Fog!

Once a year we got fog in the Keys. Inevitably I would be working and the only fog pictures I could post would be commuting shots of lamps looking film noir shrouded in mist. 

Monday morning Rusty started yawning at 6:15 and by the time he and I were out of GANNET2 the dawn still hadn’t broken properly. 

I wore my serape and socks under my Crocs. I put on the splendid gloves I bought at Wally World in Benson on Bruce’s sage advice and with my watch cap on I was equipped. Rusty wire his collar. We went for a walk. Our chairs and sand mats were wet.

Packing them up to go into town was going to be a chore. 

A Mexican family with a Nissan Altima was here the day before. We saw the car leave but they left their weekend camp behind. 

The desert mountains in the distance are invisible. 

Even the locals looked grumpy: 

Home sweet home and a cup of tea. 

Some pictures: 

To keep things in perspective Bruce sent me a picture of snow on his porch in Southern Arizona. As he put it we escaped the Great Blizzard. 

Up north the snow melted and down here the fog lifted. 

Totonaka RV

O, To be in England
Now that April 's there,
And whoever wakes in England
Sees, some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England—now!

The first verse from one of my preferred poets, Robert Browning from a poem titled Home Thoughts, From Abroad. He lived in Italy and this was his ode to his distant homeland all summed up in the last line juxtaposed against the classic English Spring depicted, when he looks at “this gaudy melon flower,” an Italian fruit. 

I’ve spent a lot of my life saying goodbye, thinking about what I’ve left behind but in this next transition I find myself looking forward. This winter in Mexico has brought about changes that I neither looked for nor expected. Life on the road relaxes me which is a paradox. I find myself able to cope more easily with setbacks, not always with grace and style which would be asking a lot, but not with as much despair. 

As we prepared for our last full day in Mexico I find myself rejoicing in the reality that the road trip continues, and not despondent that one fascinating trip has ended. This revelation took a while to sink in as the end of a trip used to mean a return to a dreary routine. I’m retired now and am free to look at a map and ponder more driving options. 

I’m looking forward to lunch with Bruce and Celia, two people who are able to mock the irritations in life, a useful example for me to follow. After that pause to regroup we’re figuring our path across Arizona’s back roads to see a friend who used to live on Big Pine Key, and then perhaps some dispersed wild camping at altitude near Flagstaff to enjoy cooler temperatures.  

Over the years of change and fresh starts I have spent too much time looking over my shoulder pondering what I could have done better but now in my van life unrolls all the time seamlessly. I don’t have the inclination to spend time looking back. The driver’s seat obliges me to look forward. And the road buoys me with anticipation and optimism and curiosity. This really is a new life. 

Our chores were done; our camping gear washed dried and repacked, the van cleaned and we were pausing to enjoy the shade of our eucalyptus tree at Totonaka RV park in San Carlos. Tuesday is travel day but Monday was make and mend one last time in Mexico. A woman walked up and introduced herself. I was impressed by her openness to new experience. Hers was its own story as she had married a Bulgarian and spends most summers in Europe, not what you expect of salt of the earth Maryanne from Indiana. She and her husband had bought land in San Carlos and were going to park their travel trailer on it and supervise the construction of their new home. 

They were thinking of a van for travel but her husband came by and interrupted our exchange with an appointment they had to keep and whisked his wife away. She was I think surprised by the extent of our travels across Mexico but that is more often the rule it seems for people who live in Mexico but have never been travelers. Switching countries doesn’t necessarily change the habits of a lifetime. Not I suppose should it. 

Luis Menendez is 80 years old and has worked all his life. Of his three children one lives in San Diego and loves her working life whose details escape him, another son lives in Baja and only one child lives nearby in Guaymas. They think he’s weird because he won’t stop working. He’s worked all his life and he enjoys it. He has a big home and sometimes wonders if he could live in a trailer like the residents of the park where he is the night security guard. 

We watched the full moon ride over the hills across the bay, as the sky darkened. There was a cool evening breeze and Rusty’s walk down the street, not terribly exciting, had relaxed him and he sat next to me watching the diners come and go from the restaurant in front of the RV park. We talked of this and that, the inevitable violence issues in the US and Mexico, the importation of guns from the US that fuel the cartel wars. How easy going Rusty (the perfect dog)  is. His children and their careers versus Layne and my decision not to have children (weird) and living by traveling. Working night shift. And Covid. Four of Luis’ sisters have died as have an uncle and a cousin. Luis has had his shots and he’s waiting for his second booster. He never smoked, drank very little and always had a job. That’s how he got to be so old. And spry.  It was cool enough to do laundry. Layne sent me a text: “Let’s do it.” Luis said he had left the lights on for us in the laundry room. 

Layne was ready to fill our laundry bag and we wandered across the vast empty park to do our last pre-border chore.

Life on the road. Here today, gone tomorrow. 

Digging For Victory

I’ve lost track precisely but I think the Friday night recovery was our third or fourth vehicle we’d come across stuck in the sand, aside from the time we winched ourselves out of the soft sand at Barra de Potosí.

The day started off as usual at our wild camp at Playa San Carlos, one of our favorite swimming holes in Mexico, with an early morning bathe before the wind picked up such that we were paddling about in salt water that most closely resembled a swimming pool.

Back at camp I checked the tire pressure on our new tires. Thursday we’d spent the day in Hermosillo, the capital of Sonora state shopping at Costco and having new tires installed on GANNET2. We chose Michelin Agilis 3, three season road tires not sold in the US, land of snow and ice. In the US the Agilis tires are all weather models to cover people who live with snow. 

They are designed to be sturdy tires suitable for rain and rough roads covered by commercial delivery vehicles. The Agilis sidewalls are reinforced, which we discovered immediately help with potholes and the rough sections of road frequently found in Mexico. They give a much smoother ride.  

We decided not to go for all terrain tires much preferred by the fashion conscious social influencers. We spend most of our time on pavement where longevity and silent running are our priorities. The Agilis tires are sturdy enough for the relatively minor amount of off road driving we do. 

On the drive back to our beach spot at San Carlos the Michelins produced an amazingly smooth ride compared to our stock Nexens. Had we been planning to stay in the US I would have bought the much less expensive Nexens as they were fine but the rough pavement we face in Central and South America next year made me choose something tougher and the Agilis tires are the right ones I believe. It’s funny how critical tires become when you live on and with them all the time!

Back at camp I was hauling my compressor around fine tuning  the pressure on the lovely new tires when a dog appeared. Fat and equipped with a collar he obviously belonged to someone and most likely a gringo. I paused to offer him Rusty’s bowl of water when a woman under a broad straw hat yelled, “Don’t feed him anything!” I didn’t respond in kind but simply  said I was just offering him some water on a hundred degree day. “It’s not a hundred degrees!” She snapped from under the brim of her broad straw hat. Okay then I said, it’s 95 and he’s in a fur coat. I didn’t mean to imply he was suffering and  he didn’t want the water anyway but I was just trying to be nice. I didn’t want her around with her instant irritation especially after six months of living among easy going Mexicans. Layne made polite conversation with her as she wandered around our camp and helped herself to a view of the van. After that exchange I left her to her nosing around and I went back to my tires. The conversation was the usual cocktail party inane stuff asking about where we’re from in Florida and that sort of thing, which seemed rather odd after her outburst putting me in my place. I had the thought that even if I had offered her dog a cookie unbidden there would have been no need for drama. On the way back she looked away and held her creature on a tight leash. All I could think was how am I going to cope back in the USA? I shall have to remember to keep Rusty on a tight leash too. 

I can always tell gringos from Mexicans as the latter almost always smile or wave if they cross your path on foot or by car. North Americans in Mexico act as if you aren’t there. Which causes me to smile and wave even harder! 

I got my karmic comeuppance for my gross generalization I described above,  during the course of the afternoon when a car pulled up in front of the van and I had my gringo moment. We were aboard GANNET2 sheltering from the heat and reading and we could hear the occupants having an animated conversation. I couldn’t quite hear the words but my mind immediately went into the gutter and I figured we had become the accidental epicenter of some secret rendezvous. Why the hell park in front of our van on an almost empty two mile long beach? 

After about fifteen minutes of conversation and as far as I could tell no hanky panky a voice shouted “Olá!” and Mr Intruder slid into our beach chair outside the door. My gringo moment caused me to sit up and wonder who the hell was in my space but Mexico has different customs about personal space so I let him talk. It turns out he was a banal traveling salesman offering very expensive seafood in large quantities. Layne gave him a flat no when he asked for fifteen bucks for a pound (approximately) of scallops. 

He tried to lower the price a fraction but Layne was adamant. We’d be eating scallops every day till we crossed the border on Wednesday as fresh meat and seafood isn’t allowed into the US. I am expecting a thorough inspection exposing a long list of infractions that we will undoubtedly discover at the Naco port of entry next week. But we weren’t going to haul dead fish through customs. At least that. 

The afternoon drifted away as most seem to do around here. Rusty loves it as there are no street dogs to ambush him and he comes and goes as he pleases. I walk him morning and afternoon but he even gets to sit outside at night if he feels like it,  as we sleep with the doors open to enjoy the cool night air. 

Layne made chicken fajitas for dinner and we were sitting out at sunset when we heard a car engine moaning. Then a gray car I’d seen on the beach earlier in the day came out of the bushes from the beach and drove off toward town  through the shrubbery. However…

…the engine noise continued. Another couple who had been enjoying the beach were now stuck in the soft sand at the beach entrance. The darker brown area in the example below is compacted dirt and that’s the surface where we park. The lighter stuff is fine soft sand deep enough to sink a car above its axles, and locals know the difference. An example below where you can see the tracks of the cautious stopping on hard packed dirt. 

After a day at the beach with his beloved, Mr Jeep had sunk hard into the sand at dinner time as the sun was setting and he was ready to be driving home to Hermosillo. I listened for a couple of minutes to the engine revving then I got out my entrenching tool and Go Treads and went to help. 

Mr Jeep (we never did exchange names) was a man of energy and resource. Lacking any tools he was pulling sand out from under his Cherokee with his arms and putting sticks under the tires to build traction. To no avail. I put the Go Treads under the front tires and together we dug. When we go back to the States I’m buying a second entrenching tool as they are small light and strong and two people dig  faster than one.  

We dug and rocked the Jeep but lacking a differential lock we couldn’t get all four tires to grip and he was stuck. Hard. His girlfriend a skinny Asian woman who only spoke English and weighed possibly ninety pounds in her swimsuit got digging too and she was tough and extremely energetic scattering sand like a back hoe. Nothing worked until the Rzr Quad off road machine showed up with two young Mexican men in it. And they had a winch.  

They pulled him out backwards then put a strap around the front axle(!) and pulled him sideways and pointed him toward the hard stuff and yanked him towards it. His Jeep got out of the sand hole with all of us pushing including the 90 pound dynamo and nothing on the Jeep broke despite the rough treatment. I want one of those Quads when I’m over van life. Load it with some water and a tent and take off into Mexico’s back country and drive anywhere. They are amazing.  

Back to reality. Everyone went home after a round of fist bumps and lots of laughter and I walked around the corner to my solar shower, stripped off and tried to peel off every last grain of sand. A fun day at the beach and one I shall look back on fondly, another memory of Mexicans helping Mexicans and strangers instantly becoming friends. 

Mexican Beach Life

We spent a week at Playa San Carlos in January. It was the beginning of our six month winter journey around Mexico and it was also the place where we learned to enjoy cold water swimming thanks to the gentle encouragement of fellow van traveler Ron from Iowa. In that week we were hardly alone as there were perhaps a dozen other RVs parked among the bushes on the beach. 

Now as we close in on Memorial Day we are alone on the beach during week days. In the evenings one or two cars come out to enjoy a sunset at the beach after work and on weekends Sundays are packed, the sole day off in Mexico. 

The cultural differences between “gabachos” (a not entirely polite term for foreigners) and Mexicans are highlighted on Sundays. Mexicans don’t have the same view of personal space as we northerners do. They celebrate time off with ear splitting music and if their neighbors are playing a different genre, never mind song, that’s okay. You can hear thumping tubas rappers and seductive ballads all together in one unholy racket on a Mexican beach on Sunday. Fun eh, gabacho?

Mexicans don’t do it to be annoying or to invade your space or send you a message. It’s simply a celebration of life and their families. You will see vast elaborate picnics with three or four generations sprawled on a blanket. If you see a couple walking along a beach by themselves chances are they are gringos. Not always but most often. If you see a couple with children they are Mexicans. Obviously I’m generalizing to make a point. But the way Layne and I travel and camp at the beach is weirdly unnatural to family oriented Mexicans. This is not a country that sees school shootings. Children are cherished. 

We respect the local traditions on Sundays because they have one day to be at ease and we have seven. We plan our weeks around where we will be on weekends and we prefer to be traveling if possible. I hate noise especially when I’m in nature and I struggle with my gringo moments when bird song is smothered by boom boxes. 

But here’s the great thing about these Mexican wild camps, you are free. I don’t just mean there’s no charge to camp, but you are free to live as you please. Play music, be silent, do yoga, walk your dog off leash? No problem. Rusty doesn’t even wear his collar here: he’s nekkid! 

So with freedom comes responsibility as we have been taught. Except that freedom doesn’t quite get the respect it deserves in these places. The question is: can you handle it? Freedom is often quite messy. 

If you can handle loud music once a week can you handle trash distribution all over the place? We in the north have been trained to twitch any time we see someone dumping trash in our presence. It’s second nature after a life time of recycling, composting, and the “reduce reuse and limit packaging” training. Can you suppress your own gringo moments in the face of this? 

Or this, a classic home made porta potty abandoned and up ended in a parking area? 

If this abandoned land contested by rival developers were in the US it would be fenced locked and liability laws would require everyone be kept out. In Mexico it is a public access area with no facilities, no fees and no promises of future accessibility. If you hurt yourself here there’s no one to sue and no one to blame but yourself. You need to be a grown up if you want to beach camp in wild Mexico. 

In the US this might be a state beach with paved parking, with fees, rules and rangers to enforce them. There would be trash cans and toilets but in Mexico a sheet, some buckets and toilet paper scattered to the four winds does well enough. If you wonder why we don’t park in the shade now you know.  

This isn’t Bureau of Land Management  camping either. There are no 14 day limits. Come back next year and the land dispute may be settled and the property may be locked and guarded. Or it may be just as it is today.  

When we plan wild camping anywhere we always try and sort out a back up plan in case the target destination doesn’t work for any reason. If this place were closed we have a nearby truck stop we can use for the night, for instance. 

Often iOverlander user reports will mention trash at the site and sometimes our estimate of trash disagrees with previous visitors comments.  In any event I expect to do a little clean up if we are staying somewhere wild. To that end I have my grabber from my time in the rehab hospital. 

The orange bag is our waterproof trash bin. If we are wild camping for a while we put our trash bags in the smell proof, fly proof orange container for proper dumping later. I have also added trash I’ve picked up around our camp site. You could fill a dumpster with the trash here so we can only grab what we can. In winter when there are a lot of campers all on trash pick up for their own spaces, the place is much cleaner in our experience.  

It is possible to keep your space clean. 

As long as you are patient and appreciate these free open spaces for what they are: yours to enjoy as you please courtesy of your easy going, if cheerfully noisy Mexican hosts. 

And after next Sunday it will all revert to its normal state. If we are here I’ll be out with my grabber.