Busting our Budget in Puerto Escondido

Las ropas means "the clothes" and I haven't been changing mine that frequently. When R and I traveled to India years ago we read that in the underwear department, all we needed were three pair - one to wear, one to wash, and one to make our mothers happy. Before this trip, R bought me two pairs of Ex Officio brand underwear (my Mom passed away a few years ago so I didn't need a third pair to make her happy) which are treated with anti-microbial stuff to make them smell less, plus are made of a quick drying material so they can be hand washed at night and be dry enough to slip into in the morning. So, just so you don't think I'm a total dirtbag, you should know I have been washing my underwear each night. It's pointless to change my other clothes, however, because they get soaked through with sweat moments after I put them on. I could go through my entire wardrobe in a day. Everyone who's ever said that they wanted to throw it all in and go live on a beach in Mexico probably hasn't considered how fucking hot it is down here in the summer.

Anyway, I was thinking about ropas this afternoon as I was walking back to our hotel with our 5.5 kilos (1 kilo equals about 2 pounds) of laundry for which I paid only 14 pesos per kilo to drop off at the lavanderia earlier in the day and have someone wash, dry, and fold. I was pretty happy about how cheap it was because I'd also been thinking earlier in the day that we are pretty much busting our budget this week by staying in a really nice, but really expensive hotel in the Punta Zicatela area, in the city of Puerto Escondido, in Oaxaca state.

Our budget for the trip is $100 a day for room, food, and everything else and we had been right on target to close September around the $3,000 mark, but then we found this place - Casamar Suites - and I misunderstood the owner of the hotel to be offering us the two bedroom apartment where we are staying for $100 for the week, not per night as it turned out. Coconut made an algebraic equation using our monthly budget, and what we had spent so far this month plus the cost of the apartment and we learned that we could only spend an additional $40 a day for the rest of the month for food and everything else, which is very doable - especially so considering that we have a full kitchen for R to cook our meals - but there's a lot to do in Puerto Escondido and R does not want to cook our meals and on top of eating out a lot, we've been busy every day with activities.

Puerto, as it's called, is a big surfing spot - boasting the Mexican Pipeline - and even though none of us surf, we all want to learn. R had a lesson the other day and the instructor rated her a 9.9 out of ten - I'm pretty sure he was rating her surfing skills and not how she looks in her yellow swim trunks because that's a straight up ten - but, unfortunately, for unfathomable reasons, the kids and I failed to witness her epicness and thus, there are no pictures of her standing on the board three times. Learning to surf is R's physical skill she wants to learn this year, so probably we will have plenty more opportunities to witness her greatness and we'll be able to post some pictures in the future so you can see it too.

Yesterday afternoon we went spearfishing - yes, we gave our ten year old son a harpoon gun and showed him how to pull the trigger, which may have been the highlight of his life since he actually posed for pictures and he doesn't usually do that - and it was probably the safest that fish have ever been from being caught, but we had a heck of a lot of fun shooting the harpoon into the underwater rocks (after it missed the fish) and we did see a stingray, which Mexicans call manta rays, but we didn't get to kill it either.

This morning we arose at 6 a.m. to take a boat ride through a nearby lagoon which is a protected area and home, we are told, to 250 crocodiles. Nobody fell in, which is a good thing, but probably would have been really, really exciting, but we did see two crocodiles attack each other with jaws snapping which was a highlight because it wasn't staged for the camera - their anger was real. Anyone reading this in the D.C. area should go check out the alligator feedings at the National Zoo - it's less threatening, but also pretty cool.

Coconut, J, and I have also been taking Spanish language lessons. I've realized that there's so much to learn from people if I could only communicate with them better - this is probably also true at home in the U.S. - that I will really feel that I let myself down if I don't come out of this year more knowledgeable in Spanish. People just seem much more open and friendly here as well, so much so that no subject seems off limits to ask about. For example, the other day, which was very hot, R and I were walking somewhere and a guy was pushing a cart along the road selling shaved ice for 10 pesos a bag - and he's got a bunch of flavors of sweetener he'll pour on it many of which we have no idea about so it's always a grand adventure to find out if you like something. While he was making R's strawberry ice and my lemon ice and we were all sitting there in the sun sweating our huevos off, R asked him how much he makes in a day. Can you imagine asking the woman at Starbucks how much she makes a day? This guy, on a good day - when he sells his entire cooler of ice - makes 500 pesos, which is about 30 bucks. It was about three p.m. when we met him and he had half his cooler of ice left and he was in a pretty random part of town to be selling shaved ice so he may have just been calling it a day and settling for 250 pesos.

We read an article that Mexico recently passed a new law setting a minimum wage at 70 pesos a day. We've been keeping track and recently the dollar was doing pretty good against the peso to the tune of 1 buck to 17 pesos, so, if you do the math, 70 pesos isn't too many dollars, but it does seem to be enough to live on, at least in a modest lifestyle. So when you compare $4 a day in earnings against our $100 a day budget, which we more than occasionally exceed, you can see we lead a pretty extravagant lifestyle and are already thinking about retiring here because you get a lot more bang for your buck. For example, tonight, the kids had two slices of pizza and an enormous Nutella crepe each, and R and I had four tacos and four spring roll things between us and a margarita and a beer, all for only $18. Then we came back to our $100 a night apartment and turned on the air conditioning, which the owner comped us because there is no one else here and he doesn't want us to leave.

Puerto, and La Punta in particular, seem ripe with opportunities. Because I'm not feeling that great about paying $100 a night for a room, we looked at some other places. We found a 4 story place on AirBnB that was absolutely beautiful with a super hero view of the beach from the rooftop palapa and less per day than what we are paying for our two bedroom apartment with kitchen here at Casamar. The owner of the AirBnB place lives in China and only comes to Puerto in December. The drawback of the place was that it was about five blocks from the beach, imagine that, and really, not near anything except chickens, dogs, and empty lots. Casamar, on the other hand, is right on the main Punta block, which is one block off the beach, with lots of restaurants, hotels, and young gringo surfers and their girls around, but also lots of empty lots that are for sale and just waiting to be turned into a gold mine. It's also a couple blocks from a great fruteria that has the sweetest pineapples and also sells green beans, which this family loves and which are hard to find here, and offers free yoga classes and ping pong. I'm sure that J would also want me to mention now that he beat me at ping pong, legit, for the first time today, ever, but I will say that I had drunk 1.2 liters of beer before we played, not an excuse, and that I followed up the 21-19 loss by trouncing him 21-7 in consecutive games to take the series. But boy, was he happy that he won a game - he said, "I see a pattern - every 20,000 games we play, I win one" - which I think is a bit of an exaggeration because we haven't played that many times yet, but not too far off the mark.

Well, anyway, I may have lost the point, but just to wrap things up, we are in Puerto Escondido on the Pacific Coast, and love it, but have to leave this weekend so we can get to Mazunte, just an hour or so further south along the coast, to meet R's parents on October 6. Originally, we planned to meet them in Belize on October 2, but that was going to be too much driving, and as we wound our way up and down the Sierra Madre mountains, documented in an earlier post, R and I discussed asking them to change their route, eat the fees, and meet us on the coast, which they didn't even blink about.  Thank you to them: Opa (German for grandpa) and PoPo (Chinese for grandma). So, we are going to spend some time with them on the beach in Mazunte, then drive back up into the mountains to Oaxaca City, another supposedly beautiful colonial city, and a lot cooler temperature-wise than the coast, and stay there maybe for as long as a month because it's supposed to be the place to be on Day of the Dead - November 1. So, as much as we are running slightly over our financial budget, we are way exceeding our time budget. We planned to be in Mexico only a month, but here we are considering staying more than two months - it's an incredible place that we, Americans, should not be afraid to visit. It's beautiful, and great value. And the beer is cold, at least for a few minutes.

South to Acapulco

(Editor's note - Technical difficulties with uploading pictures right now. I will add them when the Wifi connection is better.)

The coastal road running south out of Zihua towards Acapulco doesn't really run along the coast except for a few spots where it sidles up and offers spectacular views of virgin beach and crashing waves stretching for miles in either direction. Because Mexico is a land of opportunists, if not a land of opportunity, a restaurant or two has typically planted its flag along these spots and we enjoyed our first free night of camping at La Barrita, a beach area recommended by the On the Road in Mexico FaceBook group, which offered a big, dirt parking lot, basic bathroom facilities - a pipe with cold water spilling out of it that passed for a shower, and toilets with no seats and a bucket to fill at said pipe to encourage flushing - and not much else. This group is apparently more focused on free than amenities, but we did have an outstanding octopus dish with garlic and oil at the restaurant where we camped so I would give it a thumbs up overall.

The surf is pretty rough along this coast - even in Acapulco, which we may all think of as an ideal vacation spot, several people drown each year - but it was so dang hot at La Barrita that we never considered not swimming, and if the Mexicans are doing it, it must be okay. During our frolicking, the rolling surf washed a dead seal onto the beach - it stunk even worse than you would think a quite dead seal with tendrils trailing from the holes where its eyes once were would smell, but that didn't stop all the local kids from poking it with their fingers - and I had to help the hombres lift the thing into the back of a pickup truck so they could drive away and do who knows what with it. R and I were impressed, and happy, that a bunch of guys who didn't seem to be marine biologists, and may have moments before been drinking vast quantities of beer, it being late Sunday afternoon and all, acted quickly to remove the foul thing from the beach where people were enjoying themselves and not thinking about dead seals or what they might smell like.

Mostly though, the coastal road winds inland up and down mild grades and through mango groves and coconut plantations, past random piles of trash and areas of scorched earth where previous random piles of trash have been burned, and into dozens of two tope towns where young entreprenuers have taken it upon themselves to have one guy repaint the topes so they are visible from a distance and the other guy stand there with a cup asking for contributions. I gladly throw a few pesos in the cup because, first, it encourages their industriousness, and second, as a driver in Mexico, I appreciate being able to see the tope before its right there in front of me and I have to slam on the brakes or bounce over the thing at high speed.

We found the pleasant Acapulco RV park right on the beach in Pie de la Cuesta - a spit of land between the ocean and a lagoon on the outskirts of Acapulco. We didn't plan to spend anytime at all in Acapulco - it being a big city with a nasty reputation for crime and scams - but for the second time on this trip, our credit card information has been stolen and used by someone in the D.C. area to purchase lip balm at Rite Aid. We tried to have new cards shipped to us in Zihua, but that didn't work out, so we arranged to pick up the package at the UPS office in Acapulco.

Coconut and J had no interest in going into the city, and R and I didn't fuss over it with them - it was eleven in the morning, 100 degrees, and all we had was an address for the office and a GPS map that only intermittently showed where we were. The RV park, on the other hand, was fenced and locked, shady, breezy, and had a small pool. Plus, aside from the nice lady that ran the campground and an adjacent store, and two guys doing maintenance work, we were the only people there.

R and I started our city adventure by taking a local bus to the city center which was home to a bustling, throbbing, sweltering market, and then taking a VW Bug taxi, the driver of which liked to use his horn, could only come to rest inches from the bumper of the car in front, and did not stop at traffic lights, even when it required him to pass the 20 odd cars stopped in our lane by going into the oncoming traffic lane, before going straight through the red light. Fifty pesos and eight harrowing minutes later while we wondered if the kids would know what to do if we never returned, he deposited us on a street in Acapulco which did not appear to have a UPS office on it. After some asking around, though, we knocked on an unmarked garage door and were handed a package that contained our new cards. We were amazed, again, at how business gets done, and a little impressed with ourselves that we had actually figured it out.

Meanwhile, back at camp, J vomited up the eggs I had cooked him for breakfast. The day before, shortly after we arrived at the RV park, J gathered all the fallen coconuts, took our hand axe, and bashed them until he had a jar full of the water. J and I were drinking right from the coconuts throughout the process and this may have been why he vomited and I began to feel crappy on the bus ride back to camp. As a testament that, despite all our failings as parents, we've done something right, Coconut sat J down and made him comfortable, went to the store to get him a cold drink, and otherwise tended him until R and I returned about two hours later with a grilled chicken which I ended up eating myself over the course of the next 8 hours because everyone else wasn't interested in eating chicken and I was, even though I spent the rest of the day and night walking the fifty meters (1 meter = about 1 yard) from camp to the bathroom. By the next day, we were fine.

Being so close to Acapulco, we thought we really should see the famous cliff diving, so we took a room in the city at the Sands Hotel, which was a block from the famous Acapulco bay, which R and I weren't impressed by in the ten or fifteen sweltering minutes that we strolled hand in hand along its surfline. The Sands Hotel has a nice pool, AC, and a playground called Sandslandia that R said looked like a show room for playgrounds because it had equipment stacked on top of equipment stacked on top of equipment. We already knew from our time in Ecuador a few summers ago that playground regulations in some countries, to the extent they exist, have yet to catch up to U.S. standards and that it is okay to have jagged, rusty metal pieces as part of the equipment and cinder blocks, broken bottles, and clumps of weeds to hide other dangers in the "fall zone", so we were more amused than surprised.

The cliff divers, clavadistas, of Acapulco can be seen from a public viewing point, or from the dining room of the once fancy but now faded Mirador Hotel. This turned out to be perfect because it was my Mom's birthday and we were able to justify our expensive meal - J had flambé for dessert - as a celebration of her life and dining in style while watching these brave kids - none older than 25 years of age - jump into the water from one cliff, rock-climb 135 feet up the other side to the jumping platform, and then dive into a narrow channel between the two cliff faces, was definitely an experience that was not to be missed and that she would not have missed had she been physically present. These kid divers, who can only choose this life if their ancestors were divers, might actually have the best job in Mexico because the cost of part of our meal, and the cost to view the show from the public area, funds their weekly wage, medical and life insurance, and a pension. I've not yet heard of any other job in Mexico that provides such benefits.

Another job with benefits in Acapulco is being a police officer, and the other thing we'll remember about the city was that I got stopped three times in two days for going through a red light, and one of those times I wasn't even in the car, but standing in front of it. The officer pointed at the back of the light, he couldn't see the front of the light from where he was positioned so couldn't see whether it was red or green in the first place, and told me I went through it. This was the second time in about twenty minutes that I had been accused of running a light - we'd only been in Acapulco about 40 minutes in total - so I was still amped up from the first time and had just practiced the drill. We'd read plenty about this abuse of power - officer will stop you for some made up transgression - speeding, illegal lane change, running a stop sign or traffic light - and will threaten you with a hefty ticket that can be setttled on the spot for a fraction of the cost - which, of course, will end up in his pocket. It's called the "mordita" (bite) and you can either pay it, not recommended as it encourages further, similar abuse of others, or admit you were bad, and insist on being taken to the station to pay the fine. (In Mexico, traffic fines are paid at the courthouse, they are not mailed in as in the States). Of course, the officer doesn't want to go to the station even if you really did commit a traffic violation because none of the spoils will end up in his grubby hands.

The first cop, a fat motorcycle cop who kept going from R's window to my window reducing his asking price during the process from 1,250 pesos to 300 pesos, we actuallly thought was tryng to help us navigate the bedlam happening in the streets but then it became this game of pay me now and you won't have to go to the courthouse in three days. I wavered after he offered to take us to a nice hotel as part of the deal, but R stuck to the script and kept insisting we go to the station to pay now, then she mentioned something about me being a government employee in D.C. and somehow this became I was law enforcement - me, serial runner of red lights, law enforcement! - and the cop just went away. I considered telling the second cop that I was CIA, but he was much less persistent and after I insisted a few times that I be brought to the station - I considered it bad form to point out that I had not been driving the car at the time I had supposedly gone through the red light - he just let me go.

The next day R set up the GoPro in the front window before we started driving, and we decided that only I would talk and she would act like she didn't know Spanish. Sure enough, after I definitely did not run a light, I got pulled over for running a light, and while I am talking to the cop R starts fiddling with the camera, making a show out of taking it from the window. That put a quick halt to the proceedings and we were out of there in less than two minutes and the cop even let us know that we had missed our turn, which must have been because I was paying such close attention to obeying the traffic signals.         

One Friday Night in Zihua

Every day we go to the beach and the meseros (waiters) who stand around there wave to us and shout things at us in Spanish which I hope are recommendations in favor of their particular establishment and not denigrations of my yellow swim shirt – machismo is big in Mexico and I’m not sure I am projecting the right image with my color selection. They’ve always said the things they say with smiles, and we’ve had a meal at two of the places, but generally I try to avoid making eye contact with them because I feel like we can get cheaper and better eats off the beach, and darn it if I don’t look good in yellow.

Tonight, after eating mediocre pizza for dinner (Pizza! In a Mexican fishing village! Damn kids.) and drinking a strong margarita or two at one of those off the beach places, I was heading down for my last swim of the day and saw two of the guys sitting at the top of the public access steps drinking beer and smoking cigarettes, which is the universal language, so I stopped and with my idiotic Spanish told them we were leaving tomorrow and this and that. Before I knew what was happening - though, who am I to protest - we were sitting on the beach and C. and his nameless friend had gotten me a glass of beer and were waxing eloquent about a friend who gave surf lessons someplace, and another place for us to go, and all sorts of other things that I didn’t catch. Fortunately, R showed up with her new, tight bathing suit, which I love, and the two guys stopped paying attention to me and started talking to R, which was fine because she actually understood what they were saying and the conversation could be above the first grade level that I could offer.

Good thing, because it turned out to be quite an interesting conversation that I was left out of, though, I did have the important role of pouring the beer, which, if I was grading my performance, I passed with flying colors – yellow shirt and all.

Both C. and X grew up here. They like the trending of the city to tourism because otherwise they would fish. As a waiter, they make no salary, but earn 10 pesos on a hundred that they bring into the restaurant. On a good day, they can make 1,000 pesos. Some days they make 30 pesos. The two meals that we have had at the beach restaurants where they work (they work at competing restaurants) ran around 400 pesos. We tip 10 percent, because we heard that is the norm, but Cesar and X said typically they get a 15 peso tip or nothing at all, regardless of the total.

While I covered my feet with the cool evening sand, sipped beer, and watched the Pacific crash against the shore, they also talked about the narco-violence that all of us Americans have heard so much about. Both C. and X assured us that we were safe anywhere in Mexico – we would not be targeted. The value of tourism is recognized, and persons who rob or otherwise harass tourists are dealt with – apparently in such an unpleasant and final way by the cartel that it discourages others from having such thoughts. While this gave me some comfort, it also caused me some guilt, probably due to my Catholic upbringing, that our presence in Mexico might tempt some down and out hoodlum to hold us up for our measly belongings and thus meet an untimely end while wearing my shorts which hadn’t been properly washed in a couple of months.

C. and his friend do have some reservations about the gang culture in Zihua because El Tigre, the boss of the local trafficking business, has recently been jailed, permanently, they think, and it is unclear who will be his successor. El Tigre had proclaimed that no “propina” would be required for local businesses to operate, so for the last few years, what money came into the restaurant went into the pockets of those who had earned it, rather than those who purported to protect it. R is very familiar with this concept of protection money from her law practice, as several of her clients have sought asylum in the United States, or in Ecuador when she worked for a non-profit there in 2008, because they refused to cater to the demands of the gangs that ruled the streets. Of course, failure to abide means that you are out of business at best, or at worst, cut up and served as an entrée at the establishment of the owner that does abide. So, you either pay, or you go, or you die.

The other interesting thing that they talked about while I stared off into the darkening skies and wondered at R’s ability to carry on a grown-up conversation in another language, was something that I think is very relevant to consider amongst all the idiotic rhetoric spewing from a certain also-ran for the U.S. presidency – Mexican immigration to the U.S.

I’ve seen C. on the beach every day for a week trying to woo patrons into his restaurant, but also playing with his ever-present three-year old son. There’s no daycare while he goes to work – the boy is there with him, all day, on the hot beach. This is true everywhere we’ve been so far – the kids are there, at work, with their parent(s). Whether it is after school, or in lieu of school, the kids are there, helping with the trade that keeps the family fed and clothed, and hopefully, sheltered.

But C.’s point was that he wouldn’t trade any amount of money he could earn in the U.S. for the time he gets to spend each day with his wife – who granted, is a masseuse and probably knows a trick or two about easing tension – and his son. He related that his uncle spent many years in the U.S. and that his cousins always had new shoes and gadgets (a Walkman and even a cool pager – that only worked in the US so was useless except as a prop), but that ultimately, they resented that their father was not at home with them.

The suggestion that Latino immigrants are in the U.S. to rape our women, sell high-quality gateway drugs to us and our children, and take our jobs cleaning airport toilets, is embarrassing. In the first instance, I’m embarrassed that it even resonates with anyone, and second, I’m embarrassed that our Congress hasn’t done anything in umpteen years about fixing what everyone recognizes as an area that needs governance. It’s also demeaning to those who make the sacrifice to risk their own lives and families to emigrate.

The Latino immigrants do what they must, just as we would. They cross illegally because there is no way for them to do so legally, and they work long days at jobs no American wants so they can earn more money than they could at home and send that money home with the intention to provide a better life for their families. And the flip side, the side we don’t think much about, is that they are away from their families - sometimes permanently. They can’t go back for birthdays, holidays, or deaths. Their kids might grow up without them ever knowing them and all they have to show for their sacrifice is a pile of letters and cards from people that they are doing everything that they can for, just as we would for our families and loved ones, and that they want to know, but don’t.

Zihuatanejo - Our Beach Vacation

We've been in Zihuatanejo for a week. When we pulled up last Friday, the hotel manager, a retired rodeo cowboy named Nacho, quoted us a daily cost which was much more than we wanted to pay for a beach-view, two-bedroom apartment - something like 1,300 pesos (about $75) a night. After we protested, Nacho said, we have a custom in Mexico - negotiation. He took a seat on the edge of the coffee table. You tell me what you want to pay for the night, he said, and then I will counter with my price. If we can't agree, then we roll the dice.

After a little back and forth negotiation, we remained 100 pesos apart. Nacho took a big wooden die off the bookshelf and handed it to J. You are four persons, he said, if you roll that number, you pay your price. If not, you pay mine. When R explained what was going on to J, you could see the weight of the world settle on the poor boy's shoulders. He knows how we love a bargain, and he probably hates spending money more than any of us, so from his point of view, if anything but four came up he would have really let us down.

"You better roll a four," I told him to keep the pressure on.

J took a deep breath, tossed the die confidently in the air and caught it, and then spun it across the white, tile floor. We all watched it bounce, teeter on edge like a sailboat taking a sharp turn in a strong wind, and settle on . . . four! We all jumped, even Nacho, like we'd just won all the guacamole we could eat in a lifetime rather than saving $6 a night on our rent. But that's how things got started here and it's been just about that good since.

Have you seen the view from our apartment?

After knocking back a few shots of the tequila that I offered him, Nacho mentioned that if we stayed longer than the four nights we agreed too, he would charge us even less for each additional night. So here we are a week later - we can't pass up a bargain. Nacho was happy too, because, as he put it, he had brought his freedom. Even though he lost his commission for renting under the owner's asking price, the longer we stayed, the longer he could spend the days as he pleased and not have to stand in the street trying to get someone to rent the apartment.

Zihua, as it's called, is our first extended interaction with the working class. Who knows if Nacho really lost his commission. Maybe, but it didn't seem to concern him that much as he later offered us even more of a discount on the rent. Maybe he's got a nest egg to fall back on. I'm not sure others that we've interacted with do. Life seems very much to be a hand to mouth existence for the many who rely on others to buy their wares or food or services.

We negotiated with Jose, who we met on the street while he was buying a cold coconut drink, to captain a boat to take us fishing and snorkeling for 1,000 pesos ($60). Think about that. We met the guy while we were walking past a coconut stand, which was nowhere near the pier, and he pointed at a boat off in the distance in the marina and talked us into letting him captain it for us. Then we gave him 300 pesos as a deposit and got a little piece of paper in return that said we gave him 300 pesos. Then we walked with him to the place where we needed to rent snorkeling equipment for the four of us, and handed all the gear to him to store in the boat overnight. Then we treated ourselves to ice cream like we'd finally settled something that had been a problem for us for a long time. Would that ever happen in the States? Not a chance. We would probably have walked away from the guy thinking he spiked his coconut milk with rum. Instead, here, we had only a little doubt that he was the guy he said he was and would take us out into the bay to troll for fish and would not disappear with our deposit and snorkeling gear. It's just a different mindset on how business is run - everything is informal. For example, the waiters come into the street or onto the beach where you are building a sand castle to try to get you to come into their restaurant.

But back to the point - after Jose actually showed up the next day with the boat keys and snorkeling equipment, how much of our $60 did he take home?  Not all of it for sure, but I think he made out okay. He kept most of the fish we caught, so he could either sell them, or more likely, eat them. We tipped him after we learned he had to borrow the boat. We invited him to eat lunch with us - which was the mackerel that J caught and that we brought to a restaurant Jose recommended for preparation, and that restaurant also gave him two Micheladas, a beer and tomato juice concoction I won't go near, as props for bringing our business their way. So, in the end, he walked away with some money, some fish, and a buzz. I know I'd be happy with those spoils.

Me with a bonito that I reeled in, and Jose in the background. We turned the fish into ceviche at the restaurant that Jose took us too.

During high season, Jose is an employee on the same boat, which does deep sea fishing trips and the type of trip we went on, depending on what gets booked each day. R asked if the money he makes during high season is enough to sustain him through the year and he said not really. He needs to hustle folks like us who are just out for a drink of cold coconut milk. Life is hard.

Us hanging on the boat being easy

I gave a ten peso tip to the guy at the pier who helped us out of the boat. If he does that 100 times a day and everyone gives him 10 pesos, it's about $60. That's almost equivalent to someone in the U.S. working 10 hours a day at minimum wage. Think about that - 10 hours of work for $72.25. Here, if you earn $60 a day you may be at the higher end of the lower class pay scale. Come to think of it, I wonder how you even get that job as pier host. Is it based on an application or is it more like a giant king of the raft battle every morning amongst all the wanna-bees with the last man standing host for the day? The juice guy we met in Huetamo paid his employees about 150 pesos a day - that's almost $10. Seventy dollars a week. It may be enough to live on, but it's certainly not enough to get ahead on - to save and plan for the future as is so drilled into us in America as the goal to strive for.

One of the American couples we met who lives here is at odds with their parents who feel they are not doing enough for their future. The couple is making enough to live comfortably now, and are having a good time doing what they want to do, but apparently is not making enough to bank for the future. It's a lot of pressure put on us to make enough money for food, shelter, and Netflix now, and to save enough so that we do not have to pick half-eaten bagels out of the trash and sleep on subway grates later. Add children and a college education into the mix, and the daily outlook for fun begins to look even more bleak.

Do we feel privileged? A little bit. We could pay $24 for dinner like we did last night every night for a year and it would set us back less than $12,000. We saved more than that. We could pay the $42 a night we are paying for this place all year and it would come out around $18,500, slightly more than our Alexandria mortgage. We saved more than that, too. But it came with sacrifices. R is self-employed and I work for the government - money wasn't just falling around us from the sky. We planned for this; I drank Pabst Blue Ribbon for a while until I learned the brand was purchased by InBev, and then I drank Modelo until I learned it was purchased by InBev, and then I said the heck with it and started drinking more expensive and better tasting local micro-brews and tried to save money in other ways - I haven't purchased a new CD since Neil Young released Chrome Dreams in 2007. And I know we can eat and live more cheaply here than we have been - which is why, eventually, we are going to leave here. Probably Saturday.

But anyway, let's bring this thing back up from the depths of the deep subjects of which we have just scratched the surface. This is our beach vacation, after all. Things aren't supposed to get so heavy. We've been in the ocean everyday - several times. We've built amazing sandcastles with thick sand walls and sturdy sand towers and decorated them with shells, and rocks, and bottle caps, and watched from our balcony as people have deliberately stomped them back into the beach. Why do people feel compelled to tread on when they can walk around? We've had so much beach time, in fact, that our skin is peeling from our faces and bald heads from sun overexposure. Between my new haircut, which I love, and flaking skin, some would say my head was a mess right now.

J poses with one of our majestic sand castles

We went fishing. Jose took us, and J reeled in a big mackerel. He was as excited about that as he was nervous about rolling for our rent. As we walked from the pier to the restaurant with our big mackerel in hand, people stopped and looked - no one had seen a mackerel that big, or at least not recently - and tried to be friends with us, the mackerel catching family, and we smiled and shook our mackerel at them and waved like the Queen of England.

J and the Mackerel that garnered much awe

Our mackerel was so big that I also needed to be photographed with it even though I didn't catch it.

We go to market and buy fruit - avocados and apples and plums and pineapple and peaches - and vegetables - radishes (big and red!) and broccoli and onions and tomatoes - and juice and fish.

At its heart, Zihua is a fishing village, and every morning the fishermen who have been out all night run their boats into shore (Literally. They line up to head full speed into the beach and pull up the propeller at the last moment before crunching the hull into the sand) to sell their catch which is a bunch of fish that I don't know how to say in English, but also includes swordfish, marlin,and Ronco, the local whitefish. There are also millions of anchovies splashing about in the bay, shouting here I am, come and catch me, and the fishermen come with their nets at all times of day to catch them, and the birds dive headfirst into the sea from the sky to eat them, and other fish stalk them from below the surface and eat them. We've decided life is hard, and probably short, for anchovies.

Fishermen sell their catch at market each morning.

We've played cards using watermelon seeds - 400 of them from a single half-watermelon - as poker chips (it's a math lesson - probabilities). We've finally sorted out our iPod to contain music that the kids should know - like the Rolling Stones, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, and Frank Zappa.

We've had a mechanic check out Wesley after the hard slog through the mountains (clean bill of health), we've done laundry, and we've downloaded some of the things we've needed for the kids to be educated to the standards of the Alexandria Public School System, where they will return to school next year if we decide to go back.

And I've had time to reflect on some of the things we've seen and heard that I was too busy to think about when we were driving every day or every other day. And that's why you get posts like this that go on and on.

What we eat and other musings

In a word – food. In a Spanish word – comida. Before we left the States we made a final visit to Trader Joe’s in Austin, which is our go-to grocery store when at home in Virginia, to load up on all our familiars like the Blistered Peanuts, Z-bars, good cheeses, granola and High Fiber Cereal. Although we don’t have a lot of that stuff left, we don’t miss it (except for the cheese) because we’ve found plenty of food in Mexico to satisfy our palate.

For example, instead of the peanuts, we’ve discovered fried plantain chips: just as salty and cheaper! Instead of TJs’ freshly squeezed orange juice in a box, we get our juice freshly squeezed at a juice stand.

R, who is a notorious fruit-stand stopper, tells this story about a trip to Baja she took years ago where the group saw a sign for oranges, stopped, and found the largest bag full of the ugliest oranges one could imagine. Having stopped, however, they felt compelled to buy, and were rewarded with the sweetest trove of fruit; the sorry looking things putting their prettier, larger, American cousins to a tail between the legs type of shame. On our first day driving in Mexico we saw a sign for oranges and stopped, of course. The cold, orange juice the man was selling was so delicious that we also brought a dollar bag of about 30 ugly oranges, and in anticipation of the sweet nectar, struggled to peel one of the dang things, only to be disappointed with the sourest, stringiest, excuse of an orange. The bag was quickly cast into the corner of Wesley and we would occasionally throw disdainful looks at it. In optimistic moments, J or I would take the five minutes or so that it took to peel one of these sorry citrus and attempt to enjoy it, however, it was never a pleasant experience and we were always left feeling used. We couldn’t even feed them to someone’s pet guinea pig, which apparently only ate oranges. When we got to SMA, J squeezed the juice out of the last 20 or so with the juicer that Sean and Mittie had, added sugar and water, and we were finally rid of them, and felt somewhat validated for buying them in the first place because he made some pretty good juice.

Another early stop was at a street side vendor selling bean tacos. Coconut and J both loved them (me too – they were 10 pesos each) and now if they don’t like what we have for lunch or dinner, or if they are still hungry after eating lunch or dinner, I can make them a bean taco with the tortillas and can of refried beans that we always try to keep on hand. Sometimes I’ll add some leftover rice from a meal we’ve had or cheese if we have something that’s not this strange Mexican version of cheese.

Because we can cook in Wesley, we make frequent grocery store stops to provision our non-perishables. We also have a fairly reliable solar set up to power the refrigerator and can keep things like milk, beer, spaghetti sauce, and leftovers from previous meals. We’ve been buying returnable five-gallon jugs of purified water and filling our water bottles and keeping those in the fridge (cold water just tastes better than hot water does when the temperatures outside reach 40 degrees Celsius) and dumping the rest in Wesley’s storage tank where we can drink it out of the tap. We don’t drink the tap water at hotels, etc., but do brush our teeth with it. We’ve got an antibacterial vegetable wash that many Mexicans add to water for soaking fruits and vegetables before eating. No one has had a serious gastrointestinal problem, yet. R was feeling poorly for a few days earlier in the trip, which was ironic because in our past travels, she’s been the solid one. (Haha. Get it?) The kids haven’t complained, and have been fairly adventurous in their eating – Coconut especially so.

The markets are amazing – the variety of fruits and vegetables, the colors, the sounds and smells, the heat and dogs. And everything is for sale; meats, household items, hardware, toys, clothes, juices, prepared foods, and inevitably, there’s a three piece band set up cranking out the local favorites.

The Zihuatanejo Market band

Each place we’ve been, the market has a different atmosphere to it, but each is such a local experience that I think wandering through the markets is my favorite part of traveling. Plus, I love loading up on the cheap fruits and veggies.

This morning at the market I got a beet and carrot juice for 30 pesos (almost two dollars) and for less than a buck, a shredded chicken with mole negro sandwich. (Mole is a chili sauce prepared a bunch of different ways depending on region and it’s pronounced “mo-lay”.) We also spent about $15 on: a pound of chopped beef (J wants meatballs), fresh fish from the pescadores selling their morning catch on the beach (R is going to make us tiritas, a local type of ceviche), lots of fruit and vegetables at market – including apples, avocados, limes, an onion, tomatoes, a pineapple, radishes, plums - and 4 fresh baked rolls. Avocados are especially cheap – we can buy three or four depending on size, for a dollar. We are a mango eating family and we are right at the end of mango season so we’ve enjoyed our share of those as well. (On the other hand, we’re also a watermelon eating family and we will likely not buy another. Unlike the US where fruit is GMO’d to our perfectly bland and seedless preference, the watermelons here are full of pesky seeds and we all hate eating them, though we have found a good use for them - watermelon seed poker chips!)

Our first few days in Mexico had us wanting to eat local food but finding it difficult to know what street-side eateries were rundown-looking yet open and which were rundown-looking and closed – there isn’t much difference and only occasionally does the presentation of a place seem to be given any consideration by the proprietor. If we stuck to our ingrained programming of fresh paint and landscaping before considering whether to dine at a particular establishment, we might starve. Fortunately, we also learned before we tried it, that “barbacoa” isn’t the succulent meat grilled over an open fire with a sticky sweet sauce that it sounds like. Instead it’s some kind of cow face stew (cow cheek, cow tongue, cow forehead, cow brain). Though, I may still consider sampling it if the restaurant looks nice.

If we can’t find a roadside stand or lunch counter for eats, it’s still pretty cheap to sit in a restaurant. The most we’ve paid for a meal for the four of us is about $35 – and that was more food than we could eat. We usually bring along a Tupperware or Ziploc for the extra rice and beans and tortillas that come with every meal. At the restaurant attached to our Los Azufres camp, where R and I had trout, Coconut had the steak, and J had the chicken, the cook/waitress kept bringing us food even after our plates where cleared and we had the Uno cards out. That meal cost $18 so we did it again the next night.

Being here at the beach has opened up a new food option – seafood! We’ve brought fresh fish at the beach each morning and I learned how to clean and gut a fish, which was easier and smellier than I thought it would be. I saved the fish guts for J and I to use as bait for fishing from the pier. We didn’t catch any fish, but the flies sure liked it. We’ve booked a fishing/snorkeling excursion for tomorrow and the guide will cook whatever we catch. Since J doesn’t eat fish, he is already making plans to sell any fish that he catches. I’m excited by this entrepreneurship, and he’s even offered to sell them to me at a five peso discount since I’m his dad and am paying for him to go on the trip.

The curious thing is that despite the abundance of fresh fruits and vegetables - we've heard even regularly grown crops are more organic here than the organic products at home due to the utter lack of pesticide usage and the reduced-to-zero chance for run off - meals are lacking in these homegrown products. Sometimes a meal will come with a small iceberg lettuce or shredded cabbage salad on the side with onions, and cucumber and tomato slices, but that's about it as far as it goes for a vegetable option. It is not safe to be an animal here, however, as every part of you will get eaten.

The proliferance of meat as the meal, supplemented with carbohydrate-rich rice and beans, as well as the abundance of fried foods - don't forget, even a seemingly healthy chicken taco comes in a fried tortilla - may account for Mexico recently claiming the title of most obese country in the world. And it is fairly obvious, especially amongst the women. Although portions are generally small, the amount of food that comes with a meal often pushes it over the limit of what is necessary to consume to feel full. An enchilada platter, for example, will have three or four enchiladas stuffed with chicken, side salad, rice, beans, tortillas, and may come with a sweetened juice or soda. There's not a lot in that meal that would make your mother happy except maybe the low cost. Stores are full of packaged junk food and it is fattening both the pockets of the bosses of the multinational corporations and the bellies and asses of the public. Just like in the States.

There are signs a public education campaign about healthy diet and exercise may be reaching the middle class masses, at least. In the beach town of Zihuatanejo, which at the moment seems to attract mostly Mexican vacationers rather than American or European gringos, the streets are crowded with early morning joggers and I have seen others using heavy stones as weights.  In Hidalgo, nearby the La Posada campground where we stayed, there was exercise trail equipment that people actually used as more than a tableau for graffiti.

Seeing this has been both an inspiration to me, I've been guilted into going jogging a few times, and an albatross, I've gone jogging only a few times. Perhaps because we've been mostly mobile we've failed to establish a regular exercise routine which is something I really thrive on at home as much for the mental benefits as well as the obvious physical ones. We have been fairly active between rock climbing, walking around town, and getting pummeled by the Pacific surf, so we are not totally out of shape and soft yet, but I think a more regimented routine of stretching and resistance movements for the less active days would do us all good.

It happened at Los Azufres

We've each challenged ourselves to learn one physical and intellectual skill during this year abroad. For example, R wants to learn the night sky as her mental challenge and J wants to learn how to surf. Coconut wants to read 100 books.

My physical challenge is to learn to juggle a soccer ball on my feet at least ten times without it hitting the ground which may not seem like much of an accomplishment but soccer didn't even exist as a sport when I was in high school in NJ in the 1980's so it's basically the equivalent of a kid today learning how to ride a broomstick so she can try out for the local Quidditch team.

Wednesday morning as I was practicing in the field by our camp, I kicked the ball over the hedgerow. When I peered over the bushes to see how easy it was going to be to retrieve the ball, I saw the ball rolling down the embankment to a very narrow but fast moving creek. I quickly burst through the hedges, good thing I had put on long pants, and ran downstream to see if I could intercept the ball before it floated to Mexico City. As luck would have it, the ball had gotten stuck in the eddy of a small waterfall.

Great! I wouldn't have to shell out 30 pesos for a new ball, but I was going to have to wade into the creek to get our ball. This is where putting on long pants in the morning backfired because the pool was deep and there was no way I could hitch my pant legs up high enough to avoid getting them wet.

After a quick look around the camp ground and pool area - it's good that we camp at places like this during the week when the rest of Mexico is at work - I took off my shoes and pants - leaving me barefoot and spindly. After contemplating the bank again (must everything in Mexico be so darn steep!), I was pretty sure I could get into the creek, even if it meant falling in with thorns in my soles, but I was less sure I could get out again.

After a few calls for help to my family which was huddled around their screens at camp, they finally came to my aid long after I would have drowned or been eaten by a bear if I had been in any real need of help, and were reduced to tears by this vision of the morning.

After they had gained their composure again, R and J teamed up to dislodge the ball from its resting place while I waded in at a shallower spot which would not have required me to remove my pants if I had thought of it in the first place and waited for the ball to take its short whitewater journey to my waiting hands. 

San Miguel de Allende . . . and beyond!

We arrived in San Miguel de Allende on Friday, September 5 and left on Tuesday, Septmber 8. It's hard to keep track of the day and date when you're untethered like we are, but it's helpful to know in case a store or restaurant might be closed or whether a certain market is happening.

It's also necessary for us to know the date because we aren't completely untethered - we have plans to meet R's parents in Belize on October 2 so we are making a mad dash across 1,400 miles of vast and culturally diverse Mexico to arrive on time.

One place we do want to visit before we say adios to Mexico is Chichen Itza, which, it turns out, is a Mayan city and not a way to prepare chicken, for the autumnal equinox on September 22 when the sun will strike the temple El Castillo - so named by the Spaniards - in such a way that a serpent carved into the steps will appear to slither to the ground - something the Mayans actually planned and not a bit of architectural and astronomical dumb luck as has played such an instrumental role in shaping my own life. But more of that at another time.

Today, Wednesday, September 9, we spent the day at Erindira in Los Azufres, which is a park about 60 kilometers east of Morelia in Michoacan state. It's fairly close to the middle of the country, but a heck of a lot prettier than Oklahoma - no offense to any Oklahomans who may be reading this. Erindira is a hot springs and campground in a pine forest near a trout farm and at some high elevation, and it was all Wesley could do in second gear to climb the mountain to get here. Heck, it was all we could do to find our way here without a GPS or a map that has all the route numbers and town names marked on it, and R and I were about as far apart as you can get while sitting right next to each other and arguing whether to take 51 through Celaya, or 45 towards Mexico City, or 120 to Acambaro, or 43 towards Salvatierra, all of which might lead to some road that might lead to here. Of course, this happened just after R mentioned how well marked the roads were and I agreed.

Here's what R and I look like when we are not talking. Things turned out okay after I spent the night in the doghouse.

Anyway, we made it before dark and set up camp and I slept in the tent by myself - kind of like being put in the doghouse. We had a lazy day today in anticipation of a long push towards the Pacific Coast tomorrow. We went for a soak in the various hot tubs in the morning and then came back to camp and did some schoolwork - I now am solid with polygons and can approximate how many tourists visit the White House in one year - and then strapped on our shoes to take our first hike in Mexico to visit the trout farm which is up 138 steps leading into the forest, through a barbed wire fence, and down a dirt road with a creek running across it which is narrow enough to jump over. This is how Coconut and J gain perspective on the world.

Trout farm

Broken bridge

hike to trout farm

J has made two fishing poles on this trip after he watched a few YouTube videos about how to make a pole and he's been patiently waiting to use them. He was hopeful that we could fish at the trout farm but even after we carried them all the way there, it was no dice. We hung around at the farm for awhile anyway and watched the fish swim in circles while one of the holding tanks was cleaned. Signs advertised that the fishery (how can it be a fishery if you can't fish? Doesn't one nurse at a nursery? Eat at an eatery? Bake at a bakery?) was recognized as a place that raised trout in a way that was environmentally helpful to both the fish and to humans and R and I would agree after we had a couple of them for dinner.

J and I tried to get in a few casts at the trout farm

We spent our time in San Miguel de Allende at Sean and Mittie's house regrouping, soaking up the hot showers, and throwing a bone over and over again to their dog Switters. R and Sean volunteered together in Guatemala in the last century at a non-profit development agency and reconnected recently through the magic of Facebook. Sean has been living in SMA for almost a decade, making money as a professional photographer, and partnering with Mittie as an adventure travel team. I recommend you check out what they are up to at www.seanandmittie.com because it's pretty inspiring - they planted more than a few seeds in the fertile valleys of R's and my brains. We really appreciate their hospitality in letting us take over their house for a long weekend, and thank them for introducing us to the "Cubano" sandwich at the shop with the green door. If you eat one of those every day, and order the green juice which includes parsley, you will grow old and happy.

Me, J, R, Mittie and Sean in San Miguel de Allende. Coconut took the photo

Coconut's rooftop campsite in Sean and Mittie's garden

Switters the dog, camped out at the feet of his new best friend J, who threw Switters his toy bone over a hundred times that day

Coconut gives Switters some bone action

Coconut and J sharing some Wifi time before lights out in the upstairs room at Sean and Mittie's

Another super cool thing that happened was that Sean took a bunch of photos of Wesley in different "poses" that looked really great and we can't wait until he's done editing so that I can finally write up a blog post about how Wesley is outfitted and how we manage in it day-to-day.

Sean gets Wesley in focus for its photo shoot

Vanamos family with Switters - the only dog I ever liked. No offense to my cousin Anthony's dog, Ricky Bobby (aka Reggie)

I've heard about SMA for a number of years as an American retiree community and we saw our share of viejo gringos at the farmer's markets, upscale clothing boutiques, and just around. Sean said that if you were looking for a non-immersive Mexican experience, you could find it in SMA.  

Here I am carrying our laundry and water up the alley and to the house. I had two bottles of family size Corona's in my back pockets.

Of course, that's not what we are looking for and the cobblestone streets, local markets, and tiled walls and houses give the city a real colonial look and feel. The other "Mexican" thing about it is that you can rent all-terrain 4-wheel vehicles and drive them around the city streets in traffic - which we did - on a tour that also took us out into the corn fields surrounding the city and up into the hills for a view over the lake and city.

J cracks a smile before getting back to the business of navigating noon time traffic in San Miguel de Allende

R gives the thumbs up that J has things under control on the streets of San Miguel de Allende

Coconut tries to catch up to J on our drive in the country around San Miguel de Allende

Vanamos rules San Miguel de Allende

A few weeks ago, or maybe just a few days ago, I've lost track, Coconut and J saw that you could buy a 4-wheeler at Wal-Mart for less than $1,000 (we figured out the conversion from pesos) and Coconut is in the process of writing a persuasive essay as to why we should buy one and ship it to her grandfather's lake house. I'm already convinced and I haven't even read her reasoning yet, but I know that after she and J were allowed to drive our rentals around - something I am certain they would not have been able to do in the States - I could probably get them to kick in some money towards the cost of buying one. They had a blast. 

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

Greetings from Austin, Texas

They say 110 people move to Austin every day and 108 of them want to drive a food truck and the other two just want to eat at a food truck. R, Coconut, J, and I arrived on Thursday at the Pecan Grove RV park near downtown. Someone on the Vanagon Facebook group mentioned this park when R requested recommendations for places to stay and we were happy to get one of the few daily rental spots. The park is unique in that we could be in this large city with a population of over 700,000 people, staying in Wesley, and be walking distance from the one thing we planned to do - swim at Barton Spring in Zilker Park. The city does have one other tourist attraction besides the Spring, live music, food, and keep Austin weird vibe – bats! Since 1982 when the Congress Avenue Bridge was widened, it has been the migratory home to the largest urban population of Mexican free-tailed bats. Every evening at dusk -whenever that is, the bats get to decide - millions of bats make for the sky to feed in a black cloud reminiscent of the Alfred Hitchcock movie "The Birds" and large enough to blip on the Doppler radar. J and I witnessed the bats in flight on Thursday because we ignored our thirst and hunger to hang around for two hours until the bats decided to make their appearance while Coconut and R more sensibly opted to eat and drink and see the bats during Bat Fest, which was on Saturday and involves food trucks, music, $15 wristbands, and bats.

We arrived at Bat Fest after an afternoon of swimming, described below, at what we thought was dusk, only to have dusk turn into night, without the bats appearing. Then when the crowd started to thin out, we found out the bats did appear, but we couldn’t see them because it was too dark. So R and Coconut missed out on seeing the bats but I don't think Coconut will be in any hurry to return to Austin for this unique event because as we weaved our way through the crowds on the way out she asked, "What was so cool about that?"

About the swimming; Barton Spring has been a public attraction since sometime in the 1800’s when an enterprising Texan named A.J. Barton decided he could charge people to swim in it. Due to some geologic circumstance I read about but can’t remember, the Spring waters remain a consistent, chilly, 68 degrees, and are home to the endangered blind Austin salamander.

The 68 degree temperature might be fine on one of the 40 or so days when temperatures in Austin exceed 100 degrees, but the day we chose to visit the pond it was rainy and only in the mid-80’s – hardly ideal for a swim. Nevertheless, being the intrepid adventurers that we are, and also because we uncharacteristically paid to swim in the enclosed area rather than brave the waters of the free “dog park” area just outside the fences, we all donned our swim suits and succumbed to the numbing cold waters. How it is that allowing people to pay three dollars and swim in the spring benefits the salamander habitat is not stated anywhere, but J and I did get reprimanded by one of the lifeguards for picking up rocks from the bottom of the pond and throwing them back in to watch them sink, so I guess that, at least, is forbidden.

After the numbness left our bodies we felt hunger, so we walked the short distance to one of the many food truck parking lots we'd seen and sampled what Austin has to offer – which at this spot was BBQ, tacos, and hamburgers. R also had some sort of salad with Kimchi, which is a Korean cabbage which many cowboys used to eat on the trail once they found out horse meat wasn’t all that healthy.

Getting ready to attack the circled food trucks at Barton Springs Picnic near our RV park in Austin

To be true, Austin is apparently a change purse of liberalism inside the larger pocket of Texas conservatism, which explains the availability of Kimchi. It’s the headquarters of that yuppie hipster feeding trough called Whole Foods, and we saw more long hair, tattoos, and running shoes than we did cowboy hats, boots, and horses.

Since we arrived in Texas on Monday, we’ve had pretty good weather. Most days have been overcast and fairly mild temperatures for the season with the exception of Tuesday when we were chased out of Wesley by the heat and into a movie theater and hotel room. Even with hot days, the nights have cooled off enough to make sleeping in Wesley with the slider and hatch doors open quite comfortable.

Temperature reading from inside Wesley and outside temperature at 6:34 p.m. on Sunday evening on our drive to San Antonio from Austin. Hot!

When we arrived in Austin on Thursday we brought rain with us, something Austin hadn’t seen in forty odd days according to Bob, the guy who runs the RV Park and who has lived there for 18 years. Back in the days of the old West, when people relied on growing their own crops and raising livestock to get themselves through the winter rather than hitching up the wagon and rolling out to the local farmers market for supplies, we could have posed as rain makers and charged people for sticking around town with the promise we would make it rain again. As it turned out though, nobody cared that we brought the rain and milder temperatures, and since the RV park fills up on weekends and we only were able to stay at all because someone had cancelled the first days of their visit, we got kicked out and had to go looking for a place to stay on Saturday night.

Vanamos family poses with our very cool and generous host family in Austin.

Before we came into town, R put out a call on one of her VW camper van forums for a good tire place because we wanted to get Wesley some new wheels before we hit the bumpy tarmac in old Mexico. One of the folks who responded also offered us his driveway if we needed a place to stay and I am currently sitting in my underwear in said driveway at 3:43 on Sunday morning typing this because it is too dang hot to sleep – although, R, Coconut, and J don’t seem to be having any problems.

Coconut and J are just probably plum wore out from the days events and R can sleep on a highway overpass, and that’s without the ear plugs and eye mask which she is currently hiding behind and which are perhaps her most cherished piece of gear she brought for herself on this trip.

Because Saturday was about 100 degrees, we decided the best way to spend it would be to get back to our bargain-way roots and enjoy some free Barton Spring water at the dog park. This turned out to be a great idea because Coconut and J really had a bang up time playing together in the water fall and rapids and with some friends that J made by impressing them with his daredevil ways of sliding down the algae-slick rock and throwing himself headfirst into the waters – something he noticed a twenty-something year old guy doing and soon had perfected himself.

Even the dogs were impressed by J's fearless contortions

R and I have noticed over the last few days that the kids really are getting along – and Coconut is the catalyst for this. She can react to J’s overtures to play or converse in two ways – she can ignore him, which is the path she often chooses at home in Alexandria – or she can respond to him and engage him. For whatever reason, lately she has chosen to engage him and it’s sweet to see them holding hands while trying to help each other through the churning water to the dam overflow or laughing together when the water pushes them back.

Coconut lends J a helping hand at Barton Spring

My own attempts to play in the water ended up with me crashing to the algae-slick rocks on my elbow, stubbing my big toe on some strategically placed underwater concrete slabs, and cutting my knees while trying to drag myself, half-drowned, back to land. It was a hell of a time – I wouldn’t have missed it.

In the morning, our hosts Nathan, Tina, and 2-year old Liam put out a spread of breakfast tacos and fruit, provided showers and WiFi, and lots of information on where to visit in Mexico. With all the responsibilities of making camp, packing camp, changing clothes, and finding something to eat and drink, R and I have been deficient on actually making plans beyond what we are going to do the next day so talking with Nathan who spent three months living in Mexico with his family when he was fourteen and has been back several times since was especially helpful.

We had hard time pulling ourselves away from the hospitality, and didn't hit the road for San Antonio until four p.m.. We quickly questioned our decision to leave when about twenty miles into our 150 mile trip the engine started to overheat, which isn't a problem according to the owners manual unless the radiator light starts blinking, which is what drew my attention to the overheating problem in the first place. We pulled over, ate some breakfast burritos, and hoped the problem would resolve itself with some rest in the shade - at this point, we were all overheating.  However, once we were back on the road the light started to flash even more insistently than before. I, of course, blamed the technician who had given Wesley an oil change on Saturday morning and who had thoughtfully topped off the coolant levels. R, being a more practical person than me, pulled up a forum thread that suggested a couple of explanations for the frantically blinking red light that did not involve the tech. So while R and the kids enjoyed smoothies in the convenience store of the gas station, I read the thread and actually figured out that a sensor to the overflow coolant tank did not have a good connection and the wire was rubbing against the engine block. I deftly took a wire brush from my tool box to the important parts, used electrical tape on the wire where it was slightly chafed, and put the thing back together. When a test run up the highway did not trigger any flashing warning, I deduced that I was correct after all - our good-hearted oil man had loosened the wire so as to cause the short while he was topping off our coolant level.  Of course, I give R all the credit for finding the explanation that proved me right.

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