Chapter One

Bella

It was hot, dusty, and crowded, just as I knew it would be, a bad idea but once Renee got one in her head it was almost impossible to shake her out of it. We always had one crazy vacation a year, had done ever since I was about four and this year had been the craziest yet. The moment I heard about it I got a bad feeling. I was just finishing my homework when she burst into the room and dumped a load of colourful pamphlets and travel guides on top of it.

"Well what do you think?"

I looked at her confused,

"The books Bella, look at the guides."

I picked up the top one which featured a rather sleazy looking Mexican bandit with a droopy moustache and a strange grin on his face, together with poncho and sombrero he looked like he'd escaped from a spaghetti western. I looked on the back,

"What are you doing Bella?"

"Just looking for Clint Eastwood."

"Who? Why?"

Then the penny dropped,

"Now Bella don't be sarcastic, it isn't clever. I'll admit he looks a little like a caricature but its what's inside I want you to look at."

I opened the guide and saw it was from a travel company who specialized in unescorted tours of Mexico using local transport.

"Well, what do you think?"

"Isn't it a bit ambitious for us?"

"Oh it wont just be us, my friend from work and her boyfriend will be with us. Its probably more sensible to have a man along anyway on a trip like this. So?"

"Their transport system isn't the best mum, especially if you go out of the main cities."

"Bella you really will have to learn to be more adventurous. It'll be fun, seeing another country, I thought we'd learn a little Spanish before we go, you speak some don't you?"

"Only a few words from my school pen pal but I don't think that's going to be enough. I'm not sure, 'Where can I get a beer?' and 'I love Bruce Springsteen' will get us far do you?"

She smiled,

"Well the first might."

AS I looked disapprovingly at her she sighed,

"Bella, we're going. Three weeks in August, coach to the border, cross on foot and then bus trips from then on so you'll only need a rucksack."

"Have you told dad about this?"

He'd hit the roof last year when she told him she was taking me back packing in the Rockies, just the two of us.

"I don't need Charlie's permission to take my daughter on holiday Bella. I'll speak to him in the next few days, now make sure you get a Spanish phrase book when you go to the book store. I'm going to look up some recipes so we can get a taste for Mexico before we go and before you come out with any words of wisdom we are going to eat native and I don't mean Taco Bell."

She had made her mind up and nothing dad or I said changed her mind so here we were, the four of us, on a rickety old bus somewhere in the wilds of Mexico. A bus that was full of women shouting to each other, old men snoring, and chickens squawking at the level of a jumbo jet. Mum's friend Cynthia was nice enough but her boyfriend, our muscle, looked as if a good dinner would help. He was six foot six tall and had the muscle tone of a matchstick. He was wearing a tee shirt with a sunflower on it, one of a selection he had of different flowers and if you got cornered by him then God help you, because after a two hour lecture on the flora and fauna of Mexico you were ready to end it all. I'm sure he was a really nice guy but he was so single minded and so boring. I managed to grab an inside seat with mum so I didn't have to listen to him drone on about some wild plant that was indigenous to this area. As we travelled it got hotter and dustier and by the time we finally got off I felt like a limp lettuce leaf. Luckily the small hotel Renee had booked actually existed, last night we'd spent in a bus shelter because the hotel had closed down two years before! I was never so pleased to see and glory be there was hot water, well very warm anyway and I wasn't about to complain. The meal wasn't bad either, as long as you liked chilli's and more chilli's. My stomach was slowly becoming accustomed to them but I dreaded to think if it had any lining left!

After dinner while the others chatted with locals in the bar I went upstairs to our room and rang Charlie on my cell phone. Mum didn't know it but we'd agreed I would call in once a day so he knew we were A) Alive and B) Where we were. I know he thought he might have to send a search party looking for us although he had calmed down a bit when Renee told him about Bernard. I hadn't the heart to tell him what Bernard was like or he wouldn't be so mellow. I recounted the bus trip and the photographs Renee had taken every time the bus stopped for more than five minutes which seemed to be every second stop. I thought our transport system was slow but in relation to Mexico's it was supersonic! After our call I washed up and climbed into bed stiff and sore from travelling on a bus with only one spring and shattered from the heat and dust. I was too exhausted to open a book and fell asleep almost immediately.

Renee

This trip was turning out to be our best yet although Bella didn't seem to acknowledge the educational value of it. She didn't say much just gazed out the windows and hardly tried to interact with the locals. I'd met some interesting people on the buses we'd used for our trip. A priest, a grave digger, a travelling slaughter man, and a nun. Now where else would you meet such a selection as that? She thought I didn't know she rang Charlie every night and I was happy to let her go on thinking that if it made them both happy. Like him she wasn't an adventurous person, she hadn't inherited my genes as far as that was concerned. I was a little upset that she didn't take more time for Bernard, he was a little dry I'll admit but he had a heart of gold and he liked her.

Cynthia and I stayed up longer than Bernard who'd rather look at his plant books than drink in the bar. We had acquired a taste for the rough tequila these small bars served and soon got chatting to three local guys who worked on the fields around the village.

"Where are you ladies going next?"

I'm sure I mangled the name of the town but not so badly that it explained their expressions.

"Is not good to go there. You find another route. That is a bad area. Bandits."

The other two nodded their heads vigorously,

"Si, is very bad, very dangerous."

We looked at each other, the travel company hadn't warned us about this area so what was going on? When I refreshed our drinks I spoke to the barman about the next leg of our journey and his face went a shade lighter too.

"Is better you go back, go another way. It's dangerous in the hills, people go missing, some die, some just vanish."

"I don't think they'd hurt an American citizen, it would bring diplomatic pressure to bear."

He shook his head,

"I don't think they care Señora. You go back its best."

As we went up to bed Cynthia and I discussed the warning and decided as the travel company hadn't warned us that it was probably a feud between two villages or something, they were very superstitious the Mexicans, especially the ones who never left their villages and there were a lot of those or so it seemed.