with Jim and Gayle
Memories
of Mexico
January 2 - March 11,
2006
Our
Mexico trip was a wonderful adventure. We spent 68 days in
Mexico, traveled 2646 miles in our motorhomes (more in the tow
vehicles). We made 14 stops and visited, as sidetrips, many more
places. There are so many memories
that it is hard to capture all of them. In addition to the normal
monthly web page, I put this page together to try to encapsulate the
ensence of the trip.
The
most wonderful part of the journey was our great traveling companions,
Robin, Sharyl, and Willow. The seven of us had a great time
together (actually the Yorks and Willow didn't really get along, but
the humans all did).
The people we met along the way added to the richness of the
experience. We met many wonderful people.
We saw glorious ocean sunsets.
Lovely colonial cities.
Ancient ruins.
Colorful Indian dancing.
Monarch butterflies.
We saw some poverty.
But mostly we saw prosperity, building, and optimism. Mexico is truly a country on the move.
We saw vast croplands.
We developed the saying "Where's there's smoke, there's pollo (chicken). And where there's pollo, there's Robin!"
And where there was a panaderia (bakery), there was Jim.
We will miss the markets with their bounty of fruits and vegetables and other colorful products.
We will miss the Michoacan stores with their wonderful ice and cream fruit bars. The many flavors such as pineapple, strawberry, vanilla, chocolate, mango, guava, fig, pistachio, kiwi, etc. were always a treat (and often a surprise,like the guava bar, complete with all the seeds).
At times it seemed like every house was selling some sort of street food. The streets would be lined with food eateries. It was as if the people were afraid to go more than a few feet without someplace to buy something to eat.
And
often, in the square where the church was, there were rows of shoe
shiners.
We
won't miss having to buy drinking water in big 19 liter jugs and
pouring it into
our small jugs.
Fuel was not a problem. The PEMEX fuel stops are among the most modern facilities in Mexico and more are being built.
We had really nice roads...
and really BAD roads.
If we see another Mexican Tope (speedbump) it will be too soon. There are topes everywhere -- at the beginning and end of every village, every school, every curve, every place someone wanted to sell something, intersections, straight sections of road, out in the middle of nowhere. Most were marked, but quite a few weren't and it was quite a jolt to hit them going at any speed at all. There were some stretches of roads that you couldn't go but a couple of miles without hitting another series of topes. We joked that the reason that most roads didn't have shoulders is because they used up their allotment of asphault on topes. It seemed like in some areas, they must have had a sale on topes, there were so many.
We felt safe in Mexico. These highway robbers were the only bandidos we encountered. We paid about $440 in tolls.
Because so many of the roads are cobblestone or dirt or have dirt shoulders and so many of the yards are just dirt, the people spend a lot of time and energy sweeping.
I never got used to no toilet seats and throwing used toilet paper in the garbage can rather than flushing it.
Nor did I get used to how Mexicans handle meat. Fortunately, I
knew this from our first trip to San Carlos and brought enough
meat. When we ate out, I tried not to think
about it.
Because
Sharyl is a birder, we went on a couple of wonderful birding
expeditions and, as a result, we were more aware of the bird life
around us.
The only really bad memory of Mexico is the stray, starving, diseased, crippled, pregnant, nursing dogs. I took a picture of a couple, but it broke my heart just to look at them so I deleted them. There were signs that the Mexicans are starting to deal with this problem. In Mazatlan, the vet we took Puppet to is involved in spaying and neutering street dogs. In Patzcuaro, we saw an animal control van. There are now pet stores selling things for dogs, indicating that people are starting to care for them. In tribute to the poor creatures still out on the streets, here's a picture of what we called "Roof dogs" -- something we saw a lot of.
Our final trip itinerary is shown below.
