Harley

Harley was not our dog originally (hence his name). He belonged to a tenant of ours who asked us to watch him for a couple of weeks when he moved out of the house he was renting so he could get situated. That was 11 years ago.

Harley is our eldest. At 12 years old, he's only 6 months older than the girls, but he shows his age more. He's one of those dogs who got the big-time gray muzzle. It's very sweet. He also has a host of maladies including a thyroid condition, a pancreas condition, and most obviously, an eating disorder. Namely, Harley eats anything he can lay his lips on. He obsesses over food.

In traveling, the upside of this is he doesn't interact much with other dogs. He's too busy looking for new sources of food. As such, he's the perfect introductory ambassador - he's an old guy who poses no threat so new dogs get a mellow introduction to our whole pack.

About two weeks before we departed on our grand adventure we thought he was on his way out. He started losing the use of his back legs and I had to carry him down the back steps at night to go potty. Laurie and I said our tearful goodbyes and on day 3, when I was preparing to take him to the vet for the last time, he came trotting into the house like nothing was wrong. He had what looked like a bite on his elbow a few days prior, so I assumed he had been bitten by a black widow and survived, but there's really no telling.

He had another, similar, minor episode a few days before we left and two more major episodes early on in our trip. After the second biggie, I clamped down on his extra curricular snacking and he instantly got better. As with all the dogs, for the last 4 weeks, we've never seen him looking better. He has loved our adventure and it took 5 pounds off his waist and 5 years off his age. He romps around like a puppy. He swims in the pools and in the ocean. And, he hasn't been eating as many foreign substances as usual.

Yesterday, for the first time ever, Harley didn't eat his breakfast or his dinner. I took him for a walk down to the beach for a swim, but he just stood in the tide up to his ankles. I took him to the pool for a little dip which he enjoyed, but after, he was just being lethargic. I suspected another minor bout of his previous condition so I didn't worry too much.

Harley prefers sleeping outside lately, so he greets me every morning as I come out of the RV, awaiting his thyroid pill wrapped in a tortilla. Monday morning he didn't greet me. As I stepped out of the RV he was lying peacefully next to the steps. His final, peaceful, rest. There have been many mornings when I expected to find him in his final sleep, but that was not one of them. Alive and vibrant one day, gone the next. We're totally bummed, but thankful he went quickly and on a high note - we should all be so lucky.

I always referred to him as "my sweet boy" and Laurie and I both miss him terribly. Martin was out of town on Monday, so I called him and he was kind enough to let Harley rest alongside his dogs who have passed. I can think of no place better for his final resting place. For 7 days he roamed free, swam, played, ate, slept and then called it quits.

Goodbye my sweet boy.

Coco Loco

We really like Coco Loco. It's small (just 12 hotel rooms), quaint, and very comfortable. The setting is peaceful, the dogs have the run of the place (especially important given the traumatic nature of our last stop) and have been fascinated chasing sand crabs, and we feel very much at home. Our host, Martin, is super nice and very accommodating. Yet another good friend to add to our rich assortment of extended family.
 
 
 

We arrived on a Monday afternoon and enjoyed a whole day and a half of warm weather and sunshine before the clouds rolled in. It was really only cold for a day or two after that, but not seeing the sun since Tuesday is depressing. Compounding that is the fact that the lack of sun has allowed the mosquitoes to breed like crazy so we've been spending a lot more time inside than we would normally like.

 

Regardless,we've enjoyed our time here. We had the place to ourselves up until Friday when a few more guests started arriving. We have a few couples staying in the rooms and a very nice couple and their three little girls camping on the beach. We feel sorry for them because it's rained most of the time they've been here, but they are undeterred and having a grand time. Between Martin's 2 dogs, our four, and the 3 more from the beach combers, we have 9 dogs wandering freely and all getting along quite nicely.

Martin's been busy since we arrived, but we did manage to squeeze in one day of hanging out with him. He made us his specialty cocktail, shared a nice seafood appetizer with us and told us his story. He's from Switzerland and has been here since the early 90's. He claims to be our age, but he looks much younger. He bought his land and, at the time, the government was paying 110% interest to anyone who parked $10,000 in the bank here! So, he did just that and earned $1,000 a month for doing nothing. Ah, the good old days. In any event he built Coco Loco and has been living in paradise ever since.


Laurie treated Martin to her roasted chicken and rice one night and a pork stew the next night. He couldn't stop raving about her rice and he liked the stew so much he took a second portion home and kept the bowl. It was nice giving him some special Laurie treats.

Martin's on-site restaurant is quite good. We've had their pizza twice. They also have pastas, seafood and crepes. There's also a nearby seafood restaurant we've enjoyed a couple of times. A bit pricey, but very good fish dishes. Since the menu is in Spanish and none of the servers speak English, we've had to rely on their recommendations. Both times were great.


We had planned on leaving a couple of days ago, but we've been rained in. Allegedly, there will be a small window of opportunity tomorrow so we'll go for it and head south. Our next official destination is Catemaco. I thought it was close by, but somehow I messed up my estimate so we're going to have to stop halfway there. There's a good chance we'll get held up by the rain for an extra day at mid-point, but we must march on if we're ever going to make it to Belize. Given the forecast, we could have rain for much of the rest of our travels in Mexico.

My sister, Mindy, sent us a funny email the other day. She was visiting with her plumber and talking about our adventure when he told her he is from Belize! He still has family there and very kindly offered to put them in touch with us. His uncle has already sent us a welcome email and we're looking forward to meeting him and his family when we arrive. God willing, just a half dozen more stops before we hit the border. We're hoping to get there in a couple of weeks - fingers crossed - we're ready.

3 Days of Hell

O.K, maybe one day of hell and two, highly unpleasant aftermath days.

New rule: No more big cities. We intentionally avoided LA on our way out of California, but we neglected to route ourselves around all the major Mexican cities. Our most unpleasant driving experiences have been in or around those cities.

As is typically the case, the gals, Penelope and Laurie, were wise enough to call it a night relatively early our last evening at Don Pepe's. The boys, on the other hand, stayed up drinking and talking politics until 1:00 a.m. Even though it hurt the next day, it was worth every painful moment. I thoroughly enjoyed myself.

Ian titled these shots, Boys being naughty at night and dogs.

We rolled out of Don Pepe's pretty early on Saturday morning. We ended up giving Ian and Pen a ride into town so they could catch a cab into Mexico City. I had easily spent 3 hours the day before pre-driving our route in virtual reality land. It was the most complex route yet. Interchanges on the freeways were convoluted, at best, and I was pre-stressed out before we even began driving.

Less than half an hour into our journey, just as we're exiting the primary freeway into Mexico City, we get pulled over by the police. While the officer spoke nearly no English, he managed to relate to us that we, as foreigners, were not allowed to drive on Saturday. I found this to be hard to believe until researching it later, but, nonetheless, he's a cop and we're visitors. The one English word he did have a very solid grasp of was "dollars," as in $5,000 DOLLARS - the fine he told us we were on the hook for for driving two vehicles, illegally, on a Saturday, through Mexico City. Without belaboring the point, we ended up paying him off with about $150 and he escorted us to the Puebla exit.

We made it through one more toll before being extorted again. The second time, my frustration and anger outweighed my 6 hours of sleep, my hangover, my inexperience with being held up, and the stress of anticipating a long, convoluted day's drive, so cop number two only got $12. Unfortunately, these early day experiences totally ruined our day. We were completely paranoid for the remainder of our drive. For over an hour, I intentionally drove at about 40 mph just to avoid approaching another police car we saw ahead of us on the highway.

Pulling into Cholula, a suburb of Puebla, we got a bit lost, as usual. The Google Maps Gal took us in circles a time or two until guiding us in the back way to Trailer Park Las Americas - the only RV park in this area. One of final turns was so tight two locals had to guide us as our front bumper scraped the base of a street light pole, just clearing the turn and avoiding yet another unhooking of the truck and the resulting traffic jam.

Las Americas is a basic, small, but nice park - more hotel/hostel than RV park. I found the only spot out of about 20 sites that had a plug (dangling from the wall) a water spigot and a waste drain access. Once again, we were the sole occupants of the RV portion of the park. The setting was grassy and nice, but our mood was foul. This was compounded by the fact that as we were pulling in, the large explosions began just outside the gate. It felt like we had entered a battle zone.



Christians in this country love to set off explosions in conjunction with their worship services, and this town takes the practice to the extreme. The whole time we were there the explosions began before sunrise, started again later in the morning, mid-day and again in the evening. Poor Tess barely left the RV. When we could get her out of the bathroom, she curled up in a corner and quivered the whole time. Even though we could have used a third night of rest and recovery, the constant explosions were just too much to take, and we were sick and tired of being cold every night for the last week and a half, so we left early morning after our second night.

Having to wear a sweatshirt in Central America? Really?

We had to depart via the highway just north of Puebla so it was big city traffic again. Thank God for the Google Maps Gal. We would have never been able to navigate out of the city on our own. We had a pretty smooth drive and after a couple hours of driving we started into the cloud forest. It was stunningly lush with vegetation, and totally beautiful, but it amounted to a 7,000 foot descent on the smallest, windiest roads imaginable and we got stuck behind brick boy - a full size semi truck loaded, stem to stern, with cinder blocks. Given the angle of descent and the narrowness of the turns and the lanes, he should have never been on this road, but that's my limited, American perspective.

A sideline on Mexican driving:
While everyday life in Mexico is slower paced, driving is full-speed ahead and chaotic. Road signs mean nothing. You don't stop or yield or refrain from passing when it's dangerous. If there are 50 cars at a 4-way intersection, all vehicles are within a foot of one another and constantly jockeying for position. No one courteously lets you into traffic - you must make your own hole. If you are not as aggressive as everyone else, you will not get anywhere. All this being said, the whole, chaotic mess is accepted by everyone and amazingly civil. No one seems to get pissed and honking is usually an indication of them taking a certain action - not expressing anger. I, however, still shout profanities from time to time and Laurie periodically freaks with the occasional, "holy shit."

Back to brick boy. Visibility on this entire stretch of road never gets more than a few car lengths, but this doesn't stop every - single - driver from passing. Every single driver that is, but us. Now, we're the idiots because we refuse to throw our lives to the fates and pass brick boy. After we were about 2/3 down the mountain, my brake pedal was literally at the floor. Finally, we found a spot big enough to pull over and unhook the truck to take some of the strain off of the RV brakes. I dropped it into the lowest gear (which still had me going faster than I was behind brick boy) so I barely had to use the brakes and we completed our descent - me in the RV, Laurie in the truck. I no longer had the advantage of Google Maps Gal, but fortunately, I recognized this stretch of town from my virtual pre-drive and we successfully made it halfway through town before encountering - yep - brick boy again. Christ.

Brick Boy's Butt

Anyway, we pulled over a time or two to let the 20 or so accumulated cars behind us pass. A courtesy, I might add, the likes of which had never before been witnessed in Mexico. Toward the end of our jaunt along this long, slow stretch, we had a yet, even slower truck get in front of us traveling at a stunning 15-20 mph. Finally, we hit more open road and were able to make it to our destination on the east coast of Mexico in the northern part of Veracruz.

We're staying at Coco Loco. It's not an RV park. Martin, a European expat, has run this place for 25+ years. It has about a dozen rooms, a couple of larger cabanas, a few camping spots, and a restaurant. We've run an extension cord from the beach-side palapa and are filling our water tank from the hose. There is no sewer hook up so I'll do it by hand for a few days.
 



Need I say it? We have the place to ourselves and Martin is a dog lover so our kids have the run of the place. We're right on the beach. Given the three prior days to our arrival here, we had already determined we were going to roost for awhile. Martin's place is rustic, quiet and comfy. I'm writing this Wednesday morning. It rained last night and today is cold and gloomy. A fitting atmosphere given the news I read this morning. More reason to sit tight and try to bolster our spirits before moving on. I suspect there are more of you who are now seriously considering joining us in Belize.

Brrrrr

It's always difficult leaving places where we feel comfortable and have made new friends, but if we're ever going to get to Belize we have to keep moving. We said our goodbyes to Arturo and he lead us into town for gas and out of town to the freeway entrance. We truly have a new friend and we hope he'll visit us in Belize and we'll have a chance to return to San Juan Del Lago.

Heading in so close to Mexico City we expected it to be a nightmare, but the trip was very smooth and we only had to unhook the truck twice to back up. Once at a toll booth because the truck in front of us didn't have the money for the toll and the second time after entering Tepozotlan. We arrived after about a 5 hour drive and it was full-on prime time in Tepozotlan. This was the final day of celebration of Dias de los Muertes and this town is a hub of partying.

Sideline:
The day after we arrived here, the grandson of the original park owner was the first one who could actually tell me how the official schedule works for this holiday. As I understood him, at midnight on November 1 the spirits of the children who have died return to be honored by and visit with their relatives. At midnight on November 2 the same happens with the spirits of the adults. On November 3 it's a big party to celebrate the entirety of the occasion and then it's all over.

We arrived about 3:30 on November 3rd. Tepozotlan has an incredible, huge old church/cathedral surrounded by a gargantuan plaza and the whole area was packed with cars and people. Think New Orleans on Mardi Gras on a smaller scale. We had to drive right through the middle of it all to get to Don Pepe's. Fortunately, everyone we asked knew where it was and they directed us, block by block.



We got within just a few blocks of the park when we encountered the bus, head on, on a narrow street. He wanted us to pull over or back up, however, when you're towing a truck, backing up is not an option. I got out and made as many hand gestures as I could, trying to tell him he had to be the one to retreat. Finally, I gave up and unhooked the truck, with traffic backed up 8 cars deep in both directions. By the time Laurie jumped in the truck to drive it, the local police had largely cleared the path in front of us and we were back on our way to complete the 6 more blocks to Don Pepe's. One of the first locals who had directed us to Don Pepe's was waiting at the entrance to make sure we made it. He arrived on foot before we did in the RV if that gives you any idea of our timeline.


 
Need I say it? The park to ourselves. This is an interesting place in that pretty much every square foot of floor space in the entire place is paved with cobblestone. I know it was done by hand and must have taken forever. I had to brave the traffic once more as soon as we arrived to restock a few supplies. When I got back to the park I was locked out. I parked the truck at the entrance and walked around the block to about where the RV was parked. After seeing me pathetically yelling over the fortress walls of Don Pepe's to my wife ("Stella!") a local let me in his adjacent, under construction, domicile and directed me to a ladder which I climbed to the next level. I then scaled another 5-foot wall in my flip flops and was back inside the park.

I keep forgetting to mention that we're surprisingly at altitude. At San Juan Del Lago, we were at 3,000 feet and now, we're at 7,500 feet. As ignorant rookies, we never took the time to consider this. It's cold at night (and sometimes during the day) and we're ill prepared. Sweat pants, sweat shirts and flip flops be us in 40-degree weather. Dopes. The RV, being carbureted, also doesn't like the altitude. It's not getting enough oxygen so it's constantly backfiring - loudly. Just a few more days of this and then we'll be back down the hill on the east coast of Mexico.

We had planned on leaving after night two, but plotting our course out of here was a nightmare and required an entire additional day. It's bad enough having to drive 5-8 hours when we hit the road, but having to spend hours the day before doing the virtual drive in advance makes it worse. On the other hand, doing the virtual drive makes the actual drive much easier so I'm not quite sure how to think of the whole thing. I just finished the virtual drive - can you tell I'm a bit punchy?

Thursday night, Ian and Penelope arrived in their Australian Urban Assault Vehicle. They're 18 months into their 4 year driving tour of the world. I think I said once before that our trip is pretty minimal compared to the Europeans we're meeting. These guys are balls out. Penelope and Ian are also on their way to Belize where they'll take a break to fly home for Christmas, so we're hoping to see them again. Their latest dilemma is that Costa Rica and Panama won't let them drive through their countries because their beast is right-hand drive.
 
 
We also met Michael & Achim, who arrived from Germany Friday. Again, two incredibly wonderful new friends. Being that we're all whacky, unorthadox travelers, we become friends quite quickly. Laurie made soup for our entire, new, European family. Then, we all gathered at Ian and Penelope's and chatted until the wee hours of the morning. Saturday morning - off to Puebla.

I'm wrapping up this post after our arrival in Puebla, Saturday afternoon. I never do a full blown blog posting on travel days because all I'd do is bitch, bitch, bitch, so here's a little teaser for the next post: The quickest and yet the worst, travel day yet - asshole Mexican cops shaking us down.

Vacation #2

Another 3 1/2 hour trip that took 6 hours. Actually 7 1/2 if you include the 45 minutes at Walmart and a couple of unintentional detours of another 45 minutes (with an impressive - by my wife's admission -  mid-road u-turn that we barely pulled off). Admittedly, this was the smoothest stretch of road yet, but still long and stressful at the end - as usual.

We're at San Juan Del Lago RV Resort & Spa in San Juan Benito Juarez. San Juan Benito is a tiny village with a larger sister city, Cuitzeo, directly across the giant Lake Cuitzeo. San Juan Del Lago has just over 20 RV sites sitting on about 47 acres overlooking the lake. It has just recently, officially, opened. The park is in a beautiful setting, but the best part of it is Arturo, the owner.

We had to contact Arturo in advance so he could lead us through the narrow streets of the town and down two kilometers of gravel road to the park entrance. Once we went through the gate and up the first hill we stopped and unhooked the truck. He then took me up the hill in his truck to give me an advance look at the grade. The RV made it up with little difficulty, but we had to make a couple of tries with the truck. It was just about building up enough speed and momentum to conquer the incline.

Once again, we are the only ones here and we love it. Arturo is a huge dog lover (he has 9 of his own) so our critters get to run free. Since his property is so large, they can wander at will and we don't have to worry about ever leashing them (unless we leave so they don't follow us). They've also recently been introduced to the horses on the property. Seeing giant "dogs" was a bit unnerving for them at first. Despite my warnings to not antagonize them, Scraps thought he could take them on until he got kicked in the head and squealed away with a nice fat lip. Harley enjoys grazing with them and I think they believe him to be just another horse. All the horses like Amy and follow her around and Tess even got a kiss from one of them.

 

We were ready for another break and we feel very welcomed and comfortable here so we opted to stay put for a few days.We love the area, the towns, the people, the site, and our host. It's yet another tempting alternative for us to keep in mind.

Arturo has been our constant companion. At Laurie's insistence, he and I had a boys day our first full day here. We walked a couple of miles down the hill to one of the local mineral bath houses for beers and a soak. This area is renowned for the natural, thermal, mineral water springs that run close to the surface. You can take advantage of one of the natural baths that occur in the foothills or hit one of the local bath houses where they have set up private bath rooms and pumped the water in. We chose the latter. We had a couple of tall Coronas with lime and salt and soaked in crystal clear, steaming hot mineral water for 20 minutes or so for $150 pesos (a little less than $8). Arturo joined us that night as our first dinner guest in the RV.

Arturo has taken us into the nearby towns several times. We hit the town of Cuitzeo after our baths on our first day here for a little shopping, and returned the next day for the farmer's market where we picked up several varieties of local fruits and veggies and about 5 pounds of roasted peanuts, pumpkin seeds, garbanzo beans, and another unidentified roasted mondo bean. Afterward, we hit the local watering hole for beers and sipping shots of mezcal and shared some of our 2 kilos of pumpkin seeds with everyone in the place.



On night three, Arturo  made arrangements for us to visit his "plastic artist" friend, Jacobo Dominquez's home for a meal Jacobo prepared just for us. Jacobo is a wonderful character. Artist, chef, musician - all around creative wonder. He made us a phenomenal meal prepared in the traditional ways of the ancient locals here, sang for us, played his box drum, and let us freely wander his home/art studio. We couldn't resist picking up a couple pieces of his artwork which consists of paper mache' colored, woven around wire forms, hardened with polyurethane and turned into wonderful creatures and creations.

All around artist, Jacobo

Our host, Arturo

On day 4, Halloween, we headed to a nearby town where we picked up three pairs of incredible, hand-made, softened, all-leather shoes & boots for about $25 a pair. We're ready to move along, but we're in the middle of Dia de Muertos, the Day of the Dead (from which Halloween was borrowed and modified). The Mexican people celebrate their departed dead by visiting their graves and bringing food and drink to enjoy with them while singing, chanting, telling stories, etc. for a few days (that description doesn't begin to do the holiday justice, but it gives you a basic idea). As such, we're sitting tight a bit longer to avoid any parades/celebrations in towns we may be passing through on our way to the area just north of Mexico City. The greater metropolitan area of  Mexico City has a population of 21.5 million people so we're trying to steer as far away from it as possible.

A quick plug for San Juan Del Lago RV Resort & Spa...
For the last 10 years, Arturo has been creating one of the nicest RV parks in Mexico. It has huge sites with lots of room in between sites, full, modern hook-ups, fast internet, lovely bathrooms, and a beautiful outdoor kitchen and gathering area. His vision is of a full-service RV park for long-term retirees. This would be an ideal setting to retire in. The weather is temperate, the views are wonderful, the towns are quaint, the people welcoming, the host is amazing, and the prices are incredible. Someone could park their motor home here for $185 a month, electricity included, and live an incredibly comfortable life. Again, we're not RVers, but if we were, I think we would be locking in a space now. Check it out: http://www.sanjuandellago.com/

Inland We Go

It's been a traumatic few days so we're a little late posting again. Nothing personal, but living the adventure is more important than reporting it.

The serenity of our park setting at Los Pinos was somewhat shattered by the shrill voice of the toddler belonging to the RV park manager (and a set of lungs to back up her voice). We dubbed her "the crow" and her cawing was rather incessant. We still enjoyed the setting, but two nights was enough and off we went again.

The first three + hours of our 6 hour drive to Roca Azul was pretty painless. The drive through the "outskirts" of Guadalajara was two hours of traffic that would put downtown LA to shame. We could have walked it with the dogs on our backs faster than we drove it. Regardless, we survived and made it to our next destination.

Roca Azul is a multi-purpose facility: part sports complex, part apartments/dorms, part park, part RV park. It has 3 swimming pools, a couple dozen dorms/apartments, a soccer field, tennis courts, two huge playgrounds, recreation rooms, snack bar, tent camping and 50 RV spaces. It has the feel of a raucous Guadalajara weekend getaway waiting to happen. Which is why we left on Friday.


 







 

On the Road Again

Our stay at Las Jaibas RV Park in Mazatlan was our first week of vacation. We ended up staying for 7 nights which is why you’re just now hearing from us again. The park was great. Our neighbors were great. Our host, Rafael, was great. Plus, we had access to everything we needed so we stocked up before we left. We really needed that week of relaxing. It was hard to leave, but we both knew it was time.

So, today we left – after being jolted awake in the middle of the night by the dogs pushing the screen door open so they could chase three coatimundi (tropical raccoons) trying to steal their food. This is not our video, but it is what I chased off in the middle of the night: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRiFjuafr0I Amy decided to stick her head in Rafael's can of white paint before we left.

 

 Every travel day is stressful, but we’re getting better at it. We start off calmly, panic as we get closer to our destination and can’t figure out if we’re making the correct turns or not, start snipping at each other and then arrive, relatively unscathed, and chill out for a day or more. When we get lost our key phrase has become “This is what we’ll do and we’ll hope for the best.” 

The final leg of the road into Tepic before hitting the city.

Our Mapquest/Google Maps 3 hour trip to Tepic took 5 ½ hours. A small amount of wild driving in the city, but we found our destination, Los Pinos RV Park, pretty directly.

Once again, we’re the only ones here. 12 spaces in the middle of a big city, all to ourselves. The entrance is in the middle of a strip mall off a major street and our little RV park is a slice of heaven behind the strip mall. Amazing. Our own little park. The dogs have no idea how much they’ve lucked out. They’re hardly had to be on leashes. Today, they saw real grass for the first time in almost a month and all four rolled in it – big time. Can you believe we’ve been on the road almost a month?

The entrance to Los Pinos

The entrance to Los Pinos

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our Park

 

 

Lovin' the grass.

Tepic is about our halfway point in Mexico. It’s considerably cooler here and the temps at our next several locations, as we travel across to the east coast, will get colder yet. Just when we had acclimated to the heat and humidity. We’ll probably chill here for one more night then off to the biggest freshwater lake in Mexico.