Full Bowl Length Post: Back in the USA... Recharging with Orlik Golden Sliced

Log in

SmokingPipes.com Updates

New Cigars




PipesMagazine Approved Sponsor

PipesMagazine Approved Sponsor

PipesMagazine Approved Sponsor

PipesMagazine Approved Sponsor

PipesMagazine Approved Sponsor

Status
Not open for further replies.

12pups

Lifer
Feb 9, 2014
1,063
2
Minnesota
Actually more in my shipment than Orlik Golden Sliced, but it was the buttery calm of Orlik that I clawed through the box for and once in my hand practically gnawed it open.
Mmmm… Couldn’t get pipe tobacco in Mexico. Herb, sure. Women, if I wanted. Even was offered a boy, just name the age I was looking for. No pipe tobacco.
It wasn’t really an offer, either. It was a demand: “You have money. I need that money. You just have to name what you want in exchange for it, and then hand it over to me.” No smiles. No real negotiation. Just … a demanding tone.
Of course, I was both offended and scared. I always go for a larking in a new location. And I’ve been in places where there were travel advisories before. But in Hermosillo and Cabarco there’s a whole different feeling. The Federal checkpoints on the highways, no big deal. They were like DOT stops here. The Army checkpoints, no big deal. Grunts are grunts everywhere in the world. Just like construction crews, seems to me, with guns lazily slung from their back or shoulder instead of leaning on shovels.
The police were a different story. Fully covered, clutching machines guns to their chest with one arm, hanging tightly to the roof top light bar or roll bars of a police pickup, which sped by in little convoys. They looked like ninja-clad aliens to me, or storm troopers from a science fiction movie sent to enforce a foreign sovereignty on earth.
Where the HELL am I? I felt as though I wanted to find the remote and change the channel. I’d fallen through my tv screen. This was surreal. I don’t like this high definition crap. Give me my insulating, protective grainy old reception.
The sight of the police shook me up -- until my hosts explained that unlike the federalis and army, the state police are local. They keep their faces fully masked like that to keep from being recognized, or their families can be targeted. Either that or they were protecting themselves from desert air blowing over them at 80 mph on the highway. Both made sense to me.
Ah, but wasn’t that explanation so relieving.
I was supposed to stay in Cabarco (in Sonora), but due to increased cartel activity in April, my hosts whisked me away to Puerta Penansco, a popular American resort town. If you Google it, you’ll see that retribution, punishment of disloyal members and “messages” to opposing cartels have been going on here for decades. And visiting Americans, though not targeted for this violence, often get in the way.
So I thought I was safe in Puerta Penasco. And I went for a walk. I hadn’t gone four blocks and I was being confronted by men who wanted my money. I was, of course, a little insulted that I was being offered herb, painkillers and prostitutes. I was horrified when he offered me a boy. And then I realized I had made a huge mistake thinking I was safe here, puffing on my pipe (down to dregs of tobacco I’d mixed together, heading for a tobacco shop I’d seen a few more blocks up the street yet). I needed to get back to the motel. I needed to shake this persistent, demanding man.
I’m a large man at 6’ 3”, 225 lb. When little men get this confrontational with me, one-on-one, in my face, experience tells me to watch for several things. One, that he doesn’t reach for an equalizer of some kind behind him or under his shirttails. Two, that he’s not being backed up by friends I don’t see yet around the corner, or from behind the darkened windows of the building. Three, life in his eyes. This guy’s eyes were gleaming, not like the soulless pits I’ve seen before from guys intent on watching you bleed and cry, unconcerned about any damage inflicted on them in the process. This guy just wanted money. What else he was capable of, don’t know. But for the couple blocks he was at my side, he was just trying to get money.
When he got distracted by an easier mark on a side street, I cut across the street, trying to look casual as I did it, but also looking for anyway not to have to backtrack, not to have to pass his corner again.
Back at the gated motel, the Puerta Penasco del Sol, the doormen looked different to me. They still smiled broadly and greeted me in English, convincingly hospitable, but I hadn’t noticed before that the keen radiance from their squinting eyes, the lines on their faces, and their hard bodies made them look, to me, like retired boxers. And I was grateful.
I wanted to go straight to my room. I was shaking a little bit now, aware that I had just done something really, really stupid. But my hosts were in the lobby. They had been looking for me. They wanted to know where I had been. So I just smiled and told them I went for a smoke. They got pretty excited that I’d left the property.
That’s when I got filled in on why we’d come here. But Juan scolded me: “Do you think this hotel is outside of the reach of the cartel?” I hadn’t considered that. “Did you *see* any police who could have helped you?” Actually, I had been looking for a patrol car, thinking the guy would leave me alone if only a cruiser would come by, just like back home. “You won’t find them here, my friend. Think about where you are. Think about why this hotel is allowed to be safe. It is because of the cartel that it is protected. When you leave here, you are not protected.”
Well, that’s all very dramatic and everything. And it might even be true. But I didn’t have any intention of asserting my manhood or freedom or rights as an American right then. I just wanted to find a cigar or something. I wanted a quiet place on the beach and a slow sip of tobacco to take all this in.
The rest of the trip I mostly smoked Mexican cigars. DUDE! They were NOT good. (But I didn’t really find a selection to choose from). I found Swisher Sweet Perfectos at one stop, and that was like finding safety again.
I thought a lot about whether to buy anymore tobacco or not. I still have 16 oz of Captain Black in my garage, if I get desperate enough. And some jars of blending tobaccos (but I suck at blending).
And then I saw Pipes and Cigars special for that 4th of July run, the 1776 tins of the Independence stuff. That got me. (Thanks, Russell!). And I loaded up on my favorite Newminsters, tins of Captan and… Orlik Golden Sliced.
Good gawd, it smelled good to open that, feel it in my fingers, light it, sip at it with slow, long draws in the security of my front stoop, on my sleepy, tree-lined street, which terminates at one end at the lake shore just a few houses down from me, and leads to the sleepy little town I live in to the other.
And then I had time to contemplate the company I work for, the work I do, and the strange irony that I had to take my motorcycle to work in spite of the rain. Same reason I’m doing more international stories. Our energy clients here are suffering. I had stories to do in West Texas’s Permian Basin and in North Dakota on the Bakken. Canceled. Rigs sitting still, contractors cutting labor costs. No one buying our clients’ technology, and our clients cutting back on their marketing expenses – always the first to get slashed.
I can’t fill my truck up with gas because… the price of gas is too low.
Isn’t that something?
… But I won’t whine about it. I’m American. I live in the middle of America. I can walk up the street without being offered a young boy (most days). Pipe tobacco is available and, thanks to P&C, affordable and quickly shipped. And I can sit on my front steps, eyes half closed, no need to be wary of any other thing than not working the Orlik too hard. Just letting it work its magic while I remember Mexico.

 

12pups

Lifer
Feb 9, 2014
1,063
2
Minnesota
I didn't have any trouble in Hermosillo. Beautiful place (as indicated by the name). None whatsoever. Cabarco we avoided, though my story was just outside there a few dozen miles. The checkpoints ... seemed like more than a half dozen of them ... were on the highway (potholed ol' thing) between Cabarco and Puerta Penasco. If I had stayed on the touristy street in front of the hotel, I probably could have saved myself a little unnecessary stress. And Lordy, the beach, the ocean air... it makes you forget where you are. The beaches there are paradise.

 

lonestar

Lifer
Mar 22, 2011
2,854
161
Edgewood Texas
No me gusta nada, yo no quiero that.

Really vivid description of the ugly side of a beautiful country. I won't go to Mexico again, and we used to a lot.

For someone who hasn't been outside the resorts, this is exactly what you find in so many of the towns there.

Now I follow Robert Earl Keenes advice and stay on the Safe Side.

"Down in Piedras Negras the children play with dirt. You better stay off the side roads if you don't want to get hurt"

 

lonestar

Lifer
Mar 22, 2011
2,854
161
Edgewood Texas
Haha, well I was wrong. That's a song by James McMurtry , but here's another for you

"Underneath the barstool, theres a drain on the floor. You better not go in there, if you don't know what thats for"
"Down in Piedras Negras you gotta watch yourself

There's a whole lotta hungry people lookin to share some wealth

And when the oilfield's busted and the peso takes a dive

Stay off the side streets if you wanna come back alive"
But this was written before the cartel violence really exploded. Back in the day tourists and foreigners were protected in general, that was the rule the cartels enforced and everyone understood, but now there don't seem to be any rules.

 

jkrug

Lifer
Jan 23, 2015
2,867
8
Wow, that sounds like a pretty scary adventure. Good that you are back home and safe with a good supply of tobacco. :puffy:

 
Status
Not open for further replies.