#6 - Our new life in Culiacan, Mexico!
Our new family in Culiacan, Mexico.
After packing our bag packs, we eventually leave Isla Verde on Tuesday morning , to go to the small town of Young in the north part of Uruguay. In fact, before taking our plane to Mexico, we wanted to pay a visit to the Uruguayan office of CLAAS, our main sponsor, located 400km away from our farm.
The first 200km of hitch-hiking go faster than expected, and are the occasion to meet incredible people.
Jules drinking a traditionnal maté in the first car of the day
For instance, a well-dressed man takes us in his car and we start talking with him as old friends. He explains to us that he is a lawyer, and that he has only 10 minutes to go to the court, located 50km away from here. This doesn’t prevent him to take selfies with us, and he tells us that anyway, the audience cannot start without him! After a month of working with Germans, we understand that punctuality is not a key notion for Uruguayans…
A huge bump truck also offers us a ride. After we have thrown our bag packs in the bump, we are still escalading when the truck starts. As we take a nap in this truck, we really feel like we’re in a road movie!
Enjoying a ride in a truck
After 200km, the heat is really hard to support, and we decide to finish the trip with a bus. With our big bag packs and our tired faces, the driver hesitates before allowing us to enter his bus, but he eventually changes his mind when he sees our bills. During this comfortable ride, we understand more what Uruguay looks like: an almost empty country, with a lot of soya, corn and eucalyptuses. Uruguayans seem really laidbacks and friendlies, but proud of their country when it comes to compare with the Argentinian neighbour.
We arrived at Young at night, and meet Werner - who manages CLAAS Uruguay – and his colleagues. We spend the night at Werner’s place, a beautiful house surrounded by fields of soya and sorgho. It is the occasion for us to eat our first real asado – delicious! During this amazing diner with locals, we realize how lucky we are to be there and with people like this.
The day after, Werner takes his car to show us the harvest of a field of sorgho by a CLAAS forage harvester. Bump trucks come and go near the machine and take the sorgho to an empty field nearby, where it is compacted under white tarpaulin. It will later serve as food for the local cows.
The CLAAS Uruguay team
Then, we have lunch with Werner and his dynamics colleagues. During the lunch, it starts raining and we look at each other, thinking that it will be harder than we thought to hitchhike to Montevideo during the afternoon. Many trucks go to Montevideo from here, but they refuse to lift us because the freight companies prevent them to take hitchhikers. As we decide to take the bus, Jules miraculously finds a pick-up that accepts to take us to Montevideo. We throw our bag packs in the back of the pick-up despite the rain, and jump in Matthias’ car.
This four hours ride is the occasion for us to talk with him. Although he is only 4 years older than us, he works hard as a mecanician to feed his 6 y.o. daughter and his wife. He tells us how bad he dreams about travelling, but the lack of time and money makes this desire almost impossible for him. Once more, we keep in mind how lucky we are to be able to take a year off like this.
After a modest night on the couch of the airport’s McDonald's, we take three planes that lead us to Mexico.
Even though we look like European tourists, we won’t be in Cancun these next few weeks but in the state of Sinaloa, unfortunately notorious for the drug cartel that bears his name. As we arrive, we do not know what to expect at the airport where Carlos Sr is waiting for us. But he quickly reassures us: "With me and under my roof, you should have no fear. If you do not look for trouble, then nothing bad happens with the narcos.» Carlos Sr. is the father of Carlos Jr., a friend Tristan met when he was studying in China. He makes us feel very at ease and tells us he absolutely wants us to discover the Mexican culture in depth, and to taste all the typical dishes of Mexico. We are amazed to discover his superb house in a fractionamiento (local equivalent of gated communities) where there is for example a huge pool and a tennis court. We meet his wife and his daughter, both named Alejandra. (As you understand, here it is customary to give to children the name of their parents, from generation to generation). This is going to be our place for the next 3 weeks!
The Gastelum-Gomez family during the Sunday's family lunch
But what about the Travelling Farmers, you may ask yourself?
Don’t worry about this! If we chose Sinaloa, it was to know more about the most agricultural state of Mexico. Every day there are hundreds of trucks that leave the region and supply the entire US west coast in grain and vegetables. However, here in Sinaloa, there is no farm as we have in France. Agriculture is organized in an almost feudal way: they are 52 wealthy families who own gigantic farm enterprises - imagine a small town every time - employing hundreds of cheap labor force and leading the entire economy of the region. These structures are closed, and we are fortunate to benefit from the help of Carlos Sr, who knows many people in the region.
On Monday we’ll go to one of these farms. This is an opportunity to discover the starting point of productions that one can find a few hours later on the US markets. The only downside related to the security of the region is that we cannot work in these exploitations. We are indeed expected as privileged observers before all.
We constantly keep in mind the 4 goals we set at the beginning of this project: to meet new cultures around the world, to understand where food we consume every day comes from by working in the fields, to take time to think more personally to what we do with our lives and to let those who are interested know about everything we discover.
Here, the second objective seems to be set aside: we will understand a lot about the agricultural world, but we will not really work. However, we really have the feeling of being in the heart of the agricultural balance in North America.
In short, we'll see what awaits us in these huge agricultural exploitations next week.
And of course, you'll be the first to be informed!
We will come back next Sunday!