The hotel was an old Spanish Fort in Alamos, Mexico, and the key to the entrance gate was one of those old-timey keys that was about four inches long with a square block on the end. I sympathized with Michelle. Moving the key in the cylinder was as precise as stirring a cup of coffee, and the position of the square had to be exactly right to get that satisfying click to open.

“Hurry, please.” Michelle was frantically jiggling the key in the lock - “I am trying.” I sighed in defeat but stubbornly refused to give up puckering. “You needn’t bother hurrying anymore.” The lock clicked and I shuffled past. MIchelle covered her mouth and nose - “Oh my god.”

It was a short, humbling shuffle through a flower lined courtyard to our room. Shit was pooling in my right boot and the smell was so foul I swear it was visible as a cloud around me. I can’t claim our rush back from the town square was a complete surprise. Call it youthful exuberance, but we’d left the room an hour earlier thinking the worst was behind me. It wasn’t.

The breakfast, in a small restaurant facing the town square, had been a celebration of sorts. Michelle and I were on the home leg of our Barrancas Del Cobre trip, and we had crossed the Sierra Madres the night before in Eore our 1974 Land Rover. It had been our plan to find a place to camp off the dirt track that wound through the sierras. After crossing a wide, shallow river the track was rocky and rutted or dusty, washboard switchbacks with steep cliff faces on both sides. Shortly before sunset we passed an abandoned Federales Dodge pickup full of bullet holes and perched precariously on a boulder off the track’s edge. It put us on edge, and finding no flat place for a tent we drove on through the night to find Alamos at around 2 o’clock in the morning.

In the relative cool of a sunny morning I ordered a pumpkin flour and cheese omelette for breakfast. Michelle often orders the wrong thing and eats half of mine - “Can I try some?” “I don’t think you should. The cheese is greasy and tastes a little off. You don’t have my cast iron stomach.” I said with a smile. I was wrong, and I am sure what resulted was the fault of the Queso.

What followed was 5 hours of an agonizing yet cleansing defeat. My solar plexus felt like they were being yanked by el Diablo himself while he pummelled me in the stomach and kidneys to the tune of the church bells outside. I expelled 2 gallons of creamy liquid into the toilet from below then jumped up to wretch an acidic, chunky soup from my mouth. Mercy would have been the chance to flush in between - but I stared down into what I hath wrought over and over again. When I did get a chance to flush I luxuriated in a disgusting mist that cooled my tear and sweat stained face. Crawling into the shower I stood in an ankle deep slurry of shit and puke until I had the presence of mind to clear the drain of the chunks. It was a long day and when I was spared the evacuation of fluids I was left with the lingering burn of a caustic liquid forced at a heat and friction inducing speed through my orifices.

I clearly wasn’t ready for the stroll around the square and shitting my pants was the final flourish. The entire episode was a gastro restart that ended with a fart while rehydrating with plenty of water and Gatorade crystals. My boots were cleaned under a spigot and left to dry in the back of our Land Rover. My boxer briefs were wrapped in a garbage bag and tossed in a dumpster far from the city centre. My Carhartt pants - they were brand new so I double-garbage bagged them and did the old rip, toss and slam into a laundry machine at a public laundromat close to Sushi USA where we ate lunch back in San Diego, California; 4 desert heat days later.