them, but for now, I will tell one that was funny ... but maybe you had to be there. * buzzed *

We were in Santa Cruz, on the beach. Anytime we came to a town, any American or Canadian, or English speaking person for that matter, became your best buddy in less than fifteen minutes.

As we sat on the beach, a VW van pulled up. Yeah, all painted with peace signs, flowers, tie-dyed curtains, beads, the whole hippie thing. They got out and it was two couples. Lets just call them the Mama's and Papa's ... same look, singers, guitars, free spirits ... you get the picture. We all sat there watching dolphins swim by, talking about where we have been so far, our adventures, playing frisbee, and I recall some sharing of the mota. The Mama's showed me how to tear apart a pair of my jeans and sew the two inner seams together up the front and the outer seams up the back so I too, could have a long blue jean skirt like they were wearing.

After the sunset, Bob and I grabbed our gear and headed to a local family's piece of property to hang out hammocks to sleep for the night. *That's another story, renting trees for hanging hammocks was a must or you would be robbed and attacked by banditos unless you were paying a local to watch over you*

The next morning, Bob and I were going to head out, so we got up early, packed up our gear, then decided to go say good-by.

We headed to the beach and there we saw it. The van. The VW hand painted, right out of Haight-Ashbury hippie van. In the ocean. Water, almost up to the windows. We started yelling to them and they opened the door .... kinda.

The night before, after we left them, they all crashed, (probably with a little more mota) never giving a thought to the fact that they pulled in at low tide and were rocked asleep throughout the night with the high tide. Giving a whole new meaning to high tide.