Guanajuato Adventure

J contemplates the vast Mexican highlands on our drive to Guanajuato. The white VW bug was last registered in 2006. We guess someone drove it down the hill and couldn't drive it back up so just left it.

The road to Guanajuato, an important colonial city which sits slightly more than 2,000 meters above sea level in a central Mexican highland valley (that’s about 6,500 feet for those of you still fumbling around with the Imperial as opposed to the Metric system of measurement) was one long, slightly climbing grade followed by one long, steeply climbing grade. Wesley chugged along in third gear, and sometimes second gear, wagging a long tail of more powerful vehicles behind it. When the opportunity presented, I would pull over to allow these very patient drivers to pass, and at one of the stops, at the crest of what we hoped was the apex of our climb (not!), we got out to enjoy the view over green hillsides with nothing to hear but our own words and the occasional car going by. The xx of the land as changed from the hot, arid, brown of the northern deserts where we started our visit to more lush farmland, shade trees, and green hillsides as we’ve moved south and this was a beautiful vantage point to enjoy some solitude and vistas - if there was a way for us to pull Wesley off the road so it could not be seen we may have had our first free Mexican camping experience.

Instead we headed for an “RV park” we had read about in the city of Guanajuato that turned out to be some guys’ driveway. We called it camping in the “yonke” (Spanish for junkyard) because in addition to allowing camping, the place also looked to be a final resting place for some other once proud scraps of metal. So, although the site itself was underwhelming, it did come as advertised – semi-clean bathrooms, lots of barking dogs, and only a short jaunt down some very steep alleyways to el centro historico. It was convenient to find camping within the city so we didn’t have to pack up Wesley to drive to the sights so it worked out perfectly – Morrill RV Park; recommended! Part of the draw also was that it came with a great view of the city spread out on the hillside and – bonus - neighbors from Canada who just arrived in Mexico for their own months’ long road trip. This was our first meet up with fellow travelers and we burned the midnight oil and drank quite a bit of the tequila while swapping stories and dreams for our respective trips.

The view from our campsite in Guanajuato was interesting.

We planned to spend only one night in Guanajuato on our way to San Miguel de Allende, but after not pulling in to camp until late afternoon on Wednesday, we decided to spend all day Thursday as well. While we were standing around at the curbside taco joint waiting for our 5 peso tacos (1 peso currently equals about 6 cents) I was tapped on the shoulder by an American who recently moved to Guanajuato with his wife and two young boys from LA. Hector’s work allows he, Adelaide, and the boys to live remotely from its US location most of the year and they’ve been taking advantage of it with stints in Brazil, Germany, and now Guanajuato. We spent some nice time with them as they showed us the best place to get strawberry juice, nutella tacos, filled us in on some of the history of the city, and helped us navigate the streets to our planned activity for the day – the mummy museum.

One of the tunnels that criss-cross under the city of Guanajuato - a former silver-mining center of the Spanish conquistadores.

Coconut enjoys a bag of strawberry juice.

We are trying to implement a system of taking turns picking daily activities and any day your kid chooses to go to a museum you have to do it even if you’ve heard it’s a distasteful, morbid, and creepy spot, and might give you nightmares. Due to the make-up of the soil, when the town had to exhume bodies from certain portions of this cemetery near the turn of the twentieth century, it found that the corpses had been naturally mummified so someone had the interesting idea to put the unclaimed bodies on display so those willing to pay 57 pesos (that’s eleven tacos at the 5 peso taco stand with leftover for a 2 peso piece of bread) could come and gawk at their empty eye sockets, flaccid and flaking skin, and straggly hair. Coconut and J spent a lot of time reading the English language displays which speculated about who these people were in their lives and how they died – one guy was stabbed, another drowned, and one was suspected to have been buried alive based on the position of her hands (covering her face) and the bruises on her arms where she may have beaten them against the stone of the crypt in a desperate, panicked, and unheard, call for help. Apparently it was not uncommon during this time for folks to be buried alive when doctors mistook various epileptic or other seizures as death. Some folks would have a string tied to their finger and attached to a bell above ground so if they woke up from their blackout they could ring the bell and be dug back up – this is where the phrase saved by the bell comes from.

Coconut chose to visit the Mummy Museum but she and J both seem to enjoy the macabre.

Coconut chose to visit the Mummy Museum but she and J both seem to enjoy the macabre. Here they are reading the stories of these three souls.

A real live dead person. Creepy, and Coconut and J are enthralled!

After the museum we walked around the plazas and saw some of the sites – old churches and opulent homes built by the former silver barons – before stopping for a game of cards and bowl of guacamole. J and I had purchased churros – fried bread sprinkled with sugar - earlier in the day, and now, later in the day, the churro vendor showed up to talk to the fruit guy for about twenty minutes with his half sold tray of churros balanced on his head – Mexico’s got talent!

The man with the churros balanced on his head stood like that for longer than it took R to drink her glass of red wine.

Three-quarters of the Vanamos team poses for a sunny afternoon photo-op in the streets of Guanajuato.

The yonke where we camped was down a steep graded driveway and I had well-founded nightmares not about mummies waking from the dead to pull me to the netherworld, but about driving Wesley up the driveway to the street and then out of town. Coming into town we had a harrowing experience when Wesley stalled out when it didn’t have a enough power to navigate an almost ninety degree switchback up a ridiculous hill. I had to slam on the brakes and R pulled the emergency brake to prevent us from rolling back over a nearby pedestrian and into the car following right on our tail. I probably took a few thousand miles off the transmission gunning the engine in first gear to make it up the hill.

It took me three tries to get out of the driveway and we had an uneventful drive after that to a hot spring near San Miguel where we met R’s friend Sean and his friend Mittie. We are now comfortably holed up here, in their house, until Tuesday while we plot our next move and the only thing I’m dreaming about is clean clothes and a hot shower.

Land of the Free

We planned to leave La Posada early on Monday in the direction of the City of San Potosi with our ultimate destinations being Guanajuato and San Miguel de Allende. Our first stop, though, was the grocery store to load up on fruit and water. We had a little scare when Wesley wouldn’t start after we’d run the water pump for ten minutes to empty the month-old Virginia water that still filled the water tank, but after some quick diagnostic work we determined it was only a dead battery so we had a local jump us and we were on our way. Driving in Mexico suits me – it’s basically every man for himself since there is no formal driver’s education program folks are required to take and you can get a license once you reach a certain age – which may be as young as 14 since I’ve seen some pretty young kids driving motorcycles with one or two other friends stacked on behind them.

The view from the captain's seat

What I’ve observed it that it’s acceptable and expected that slow moving vehicles like us drive on the far right side of the road, with two wheels in the shoulder. Faster moving traffic won’t generally pass on the right, which is one thing that really bugged me on the US interstates because cars were flying by on all sides without giving me a chance to get the heck out of the way. Here, if I happen to find myself more to the center of the road because I’m avoiding a pothole, rough patch, or herd of goats, any car coming up on me will flash its lights and then wait until I move over, which I’m more than happy to do once the opportunity presents.

A typical Mexican strip mall on the road from Monterrey to Matehuala - a dirt parking lot fronting a vulka (tire repair shop), restaurant, and otherwise empty landscape

It’s a lot more interesting driving too – I haven’t seen one Office Depot or Best Buy. R and the kids made car bingo cards that included animals grazing on the median, three or more people on a motorcycle, bicyclists traveling in the opposite direction but in our lane, and someone riding a horse, and had the card complete within ten minutes of leaving town. At one point I saw a road crew making a fire by the side of the highway to cook their lunch – which may have been one of the many grazing goats we’ve seen. Many roadside stands advertise “cabrito” – goat – but we’ve yet to stop and have a taste. I’ve seen as many dead dogs on the side of the road as there were dead armadillo in Arkansas and Texas.

80 kilometers an hour is slower than it sounds. Multiply by 6 and drop the last digit and you'll see even Wesley can maintain the pace.

We made it to the smallish city of Matehuala after our first day of driving; merely a way station on our journey. We camped at a hotel/RV park recommended on one of the overlander Facebook groups we’re part of which was really just a parking lot with a very clean bathroom alongside. Matehaula, though, was our first evidence that Mexico has a middle class – we ate at a semi-fancy restaurant alongside a Mexican family that had reserved a few tables to throw some kind of party, people were walking around the streets dressed in suits, and there was a Wal-Mart which we went into hoping to find some good cheddar cheese and came out of with $40 worth of stuff, including a bottle of reposado tequila, two pairs of swim goggles, and some kind of sweet bread in the shape of a lizard.

J versus the sweet lizard bread

Here is J wearing the tail of the lizard as a war-trophy. He dubbed it Rudolph the bread-nosed reindeer.

We also got Wesley a car wash while we shopped, from some guys with buckets and sponges who were hanging around in the parking lot. Apparently the same rule that applies in the U.S. which requires it to rain within hours of washing your car applies also in Mexico and we got a short downpour as soon as we hit Santa Maria del Rio, a small town with dirt streets.

We needed to measure the height of the van to make sure we could get into the secured parking lot in Santa Maria del Rio. While sitting on my shoulders J could just reach the ceiling of the "parking garage" and as you can see here, that gave us plenty of clearance

We had planned to stop the second night in San Luis Potosi but it turned out to be a big, smelly city with lots of American chain stores, so we just drove through the city center and then kept going to this patch of green we saw on our map that looked like a national park but we must have missed a turn somewhere and ended up in this town called Santa Maria del Rio, which is famous for some kind of baby sling woven there which we weren’t in the market for. We were a little bummed about our blunder and it was too late to try to find something different so we got a hotel room on the main square for $30 and found out that we had stumbled into town on a festival night, which I’ll post R’s description of, so it turned out that we had a pretty neat and unplanned experience which are sometimes the ones that you remember most.

The following day we began our lessons in Mexican history in the town of Dolores de Hidalgo where, on September 16, 1810, a local priest named Miguel Hidalgo summoned the town to the church steps and issued what has come to be known as the “Grito de Dolores" (Cry of Dolores - the town originally named Dolores was renamed in honor of Hidalgo) - essentially calling out the Spanish overlords as money grubbing slave masters and urging the people to unite in beating them down. This was the event that marked the beginning of the Mexican war of independence and the day has been adopted as Mexican Independence day, which we will be celebrated shortly.

Some of the pageantry on the streets of Dolores de Hidalgo in anticipation of Mexican Independence Day.

As an American, I’ve learned that Mexico just exists – my New Jersey education did not include a lesson on Mexico and it’s only through some independent learning that I know an intelligent and prosperous indigent population existed before the Europeans arrived and raped and plundered in the name of the Lord, and perhaps the king as well. As we stood in the pretty town square which was decorated to celebrate the anniversary of El Grito, stared at the church steps from which the entreaty was delivered, and ate our hand-churned ice cream that comes in as many flavors as you can name including carrot, and yes, beer, we read to Coconut and J about Hidalgo and the other leaders of the independence movement. We realized the story isn’t that different from the events that gave rise to the American Revolution. Rules that were mostly inspired by squeezing more money out of the colony were imposed on a hard-working, local population by governors doing the bidding of a faraway magistrate, and the people objected.

Statute of Hidalgo with the church in the background and Vanamos family in the foreground

Vanamos family enjoying the famous hand-churned ice cream in Dolores de Hidalgo.

We were able to follow up on this first lesson on Mexican independence at our next stop. Guanajuato is a pretty colonial town high in the mountains, the history of which is centered on silver mining. It was the site of the first victory by the Hidalgo-led freedom fighters over a small garrison of Spaniards and loyalists that had holed up in the town’s granary with all the silver they could stuff in their pockets. Unfortunately for Hidalgo, he was captured shortly afterwards, beheaded, and had his head hung for ten years from a post to discourage other rebellions, which didn’t work, as Mexico eventually gained independence – but we haven’t gotten to that part of the story yet. And even if we don’t get to it – Coconut and J have already learned more than R and I ever did about Mexico and how its people want the same rights, liberties, and opportunities as their Northern neighbors.

Heading out to the Highway

J doing one of the many flips he performed during our week at La Posada

Our time at La Posada has finally come to an end although we tried to extend it as long as we could and we all probably would have been perfectly content to spend the year here and have our skin turn to sandpaper from all the chlorine in the pool.

In part, our inertia stems from indecision – we don’t know where to go next. We’ve been in Mexico for 6 days and we've already concluded there is too much to do in this country even if we had a year and we’ve only got four weeks – my in-laws arrive in Belize, which is about 2,358 kilometers (about 1,400 miles) from Monterrey if you go in a straight line, on October 2 and they would be disappointed, to say the least, if we weren’t there to meet them or didn’t show up within a day or two of their arrival.

Here I am with a map of Mexico and no clue which way to go

To give you some perspective, the land area of Mexico is as much as all of Europe, and we are in north central Mexico – so we’ve basically got the whole country below us. There are three roads leading south out of here and we don’t know which to choose – it’s like the Price Is Right but behind every door you’ve picked the grand prize.

The first road we can choose goes southwest and would take us to Zacatecas, where La Feria starts September 3. According to its own web page, La Feria is one of the three most important fairs in Mexico celebrating the country’s independence from Spain and it boasts the usual celebratory events like bullfights, cockfights, and drinking in public. Going this way would also put us in a direct line to Guadalajara, where we plan to meet Sergio, a boy we began sponsoring through Children’s International about a year ago. We told Sergio that we were going to come visit him and since we are probably the only Americans he knows, we want to keep our word so that he doesn’t think poorly of Americans other than Donald Trump. J is also kind of excited about this visit because Sergio has told us that he plays soccer.

A second road goes more or less straight south to the city of San Luis Potosi and beyond that to two of the colonial gems of Mexico – the cities of Guanajuato and San Miguel de Allende (SMA) – where there is lots of history, architecture, and drinking in public. We’ve got an offer of a place to stay in SMA from a friend of R’s, and we need to pass through there anyway to pick up our VA DMV package that contains the certificate of title with the correct VIN which our friend in Alexandria was able to secure free of charge today. (VA waived the fee to make up for their error of giving us a title with the wrong VIN in the first place). We are also more or less still in line with Guadalajara and that visit to Sergio, so this route makes the most sense. SMA is a big ex-pat community as well which we’ve read about for years and I’m sure that as soon as R sees it and talks to her friend about it, she’s going to want to move there.

A third road goes southeast to the State of San Potosi – land of turquoise rivers and swimming holes, canyoneering and waterfall jumping, and drinking in public. While this direction seems to hold the types of things our family is most into, we would essentially need to double back to get to SMA and Guadalajara, so, as much as we regret missing out on what looks like some beautiful natural areas and fun activities, realistically, we won’t be able to pull off going here, in addition to the other places, with the time that we have. I’m guessing this won’t be the only time this year when we have pass on something we want to do because a year isn’t going to be enough time to see and do all that we want to see and do so we may as well get used to it.

Here are Coconut and J sharing some quality time together and with a screen

One of the other reasons we stuck around La Posada for the entire week was that we wanted to climb in the Potrero Chico. We finally got to do this on Sunday morning and even though my toes are black and blue and I’m sore as a donkey, I’m sure the guide is probably just as sore because by my fourth climb she was basically pulling me up the rock as I took chances with my finger holds and toe holds that I knew I had no real chance of making, but I was so tired that I figured I would either fall and be done or she’d give me just enough help for me to hang on until a more reasonable hold developed. Coconut showed off her climbing skills acquired at Sport Rock in Alexandria, tying all the knots, making all the climbs, and even belaying J and me on one of our climbs.

Maya impressed our climbing guides with her rock know-how and belayed me as I climbed "snake hole". Most of these climbs are well clumb, so there is little danger that a snake actually still lives in the hole.

Poppy climbing

R climbing

Here I am descending from one of the climbs at El Portrero Chico

J climbing at Potrero Chico

ground view

Overall, it was well worth hanging around La Posada the extra time as well as the $100 we paid for four hours climb time, and we got to meet Rudy and Karla, the accomplished climbers and guides that work with La Posada. We would have gone climbing earlier in the week but Rudy and Karla were off somewhere climbing themselves until Friday – so we scheduled to climb with them on Saturday afternoon, but we cancelled because we were hanging out with a Mexican family who had arrived late on Friday night and tried to set up a tent for the first time in the dark. We were playing cards nearby and Coconut has become expert at tent-setting-up so she was able to help them and on Saturday they invited us to swim and BBQ with them and J played with their two boys.

About 150 people and 1600 cans of Tecate beer showed up on Friday night and everyone started drinking as soon as they woke up, though I managed to wait until noon, so by our scheduled climb time the party at La Posada was in full swing, Coconut was deep into her second book of the day, and R was circling me as I hung with the hombres - grilling meat and drinking Clamatos, a mix of beer and tomato juice and maybe clam juice as well that tastes as disgusting as it sounds but as an ambassador of America, I drank what was offered. It seemed like a bad idea to break up the party to go climb.

The same thing happened on Sunday – people partying and drinking all day – and then just before dark, everyone cracked their last Clamato, hopped in their cars, and drove home – apparently without a second thought. In this sense, Mexico does seem to be lawless, but not in the way our media portrays it. I mean, drinking and driving must be illegal, but there doesn’t seem to be any fear of enforcement, or any social stigma against getting blitzed and driving your family home. I saw one mother put her kids in the back seat, then crack a beer and hand it to her husband, who got in the driver’s seat, started the engine, lit a cigarette, and drove them away.

One of the road rules in Mexico is not to drive at night – mostly, we thought, because of the large speed bumps that turn up out of nowhere and the cows, goats, dogs, and people crossing the roads which you can’t see because there are hardly any streetlights. Now, I’m thinking it’s also a good idea to stay off the road at night because of all the drunk people taking their families out for a drive.

La Posada

I'm not usually very good at framing pictures, but I got this one good. The mural, the sign, the entire tree, and one of the mountains. Bienvenido a La Posada!

La Posada has been the perfect landing place for us to rest on our first days in Mexico and plan our next move. It’s in a great natural setting in El Potrero Chico recreation area, which is a world class rock climbing destination, and the gorgeous natural setting, proximity to a grocery and depositario – which is basically a store that sells only beer and chips – and low cost at twenty bucks a night, have all combined to ground us here until Sunday at least.

We give credit to the grounds of the compound for the laid back feel of the place, and the staff are basically working all day every day watering the grass, cutting the grass, and picking up the grass, to keep it in pristine condition – it almost seems like everywhere we decide to sit or play they are not far behind with the lawnmower and hose. Early this morning, a funny, periodic noise we could not place sounded to me like R breathing funny but she thought it was the night watchman spreading gravel, which is pretty ridiculous thinking about it now, but at the time it seemed a plausible explanation given the work ethic we’ve seen from the staff. It turned out to be the sound of the water hitting the palm leaves as the sprinkler made its rotation – this is before the sun came up. I don’t think the sprinkler ever gets turned off. The first night we pitched the tent, the sprinkler was actually moved so that the spray came up just inches short of hitting our tent and one night the hose was left turned on at the base of a tree and created a river that threatened to wash out our site. R had to argue with the guy to turn it off or move it. Remember, we are the only people camping on this large lot with lots of trees and grass in areas that we are not. Apart from the obsession with landscaping wherever we happen to be, they’ve been real nice.

Outside the whitewashed concrete walls of the compound is more representative of the Mexico that I expected – potholed, unlined streets; brown, rustling grasses; dog shit and trash. Though, Hidalgo, the town just a few kilometers below La Posada, is pretty clean – I even saw garbage cans out for trash collection. I took a walk up the road from La Posada this morning and the public access area is strewn with litter – David, the hotel manager, says every Sunday there is a beer party up there. It was so quiet though, that I could hear the wings flapping of a bird as it flew up the dry riverbed.

Entrance to the dumpy Potrero Chico recreation area - home of world class rock climbing, empty buildings, and a public pool. Word is that the beer party in the parking lot on Sunday is not to be missed.

Art in the park. Someone painted this pretty cool face on a rock on the park, and yes, that is what you think it is on the ground in front of it. Not mine!

Upon entering the La Posada compound the driveway empties into a gravel parking area bordered on the right side by a low structure housing the office and the staff quarters and on the left side by a row of one room habitaciones for rent. Just past the office is a restaurant (closed), communal kitchen, and an adjoining patio and some barbecues, and across from that are beautifully manicured and shaded grounds for camping stretching deep into the grounds of the compound. At the end of the parking lot are the pool, which is five-star hotel worthy, a shaded patio where we type and lounge, and bathroom and shower facilities for hombres (men) and mujeres (women). Given my fascination with the old west, which I documented in my blog post about the Alamo, you can just imagine how stoked I am to be referred to as an “hombre” and I’ve taken to wearing the top few buttons of my shirt undone to fit the profile.

We decided to pitch our tents in the middle of the field right next to the parking lot, which was a beautifully shaded spot when we got here in the late afternoon on Tuesday but is otherwise in the sun most of the morning and afternoon. This hasn’t been a problem since we are generally at the pool all day and it’s been a great spot for us especially since J is sleeping in the van and nobody else has been here but a few one-night guests and some day-trippers here just to use the pool, but David tells us it might get crazy on the patio of the communal kitchen on Saturday night so we might be right in the middle of the party which I don’t expect will bother me too much but R, Coconut, and J might not like it.

No one here at La Posada but us and giant, unidentified bugs

A closer look at whatever this guy is called

Hanging around at the pool

David, the hotel manager has been great. He’s fed us the Wifi password, let us play with his guinea pig, and on his one day off for the week, he took us into Monterrey, the big city. We had planned to take a taxi to the bus station in Hidalgo, the town a few kilometers below La Posada, to catch a bus to Monterrey and then metro to the city center, but David must have mentioned to the owner of La Posada that he planned to bring the guests to the city, so Luis, who had some business in town offered to drive us which was very nice. Little did we know that he drives a compact, so R, Coconut, J, and I had to squeeze into the back seat, which we didn’t fit into all that well so R had to scoot herself into the space between the front seats and hog all the air conditioning though some trickled around her to cool those of us riding in third class.

While Luis was gassing his ride, which he would not let me pay for, I thanked David for arranging the ride, especially since he had to chat it up with his boss in the front seat, which I remember from my prior life that is fading much more quickly than I thought it would, can be an awkward thing. David said that in Mexico it is common for employees to have a social relationship with the boss.

Monterrey wasn’t all that exciting though we did get to ride the subway which was much cleaner than the DC Metro – I guess no one reads the Express newspaper or drinks Starbucks coffee and leaves them behind on their way to work – and get to sample “dog” tacos from a street vendor for 10 pesos, which is about 50 cents each. A dog taco is what Nathan, our host in Austin, called tacos from a street vendor because who knows what they are made with. Coconut had the chicken variety and J had a bean version and they both liked them. We also went to a Mexican history museum. Most of the exhibits were explained in Spanish so we were able to breeze through two floors in about an hour. I learned that the different periods of Meso-American culture has many gods of corn. While we were in Monterrey we also got to FedEx the necessary paperwork to Virginia to assist our proxy to secure a Certificate of Title from VA DMV so that we can leave Mexico with Wesley when the time comes. We learned today that the paperwork was already delivered to our house in Virginia in less than 24 hours, which is pretty amazing when you consider that it took us over three weeks to get here.

Crossing the Border into Mexico - There and Back Again

The view from behind Wesley's windshield as we approached the bridge over the Rio Grande. Little did we know we would see this for a second time later in the day.

The sun rose like a tinderbox throwing gasoline on the shadows it cast before us and great billows of steam rose from the blacktop as it heated up after the cool of the night.  We kept our eyes forward as we crept along through the rising vapors, certain the attack would come from the dilapidated shack at roads end where heads furtively peered over bulwarks and eyes cast stealthy glances through knot holes.  We knew they didn’t like foreigners in these parts; especially Americans with squeaky clean driving records and a disregard of fried food. Cries of “Murir, gringo” broke the silence of the morning seconds before the rat-a-tat-tat of machine gun fire kicked up divots of dirt around our ankles. I dove behind the wheel, gunned Wesley’s engine, and headed straight for the ramshackle structure where the enemy, Mexican customs officials, remained hidden like cockroaches. R, Coconut, and J, jumped on board and threw our dirty laundry at them like hand grenades. If this was how they wanted it, they would have my dirty socks to pay for it. We’d come too far to be turned back now.

A Mexican border crossing as described above would be worthy of national news coverage and what most of us know about Mexico we learn from the news. And let me tell you, the national news does not run stories about how our border crossing went, and how hundreds of border crossings every day go – uneventfully. And the national news does not run stories about the oasis of a hotel and campground where we are now holed up – a mere 146 miles from the border – because the only thing that happened here today was that we swam, napped, and ate. And because the national news won’t run our story, I’m going to have to tell it to you myself.

R and I gave some serious thought to what we needed to do to cross the border into Mexico in the most painless and efficient way. Everything we had read advised spending as little time as possible in border towns, in particular on the South side of the border, so our plan was to spend the night in the U.S. border town of Laredo, Texas, cross the Rio Grande first thing, and put the pedal to the metal and drive 200 plus kilometers to Monterrey, Mexico, for the night. One guy we mentioned this plan to advised against spending the night in Laredo, but after searching for options north of Laredo where we could spend the night and still get to the border pretty early, we realized there were none and that his story was as full of holes as the heads of the boaters on Lake Laredo that the cartel used for target practice – may they rest in peace.

We booked a night at the Family Garden Inn in Laredo and arrived there from San Antonio just in time for happy hour – free hot dogs, nachos, and beer – and to find out there is truth to the adage that freedom isn’t free – the hot dogs were mushy, the chips were smothered in that fake nacho cheese crap, and the beer was Lite. I had indigestion before I finished my first hot dog.

Family Garden Inn Suites in Laredo

Coconut at the Family Garden Inn pool

The border opens at eight in the morning for those hoping to cross legally and we roused Coconut and J at 6:45 for our sugar-coated free breakfast and hit the bridge shortly after eight. The Mexican official poked his head into our van for about ten seconds, waved us through, and there we were – spit out into the streets of Nuevo Laredo. No guns, no threats, no hassle.

We had printed instructions about what documentation we needed to obtain visas for ourselves and import Wesley into Mexico to prove that we owned it and didn’t plan to sell it and after a few wrong turns we arrived at the customs house with our paperwork in hand and eager to be fed through the assembly line.

It was here that we learned that the Certificate of Title and registration that we had received from the Virginia DMV for Wesley had the wrong vehicle identification number on it. The customs official actually removed himself from behind his glass window, walked with us out to the parking lot, and confirmed this by comparing our paperwork to the VIN punched into Wesley – there was an X where there should have been a Z.

We were then presented two options – return to Laredo to get a temporary registration for Wesley in Texas with the correct VIN which would allow us to obtain the proper paperwork from Mexico to enter with Wesley, or leave Wesley behind. Since that second option wasn’t really an option, we drove back to Laredo. By this time it was 10 a.m. and about 100 degrees.

It was hot in Laredo and Mexico on Tuesday! The reading on the left is inside Wesley. The reading on the right is the outside temperature.

After going through U.S. Customs, where we wondered if the officer would make us throw away or eat the bananas that we had purchased the day before in Texas, and stopping at a traffic light on every street corner in Laredo on the way to the County Assessor’s office, the light started flashing that Wesley’s engine was overheating. This is the problem I thought I had solved the other day with a wire brush and some electrical tape. I guess I’m not the mechanic I thought I was - or rather, I am that mechanic.

We managed to get to where we needed to go in Laredo, were directed to a parking spot by a Sheriff’s Officer, were met at the door by a woman who made the copies we needed and directed us to the window where we could complete our transaction, and were presented with our temporary registration in about fifteen minutes. How impressive is that? Go Texas.

All during this time – from Mexican customs, back through U.S. Customs, and to the Texas office, Coconut and J were reading their books and playing Plants vs. Zombies on their screens without complaining about the heat, their hunger or thirst, or asking why we didn’t check the VIN when we received the VA DMV paperwork in the first place. In short, they made a stressful situation less stressful by being awesome.

Even after getting the Texas permit, we still had two situations to deal with. First, the permit is only for 90 days and it seems that we have to be present at VA DMV to be able to correct our VA DMV certificate of title to show the correct VIN. Since we won’t be present to do this, we are not sure what is going to happen when we try to leave Mexico after 30 days have expired to enter Belize with paperwork that shows the wrong VIN. Maybe we won’t be allowed to enter Belize?

Second, Wesley’s cooling system appears to have a problem that I can’t fix. While Texas was doing its thing, I fiddled around again with what I had fiddled around with the other day. This time I also added some water to the overflow coolant tank. However, once we had the right paperwork, I still hadn’t started the van so didn’t know if I had accomplished anything. Wesley might overheat at any time.

After a short discussion around these two issues - should we stay or should we go - R and I decided to go for it. We were going to Mexico.

When we arrived back at Mexican Customs, the official stamped us as official, charged us some amount of money – about 5000 pesos - to give us our visas and Wesley his sticker, and sent us on our way – which was into the now hot and throbbing streets of Nuevo Laredo with no data access – R had removed us from Verizon the previous night. So, essentially we were travelling South (compasses don’t need data plans) hoping the coolant light wouldn’t go on, hoping to stumble across the right exit to put us on the road to Monterrey, and hoping to find an ATM to withdraw pesos and a store to buy a SIM card to make our phones work again.

As I sit here typing this at La Posada camping and lodging in El Potrero Chico recreation area near Hidalgo, Mexico, which actually was our destination rather than Monterrey after R did some late night research on the free WiFi at the Family Garden Inn, I feel really fortunate that we did not allow the day to turn into the disaster pie for which it had all the fixins’.

We pitched our tent in the middle of the campground so we could have this view of the mountain. We made the right choice to leave Laredo.

This hotel and campground is beautiful and we are the only ones here. There is a cool breeze blowing that makes the 113 degree temperature we reached today a distant memory. The space we are in is set in a valley between two world class climbing mountains. There are beautiful, shaded grounds and a wicked pool which we’ve already been in twice, and I know my family is content and asleep in our tents which are just out of sight in the wall of darkness created by the lit porch where I am typing this. I know that as soon as I walk out of this canopy of light, and my eyes adjust, I’m going to walk over to Wesley, crack myself a final Tecate beer, and sit back and enjoy a sky full of stars.

J relaxing in the hammock hung over the pool after taking a swim.

Here's another photo of the pool and grounds at La Posada

Remember the Alamo

The church at night - this church was part of the Alamo compound.

We drove from Austin to San Antonio to spend the night for two reasons – to shorten the drive to Laredo and the Mexican border and to visit the Alamo. We checked the Alamo off the bucket list this morning.

I’ve been excited by stories of the Old West since I saw the Brady Bunch episode where Bobby idolizes Jesse James as a hero only to have the grandson of one of his victims relate the story of how James shot his grandfather in the back as evidence that he was a lowdown, dirty, train-robbing, scoundrel. That did not have the desired effect on me, however, and I’ve always romanticized James and other Western characters like Cole Younger, Billy the Kid, Doc Holliday, and Wyatt Earp, not as heroes necessarily, but I admired their grit under pressure, their ability to thrive in harsh living conditions, and the fact that they probably never changed their underwear.

The Alamo, being from that same general era of history, holds the same appeal for me. Now, I’m not going to go so far as to say that visiting the Alamo was a dream come true for me, but one of the first things I thought of when we planned our route to Mexico was going through San Antonio to see the Alamo. You could say I was pretty jacked about it. Yet, everyone I know who had ever seen it was, shall we say, less than impressed.

Well, I say, pistachios to them! While it is true that most of the compound that existed during the battle is buried under the asphalt and concrete of modern day San Antonio, the façade of the church, perhaps the most recognizable feature, remains intact. I don’t know if I would have been satisfied if that was the only thing I saw, but fortunately I don’t have to say because there was a shrine and museum attached – both free, otherwise we might not have gone in – so we got to see important artifacts like James Bowie’s knife and Davy Crockett’s hair brush (they both died at the Alamo) and get a history lesson that allowed us to rate the experience two thumbs up.

All our pictures of the Alamo during the day came out crummy. Notice the Crockett hotel in the background.

I’m going to condense three centuries of Alamo history into a few sentences, and - spoiler alert! – I am going to reveal the ending. The Mission San Antonio de Valero, the original structure on the Alamo site, was a church and out buildings built by the Spanish in the early 1700’s as a means to convert Indians to Catholicism and thereby increase Spanish rule. It was eventually abandoned as the Spanish lost influence in North America and then re-established in the early 1800’s as a strategic military outpost because the town it was situated near, San Antonio de Bexar, was a crossroads and center of commerce. It was referred to as the Alamo starting from this time in honor of the hometown of the Mexican cavalry that was garrisoned there and the name stuck. In Texas’ fight for independence from Mexico in 1835-36, which ironically was brought on in part by Mexico’s restriction on further immigration of U.S. citizens into Texas, it was the scene of a famous battle where the greatly outnumbered Texans who were defending the compound made the decision to stay and fight rather than surrender. They were all killed, but their bravery in electing certain death gave rise to the rallying cry “Remember the Alamo” which inspired an outnumbered army led by Sam Houston to defeat the Mexicans at San Jacinto just a short time later and secure an independent Texas – which was admitted to the Union as the 28th state in 1845.

Surprisingly, Coconut and J were relatively interested in all this because when we stayed in North Carolina a few weeks ago with a sister of a college friend, Frank the husband let us know that his ancestor had been killed at the Alamo. Having this connection made it more bearable for Coconut and J to go through the exhibits looking for his name and reading about what an honorable guy he was. It turns out that James Butler Bonham was one of four commanders and had snuck through the Mexican siege line at one point to get help. Upon learning no help would be coming, Bonham snuck back through the lines, which the other couriers that had been sent out did not do, to let his compatriots know that they were on their own. He died with them on March 6, 1836. One has to wonder why, if it was so easy to sneak through the Mexican lines, the whole army didn’t sneak out and attack the Mexican rear, but I’m not a military strategist so I guess it didn’t make sense at the time.

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pointing to Bowie and Bonham's names

We didn't do anything else in San Antonio, except leave our iPad in the hotel lobby. After we reached Laredo and realized it was missing we called the hotel but it had not been turned in as lost and found. It's a bummer, but the only things that are irreplaceable on it are some photos that we took with the GoPro and potentially all of our personal banking information.

hotel in San Antonio