McDonald’s left me feeling unsatisfied, as usual. We walked around a bit afterwards. Talked about what we’re going to do back home. Went back to McDonald’s for coffee. It was the third time we’d been that day. Soaking up the Mexican culture. Well the coffee is good. Go fuck yourself.

The same girl was still in there working. Already she’d seen us enter both times previous. She was sat down eating on this occasion. Oh jesus, I hope she doesn’t see us. Can you imagine? She did see us. She looked at us like a pair of tragic dogs doomed in our hopelessness.

We sat down and a man bought us our coffee.

It has gone by so quick it seems like yesterday.

Yeah.

What are your three favourite places that we have been?

I’d probably say Santa Marta (Colombia), because we were there for so long, San Juan del Sur (Nicaragua), and Medellin (Colombia)… Then there are the Corn Islands (Nicaragua), Los Llanos (Venezuela) and Playa del Carmen (Mexico), and Mexico City, Bogota (Colombia), Boquete (Panama)… There are too many!

How about the worst?

That’s not too difficult. Managua (Nicaragua), Montezuma (Costa Rica) and Cali (Colombia). They sure rubbed me up the wrong way, like a bad massage…

I would almost put Minca (Colombia) in there. That was pretty grim with food poisoning. The rustic setting wasn’t conducive to simultaneously purging from both north and south poles

Yeah.

I can’t believe it is coming to an end.

We’re talking like we’re going home tomorrow when really we’re just going our separate ways.

Yeah.

We drank our coffee and after a while we rose and walked back to the hostel.

I lay in the dark listening to the sounds above me, those hideous offensive respirations that I wouldn’t hear again, for a while at least.

In the morning we walked down to the metro station together. I was going to the bus station, Boxhead was going to another part of town.

Urgh I didn’t sleep too well last night, I said, it was strange, I kept dreaming of everybody back home. Mark, Peewee, Ratface… I don’t know what the hell they were doing in my head.

The day before we’d walked to the same metro line, on the way to Teotihaucan ruins. There was an old bum with his middle finger in the air and so much hatred upon his face that it was unquantifiable, like every grain of sand in the world. I wondered who he could hate so much. Then I watched his finger and hate-gaze follow Boxhead as he walked past. Heh heh. The old man wasn’t there this time.

I guess this is it.

Yeah.

See you back home.

You take care

Yeah. You take care.

I rode the metro to the bus terminal and bought a ticket. There was a bus going in five minutes. What luck. I climbed aboard and took my seat at the back of the bus, well, some guy was in mine so I took the seat next to him. Shortly after the driver closed the door and looked to the rear in the mirror and put the bus in gear and we pulled away. The bus was almost empty. I moved across the aisle so that I would have two seats to myself.

So this is it, the last chapter in the saga of Boxhead and Wal. Now I’m going by myself back to El Salvador but I can’t help but feel that it’s not going to last much longer. I have too much of a life waiting for me back home, and I’ve got to start my novel (…). I thought about our first meal in Miami airport, and remember our place at the back of the boat on the crossing from Colombia to Panama, under the dinghy, the only shaded spot in the afternoon, and sitting there at the back, everybody else in bed sick or sleeping, almost suspended over the water, blue stretching out before us vast and terrifying, remember all the narrow streets and ancient buildings, trying to make the first game of the World Cup, the dogs, the starvation nights, all the hiking, the buses, the persistent terror of our Spanish lessons, the Justin Bieber lookalike in Cartagena, his face flowing he’d taken so many drugs, marching a huge group of people about looking for a club that was still open, the two English girls scared of beggars in Santa Marta… I DON’T LIKE IT! He’s ten years old. WHAT AN EVENTFUL NIGHT IT HAS BEEN ALREADY! Uhhhhhh

All of it as if it never really happened, just one long sustained hallucination.