Angel Gabriel Soto de Mexico

Hola mis amigos y amigas!

As time goes by and my passport gains chapters, I'm beginning to realize that it's the people I meet along the way that makes the journey fruitful. I wish to relate my 3-day friendship with a remarkable man I met in Mexico. Angel Gabriel Soto was exactly what I wanted a real Mexican to be. He was playing his guitar under the impressive Cancun stars and singing songs in front of the Pizza Hut when we drunkenly stumbled upon him at 4am. His guitar was brutalized and barely playable but Gabriel was happy just to hold it again.

"I was married. I'n stop playin' de music man. Den my wife take everything. Now I'n playin' again."

His English was good enough to teach in Mexico but his accent was still strong enough to be charming. Gabriel explained his love of music and his secrets to happiness. His world-view was simple enough that some may view him as foolish while others see him as a genius. He was certainly one of the most genuine and content people I've met in my travels and his candidness in talking to us drunken strangers made him immediately endearing.

"Jus know mang, when I'n sad, I jus ride my boat in de Caribbean sea dn I'n feel better. I got a bed in de boat, dat's all I need mang!"

Eric Clapton couldn't make this guitar sounds pleasing but Gabriel, with his raspy, vulnerable but passionate voice, gave it his best. I started playing Green Day's "Basket Case" and Gabriel jumped off the picnic table and began clapping in appreciation. (It seems not many drunken Cancun tourists stop to play with him.) He bounced around like an 8-year old on a hotel bed and followed the song up with his now legendary line. I can still hear him say:

"Dat's a beautiful song, mang!"

He walked us around the pier and told us about his failures in life and why he's happy with his current situation. He's a tour guide and engineer for a Jungle Tour. *we realized 'jungle' isn't the right word since the tour is actually just a long, fast boat ride with a brief path through some coral reef.

After hearing him talk about his connection with the water, we knew we had to cruise with him the following day. If you look down in the pictures, you'll see that the man was a 5 foot, pot-bellied fish with a thirst for life that matched his thirst for the sacred cerveza.

He gave us an actual 'special price.' (that's a word that gets tossed around tourist spots of the world. In fact, one of my favorite things is walking into an open market and asking the natives, "Excuse me, is there a special price going on today," and watching them jump to their feet.) Gabriel took us out into the never ending ocean and quickly left the group. He took us to some natives' stand by the river and bought 'de soul'- a spicy Mexican fruit that ended up on my shirt. I enjoyed watching the ocean through his eyes. He didn't talk much and I perceived this as proof of his passion towards life on the water. He told me about his brother's adventures at sea and his life as a boat mechanic. (it seems to me that older generations are able to speak to younger ones much more honestly in other cultures. This is a reoccurring theme in my travels and it never goes unnoticed by me. Of course, I always treat elders with respect but I believe that respect is reciprocated much more in the poorer, more simplistic cultures.)

Gabriel took us out the following night and showed us his endless amount of friends in Cancun. He and I performed on the bus as well. (that's now 6 countries I've performed in! even if only a few songs on a wretched acoustic guitar.) On our last night, we stopped by his picnic table in front of Pizza Hut and sat with him as he finished his solo bottle of Whiskey. He demanded I play Pearl Jam's "Black" one more time for it and we all belted it like drunken fans. We had a schizophrenic, 5 minute goodbye of hugs and slurs and he wrote us a note. I went something like this:

"Hey guys. God Blaze you guy! Love, Angel Gabriel Soto"

(I've chosen to keep him as my lasting memory of Cancun.)