Los Reyes

The thing about hurricanes is that by the time you notice you’re in one, it’s probably too late to get out.

We were travelling home on the bus together, ‘we’ being exchange students; two Brazilian girls, one German guy, a Swede and me, a 19-year-old Australian with a Spanish vocabulary that was arguably functional in the same way Frankenstein’s monster was arguably a man. Our destination was Veracruz city, capital of Veracruz state – so-christened in the glorious Mexican tradition of reusing names for things it was very easy to confuse in casual conversation. As far as naming conventions went, this one was bizarrely ingrained – I’d once attended an extended family reunion where every male in attendance was named Cecilio, which I can only assume made asking what a specific person had been up to nigh on impossible. But I digress. We were on a bus. Nobody was doing much talking. Apart from we internationals, the driver and a Mexican ex-exchange student chaperone a few years older than us, the Greyhound was completely empty.

And it was absolutely pissing down rain.

It had been fine when we left Boca Del Rio, an uneventful little town where all the state’s exchange students had gathered for a weekend honouring the anniversary of Mexican independence. The trip hadn’t been a choice – few things on exchange were. Rotary International, the organisation through which the exchanges had been organised, had firm plans for what its students did and strict rules about them doing it, and after several months both chaffed at me like an ill-fitting dog collar. There was to be no sex, no driving and no alcohol, and while I was too unattractive to be impacted by the first and had no desire to drive on the wrong side of the road anyway, the no-drinking rule was simply intolerable. I was Australian. I could grow a full beard. The bottle shops had stopped asking me for ID when I was 16 and to paraphrase the Mandalorian, drinking was part of my religion. Being relegated to teetotaling at 19, after a year of enjoying alcohol openly and three years partaking on the sly, was not just frustrating but an insult.

So by the time this trip came round, I was decidedly unenthused; so unenthused, in fact, that on the first night in Boca Del Rio my unenthusiasm manifested as what at the time felt like genuine illness, but in retrospect was most likely a severe case of ‘can’t-be-fucked-itis’. I was taken to a doctor, given a few pills, and consigned to bed rest. Thankfully, whatever I had (or had convinced myself I had) passed by the time we boarded the buses home; nevertheless, the entire excursion looked to have been an irretrievable waste of time.

Then the first powerline came down.

Far from being violent, the collapse was relatively discrete – the howl and crack of the gale and rain muffling the pylon’s fall into a diminutive ‘blumf’. The first indication any of us had that something was amiss was the bus stopping and the driver staring gormlessly at the electrical cables laying across the road. At this point the German boy, Jonas, took stock of the situation.

“We’re all going to die!” he wailed hysterically.
“We’re all going to die!” I echoed in excitement.

It has long been theorised that thousands of years spent evolving on a miserable fog-bound island unintentionally conditioned the British to instinctively respond to discomfort with polite, unflappable cheeriness. It is also theorised that this endurance, transplanted in British convicts and mutated by the nightmare of the Australian wilderness, has further evolved in many Australians to cause them to react to disaster not with terror, but perverse, masochistic glee.

Which would explain why, seeing that we appeared to be in what scholars would call ‘some shit’, I found myself becoming unusually excited.

The last fifteen minutes to Veracruz took an hour. Trees were down. Land was sliding. The Brazilians, Ana and Gabriella, were huddling with Jonas and sobbing. I was the happiest I’d been in months. As the bus driver furiously navigated us down back alleys and side roads I sat with my face glued to the window, cackling manically at the sight of downed buildings, submerged cars and things that had no right to be swimming floating merrily down flooding streets. Finally, through the power of the Greyhound’s engine and the Mexican bus driver’s determination to clock off, we reached the bus terminal. Unsurprisingly, our connection was cancelled.

“What are we going to do?” cried Jonas.
“Ho-lee shit,” I chortled, surveying the disaster.

I’d seen few cities in Mexico which wouldn’t be classified as a mess by the imperious first-world eye, and Veracruz was no exception. The addition of several hundred gigalitres of water did little to help things. The streets-turned-rivers ran thick and brown, flowing fast with detritus which once littered yards and sidewalks but which now sped freely off to one day choke a dolphin. The rain hammered. Horns blared. A janitor with a squeegee mop kept swabbing, in stout dedication to his duties and open defiance of God.

Luckily, though they had their failings, the Mexican Rotary Club acted swiftly in the face of disaster. Marco, our twenty-one-year-old semi-chaperone, managed to call through to someone in authority, and before long a lean, well-dressed Mexican Rotary member arrived in a four-wheel-drive to carry us away. We piled ourselves and our belongings into the back before our grim-faced saviour set off, ploughing his Landcruiser through streets flooded four feet deep with water. I stared at the wake streaming out behind us and considered asking if anyone had a boogie board, but gave up as I didn’t know the Spanish for ‘boogie’.

Our driver, who in very un-Mexican fashion was named John, turned out to be a local hotel owner, and his hotel was only a few blocks away. We piled through his front door like bedraggled rats and were quickly ushered up to a pair of adjacent rooms. There were instructions to stay put and an offer of food if we were quiet. The power was down, so there was no TV and only torchlight. According to John, the road back to our home city was blocked, but was expected to be open again by morning. Everything was closed. We were confined to our rooms. There was nothing to do but wait.

Well, almost nothing.

See, despite my many other personal failings, I am nothing if not hopeful. Although I had gone into this weekend disheartened, I had also secretly bought with me a bottle of Los Reyes, a Mexican spirit of low cost and repute, on the off-chance the opportunity for freedom arose. This was perfectly legal – I was nineteen and completely overage – but given the Rotarians’ strictness on alcohol, when it came to their outings school rules very much still applied. Regardless, I’d smuggled the booze along, hoping God would help those who helped themselves – only to fall sick and render the whole disobedience in vain.

Until now.

Los Reyes, for the uninitiated and the self-respecting, is a discount brandy more akin to brown sugar and methylated spirits than any proper alcohol. It cost approximately four Australian dollars, and tastes like every one of those dollars has been dissolved directly into it. Objectively, it was disgusting – but to a bunch of teenagers trapped in a Mexican hotel room the revelation of this bottle of bottom‑shelf spirits was akin to angels delivering the birth of Jesus. “It’s a miracle!” cried Jonas, and so like a good Christian I recited the Lord’s Sacrament and poured Los Reyes out to all assembled like our very own blood of Christ.

*

‘Los Reyes’ in Spanish means ‘The Kings’, but after a night of playing cards and exchanging drinking games it was unanimously decided that Los Reyes was not a king but a god. A kind, brown‑ish god that had sent a hurricane from the heavens solely to provide us with a night of fun. ‘Praise Los Reyes’ became our mantra the next day as we wandered through the streets, unsupervised and surveying the damage. Veracruz had actually fared quite well against the hurricane, and in the bright light of morning the main thing noticeable was all the dirt and plant debris littering everything, like God had seasoned his soggy city with enormous flakes of chocolate. The six of us meandered aimlessly, finding little that was open and little that was destroyed. We shot pool in a pool hall for an hour before exploring around the harbour, then wandered back to the hotel fully expecting to be ordered back onto a bus. When we arrived though, John had different news.

“The road’s still closed,” he informed us, “Nothing will open until tomorrow. You’ll have to stay another night.” He was barely out of earshot before we erupted in exuberant glee. ‘Praise Los Reyes’ intensified.

Unfortunately, none of the supermarkets were open. We wandered around for a while, trying to find anywhere we could procure more liquor, before on a whim I decided to try a convenience store. There was still mud on the floor when we came in. I enquired in broken Spanish if they had anything to drink.

“Not much," apologised the shopkeeper. “All the good stuff is gone.” He gestured to a single shelf. “This is all we have left; not sure it’s what you’re after.”

There, in all its glory, sat Los Reyes.

*

By the next morning, John was starting to get suspicious. Be it our groggy appearances or the noise no doubt filtering through the walls, the hotel proprietor seemed to suspect that we were having a little too much fun, or was at least becoming annoyed at being forced to let us stay for free. Whatever his complaints, he didn’t voice them – we were all going home today anyway.

Except we weren’t. Come mid-afternoon, it was official – the roads were still closed. We were stuck in Veracruz another day.

Praise Los Reyes.

John was displeased. “No staying in your rooms tonight,” he announced when we returned from another day’s meandering, “There’s a quinceañera on in the function room. You should attend. It’ll be a cultural experience.”

None of us had ever been to a quinceañera – a Mexican birthday party celebrating a fifteen-year-old girl’s statutorily-inaccurate transition to womanhood – so we readily agreed. By now the power was back on and it was getting difficult to tell that a hurricane had been through. The rate of recovery was astounding, and bellied a resilience in the locals that was easily overlooked. Two days after the streets had flooded, the set-up for the quinceañera was immaculate, and when we wandered in and explained to the organisers that we were curious and foreign they welcomed us with open arms.

“Sit here,” they insisted, leading us to a table seemingly set aside for miscellaneous guests, “Let us bring you food.” Having subsisted on little more than ham and cheese sandwiches for the past two days, the offer was gladly accepted. We were soon surrounded by good Mexican food and friendly Mexican company.

“Can I get you guys drinks?” asked one young well-dressed man, who was possibly a family member. Being young exchange students, we said yes. “What would you like?” he asked. Being young exchange students, we said anything. He flashed us a warm smile and ventured to the bar.

“Here,” he grinned upon his return, placing a bottle atop the table, “Enjoy.”

There, before us, stood Los Reyes.

*

On the third day, God and the Mexican government saw fit to clear away the hurricane damage and, sadly, our extended vacation came to an end. Marco and the other exchange students and I parted ways, and though I would like to say our adventure forged life-long bonds, unfortunately that would be a lie. We remained friends throughout our exchange of course, and bought out a few more bottles of Los Reyes on trips whenever discretion allowed. Yet like a first love, the brilliance of those first nights was never truly recaptured. Maybe it was the thrill of the hurricane, drawing us all together. Maybe it was the element of surprise. Maybe we had indeed invoked a god. Regardless, the year ended and we went our separate ways.

I left Mexico a month early and spent the New Year in America, where I was once again relegated to the kids’ table and deemed too young to drink. After meandering my way alone through California, I met my flight at LAX and returned to Australia. ready to put the past year behind me. Though perhaps not all of it; I did, in quiet memory of our once great and glorious god, bring with me a single bottle of Los Reyes. I relayed this story to a good friend while we shared it, and sat in contemplative silence pondering life’s many mysteries.

“It tastes pretty bad,” my friend opined, eyeing his glass with scepticism, “Are you sure it’s magical?”

“Probably not,” I admitted, taking another sip, “It’s just shitty spirits. Adventure comes from the soul.” He nodded in agreement and we settled back in our comfy pants for a quiet evening indoors.

Later that night, after half a bottle of Los Reyes, we’d crash a wedding.

But that’s a story for another time.