Tepic

Tepic was founded in 1531 and has a few historical buildings to prove it. It’s the capital of Nayarit state with a population of half a million people devoted to industry and agriculture not tourism.  It’s a frantic town with a street layout designed by a committee of urban planners obviously high as kites. The city is filled with random junctions, zig zag intersections and bizarre dead end neighborhoods. 

It took me one day’s shopping trip to realize I do not like driving Tepic. You will hear more horns beeping in Tepic than the rest of Mexico combined for a start and that was a warning. I love driving but a day on the streets of Tepic and I fell asleep when finally we got home, in my camp chair, in the middle of my book, so stressed was I by aggressive driving and invisible traffic lights and the practice of running four way stop signs if the intersection looks like it may possibly  be clear. How we didn’t wreck or get rear ended I’ll never know. 

Usually it’s easy to find the three things we were looking for so we left the campground planning a quick  half day doing chores and then an afternoon of rest and repacking before the long haul south through ghastly Puerto Vallarta to a swimming beach at Tenacatita. 

Tepic is the junction for southbound travelers who either turn along the coast and take the crappy Highway 200 jigsaw puzzle to Puerto Vallarta traffic hell or follow 15D inland to the mountains of Guadalajara, a spectacular drive on an excellent highway maintained by Jalisco State but with zero swimming beaches. Crappy potholed Highway 200 for us then! Meanwhile we wanted to get our chores done and we set off looking for a laundry. In traffic. 

There’s something about Tepic I don’t get. It amuses me that one of the scientists responsible for creating the contraceptive pill was born here but aside from that useless piece of information the town doesn’t seem to operate like most Mexican cities. There is a splendid university here. 

But we had the devil’s own job finding a laundry. One listed on iOverlander  was miles away but open. We drove there. It was open and inexpensive, $6 for wash dry and fold for a huge clothes bag. The owner had one arm in a sling since later discovered the cold portion of the program was not quite kosher! That Google maps got lost taking us back there that night was just one more cause for stress. What a drive! 

We got lost hunting for a tortilla maker so we stopped for a fruit juice pick me up. We got one tart lime/cucumber/chia seed and one sweet melon. A dollar each for a quart. Lucky we could store leftovers in our fridge. 

Layne got more vegetables than we could eat for a buck and a quarter. It was 85 degrees out and summery. I thought of all those RVs in the dust in Quartzsite enjoying a cool Arizona winter. Lucky them, they get to enjoy campfire chats with friends, true, but to be warm: priceless.  

Of fresh made-on-the-spot tortillas we found none. We saw two places selling corn but none selling flour which we prefer as they store better. Corn turns to cardboard if not eaten immediately. Eventually we found on Google maps a for sure open flour tortilla shop (tortilleria de harina) on the road out of town where we shall stop when we leave Tepic. 

No tortilla makers? What kind of a place is this? And then we needed water to fill our almost empty 30 gallon tank. We like to buy purified water which costs ridiculously little for us but seems unfair for Mexicans who can’t trust their own tax funded municipal water supplies to be clean enough to drink. 

Apparently everyone gets their water delivered in this town. iOverlander app to the rescue but it took me a while to explain I wanted him to fill the five gallon jugs (US 60 cents each) and let me siphon them one by one into my tank as I carry no jugs of my own. He got it figured and all went smoothly.

In addition to a conventional hose filler on the side of GANNET2 I had Custom Coach put in a filler at the back so I can siphon water when we travel outside the US or Canada. I put the jug on the bed and use a siphon hose I had on my boat. Fifteen minutes and we were done. At last we had our 25 gallons and for the low, low price  of three bucks. 

After all that running around and shopping Mexican style please note we had refried beans and chorizo tofu for lunch, decidedly not Mexican at 3:30bin the afternoon of an already long day.  I passed out. 

At five we left the campground and that was when Google got us lost on our way back to our cleaned and half folded laundry. The cherry on a shit sundae of a day. We groped around the industrial outer suburbs of Tepic for a while with me swearing indiscriminately at Google, motorcycles, pedestrians, stop signs and topes, but eventually we found our lost laundry in a black mood and got back to camp at dusk unmolested. 

Eduardo met us at the gate and enquired how our day was. After we concluded our lamentations he looked at us with pity in his eyes. 

My wife Laura can do your laundry as we have our machines. And there is a water bottling plant round the corner and I can get it delivered any time you want. All you had to do was ask. 

Highway 15D

Traveling by van is my thought for the day. I was pondering our retirement choice as I sat in the shade at the Los Pinos RV park in Tepic in the great state of Nayarit. We have finally found the sun and we are packing away our winter clothes in the spaces under the bed. From here to the Andes I trust we shall be in summer. 

It’s fifteen bucks a night in a grassy walled compound by ourselves with Eduardo the manager. The grass is thick and lush and there are no biting insects. It’s cool at night, the showers are hot and all we can hear is the rush of traffic outside the walls, not even dogs barking or loud music. It is an oasis of sorts. 

Eduardo sweeps the fallen leaves around all the businesses at the entrance to the park, above, as I guess his boss owns the entire property. Rusty likes to go for a short walk morning and evening and I keep him on leash as the traffic is fierce. He drops his eggs, I pick them up and we meander back to GANNET2 on his schedule. He really enjoys the grass. 

It is a surprisingly zen kind of life and I have been ploughing through my kindle e reader. The latest is a book recommended by Webb Chiles, himself an avid reader, this book on the subject of the Mexican revolution, a novel that talks in terms of Mexico a century ago, a place more familiar in literature than modern Mexico. 

The drive along the coast to Tepic was a particularly long day starting at 7:30 in the morning leaving Las Glorias after putting out my last pile of food for the stray dogs living by the dumpster, and ending after dark at Los Pinos in Tepic. 

Highway 15D (D for “Directo” designates a toll road) is the main road from Nogales down the Pacific Coast to Tepic where it turns inland to Guadalajara ending in Mexico City. It’s the main road but the surface is totally dependent on the funding from, and commitment of  the states. In Sinaloa most of it is crap. Enjoy the potholes! 

Or the randomly placed vibradores designed to slow you down by rattling your teeth and testing your suspension and interior furniture on their steel buttons placed in the road. Most places they mark dangerous curves or likely pedestrian crossings but in Sinaloa they are random:

Then there are random pedestrians or horses or slow unlit motorcycles or animals. Or lumbering rattletrap vehicles driving 25 miles an hour. 

Do not drive at night; chances are you will hit something or someone. 

Daily life is lived by the side of the highway. 

Maybe a farmer checking his crop? 

And for this endless tolls. Lots of them. In one day we paid $70 to drive highway 15D. You’ll meet people who make a point of avoiding the “cuotas” (toll roads) because they want to see “authentic” Mexico but if you want to cover ground in this vast country this is the way to drive. You’ll get plenty of back road Mexico later. 

We’ve seen some crashes on Highway 15D. Oddly the trucks we’ve passed were overturned at the side of the highway along empty straight stretches as though their overworked drivers fell asleep at the wheel. We came upon a group of cars that crashed in the mountains during the rain, as we closed in on Tepic through a stretch full of bends. Speed and inattention to weather were to blame I expect but no one was hurt. 

I love the magic third lane in Mexico where slow vehicles like us ride the shoulder and everyone else gets a move on at their pace, no stress and no road rage.

We’re driving the shoulder so oncoming traffic can take the magic third lane if they feel like it. The box truck below is starting to pass the 18 wheeler: 

We saw evidence of the recent battles between angry narco- traffickers and the military. I tried but got only a fuzzy picture of burned out trucks at the weigh station where Sinaloa State meets Nayarit:

It’s not normal: other truckers waiting in line to be inspected had their cell phones out taking pictures of the wreckage. I held up my Lumix GX85 and snapped as we flew by. We took a break at a truck stop where we bought five dollar regular gas. This year the peso is strong and gas is expensive. You remember the book I mentioned about Mexico a hundred  years ago? That image is a bit out of date here. 

Rusty walks unmolested by dogs and ignored by truck drivers. 

Highway 15D is more than a freeway, as modern as it may look sometimes. Its also where people live and work, it’s how they get home to their shacks pushing wheelbarrows of firewood or riding horses that are cheaper to operate than motorcycles. Poverty is everywhere here and sometimes that glimpse of 19th century Mexico shows through in the middle of the modern supply chain superhighway. Sinaloa also has crappy bus stops along the road acknowledging the need many people have to get about by public transport. 

Motorcycles are everywhere and some people are wealthy enough to buy and use the required helmets. 

Tolls are paid in cash and though some use electronic passes I’m not an early adopter so I’ll leave that electronic trickery to travelers braver than I.

Pay in pesos…don’t be clueless! Get at least a few hundred dollars in pesos from your bank before you arrive because ATMs do require some learning to use effectively but unlike Baja where the economy survives in pleasing Americans,  this is real Mexico and they expect you to understand that. Apparently some foreigners still try it on: 

No gate crashing at road works either please. Despite stereotypes Mexican drivers are polite and most often don’t take cuts.  Get in line and be patient. 

And at the end of the rainbow of Highway 15D we find Tepic, land of Wally World and blueberries and trash bags and UHT milk. Webb teases me about shopping American but we do both American and Mexican shopping as you will see. We live in our van and we aren’t on vacation so we like to retreat to our own home of an evening, and surround ourselves with the familiar to avoid the burnout of endless travel. I love traveling in my own home. 

It was a long day of driving. We got to the campground after dark. Luckily we knew where it was, I’d never have attempted to find it at night unless we’d been there before. Remember no driving at night? It’s creepy even in town and my eyes were like saucers as we followed Google maps’ blue line. Invisible Pedestrians!

We could all use a rest.

Beach Hunting

Yesterday was one of those days when nothing goes right. It was no great drama - van life shock! horror! click bait! - but it was instead a series of small reverses that added up to an irritating time on the road. 

We left the truck stop south of Mazatlan early, around eight, to get a good start as we hoped find a beach spot to sit still for a few days. The toll road wasn’t busy on a Sunday and we bowled along at 55 to 60 listening to a Carl Hiassen novel (Chomp), a pleasant light memory of South Florida and home.

The toll road isn’t a normal freeway like you’d understand it. Long stretches in Nayarit State were two lanes only, though reasonably pot hole free. Short stretches  went through towns and villages as though a toll road were suddenly a four lane Main Street. It’s slightly weird but you get used to it. The other thing to know is there is an  expectation that slower vehicles will get out of the way and ride the shoulder if there is one.

On a two lane like this when passed you don’t take offense, you just pull aside. If oncoming traffic is passing you don’t play chicken, you just pull onto your own shoulder and keep going. Also when passing in an iffy area ( like the crest of a hill!) turn on your headlights. I was really getting into it and enjoying the flow until the voice of reason suggested she was getting a bit nervous at my Italian style of making progress. The van is a small home for us to live in and she is important to my welfare so I did as I was told. It was fun though driving like a Mexican and I really enjoy their no stress style. 

Turning off to take the highway to San Blas was lovely. The road wound down the mountain, perfectly smooth and full of gorgeous views between the mango groves. San Blas is known for its vicious insects that breed in the mangroves in the estuaries around the city. Long ago San Blas was a major shipbuilding center but the harbor silted in and trade moved to cities up the coast. San Blas never got over becoming a bug filled backwater. 

The lovely central square is all torn up and dusty. That was a disappointment. We sailed here twenty years ago and had fond memories of walking the town before retreating to the boat of an evening to avoid the infamous insect bites.

Our favorite ice creams, one dollar paletas de Michoacán, watermelon for Layne and strawberry for me. 

I used the wide angled setting on my phone to catch Rusty staring at the dogs on the roof. You can see the distortion that gives Rusty a barrel shaped look. A local sitting on his sidewalk engaged with me and started chatting about him. He’s fat he said. Well I wanted to say your dogs are underfed but I laughed and kept my opinions to myself. 

We had already stopped for lunch  when we arrived town. Dorado and grilled lobster and two sodas (“Coca lite”) and it was excellent but not inexpensive at $33. A friend asked it it was street food. Not at that price Bruce! 

Layne got a to go box from the van and we took some dorado for later. It’s nice traveling with your own fridge! Then she went shopping:
On the way out of town we stopped for “world famous” banana bread which looks very familiar and Layne who enjoys shopping the street stalls also got a pie. A sort of ricotta texture not too sweet and of undefinable flavor.
On the whole San Blas left us feeling disappointed. The town doesn’t seem to have enjoyed prosperity as one might have liked. It doesn’t have a very vibrant feel. We set off to find a campground on a beach an hour south as listed on iOverlander the invaluable app.
We followed the directions and took twenty minutes to cover less than two miles of rocky lumpy jerky dusty mess. We crawled and made our slow way past a private development. 
The van did well and the skid plate protected us from the rocks. It was like being at sea and hitting waves every few seconds, rocking side to side as we lurched. 

We got to the beach but the main area was closed as part of the private  development. A side road seemed to be the way to go with mangroves on the left and a barbed wire fence on the right bypassing the beach club. The track was narrow but we made it until an overhead branch threatened our roof. I stopped. We had to go back or cut the branch. I was ready to get the saw out but my common sense wife noted we were in full view of God and everybody and we didn’t know whose private property I wanted to vandalize. Sighing, and forgetting to take a picture I started backing up.

Somehow I avoided backing into a broken culvert and I avoided scraping the barbed wire. Or whacking the roof air conditioner.  A young couple in a Nissan Versa smiled after waiting patiently for my maneuvering before they turned down the lane to the restaurant and campground. They confirmed the privacy of the club we could see, and said the campground was down the track we couldn’t negotiate. We turned around.

The journey back was tough as we had failed. We made it back to pavement at which point We had 90 minutes till dark so we tried our second parking choice 15 minutes down the road. That was a bust as it was a large parking lot next to some loud restaurants and the whole area was filled with trash. Rusty would have been overwhelmed by the number of local dogs. This was a no go. We fell back on our last resort plan: a gas station on the edge of a nearby town called Las Varas (“the canes”) about an hour away.

We passed through a small town on the way, Zacualpan of which we had never heard. It was pretty enough but it was also a break from the many nasty potholes and topes (speed bumps) that littered Highway 16. 

The cratered nature of the main road wore on our last nerve but it also explained why Google estimated a 35 minute drive for 16 miles.

It was about a half hour before dark when we saw our destination. Two traffic cops were monitoring the highway but they ignored us. That was checkpoint number 13 since we entered Mexico. We have never been stopped, not once. So much for corrupt police. So much for dangerous Mexico. We drive as freely as we do in the States.

We put $66 of regular into the heroic GANNET2 and gave the attendant a dollar when he said we would be fine if we parked for the night. We sat and stared at our phones for a while wondering where we were going next. Then I walked Rusty and said hello to some people sitting out enjoying a Sunday evening. Good for your health he said to walk the dog. I agreed. Good for my mental health too.

He ate a huge dinner, we had salad and a beer and a slice of banana bread. I think we shall all sleep well. Monday we will try to find an oceanside berth near Punta Mita north of Puerto Vallarta. Fingers crossed.