Final Pause in Mexico

We arrived at the Hotel Mirador Maya in Xpujil on Tuesday of last week. There's not a lot happening in this part of Mexico other than Mayan ruins, but there's a ton of those. In looking at Google maps there were at least 5 Mayan sites within a few minutes  of our hotel. A group of students were occupying the entire hotel when we arrived so we parked between the complex of rooms and the highway. They stayed up late and partied, but left the next day and we had the place to ourselves - a typical theme in our travels. We rented a room for night #2, but still opted to stay in the RV. 

 

Given our close proximity to so many Mayan sites we had to go check one out on Wednesday. It was Becan and was very cool. The pyramid here is higher than the much more famous pyramid at Chichen Itza, but this site is much less touristed (that's not a word, but it should be) - only four other people there. I checked out the sign-in sheet for the day and, as with the other stops we've made throughout Mexico, the site was mostly being visited by folks from Europe. The North Americans seem to be missing out more and more on the wonders down this way. 

 


While we were at Becan, Ian and Penelope (our Australian friends) caught up to us. We were returning from the site and heading into town (past our hotel) to do a little shopping when we saw Wiggy, their urban assult vehicle, parked by our RV! We were going to make a quick swing through town, but decided instead to swing around and head back to the hotel to see Ian and Pen. We got a bit bogged down in traffic and by the time we got back they had moved on and left a note on the door saying they'd see us at the park in Chetumal.


Hotel Mirador is a super cute little enclave of casitas, but not terribly relaxing so off we went on Thanksgiving morning to our final destination in Mexico, Chetumal. The drive was smooth and less than 2 hours - what a contrast to most driving days. We arrived at Yax-Ha just after noon and set up camp next to Pen & Ian. There were two other campers here from the states, but other than that, isolation in paradise. And Yax-Ha really does feel like paradise. It's right on the ocean, but no beaches, so way fewer biting insects. The entire complex is grassy and full of thick, low-lying palm trees. Truly gorgeous. The sun has been on again, off again, but in general, the weather has been beautiful. 


 



Pen & Ian needed to empty their fridge before crossing into Belize so we got invited to dinner with them for the next two nights. Great ribs and pork stew - not to mention the wonderful company. We had wondered where we would spend our Thanksgiving holiday and we can't think of a better way to do it than with our new, Australian family. It was a wonderful setting, a wonderful meal, and the best of company.

 

Ian & Pen set off for Belize on Saturday morning, the park filled up with local families over the weekend, our other two couples - long-term traveling brothers and their wives from the states, departed Monday morning and we were, once again, solo. That is until early that evening when the Swiss showed up. Who would have ever imagined we would be getting such an incredible European experience in Mexico? 

Erika & Andres, on the more typical, one-year travel plan, started in Boston, headed north and did the Canada thing and then down to Mexico and beyond. Tooling about in their vintage Peugeot van, they've been pleasantly delayed multiple times, but are trying to get as far south as possible in the four months they have left. They joined us for dinner at the restaurant next door, mezcal shots into the evening, and off they went Tuesday afternoon. Here we are, alone again.


We find ourselves dragging our feet, leaving Mexico. We really love it here, but it's lonesome not being able to speak meaningfully with the locals. We will be back, but we must move on. The plan is to depart before the next weekend onslaught of locals. Off to Corozal Friday or Saturday. Until then...

Uno Mas

Before moving forward - a bit of back-tracking, catching up and commentary:

The Incredibly Wonderful People of Mexico:
After posting about our bad experience with the Mexican police officers in Mexico City we received a couple of those "Mexico is rampant with corruption" comments. While I'm sure there's plenty of corruption in Mexico, we've barely experienced it.

Contrary to what our soon-to-be Fear Monger In Chief blabs, the Mexican people are warm, welcoming, helpful and hospitable. While Belize is our goal, Mexico is extremely tempting. We've stopped at more than one park that is a shell of its former self because of media hype about how unsafe Mexico is. Again, we have not once worried about our safety or security. We take walks in the local communities. We drive the truck on excursions. And, there isn't a single time we've been out, driving or walking, when we haven't had multiple people smile at and wave to us. That just doesn't happen in the States.

European Friend Update:
Ian & Penelope, of Australia, are trekking onward toward Belize. They're still at altitude (7,000 feet as last reported) and Southwest of us. We're only getting snippets from them currently, but hoping to spend some time with them in Belize before their December respite to Australia.

We heard from our new German friends, Michael & Achim, the other day. Michael has started a blog and it's wonderful. Being that he is a photographer by profession, his blog is mostly pictorial and speaks for itself. His verbiage is in what he dubs the asteism (sarcastic) style - quite entertaining. The blog is in German, but God bless Google Translator who does a fine job of converting the entire blog in one swell foop. It reminds us of some truly amazing places in Mexico that we're missing, since tourism isn't our primary objective, but as Arnold would say, "We'll be back." Here, I hope, is the translated version of Michael's blog: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=https%3A%2F%2Feinalterfreund.wordpress.com%2F&edit-text=

And Speaking of Google...
How did anyone ever traverse Mexico without the internet? We are woefully inadequate when it comes to technology, but had we not finally gotten the Google Maps Gal to speak to us, we would have been totally screwed. Add to that the ability to virtually check out the tricky intersections in advance via Google Street View and our drive days have been totally made possible by Google. Not fans of the corporate giants, but big fans of Google, presently.

Moving Forward:
Getting out of the No-Tell-Motel was a bit challenging. We only had to unhook and rehook the truck up twice on the tight exit from the motel. A half hour or so of nightmare city driving and we had a relatively painless drive to the coast. Type in, "Isla Aguada, Campache" into Google maps and you'll see the little strip we occupied. Not really an island, more of a long peninsula - lagoon on one side, open ocean on the other. Harley would have loved it.

Humans are drawn to the water - kind of fascinating when you think of it. We're land mammals. In any event, if we're at the beach on a weekend, we will be inundated with families. Freedom Shores, our current location, is no exception. The beach visits by the locals extended into Monday, as well. It wasn't until right before our departure that I realized the allure of this section of beach was the palm trees Thelma has planted on the beach. All the locals flock here.



This is an interesting park. Designed by Bill, a quadriplegic, and husband of our hostess, Thelma, as a park that allows total access to those with physical disabilities. Unfortunately, Bill passed 5 years ago and like our first stop in Mexico with Edgar, Thelma is lost without her life-long partner. Notwithstanding, she's obviously a strong woman and continues to move forward. As stated previously, the media in America has largely killed her RV biz, but she has a thriving hotel, restaurant, and beach area.



We were the only ones there on Friday, but then the weekend arrived and the primal call of the sea brought the yoga retreat gals on Saturday, their families later that night, and Sunday through Monday, 80 plus locals of all ages, rotating onto, and off of, the beach, right in front of our RV spot. No one was rowdy or excessively noisy, but all the traffic was like being at a water park.


 

We had planned on leaving Monday morning, but a late night, Saturday storm brought to light a ceiling leak near the rooftop AC unit which soaked all of Laurie's clothes below and, upon further inspection on the lower level, we discovered the water pump was also spewing under the couch/lower level bed. Consequently, Monday turned into laundry/repair/patch/dry out day.

Monday night, we met Kieran, from Australia. Kieran is bicycling through Mexico on his way to Panama. He started in BC, Canada, biked down the continental divide to Texas, flew to Mexico City and biked to Isla Aguada where we met him. Gotta love these Europeans. He's being tempted with an offer to sail out of Cancun for a couple of months, but still plans on hitting Belize, so we're hoping he looks us up. We got an email from our French friends today. Unfortunately, they're already south of Belize so we've missed them. Safe travels Marc, Juliette, Max & Rafael!

Talk about a tiny tent.

We had a pretty smooth, 5 hour drive to Xpujil today. We're in the heart of the Maya forest of Calakmul. We sense many archeological temptations surrounding us, so we'll research it tonight and, perhaps, explore a bit tomorrow. Then, off to our final destination in Mexico - Chetumal.

Bounding On

Thursday's drive was a reminder of the various driving conditions in Mexico, sans the city driving nightmares which we picked up again briefly, leaving Villahermosa on Friday.

Two hours of peaceful driving through the coastal villages of Veracruz. Lush, green, slow-going. Every time you think you can pick up speed and hit a stride, you encounter another little village with a half dozen speed bumps. After two hours it got old and we were ready for some smooth sailing on the toll road. Wrong.

Next: two hours dodging thousands of pot holes. I am not exaggerating in the slightest, THOUSANDS of pot holes, ranging from 12 inches to 4-feet wide, and 4 inches to 12 inches deep, covering both lanes for two solid hours of driving (at a whopping 25-35 mph). These are car killers. I can't believe this "highway" is typically this bad. It has to be that the area got hit with the hard rains we've been experiencing and washed out all the asphalt patchwork that would normally occupy these holes. As my friend Dan would say, the road conditions are unfuckingbelieveable. Sorry, but I've decided to stretch my legs and not make this is not a "G" rated blog.





The next time I read a comment online from someone who says the Mexican highways are comparable to the U.S. highways I'm going to buy a plane ticket, fly to their location, and slap some sense into them. What are you smoking????

Last two hours: smooth sailing. Concrete highways, minimal pot holes, pretty painless.

Before I progress, let me digress.

We left Coco Loco under less than pleasant circumstances Monday morning. We stayed in the parking lot of a small motel (too out of it to take pictures) and left the next morning for Lake Catemaco. Half the time we drove in the rain, but the drive was smooth and uneventful.

Blessedly, the sun came out the next day. Man, did we ever need that. Catemaco is beautiful. Lush, green, beautiful weather, gorgeous lake, and best of all, no mosquitoes! We would have loved to stay for a few nights, soaked up the sunshine, recharged our batteries, and explored the lake and the town, but what Catemaco also had was religious explosions, all day, every day. I just don't get it. Constant religious explosions = quivering Tess, hiding in the RV. Hence, departure after night #2 and back to where I started at the beginning of this post.






One of the challenges in charting our course was the lack of RV parks in this part of Mexico. However, since we're not RVers, we recently discovered that we can rent a hotel room for little more (and sometimes less) than we would pay for an RV space. We've grown so fond of our little RV room that we still prefer staying in the RV for the night, but the hotel room provides us with secure parking, a hot shower, toilet, and someplace to plug in for the night. It also allows us to find great, mid-way stopping points between RV parks.

Our host in Catemaco turned us onto a great little website/ap, ioverlander.com, that helped us find the hotel we landed in Thursday night. While the reviewer of  this hotel talked about how nicely the place had been remodeled, he/she failed to mention that it's an hourly motel - i.e. a no-tell-motel. And the decor truly reflects its intent. A motel room rents for $500 pesos for 8 hours, but the "madam" at the front desk, seeing the ignorant gringos in their 30 year old RV, rented us a room for $350 pesos for the night. That's less than $18.

The room was lipstick pink, the headboard was back-lit plexiglass, the perimeter of the underside of the bed was lined with blue, neon lights, and the room was equipped with a 'foundling wheel' for anonymous, late-night deliveries of food. I had to look that one up since I haven't seen one of those hatches since the Carmelite Monastery in my home town of Bettendorf, Iowa. Hmm, once used by nuns, now used by sinners.




While it was a grueling drive to the no-tell motel, we needed to continue on the next day so we could get someplace where we could stay for a few days and relax.

Next up: Freedom Shores - Isla Aguada, Campeche - just two stops away from the Belizean border.

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.