Things to Know about Life on the Road

We left Alexandria, Virginia on August 1, 2015, in our 1985 VW Westphalia and spent nights in North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Texas before finding ourselves at the U.S.-Mexican border in Laredo, Texas. When we crossed into Mexico on August 26, we expected to spend a month making our way to Belize and to be in Panama by Christmas. Happily, that plan didn’t work out and we spent the next 3 ½ months experiencing Mexico, which is now one of our favorite places. We even settled down in Oaxaca for a month when we rented a house, giving our “life on the road” some semblance of stability.

Nevertheless, our goal was to overland to South America in a year, and however dim that prospect looks at the moment – as I type this on January 11, 2016, we are more than five months into our twelve month trip but have only been in Mexico and Guatemala (we planned to have been through those two countries, as well as El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica by now, and waiting in Panama to ship our van to Colombia) - we plan to push southward until we have to come back north.

Since we left Oaxaca on November 29, we have been living out of the van more or less on a day-to-day basis. This has reminded us that overlanding is not the party that it may seem to be. As a fellow overlander said to me as we bellied up to the tiny bathroom sink to wash our dinner dishes, “People think we’re on vacation, but this is hard work.”

It’s not the 9 to 5 type of job, and we don’t get paid, but for all the fun it is to discover new places, it does involve some hard thought. With that in mind, we thought it would be fun to share how we go about our “daily work” – which consists of finding a place to go, finding a place to sleep, and figuring out what to eat.

"What are we doing today?"

Coconut and J ask us this all the time. Their second most frequent question is, “How long are we staying here?” Sometimes we have an answer, and sometimes not.

When planning a route into and through a country, we come up with an overall country plan. How do we get from our entry point, visit the places in the country that are must do, that we have always dreamed of seeing, or that we never heard of before but that have been recommended to us by other overlanders, and get to our exit point using an efficient route on paved roads? Our country plan for Mexico got blown to pieces, as we ended up in places we had no intention of going and stayed much longer than we planned, but that turned out for the better. We’ve stuck to the plan so far for Guatemala.

In making our overall country plan, I am low tech. We have a few guide books – Lonely Planet and the Rough Guide – and I read them. There are a lot cooler 21st century ways to do this, but I like to curl up with a good book at night and what could be better than the Rough Guide to Central America on a Budget?

When I come up with a place or an area that sounds fun for all, or that has something educational to do that I think the kids won’t complain too much about, I look at our paper map to see if we can get there in a reasonable way considering all the other things in the country that are on the list of things to do. One thing we learned in Mexico is that not all roads are flat and that Wesley, our van, is capable of climbing mountains, but that it takes time. We double the time that our guidebooks or Google Maps estimate that it will take to get anyplace.

Once I’ve mapped out an overall country plan, I discuss it with R, our resident techie, and she uses the few apps that we have and poses queries to the overlanding forums she is part of to see if things have changed in the few years since our books were written or for places to camp, since the books are written with backpackers, not overlanders, in mind.

When we are in country, we plan our day-to-day activities like we would plan our weekends at home – we see what comes up. As I mentioned, we go to an area of the country because there are cool things to do there, but we don’t really have a plan to do them. We roll with the mood that strikes us, or the weather, or the circumstances. For example, we anticipated that Flores, Guatemala, had a full week of activities - a lake for swimming, boats to cruise the lake, a zoo, hiking, a wild animal rehabilitation center, and Tikal. Also, R had studied Spanish in nearby San Andres and we wanted to visit her places of interest. We ended up underestimating the time needed and spending ten days there, and still didn’t do some of the things I thought we might do. Other places, like Rio Dulce on Lago Izabel, are hot, bustling, dusty junctions, and we get out of dodge sooner than we think we might.

Other times we don’t get to a planned location and have to come up with a new plan on the fly. Semuc Champey, the most beautiful waterfalls in Guatemala, was recommended to us by several other travelers, but it will have to exist without us because we couldn’t drive there from where we were. Instead, we drove to some other waterfalls that were maybe not as beautiful, but we learned how to use a machete to cut a coconut and jumped off a bridge with some local boys into the Rio Chiyo.

Earlier this week we planned to stay at a Japanese guest house in Quirigua, a small town near some off-the-beaten track Mayan ruins, so that R could rest from her recent infirmities, the kids could catch up on homework, and I could visit the ruins. However, after finding the guest house – which was no easy task – we learned there were no rooms available. So it was back in the car for another 200 kilometers to Guatemala City. After a few hours of driving, we were all hot and cranky and R was fading, so we ended up at a hotel with a pool and water slide in Santa Rosa where we stayed for two nights.

"Where are we going to sleep?"

When Coconut was three, we flew to the Bahamas to meet some friends who were cruising in their 44-foot sailboat, Belisana, for the year. We told Coconut beforehand that we would be staying on the boat with our friends, so when they came to pick us up in the dinghy from wherever it was the puddle jumper dropped us off, Coconut was a little confused. She whispered to R, “Where are we all going to sleep?”

Having Wesley solves that problem – we can all sleep comfortably inside the van. My preference is to camp because it’s cheaper, and also, like a younger sibling, Wesley has become part of the family and it’s a little sad when we roll the slider door shut and walk away for the night. One couple we met in Oaxaca told us that when they have guests to their home, they offer the guests their own bedroom and sleep in their van in the garage. We understand that sentiment. There have been a few times when we’ve rented a hotel room and R or I have slept in the van on the street. It’s nice and cozy.

Sometimes it is too hot to sleep in the van, or sometimes we have slept in the van a few days in a row and we need a shower, or the kids will request a room with WiFi. For example, Coconut asked if we could get a room for Christmas because she didn’t want to drive on that day. That was a reasonable request – how else would Santa have found us – so we got a room.  If we get a hotel room, it is usually a place suggested by our guidebook or that R has found online. If we plan to be around a while, we will look for an AirBnB place.

In most cities there are no convenient places to camp and we end up in a room because we would have to camp too far out of the city to visit the places in the city that we want to visit. Once camp is set up, it’s an involved process to break it down to drive around town, so we don’t usually do that. Guanajuato and San Cristobal de las Casas, both in Mexico, were two exceptions where campgrounds were within walking distance of the city center – though, in Guanajuato, we called the campground a “yonke” (junkyard) because there were several rusted out autos on the grounds.

"What’s for dinner?"

Wesley comes equipped with a two-burner propane stove, and we brought along our camp stove, so we can cook our meals at home. If we aren’t camping, we look for rooms that have a private kitchen or access to a communal kitchen. R has become expert at baking a pizza on the bottom of a cast iron frying pan.

Of course, part of the fun of traveling is that you get to eat all the tasty foods native to the place that you are visiting. One of our favorite things to do in Oaxaca was to visit the Friday street vendor food market in Llano park to get the pork rib tacos for 5 pesos each. Overall, we prefer the food in Mexico. It was cheaper than in Guatemala, and tastier – we eat these things in Guatemala that they call tortillas but the Chicago Black Sox may have used them in 1919 for baseball gloves.

We also loved the abundance of fresh fruits and vegetables in Mexico. And the fresh squeezed juices. Consistently, the vegetables on offer in Guatemala are yellowed broccoli, wrinkled string beans, and sad-looking cauliflower. The fruits are just as pathetic - waxy apples and believe it or not, it’s hard to find a decent banana. Guatemala does have seedless watermelons, which is the only kind the kids will eat, and the pineapples are outstanding. We drove through Puerto Barrios the other day, which is a city on the Caribbean coast where Dole, Del Monte, and Chiquita have shipping facilities, and stopped at a few roadside stands for some of the sweetest pineapples ever. They cut it in quarters, with the hard center intact, so it’s like you are eating pineapple on a stick.

The only other food that stands out in Guatemala is the fried chicken from Pollo Campero – but this is basically fast food and you can now get it in the states, including in Alexandria. So, we’ve done a lot of eating at “home” – eggs and rice, roasted potatoes, salads, pasta.

So, that's it. That's how we've taken the two greatest obligations a parent has to his or her children and turned them into our only responsibilities. It's a pretty low-stress lifestyle - no worrying about schedules or who needs to be where at what time - and for all the benefit that Coconut and J will get out of it, the more immediate benefit seems to have accrued to R and I. In fact, while reading "Life of Pi" yesterday, I came across this thought penned by Yann Martel, the author. He writes, "I have nothing to say of my working life, only that a tie is a noose, and inverted though it is, it will hang a man nonetheless if he's not careful.

It's a New Year in Guatemala

We spent a low key New Years Eve - four Gallo beers and a rum with coconut water - relaxing in the quiet beauty of the Oasis Chiyo in Las Conchas, Guatemala. We brought the noise: J finally got to shoot off the last of the fireworks we purchased in Mexico and those that he received from Santa, in a soccer field that doubles as a cow pasture. Even though we aimed the rockets away from them to avoid a stampede, the cows were not pleased with the noise and smoke and we could see their eyes reflected red in the flashlight beam move deeper into the corner of the goal where they took their repose. We have been in country for two weeks now and I think I’ve seen enough of Guatemala to suggest some New Years resolutions:

Put up road signs.  Not the kind that tell me the road is going to curve to the left, but the kind that tell me where the hell I am and where the right fork of the road goes. All too often the road splits and there is nothing to indicate which way leads to heaven and which way leads to hell.

We wanted to get to Raxruja after we drove off the ferry in Sayache. The road going up took two directions - one paved and one not - but had no sign indicting what lay in either direction. The GPS apps we are using are wrong often enough where we can't blindly trust them and - see paragraph two below - the fact that a road is not paved doesn't mean it is the road less traveled.  Remember, we got to the Mexican-Guatemalan border by driving through a muddy cornfield.

When there is a sign indicating what city lies on either fork, the city named is often hundreds of kilometers away and not the next city en route. This happened in Mexico as well and requires us to memorize the map of the country for city locations way beyond our hoped for destination. It's like coming into New Jersey from New York across the George Washington Bridge and following signs for Las Vegas to get to Paterson.

Finish paving your roads. We can be cruising steady at 45 m.p.h. on this beautifully smooth and flat road and I will have to hit the brakes hard because the pavement ends and is replaced by a muddy, bumpy mess of a path. And you can never be sure that the muddy trail called a road is the wrong way. The infrastructure of the place puts it firmly in the category of developing countries - while waiting 30 minutes for the ferry to take us fifty meters across the Rio La Pasion in Sayache, J asked, “Why don't they build a bridge?” Good question.

We had a plan to drive to Semuc Champey, a blue waterfall described to us as one of the most beautiful places in the world, but there is no really good way for us to get there. Option one was to drive a paved road about 200 kilometers west to Coban so that we could then drive 150 kilometers east on a mostly paved road to Lanquin to park Wesley and take a 4WD to the waterfall. Option two was to drive a shorter but unpaved, rough rocky road that may or may not be in the process of being improved straight south for 50 kilometers to Lanquin  Option three was to drive north, then east to Rio Dulce and catch a 4WD that drives 5 hours on another rough, unpaved road through Cahabon to Lanquin.

We went to bed planning on option two but in the morning we read some things that dissuaded us from that notion, so planned to skip Semuc Champey all together and go to another waterfall in Las Conchas. Then the hotel owner went off about how beautiful Semuc is compared to Las Conchas so we were back to option two even though the owner suggested option one, saying it would take the same amount of time. We picked up a campesino hitchhiker and he was of the same opinion, but against all available local information, I thought we should try option two because you never know how bad it really is until you see for yourself. “This is the shortest route to a top five tourist destination in the country.” I thought, “Why wouldn't they have paved the road by now?”

Option two was like trying to ride a unicycle over an avalanche. Picture what a group of ten year old boys would do with some hammers and a pile of boulders. This is the road. After twenty minutes, ten of which I spent out of the car figuring out how I was going to get Wesley turned around (solution: get Coconut and J out of the van and safely to the side; put R behind the wheel, and push) we decided to skip Semuc for the time being and go to Las Conchas and then Rio Dulce where we may try option three. I was initially relieved by that decision and all the tense driving and abuse of Wesley that would be avoided, but felt like a real loser when I saw a low-riding pick-up truck with five or six campesinos standing in the bed rolling steadily up towards where we had just turned around. Sigh. Maybe I’ll be a man tomorrow.

Teach your people to smile, and to say no once in a while. We had read the people in Guatemala were more reserved and it is true. We are often met with silence when greeting people. Wesley is no longer met with smiles due to his/her headlight eyelashes. When walking along the road, I miss being greeted by all eight people in the taxi as it drives by. On the other hand, people are very helpful and accommodating when we do strike up conversations. When we were jumping off of waterfalls the other day, I asked whether it was safe to jump in a particular spot. “Si,” the boy said. “You jump here? It's deep enough?” I asked. “Si.” “Right here?” I asked, pointing at the spot just to be sure. “Si.” So I got ready to jump only to be stopped and told that it was safer to jump in a different spot. We don’t know if they are saying yes to be polite or because it is true.

Kill all the mosquitoes. We all know mosquitoes are useless except as food for bats, so why are there so many of them? When we were sitting at restaurants in Flores, we could tell who had been to Tikal by the condition of their legs. Red and scabby meant they had been to the jungle. Now we are those people. I have a bite on my neck that is so big you could hang a picture on it. And they itch like crazy; I have bites from last year that still itch this year. Plus, they carry diseases with cool names like Dengue Fever and Chikungunya, but that you don't want to come down with.

Coconut has been under the weather lately with a fever as high as 40 Celsius (about 103 F) and we worried it was one of those mosquito-borne diseases with a cool name like Dengue Fever or Chikungunya, but which we certainly don't want her to come down with. We took her to a doctor who quickly looked her over and decided Coconut has a throat infection from the weather changes and general climate. He prescribed a number of medications which seem to have helped so we are hopeful that he was right in his diagnosis. Otherwise, I will have something else about Guatemala to complain about.

San Andres - 20 years later

In the summer of 1995 I took what I consider my first real solo adventure and came to Guatemala to go to Spanish school in a little village called San Andres, on the Lago Peten Itza. We've spent over a week on this lake and hadn't yet been to San Andres. The area has changed a bit - 20 years ago the only real way to get to San Andres was via little public lanchas, large motorboats that shuttled between the two sides of the lake. I fully expected to be able to hop on a lancha and visit my former host family and see the school where I first studied Spanish.

On one of our first days in Flores, we were shocked at the quoted price of 200Q ($24) for the ride across the lake. Apparently in the past 20 years there have been road improvements, making it possible for buses to get to San Andres, making the public lanchas obsolete. So it took us a week to finally agree to pay $24 for a 30-minute boat ride to see where I had spent 3 weeks.

The village itself has changed as well with improvements to the waterside: a nice public square and promenade area. After some confusion I managed to find the street where I had lived with Nidia Fion and her 3 children, Siomara, Romero, and Teresa. There was a group of women sitting on the corner and I asked them if they knew where we could find the family. They exchanged strange glances with each other that said something was off. I asked if she'd died and they said yes, 9 months ago, in a terrible incident. The group we had asked was Nidia's family. I didn't quite catch what Nidia's sister was telling me about what happened but maybe her husband killed her. This wasn't quite the reunion I was envisioning. The sister graciously let us walk around the outside of the house and I took pictures of the rooftops of where I had lived. The house had been improved since I was there, though I could still see the roofs of the little outhouse and my stand-alone room where I had slept. We didn't go inside the compound so I couldn't check out the interior.

We then walked to where I remembered the school being and found a burned out shell. I'd heard that it was burned but I just assumed it had been rebuilt. Not so - it was just walls, no roofs, and the beautiful airy classroom with the fantastic view over the lake was an empty space overgrown with weeds.

It was kind of a sad visit, not at all what I imagined, where I would sit down with Nidia and chat with her fluently, then head over to the school and make them proud that I was now speaking fluently, thanks to their teaching 20 years ago.

To top it all off, we're quite certain that the pig who lived in the house next door to Nidia's has also been eaten.

Not Dead Yet

We are always the last to leave the party, sometimes even tucking the hosts into bed before turning off the lights and locking the door behind us, and our planned four to five day stay in Flores, Guatemala, proved no different.  We stayed ten nights.

Technically, the ten nights we spent in Flores included a night in Tikal and four in Remate, but all these places are in the same few square kilometer area of the country so its semantics. Maybe it is more accurate to say we spent ten nights around Lago Peten Itza because Flores and Remate are on opposite sides of the lake, but however we frame it, they were happy days.

When planning our visit to this area of Guatemala I thought we could stay a week because there seemed to be enough fun things to do, I factor in days were we don’t do anything, and of course, anytime you stay someplace for a few days you learn about other things to do there, so if we actually wanted to do everything possible in the area, we should probably just move here.

R also studied Spanish in San Andres, which is a small village on another side of Lago Peten Itza, for three weeks back in the summer of ‘95, so we all wanted to go visit her old haunts - the one room shack were she slept and the one room school were she studied - which have been so impactful on her life, and thus, on ours.

In 1995, before the wheel was invented, lanchas (small motor boats) were the way to get from place to place on the lake. Nowadays you can drive to San Andres, but to make it feel like old times for R, we hired a boat to take us.

It was a bittersweet return; we learned the matriarch of R’s host family recently passed away, the language school burned down, and the pig she used as a landmark was made into carnitas. Talk about hitting the trifecta. R has written about our visit in a post entitled - "San Andres - 20 years later" - which will be posted shortly.

The streets were as steep and the temperatures as hot as R remembered, though, and since the kids weren’t going for swimming from the boat pier - there was a piece of a cow jawbone at waters edge - we had the lancha stop in the middle of the lake so we could splash and play around.

That was the thing to do in Remate as well - it was the first time we ever rented paddleboards on Christmas day. We met a family from New Zealand in Remate and Coconut and J had fun swimming with Hugo and Tooey each afternoon from the dock in front of the hotel\restaurant Mon Ami. We camped in the parking lot of the restaurant one night for the cost of a meal. We also got to eat the food that came with the meal, so it was like camping for free.

There was less to do in Flores besides sweat, but it was our base for wifi, groceries, and to play the Guatemalan version of Monopoly at the Hospedaje Yaxha, where I also had a few beers with the guys that work there, Scott and Ben.

In between visits to Tikal and Remate we kept ending up in Flores. It's a pretty town, on an island small enough to easily walk around, with plenty of restaurants, hostels, and street parking. There are also many young gringo travelers to make R and I nostalgic for the opportunities of youth. Not that we feel we squandered ours in any way - well, I do - but when all that youth is right there in your face you recognize that certain opportunities are now pipe dreams and that you have to take advantage of your middle aged chances. After all, we're not dead yet.

Tikal with kids

(Ed. Note - I wrote this in a rush on Tuesday morning before we left Flores for the last time and did not get a chance to complete many of the thoughts, or even, the article. Please do not judge my writing on this piece, and please check back in a few days when I have a chance to complete. We are heading to Lanquin and underground caves today so do not expect to have Wifi for a few days. Maybe not until the weekend when we are in Rio Dulce.) When we arrived in the Gran Plaza, the 1,300 year old social and administrative center of the vast Mayan archeological site of Tikal, moments before the sun did its turn on the other side of the globe, we were tired and sweaty but still managed to get a smile out of Coconut and J for the family photo album. This is because R, applying knowledge gleaned from our visit to Palenque a week earlier, had brilliantly thought to advance purchase the "no complaints and unlimited photo" package for the low cost of a soda and Iron Man 3, to be screened upon return to the van.

From the entrance to Tikal, where we purchased our entry tickets, to the parking lot for the ruins is a twenty minute drive through thick, turkey-infested jungle. From the field where we camped, along with fifteen million mosquitoes with teeth like Jaws and an appetite to match, to the Gran Plaza is another thirty minute walk. This place is in the middle of nowhere.

If anyone not from Guatemala ever thinks about Guatemala, I am making these numbers up, there is a five percent chance they will think about the scene from Return of the Jedi where the X-Wing fighters buzz the stone temple comb poking through the tree canopy - that's Tikal - and a ninety-five percent chance they will draw a complete blank because, and I am not making this up, who ever thinks about Guatemala anyway?

A ticket purchased after 4 p.m. on Day 1 allows entry to the site on Day 2 and R and I took advantage of this by waking early and walking most of the marked paths to some of the ruins Coconut and J would be less likely to want to see. This worked out perfectly. When we got back to our camp at nine, the kids were awake (and boiling inside the van) and by ten we were back on our way to the Gran Plaza and some of the major sites.

Twenty odd years ago, R visited Tikal and bribed a guard (she won't tell me how) to let her sleep on top of one of the temples. She couldn't remember which one, but with the help of one of the current guides, we decided it was Temple IV.

Welcome to Guatemala

We woke on Christmas eve morning to clear blue skies over Lago Peten Itza in El Remate, Guatemala. We’ve rented a studio apartment for the Christmas holiday. It has fabulously high ceilings and floor to top windows, and with its setting on the hillside and sun glistening off the lake, it reminds me of a Swiss chalet; though with the high humidity and the sun baking us like chickens in an oven, we are all thinking about swimming rather than skiing. Fortunately, the lake is great for swimming.

We crossed the border from Mexico to Guatemala on Saturday, December 19, at the Guatemalan town of El Ceibo. At the start, we were driving on a mud track through a cornfield and if we weren’t being passed by dozens of other cars, we might have turned around. We figured the road must lead somewhere that people wanted to go – why else would they be driving so fast through muddy farmland?

Eventually we ended up on a nice paved road and arrived at the border at 9:30am (it opened at 9.) I don’t have a lot of experience doing land border crossings, but I think this one was fairly smooth other than the 4 hours of waiting caused by your typical bureaucratic hassles. When we entered Mexico, we needed to leave a $200 USD deposit to dissuade us from selling our van Wesley, or otherwise keeping it in the country.

In order to retrieve our deposit, we needed to have our exit paperwork processed within the 180 days we were allowed to legally be in the country and show that we were exiting with the van. Because there was only one guy working this window at the border, and he didn’t give us any confidence that he knew what he was doing, we thought about just walking away. But we can theoretically live for 2 days on $200, so in the end we waited him out – three hours – and got our money back. Though, we are still waiting for it to show up as a credit on our credit card account. While we were waiting for him, we went to a food stand 300 meters inside Mexico, which we had just been stamped out of, and got a grilled chicken to eat.

The Guatemalan side was a little better; we only waited for an hour to be processed. Most of this time was spent standing on the sidewalk where we were supposed to pay our nonreturnable vehicle import fee of 160 Quetzales (8 Q equals about 1 USD) while the computer rebooted. The room where we got a Guatemalan entry stamp in our passport had six floor fans – giving the impression that it gets really, really hot in there - a stove, and enough tables and chairs so that it looked like the place might double as a restaurant when the border was closed. The office where we processed Wesley’s paperwork was a mobile trailer and we had to walk 200 meters into the country we weren’t legally allowed to enter yet, to get a photo copy of the passport page we just had stamped. Welcome to Guatemala.

Right away Guatemala gave us the impression of a much poorer country than Mexico. It has been raining a lot and the mud went right up to the doors of the wood and tin shacks where the people live – there are no such things as front lawns. There are a lot more pigs wandering around, and turkeys. I saw a chicken nibbling bugs by the side of the road get spooked by something and run into the road and under a pick-up truck; the first time I saw any animal get hit on this trip, even though chickens, dogs, cows, donkeys, goats, and now pigs and turkeys, are wandering around like kids after the last school bell. This really has nothing to do with the economics of a country – the chicken getting run over, I mean – but it was the most interesting thing I can remember from our drive to Flores, and now El Remate, where we have been for the last week.

Flores is a small town on an island in Lago Peten Itza. R spent some time many moons ago on the lake when she studied Spanish at a small village – San Andres – on the other side from Flores. San Andres is too small for an ATM so she and her fellow students had to get a lancha (small boat) to Flores to withdraw cash. Most of the lanchas are gone now since they’ve built a road all the way around, but you can still get a boat ride to San Miguel – directly across from Flores – to walk around and see some jungle covered Mayan ruins, which settlement was apparently visited by Hernan Cortes in the 1500’s. I’m not sure how they know this; maybe he signed the register at the hotel.

Most of our time in Flores was spent preparing for Christmas – we learned how to sew stockings, and the kids wanted a tree and presents – and trying to find the cheapest place to eat. We’ve determined in our few days here that things in Guatemala cost twice what they would cost in Mexico – a beer costs about Q 12 (around $1.50 USD) and a box of milk about Q 20 (around $2.50 USD). It’s still a bit cheaper than U.S. prices, but not as affordable as we expected. We also have to relearn the art of haggling over prices in the market; we lost our touch in Mexico because, for the most part, it isn’t part of the culture.

Of course, all of this may be because we are near Tikal, one of the top tourist destinations in the country - we’ve seen a lot more white (i.e., U.S., European, and Australian) travelers than we are accustomed to seeing. Things may be different as we put some distance between us and this place – which we plan to do after our visit to Tikal on Saturday and Sunday.

Palenque with Kids

When I was a kid I had a book called “Wonders of the World” and I would sit and stare at the pictures it had of Mayan temples half covered by jungle or poking out of the trees and wonder about the people who lived there and what they were like. I imagined walking through the brilliant green fields beside the towering temples – obviously not realizing that the temperatures would be sweltering and the rain plentiful - and exploring the labyrinthine passageways inside. I wondered about details of life there that we will probably never know and the questions raised about this ancient civilization still fascinate me. Last Friday, this 45-year old kid got to visit Palenque, one of the major Mayan architectural sites in Mexico, which was at its artistic and militaristic peak from around 600-800 A.D.. The excavation work at the site which began in 1952 and continues today – only a small portion of this vast metropolis has been released from the clutches of a relentlessly encroaching jungle – has revealed a treasure trove of information for archeologists about this particular city and its place in the pecking order of contemporary, rival cities like Tikal and Tonina, and about the Mayan culture overall. Watching the mist rise from the tangle of trees and vines surrounding these magnificent yet crumbling buildings gave me chills and I realized I am still awed by the questions places like these put in my mind. What did the war chiefs talk about when they met on the patio of the war chiefs? How did the great Mayan ruler Pakal feel when he looked over the city from the portico of Temple IV? Where did enemy captives get their heads cut off? Why are my children so lame?

We were only about 30 minutes into our visit to the museum outside the ruins, which is air-conditioned, and contains intricately carved artifacts from a thousand years ago with funny faces and serpents coming out of their heads, all described in English, including an enormous sarcophagus where bones of the ruler Pakal were found, when Coconut declared she was bored. The extent of her curiosity about the site over the next couple of hours was to ask why the steps of the temples were so big when the people are so small in stature. J climbed 25 steps to the top of a building where a Count from Europe lived for a few years in the early 1800’s, and that was it. He and Coconut seated themselves on a rock at the edge of the Central Plaza and got drizzled on while R and I climbed temples and explored passageways and took in the views with amazement and wonder.

We were pissed – R was going on about how our kids were missing such a great opportunity and I agreed, comparing their lameness to the greatness of another pair of kids who were on a guided tour with their family and appeared to actually be paying attention and asking questions. If I had found the sacrificial table, heads may have rolled. But then the greatest thing happened - the sky unloaded buckets and buckets of rain at a rate of about 15 inches per hour. This, finally, caused Coconut and J to climb the 40 or so steps to the top of the Palace to seek a dry corner and eat the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches I had made for lunch.

The mood lightened even as the sky grew more overcast and dim. They still wanted to leave, but they let me go on a little bit about what I felt as a kid when I looked at pictures of the place in my book and how it made me feel to actually be standing there, and even agreed to walk the few kilometers back to our Maya Bell camp rather than taking a collectivo bus.

We hate camping in the rain, and even though Wesley is cozy and warm, R suggested that we pack up and head for the border town of Tenosique to spend the night. It was a good idea. Coconut and J showered, put on dry clothes, and played cards after ordering lunch at the restaurant while R and I packed our soaking gear as dryly as possible while the clouds continued to empty themselves so much that the pool overflowed. Finally, as we pulled out of camp, the skies cleared and the sun shone through – a good omen for our drive. If all goes well, we’ll be spending Saturday night in Guatemala.

The Long and Winding Road

We heard several things about the road from San Cristobal to Palenque – none of them that it was an easy drive. That the road was long and winding was no surprise -  it was many moons ago that I anointed Mexico the most mountainous country I’ve driven. We also heard that the number of topes was extreme – two tope towns become four and five tope towns with no discernible difference in economic or scholastic opportunities.

Finally, and most concerning, was that we could encounter road blocks along the way that could hold us up for hours if we weren’t willing to pay the “toll” - something like 50 to 200 pesos, depending on how well one can negotiate. Chiapas state has the highest population of indigenous peoples in Mexico and therefore, has the highest population of disenfranchised peoples. As we drive around we point out to Coconut and J all the old men and boys clearing the fields and tending the animals and the women and girls selling fruit, corn, and trinkets on the street, and they know how lucky we are for being born into the circumstances that we were.

The thing is, even though the people are breaking their backs in the fields, they aren’t seeing all of the fruits of their labors because they don’t own the land. It’s the story of how the rich get richer and the poor get more bent over.  So, every once in a while the poor will set up a road block on the main road to Palenque to stop traffic – primarily trucks hauling freight – to protest their condition. I don’t know if anyone in charge who can change their plight notices this and wants to fight for them, but a side benefit is that by stopping traffic, tourists like us who have nothing to do with anything, can pay a toll to move along.

Coconut was actually excited to be stopped like this, but after all the build-up and anticipation – it’s one of the first topics of conversation among overlanders coming from or going to Palenque – we didn’t encounter a road block. I was a bit disappointed as well, because depending on where the road block was set up, I thought we might be able to get an oil change for Wesley while we waited.

A few times during our drive a mom and her dirty and sweaty kids would string up a line as we approached and try to sell us fried plantains or sugar cane for a few pesos. When we didn’t buy any of their stuff, we would hand out a few toys from the bag of junk that we brought with us for this purpose – matchbox cars, erasers in cute shapes, super balls, colored pencils, and the like.

There are a few stopping points along the road to Palenque and the first night we camped at Agua Azul, a series of waterfalls tumbling over rock crevices into pools perfect for a refreshing dip. We’d been in the highlands for the better part of two months so the jungle setting of the falls was a reminder that heat and humidity suck, but at one point after splashing around in the water on a rope swing, J was shivering and we said we would remember that feeling later that day when we were sweating again.

The camping at Agua Azul was pretty basic – no showers and toilets without seats that were closed after dark when all the restaurants and vendors hawking artsy-fartsy stuff went home. A bunch of people drinking beer pulled in right next to us and R was pretty annoyed so went to bed around 7 p.m. but Coconut and J decided that  with the sound of the falls, we could hardly hear their noise. After a few hours the police came and chased the party away – the most effective bit of police work that I’ve seen in Mexico.

The next day – Wednesday – we stopped at Misol Ha, another waterfall with some caves behind it that we paid ten pesos each to enter to see the bat cave and underground waterfall. It was pretty cool. Then R and J and I swam in the pool in front of the main falls for a while before driving on to Palenque and the Maya Bell campground where there are still no toilet seats on the bowls.

There are biting ants, however, and when Coconut and J are not in the pool or scanning the tree tops for howler monkeys, they are holed up in Wesley. J has become super sensitive to bugs and when he and I were leaving the bathroom, he spotted a cockroach so I started singing – la cucaracha, la cucaracha. He asked me who sang the song, but I didn’t know; I said that it was just a folksy song and not a song written by a band that made records. He raised his fist and said, “Yeah, I bet people didn’t sit around at Beatles concerts going, 'yeah, play La Cucaracha, man!'”

A Change in Plans

We left Alexandria, Virginia, on August 1, with plans to be in Belize City on October 2. Coconut and J’s grandparents wanted to meet us somewhere and Belize in October seemed reasonable, though I’m sure we never looked at a map or actually figured out how many miles away it was and how many hours of driving would be required. R and I aren’t that type of overlander - detail oriented. We just kind of go with our gut. On September 16, when we were still stuck in Zihuatanejo, a great Mexican beach town on the Pacific side that we had stumbled into a week earlier without any idea of what we were getting into, we did the math and figured that Belize was still about a million miles away and that we could never get there in two weeks and a few days so we had a change of plans and took R’s parents to San Augustinillo, a different Mexican beach town on the Pacific side.

A change in plans – that’s pretty much been the story of our trip. By Christmas we thought we would be in Panama. Instead, we might leave Mexico and be in Guatemala. We spent our first week in Mexico at La Posada, north of Monterrey, where we only planned to spend a night. We spent four nights in San Miguel de Allende because we were having fun with Sean and Mittie, a whole week at Zihua; seven nights in Puerto Escondido; more than a month in Oaxaca; and now, a week plus in San Cristobal de las Casas which I was pretty much ready to skip except for a hot shower and hotel room pillow.

We crossed the border into Mexico on August 26, and if you add it all up, we’ve been here for more than 15 weeks when we only planned to spend about six. Overindulgence has always been part of my identity – too much of everything is just enough, as the Dead sing in “I Need a Miracle” – but I didn’t expect Mexico to grab me by the huevos like it has.

The natural beauty of the country is unbelievable – like nothing I have ever seen. Driving roads where the horizon lays out mountains on top of mountains is terrifying, okay, especially when you are driving the equivalent of a tricycle, but once you get past that, the feeling that vista gives you is tremendous - you feel wild; unhinged. Like anything can happen but it will all be fine. And the people are so friendly. How often have you said, “Hello. Good morning” to every single person you passed on the street, including those riding by in a taxi and the driver? And had it returned? Americans' perception of Mexico is so skewed by media portrayal that we should sue for libel. Is a bunch of guys standing on the corner drinking Coca Cola and eating grilled corn on the cob threatening to you? How about when they all raise their Styrofoam cups in recognition, genuinely smile, and say “Buenos noches”?

So, our plans have changed a lot and we’ve had a hard time getting out of Mexico. We haven’t needed an explanation because we haven’t asked any questions – we go with our gut. Along the way we’ve run into other folks who are wobbling from there to here, but no matter what song they’re singing, when we tell them how we’ve got stuck, it’s the same refrain: you’re doing the right thing. There’s no place like here and there’s no place like now if you’re enjoying yourself.

And we are. Since we arrived on Sunday at Rancho San Nicolas, with plans to spend a night or two, a family of four from Canada has pulled in next to us. An older couple from Switzerland who has been here before pulled in next to them, and a young couple from Switzerland who has not been to Mexico before but took 14 months to drive up from Uruguay pulled in next to them. This has driven the American who has been here for the last month to the corner of the grounds – not because he’s not social, but because too much English spoken outside his window breaks his concentration while he finishes his novel. On Friday night, we all went out to dinner.

On Friday morning I took a walk on the path that leads steeply up from the campground, crossed a few barbed wire fences to the top of the hill, and gathered my breath while I watched the mist rise from the fields. I came down along the road and took a path that led to a river where I saw an old man gathering sticks like gold from the bank to put on the fire where he was heating his breakfast. When I arrived back at camp at 8:30, J was in the common room. He had started a fire in the fireplace and was playing pool with his two new friends. Coconut, who will be a teenager on Monday and has been acting like one lately by sleeping to 10 a.m. or later, was not far behind. Before lunch, she was demonstrating to the boys how to draw a bow to shot an arrow, and actually joined the Wiffle Ball game, which the young Swiss guy joined too, after sitting and watching us for about a minute.

Coconut told us later in the day that she wanted to stay here until at least Tuesday. We planned to start our drive to Palenque, a major Mayan ruin, on Sunday, but now - what the hell? We may have lots of questions about what we’ve done, and what we are going to do, but there are no regrets.

Crazy Town

Chiapas state has the most independent-minded indigenous culture in Mexico. Parts of the state were never fully subjugated by the Spaniards, and several tribes continue to deny Catholicism as the national religion and not pose for tourists’ pictures. The state even rejected joining both Mexico and the United Provinces of Central America subsequent to the eviction of the Spaniards in the 1820’s before deciding by referendum to join Mexico. We’ve witnessed some of that edginess during our short stay in San Cristobal de las Casas. We arrived during the week long fiesta for the Virgin of Guadalupe, who is the patron saint of Mexico, and she apparently requires that the band start playing at five a.m. to the accompaniment of exploding sticks of dynamite and someone yanking on the church bell 100 times every fifteen minutes. Despite the constant drizzle of rain, uncharacteristic, we are told, the people’s spirits, and the fireworks’ wicks, have not been dampened.

We didn’t plan to stay in San Cristobal for long, having just come from an extended stay in a colonial city (Oaxaca), but I ran Wesley into a telephone pole so we are grounded for a few days while it gets repaired. As we drove to a body shop recommended by someone that we just met, I described to Coconut and J how the repairman would drill a hole into the middle of the dent, insert a tool that would splay out from the inside, and then pull the metal back into shape. Instead, the body guy comes out into the rain and mud with a heavy mallet and a piece of two by four and starts banging away. In an ironic twist, he thinks he might have the van a few days so he can get the paint to match. A perfectionist.

After watching this spectacle for as long as we could take it, we started walking back to town. At a busy intersection, we saw a kid - a teenager - with a plastic liter bottle filled with gasoline. He took a swig from the bottle, spewed flames from his mouth, and then daintily dabbed his lips and chin with a greasy rag. It looked really cool, but was a depressing thing to witness. We gave him fifteen pesos. I told Coconut and J that if they ever needed money that badly they should come talk to me no matter how grouchy I am that day.

Later, while we were eating lunch at the fanciest pizza place in town, a parade came marching through the main pedestrian street. We quickly ran to the balcony of the restaurant to watch and saw an older man at the end of the line nonchalantly lighting bottle rockets with his cigarette and launching them from his hand like he was Cape Canaveral. We didn’t feel nearly so badly about this - in fact, we could hardly stop laughing it was so funny.

The fireworks culture in Mexico is quite different than what we are used to. Explosions are mandatory for any celebration, and ubiquitous at all other times. I think the school principal will often set off a rocket in lieu of opening bell. R and I had fun shopping for cojetes before our Thanksgiving celebration and the kids had fun setting them off - under my supervision, of course, for whatever that is worth. When J had a friend come over for a play date, lighting off fireworks was the featured activity.

Anyway, the rebellious strand that permeates life here seems to have trickled over - this morning even R, a notorious pacifist, got into the act. When the first volley of gunpowder was detonated outside our door several clicks before sunrise, she rolled over and said, “I’m going to kill them.”

Indian style in San Cristobal de las Casas

Since Mexico gained independence from Spain in the early 1800’s it has survived several invasions by other countries, including the United States in the Mexican-American War, and internal uprisings due to bad government that has caused it to change heads of state more often than the wind changes direction. Many of these civil wars were instigated by indigenous peoples seeking equal rights, particularly with respect to land holdings. In fact, as recently as the 1990’s, a rebel group called the Zapatistas engaged in an armed insurgency as a means to bring about social reforms for indigenous peoples in Chiapas state, where Wesley is currently parked. In some cases these uprisings bring about social reforms that redistribute land ownership to ejidos - community land holdings - for local groups native to the region. On Saturday night, we arrived at Sima de las Cotorras, an ejido of the Tzamanguimo people - who must be ancestral to Chiapas.

The Sima is an enormous sink hole in the ground, dating from who knows when, and its recent claim to fame is that it is home to several hundred green parrots which spew forth from the ground like feathery lava each morning and seep back at dusk, but only during the months from April to October. In December, the parrots are sunning themselves in warmer climates; but nobody told us this, so we bounced our way over 12 kilometers of rocks and mud to camp in the rain and cold. No matter, because the chances that we were going to be able to wake at dawn and hike the few meters to the sink hole to see the birds as they greet the day was really quite slim. Instead of seeing birds, we justified our visit to the Sima by taking a stroll around the perimeter of the interior of the hole on what we called a “danger walk”.

Being on the ejido, and witnessing what the folks have done with their opportunity to own land - nicely maintained grounds, well-built and kept cabanas, good restaurant, something to keep their children home and to take pride in - led to a Vanamos breakfast conversation comparing Native Americans with Mexican indigenous peoples.

Now, I’m just a guy with too much time on his hands, so none of what follows should be taken as gospel, but just some general reading I’ve done has learned me that before the Spaniards conquered what they came to call Nueva Espana, the native tribes like the Aztec and Maya had settled in great cities and when they warred with neighboring cities, they sacrificed the captured warriors by cutting out their hearts, or chopping off their heads. Native Americans, like the Lenni Lenape and the Apache, did not build cities but generally moved around the plains or forests depending on the season. If they got into a disagreement with a neighboring tribe, they organized a raiding party and, under cover of night, stole some of the other tribes’ horses. Comparatively, this is the equivalent of bullying the other tribe for its lunch money.

When the Spaniards came to Mexico they were viewed as bearded gods and were thrown great feasts and given women as concubines. Then they conquered and enslaved the men and took their land and its riches. When the first settlers came to America, they wore white socks pulled up to their knees and patent leather shoes. They tried to befriend the Indians because they needed their help to understand which crops to grow or else they would die. If the Indians were unfriendly, the settlers lived inside forts that they built out of sticks, just like the second little pig.

When the Mexican Indians got fed up with the Spanish Imperialists, a priest led them in revolt and they kicked them out, but this didn’t work out any better because the Church came into possession of the land. In the 1850’s, the Zapotepec politician Benito Juarez, one of the unsullied heroes of Mexican history, passed reform laws that required the Church to sell the land, but this didn’t work out any better for the natives because most of the land was purchased by rich people - not by historically oppressed peoples - and the rich people continued to exploit the natives and combat further reforms that would improve the natives’ station. This has continued to create unrest, and as recently as 1910-1920, Mexico was still engaged in widespread civil war to redistribute hacienda land to the natives. The natives haven’t owned their ancestral lands since the 1400’s and basically, they are pissed off about it. Occasionally, they get thrown a bone in the form of an ejido and it’s nice to see them take hold of the chance to preserve it in a way that the Tzamanguimo have done with the Sima.

On the other hand, as the American settlers became more comfortable with the land, and imported more guns and people, they pushed the Native Americans further and further west, signing treaties along the way that promised the Indians several shiny necklaces and a lifetime supply of alcohol. Eventually, the New Americans got tired of that game and created reservations in god forsaken places like Oklahoma where they forced the Native Americans to live with no economic options but to sell tax-free cigarettes and build casinos.

Well, it was an interesting conversation that we had, and Coconut even asked some questions about why Indians build casinos that reminded me of a very good book that I read called “Revenge of the Pequots” which details the history of Indian gaming starting from the Seminoles’ bingo parlors and the State of Florida’s unsuccessful efforts to tax the profits. The Pequots are a Native American tribe from Connecticut that was forced to open Foxwoods Casino and book multi-million dollar acts like Keith Urban and Nickelback, which is why you have probably never heard of them, but other tribes have heard of them which is why they all want to open casinos and get rich too.

Anyway, after our danger walk and lunch, we got in Wesley and drove a couple of hundred kilometers south and 1,940 meters up into the clouds, literally, to San Cristobal de las Casas, a colonial city in a valley surrounded by a pine forest. We planned to be here only a day or two before heading north to Palenque, but while we were waiting to pull into the campground Rancho San Nicolas, I got it into my mind that I would back up in case anyone coming out of the gate wanted to pass and I ended up kissing a telephone pole that someone had decided to plant two feet from the curb in the road. It did serious damage to the rear fender and dented the rear hatch so much that it won’t open. I also broke a taillight. What all this means is that we are going to be sitting in San Cristobal for a few days while Wesley gets repaired.

Three days on the road

We left Tule on Wednesday under clear, blue skies, and perfect winter morning temperatures - about 68 degrees, for San Cristobal de Las Casas, a colonial city perched at 1,900 meters in the mountains of Chiapas state. Our guidebook estimated a ten hour drive, but we knew better. We planned for 20 hours over four days.

We knew the first part of the road we would be traveling was flat and straight since we had traveled it a number of times on our visits to the market at Tlacolula, the ruins at Yagul, the frozen waterfall at Hierve de Agua, and the zip line at Caujimoloyas - it’s the only direction we ever went out of Oaxaca - but we didn’t know what to expect from the next 500 kilometers. It was no surprise, however, when the road started winding up and up because it seems like someone has grown a mountain between us and wherever we want to go in Mexico.

This is the worst type of driving to me - it’s tedious, upshifting and downshifting, keeping eyes peeled for oncoming traffic around steep curves, and we only average about 20 miles an hour, so it takes all day to go anywhere. We pledged at the outset of this trip that we would not drive more than four hours a day and would not drive consecutive days if we drove four hours the previous day, but we had to blow that philosophy up long ago or we would still be in Texas. When the road finally does reach the top of something on our mountain climbs, the views are spectacular, but then we start winding down again, and I only get glimpses of the mirador because I hesitate to take my eyes off the road for too long.

We planned to spend the first night at Ojo de Agua, a natural spring/swimming hole, near Magdalena Tlacotepec (which is near Ixtepec, in case you want to look it up.) The campground was essentially a dirt spot under a tree, surrounded by other dirt spots, next to a large parking area strewn with litter and burned out spots where litter is burned, and infested by flies and stray dogs. In other words, it’s a dump, and in the middle of the dump is this really pleasant, clean water swimming pool made by damming a natural spring - it reminded us of Barton Springs in Austin, TX, but not nearly as cold. We got out our goggles to watch the little fish in the spring nibble at our toes and other exposed areas of skin for what amounted to a free fish spa - which tickled - until a bigger fish would take a nab at a toe with intentions of making it breakfast.

And we all finally got to use our Turbo Toilet because the public restrooms closed at 6 p.m.

We finally reached Chiapas state on our second day of driving after spending more than six weeks in Oaxaca. After we passed through the wind tunnel of La Ventosa, the narrowest point of the Mexican isthmus where winds can reach speeds strong enough to rip your teeth out, the drive was a pleasant stroll through rolling mango groves and wavy grass fields, more reminiscent of the winding mountain roads I’ve driven in the States, and lacking the steep grades so common to Mexican road-building; most of the time it’s as if the engineers were late for siesta and said, “Fuck going around the mountain. Let’s just go over it.” Coconut and J spent the day in the back seat doing math homework, playing video games together, and taking a nap - just the kind of bonding experience we hoped they would have.

We planned to camp at Aguacero, a waterfall described in our guidebook as a gorgeous series of frothy stairs that tumble and spray, but when we pulled up at 5:05, the gate was locked. We later found out that Carlos, the guy from town who has the keys, calls it a day at 5 p.m., not at 6 p.m. like the guidebook suggested. I did hike down the couple of hundred meters to the campground, which was abandoned except for two stray dogs, one of which growled but turned tail after I stooped to pick up a rock (I didn’t bring my stick.) The waterfall is about 700 stairs and a 20-minute jungle hike from the campground, so all I could see when I peered over the wall was the river far below in the canyon - it was pretty, but I forgot my camera so no photo.

After some debate, R and I decided not to camp at the entrance to Aguacero, which would have meant that we basically set up shop right on the dirt road in front of the gate, so we turned Wesley around to bump the 8 kilometers back to the main road and head in the direction of Ocozocoatla. By this time, though, it was after six, dark, and had started to rain. I couldn’t see where in carnation anything was, including the road, so when we made a wrong turn for the other campground we could have stayed, we decided to head to the nearest Pemex gas station to stay for the night. As our friend Andre said over coffee and cake in our San Felipe house, you haven’t overlanded unless you’ve slept at a Pemex. So, finally, check! And it actually turned out to be one of the quieter nights that we’ve spent in Mexico - no stupid, barking dogs - though Coconut did say that I snore.

After a leisurely morning spent doing this and that in the Pemex parking lot, we drove through the modern city of Tuxtla Gutierrez, which proudly boasts a traffic light for each of its 540,000 residents, to get to the Canon del Sumidero so we could take a boat ride up the canyon. This pre-historic fissure in the earth has a variety of birds that may get eaten by the 240 or so crocodiles that live in the river, some towering rock formations rising out of the mist that reminded us alternatively of the cliffs of insanity or something from the Lord of the Rings, and, unfortunately, lots of floating plastic bottles. At one point, the canyon wall was 300 meters high, the water 100 meters deep, the boat was traveling at 60 kilometers an hour, and the temperature was 15 degrees Celsius. That’s a lot of numbers to add together, but it can be summed up like  this - it was really cool.

On the road again - kind of

We left Oaxaca/San Felipe on Saturday. Coconut and J’s last day of school was on Thursday and they were recognized with an ovation by the student body during morning calisthenics. Neither one of them speaks Spanish well enough to tell me the words said by the teachers, so in the end, R and I may have just bought ourselves freedom for the month at the low cost of the prorated tuition. It was worth it. San Felipe gave us many happy days. The house we rented was great - it had decks with views, balconies with views, comfy beds with views, hot showers, a walk-in closet that was bigger than Wesley, and all kinds of things to explore in any direction you turned once you stepped out the door to the street. And across the way was an outdoor wedding facility, so each Saturday night we got our fill of Mexican pop music, live mariachi bands, and American faves like Guns n’ Roses and Journey cranked all the way up by the D.J. until two a.m.

Hate to give up this view of the mountains from our rooftop deck, but the time has come to ramble on.

Overall, including San Felipe, we’ve been in the Oaxaca area since October 11. Although I probably spent way more time than is healthy sitting alone in a chair watching the sun move across the mountains, even I can make friends in a month and a half, and the people you meet are part of what make a place memorable. So R and I were happy that we were able to make some friends who we hope to see again in other places, and meet a bunch of people who we would be happy to see again if we make it back to Oaxaca.

Our spread for Thanksgiving included two grilled chickens. Peppo, the director at CEI, and a CEI volunteer are to my right and Susan and Andre are to R's left. The kids must have been behind the camera.

We had a couple of fun times with Octavio and Farina, our landlords by proxy while the owner of the house was in Mexico City, and they told us how to fend off wild dogs and about places to go and things to do as we head on down the highway. We also got a lot of good advice from the amazing and inspiring Andre and Susan, who drive here from Montreal every winter to camp at an agave farm, and we heard lots of entertaining stories about their own overlanding adventures – some of which we hope not to repeat (especially the one where Andre sunk his van in mud up to the floorboards while trying to cross the Atacame Desert in Bolivia by the road less traveled.) We even made friends with the mechanic who did some work on Wesley – and he told us about a carrera bocho (a race with souped up VW Bugs) held one Sunday afternoon, where dogs and people were just as likely to be on the dirt track as race cars.

Octavio at work getting the charcoal lit so we can grill dinner.

The race was exciting in more ways than one - people were milling about on the track as the cars raced past and there was only a low berm separating the cars from the spectators.

Because our San Felipe rental house had five bathrooms, we felt comfortable inviting our Virginia friends Megan and Zoe to visit. Besides doing grown-up Oaxaca things like sampling mezcal until we were dizzy, we also took them to Cuajimoloyas, one of eight remote mountain villages, called the Pueblos Mancomunados, which have joined forces to offer wilderness and other ecotourism adventures. On the long and winding road into the mountains, Megan and Zoe were able to behold the power of Wesley – R only had to get out and push once – and we know Megan will never forget – though, she may want too - watching Calibre 50 music videos at dinner: coordinated cowboy outfits, accordions, and songs about extra-marital sex.  Zoe might also remember her 900-meter zip line into the rain and fog on the coldest day in the history of Mexico.

Enjoying a Mexican lunch of tlayudas and fresh squeezed juice on our way to Cuajimoloyas with Megan and Zoe.

Conditions for zip lining were not great, but the line was open and the kids were willing.

Zoe gives a thumbs up after surviving a zip line through the fog and rain.

Although Wesley was parked in the garage most of the time, s/he was not neglected. We had it tuned up, had the hand brake fixed, and finally changed the fuel lines that leaked every time we filled up with gas so there is no more fear we will be a great ball of fire rolling down the road – at least not from that issue. We also discovered it was not J’s socks, but a loose propane gas line coupling, that was the cause of a nasty smell inside the van and we got the driver’s side mirror replaced because it was spotted brown – who knew glass could rust? One of my favorite memories will be of the glass guy coming out to take what looked to us like very rough measurements, matter-of-factly saying “Si!” and then going back to his shop and cutting glass to fit. Presto - a new mirror. Cost - $2.

Wesley parked outside of our San Felipe rental house as we load up our things to leave.

Even though we’ve left San Felipe, we didn’t leave it far behind. Our first stop on the way to Chiapas state was at Overlander’s Oasis, a small campground owned by a Canadian couple, Leanne and Calvin, which is less than a 30-minute drive from Oaxaca. This place is legendary in our eyes - before we left Alexandria we were reading blogs by other overlanding couples who stayed here and it looked like fun - so for us to actually have made it here makes us feel like we’ve accomplished something. This may also be why we are finding it hard to leave – we came in for two nights – Saturday and Sunday - but are still here on Tuesday afternoon.

We had plans to stay on Sunday night because we wanted to catch the Lucha Libra wrestling event like we saw in the Jack Black film "Nacho Libre." It was about what you would expect from a bunch of guys in tights and masks with names like Hurricane Ramirez and Mask of Gold – pretty hilarious. One wrestler actually came out dressed like a scarecrow and had a stuffed crow on his hand. Our favorite wrestler, though, was this little guy called Shockercito, which means little shocker, and we got a great video of him flipping around a much bigger guy like a tornado.

These cool advertisements are posted all over town. How could we not go?

We stuck around on Monday because Coconut came down with an ear problem and we wanted to take her to the doctor so he could pull a big ball of wax out and give her some drops to help dissolve the rest. I stayed behind to watch Calvin replace Wesley’s propane tank regulator, but R described it as one of those kind of gross things that is fascinating. Coconut says she is fine now, so that’s good.

At some point on Monday night, while we were sitting around with some of the other folks staying at OO, listening to their stories, and drinking all the beer, wine, and mescal, in the place, R decided we were going to spend another night as well. So here we are on Tuesday, December 1, four months to the day that we left Alexandria, enjoying the sunshine and the other travelers at this great little oasis that Calvin and Leanne have built. Tomorrow, for sure, we go – partly because there are other travelers coming in with a reservation and there will be no room for us, but mostly because we are all getting a bit restless to be back on the road and find out what else Mexico has to offer.

One of the reasons we ended up staying another night at Overlander's Oasis is because we didn't get to bed until 2 a.m. Blame it on these guys.

Street dogs mean we're safe

The road directly across the street from us goes up, and then it goes up some more – it’s a stairway to heaven strewn with dog shit – and then it turns into a dirt and rutted road that goes down; a lot of the roads here in San Felipe start out as paved roads and end in dirt. This place is schizophrenic - even though you have a fancy house with a cook and groundskeeper in one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in Mexico with a gorgeous view down the valley to Oaxaca city, your garage door opens on a road like something you would see in Jurassic Park. I walk up the road directly across from us a lot because I like to explore and am fascinated with all the places it goes – up into the mountains, down to the river, through neighborhoods with walled compounds and corrugated tin shacks to the park. I usually bring a sturdy bamboo pole with me because the street dogs that plague this country like to bark and follow me as I stroll through their turf. The stick will keep them at bay so I don’t have to find out if they will bite. If I am stickless, my friend Octavio taught me to bend to the ground as if I were picking up a rock and whatever dog is making a show will tuck tail and scurry away (typically, I end up with a rock in my hand because there are plenty of rocks around so why just pretend?) I’ve taught this tactic to Coconut and J and they are amazed that it works so well – classic behavioral conditioning a la Pavlov’s dog – because, I guess, these dogs have been beaten, and kicked, and hit with rocks often enough to know the story if they don’t get the hell out of there!

Notwithstanding the threat of being attacked by a pack of mangy dogs, we’ve felt welcome and safe in Mexico. Honestly, however, based on tales we had heard told before we came here by people who have never been here, R and I did have some nagging doubts regarding whether it was a smart and responsible place to bring a family. We did have some previous experience traveling in foreign countries, and a thread of skepticism of the mainstream runs through the tapestry of my thoughts anyway, so we certainly didn't think we were going to be shot in the face within minutes of crossing the border. But if you hear T.V. news and U.S. border guards as truth-tellers, you might think every place but home is filled with U.S. army surplus machine guns and gangsters who want to pepper the ground at your feet with bullets.

Restaurant health and safety inspections and a stop sign on every corner where there isn’t a traffic light may make a place civilized, but those things don’t necessarily make a place safe, and people may equate one with the other. Admittedly, packs of dogs roaming the streets like high school punks smoking PCP, put life a bit more on the edge, and a proposal was made several years ago in Oaxaca to resolve this stray dog problem by rounding-up and euthanizing the hundreds of poorly groomed mutts since adequate shelter facilities are not available to house them. The proposal didn’t go anywhere because animal rights activists intervened – which surely is evidence of a civilized society - so we are awoken early each morning to the barking and braying of the hounds.

We’ve yet to be woken to gunfire or experience any threat of a random act of violence. Outside of the traffic cops in Acapulco, we’ve yet to even feel intimidated by any person – and they didn’t really intimidate as much as annoy and disgust us. The person-on-person violence reported in the papers seems to be targeted killings that exist in the kingdoms of gangs and turf wars, and sometimes, a massacre of 43 humble scholars who lobby for progressive social reforms. Yet, while my fellow countrymen seem to view the world as such a violent and unsafe place, the number of U.S. states that have not had a random person armed with multiple rapid-fire weapons purchased legally online or at a trade show, go into a random place and kill and terrorize random people, is dwindling. Since R and I got out of the narco-trafficking scene, and I am certainly not an intellectual unless they are serving free beer and cocktail wieners, I think we are more likely to be caught in a cross-fire at the midnight showing of the new Star Wars movie in Alexandria.

The truth is Mexico may be safer than the U.S., especially now that religious radicals have cited major U.S. cities, including my D.C. metro area home, as a place where people with some wild ideas might intentionally blow themselves up in a crowd. Since we’ve been good citizens and registered with the local U.S. Embassy, we keep getting email messages describing a worldwide travel warning for U.S. citizens, but I would wager a dozen churros that no place we have been in Mexico or are going in Central America is a target for suicidal crazies. There aren’t enough Western infidels here to hate, and frankly, would the world really care if a bomb blew up in Guatemala City?

A surprising number of folks asked us before we left on this trip if we planned to bring a gun. We didn’t – I’m not certain pulling a gun on a person who has pulled a gun on me is the best negotiating strategy; I’d rather just give them my wallet – and we haven’t.  In his book “Travels with Charley,” John Steinbeck writes that while preparing for a cross-country driving tour of the United States in the 1950’s, his friends warned him of the violence that could be perped against him. He heard it so much that he brought a dog with him, thinking that if anyone unwelcome came into his camp, Charley’s barking would alert him. Mexico has done him a few thousand better – and as long as I’ve got my stick and a couple of rocks, I’m safe.

Spanish Homework

A few weeks ago R and I decided to experiment by slowing down our journey, settling in one spot, and sending Coconut and J to school to immerse them in Spanish in hopes that they will learn the language. For R and me this arrangement has been great, and it is with mixed emotions that we contemplate our departure from San Felipe this weekend. We are excited to ramble on to new places for sure, but the stability of knowing where we are when we wake up each morning has been nice. Despite the shades of the life we left, a washing machine, for example, so I generally only wear a shirt two consecutive days before I put it in the wash, whether it needs it or not, we mostly have our time free to spend as we please. Someone asked recently when was the last time we had all this time to do nothing, and it was a hard question to answer - we had to think back over about three decades to high school. That’s a long time to do something that someone else wants you to do - not that we were living for someone else, necessarily, but our time wasn’t always our own like it mostly is here. But what about the kids? Someone suggested that I give their perspective on this experiment, and, through interviews done during the course of several dinners, I can now relate their thoughts, and my analysis of the lab results. In short - success! - though, it’s hard to see that at first.

School starts at 7:50. That means the whining and protests start about twelve hours earlier, when Coconut and J are getting ready for bed. This is routine for J, no matter in what country the school is located or in which language the lessons are taught. After his first day of kindergarten in Alexandria, he bemoaned the fact that he had 12 more years before graduation. The kid is forward thinking, “When can I retire?” he asked then, and I think he is still looking forward to that day - he will probably want me to organize a game of football with his friends to celebrate.

Coconut has always been a good and responsible student. Whether that discipline is derived from a  resignation that she has no choice but to go to school, or from a genuine enjoyment of learning and structure, she won't say, but we haven’t needed to resort to the same bribes with her to get her up in the morning that we use with J. She just does what she has to.

It takes us about twenty minutes to walk to the school, but for whatever reason, lately J has been dilly-dallying in the morning, so R and Coconut will leave as scheduled and J and I will have to jog/walk to make it before the bell rings. Despite our reputation, we do believe timeliness is an admirable thing and are trying to encourage Coconut and J in that direction. It is especially relevant in this case as the school charges 60 pesos each time a student arrives late, and a bit more if a parent is not there on-time for after school pick-up. We have heard other schools charge for these infractions as well, so this might be one way Mexican schools teach the important life-skill of being on time for your appointments. We’ve all been trying hard to be on time - money, especially saving money, motivates all of us - and we have yet to incur a fine. Go, us!

The school building is a two-story cement rectangle inside a larger walled compound with four or five classrooms on each floor. In front of the classrooms is a basketball court where the students gather for calisthenics first thing in the morning after the bell rings. It’s interesting because when we were in Zihua on Mexican Independence day, the celebratory parade down main street (main street is usually called Calle Hidalgo in Mexico, after Miguel Hidalgo, the Mexican priest who called the peasants to arms against the Spanish in 1810) consisted mainly of students from the various local schools marching along in military formation. Morning calisthenics seems right in line with that discipline, but J says about this routine that the teachers take okay songs and ruin them with their dance moves.

When the kids get back to the classroom after warm-ups, there is ten minutes of individual reading. I think Coconut and J often extend this time unilaterally because they have both read a lot of books while we have been in San Felipe and I never see them reading when we are at home. Coconut says she can't tell when there is a subject change because everything is in Spanish so she doesn’t know what they do all day - and I don’t think the teacher stops her if she chooses to keep her nose in her novel. There are a couple of English speakers in the class (which has mostly ninth graders in it), but Coconut hasn’t really connected with them as far as R and I can tell. She’s rather introverted and it must be exhausting to be the new kid and try to understand what the heck is going on when you don’t get the language, never mind trying to make friends.

Coconut studied Mandarin in Alexandria last year, and one of the things R and I were hopeful for was that she could keep those studies up this year because she really seemed to enjoy it. However, we don’t speak Mandarin, I barely speak English after 8 p.m., and Coconut hasn’t been self-motivated enough to take advantage of the online opportunities we could set her up with. It’s tough, and maybe someday she can get back to it, but right now it’s a great opportunity for her to learn Spanish. We think she has picked up some of the language, reinforcing the individual lessons she had in Puerto Escondido in October, but she can also be stubborn and not forthcoming with what she has learned, so we don’t know exactly where she is.

J’s Spanish has improved. When we are out I often look to him to translate what people are telling me and he is getting less shy about talking to people. He even ordered dinner for us the other night at our favorite taco stand. He made a friend at school named Diego, who is a really nice kid, and ridiculously smart, and it justified our planting a flag here when they were playing together - sword fighting with bamboo poles apparently being a universal language - but Diego’s newborn brother has been having heart issues so Diego has been out of school a lot, and may even have enrolled in a school in Mexico City for the rest of the year because the family is spending so much time up there with doctors.

Anyway, back to the school day. Lunch is at 9:50am. I pack a bagged lunch for them, but they like to buy the popcorn with chili powder at the cafeteria - what popcorn is doing on a lunch menu served before 10 a.m., I don't know - but this is something they both agree on, and sometimes I think they even share with each other, so we will give them money to buy it. I think it is ten pesos a bag - cheap.

Both Coconut and J like English class - there is a teacher with a guitar who makes up songs and one of them is about the days of the week and includes the chorus scooby-do-bee-do-bee-do-bee-do-bee-do, which you have to admit is pretty catchy. On some days, J has French class so he has learned to count to ten (though, he doesn’t know how to say ‘eight’) and say a few other words. His favorite subject is physical education - gym class. He’s been named the best “mini-goalie” during recess soccer games by the ninth-graders. One day Coconut played volleyball for almost four hours with a basketball. Her forearms were really sore the next day, but R and I are hoping that it is things like that they are going to remember, and fondly, even if they can’t remember when to use the verb “ser” and when to use “estar”.