Just the right place, just the right time

Motorcycles have taken me to some of the most memorable places, and most unforgettable experiences, of my life, from the beauty of the Going to the Sun Road in Glacier National Park on my 10th wedding anniversary to the thrill of testing how fast I could go on a Kawasak ZX-10R on the back straight at Losail International Circuit near Doha, Qatar. One of the most memorable was on this day many years ago, and happened totally by accident.

That December, living in Ohio and still missing my former life in the tropics every winter, I decided to use my vacation time and take a trip south. I loaded the 40,000-mile BMW F650 I’d bought that year into the back of my equally well used truck and drove to Tennessee, figuring that was far enough south that I’d be able to get back to it without hitting snow. Then I rode several days south, well into Mexico, seeing some off-the-beaten-path sites, until it was time to turn around and start home. Mostly by chance, that turn-around point was the city of Tuxpan, in the state of Veracruz.

It all started because I wanted a motorcycle ride to somewhere warm in December, to immerse myself in both the Latin American culture I missed and the tropical sunshine that came with it.

As I wrote in my book, “Nobody goes to Tuxpan, which is the main reason I went there.” I didn’t want a tourist destination. I wanted to fade into the background and observe the daily lives of the people around me: rushing home from work, anticipating dinner, staring in a store window and weighing the joy versus the expense of buying that toy for a son. Street vendors aggressively trying to sell a few more packs of gum or a frilly girls’ hair barrettes before the day’s last light fades.

I booked a modest hotel room for two nights and the next day I did an easy ride to a nearby archaeological site, resting up to begin the long ride back home the following day. But that second afternoon in Tuxpan, everything felt different. In addition to the usual street vendors, dozens of women were selling candles on the streets and all the stores had them on display. When I picked up my clothes at the laundry, I talked to the woman who ran the business and her teenage son, who told me his dreams of being a musician and maybe someday being able to perform in the United States. After I answered all his questions, I had questions of my own about the sudden spike in candle sales.

A child lights candles along the street as part of the traditional remembrance.

As it turns out, my last night in Tuxpan was el Día del Niño Perdido, or Lost Child Day. It’s a local tradition that dates back to the 1800s, when child mortality was so much more common. Families that had lost a child would place candles in front of their houses in remembrance. Today, the tradition carries on. Those thousands of candles sold by sidewalk vendors were placed along the edges of the sidewalks to line the streets after dark, and all evening adults and teenagers scurried around to relight candles blown out by the breeze. Instead of traffic, those candlelit streets were filled with strolling families. Small children pulled homemade cars and trucks behind them on strings. The little cars, some of them elaborate, resembled the kinds of floats you’d see in a parade in the United States, only about 1/100th scale.

Families stroll the streets and children pull their decorated carritos, like miniature parade floats.

It was a festival not quite like anything I’d seen before, anywhere: more somber and sober than most Latin American fiestas, less commercial than U.S. festivals, and utterly unique. Tonight, December 7, the people of Tuxpan and other towns in that part of Mexico will light the candles again, carrying on the lovely tradition of el Día del Niño Perdido. I only know about it because pure luck and the kind of magic that travel sometimes provides took me to the one place in the world on that December night that I might have chosen to be, if I had even known that such a holiday existed. And it all started because I simply wanted a warm motorcycle ride in December.