Three Weeks

Wednesday will mark three weeks since we arrived in Oaxaca. It was a three day rush to get here from Laredo and since then we haven’t moved. The big news is I bought a cup of rice pudding last night. Sylvia had some but Rusty and I had the bulk. 75 cents well spent. 

It was fair enough as I got no chocolate cake at the campground when the residents celebrated the caretaker’s 63rd birthday. Calí (short for Calixto) cleans the toilets, empties the trash cans and trims the grounds.  He is tireless and a bit of a tyrant as he takes muddy footprints in the showers personally. I mop the floor after I’m done even though I leave my Crocs outside the door while showering. Cali specializes in tough love. 

We are a mixed bunch of French, Canadians, Germans,Poles and Mexicans. None as scared of driving Mexico as you might think. The campground owner, carrying the Coke bottle,is a vegan just to wreck our stereotypes! He spent the day catching wild cats and taking them to the vet to be neutered. They were all back prowling the bushes in the afternoon.  Rusty ignores them. 

I thought of Webb Chiles as I walked through Sam’s Club and passed a promotional stand for Scotch Whisky but Laphroaig was not on the menu. My sister lives in the top left hand corner of the map but I have never, oddly enough gone whisky tasting in the Highlands. 

Halloween is not a big deal in Mexico but the Day of the Dead the next day is party central and Oaxaca is known for its extravagance. 

I had a hard day driving Oaxaca on Saturday as the city streets are a shambles of torn up asphalt and holes. Imagine driving into this thing below. That’s why driving at night is very dangerous. 

There was an accident on the way home when a propane truck went off the road and that created a massive snarl of Biblical proportions. I got back to the campground in not a great mood. 

Oaxaca also has a truly peculiar habit of directing traffic to the left side of the road. Check it out as there’s a frontage road on either side but our two lanes are on the left. It is bizarre to the rational mind but you have to be on your damned toes! 

Anyway Guatemala seems to be opening up and the general strike seems to have depleted the country of food and fuel so the blockades seem to be coming down. Tuesday, all things being equal we will be in our way I hope. I feel like I’m putting down roots! 

Still Here

I have been in the habit over the years of posting daily and when I lived in Key West it was easy.  I could post daily photos from such a photogenic location and I could spend the time sitting at my silent 911 desk between calls posting those photos.  Thus I could share my love of that place every day online. Life in the campground is different. 

We had goulash last night. That’s the big news as Layne went to Walmart in Oaxaca with the Germans and the Austrians and Sandro brought back the ingredients for this national dish from Austria-Hungary. Four pounds of meat, four pounds of onions, cook’em down (no braising) add paprika by the wheelbarrow load and eat with pasta or potatoes. It was magnificent.  

We gorged, drank red wine and compared life in the US to life in Europe. In the end it’s all really about what you are used to, and what you expect. It’s not easy for Europeans to understand the size and variety in the US until they drive it and inevitably they love the parks and wilderness and vast open public lands even if our way of life escapes them. I like to hear about camping in Europe as it’s been forty five years since I motorcycled Europe with a tent and I plan to take GANNET2 for a tour after South America…

Guatemala’s general strike seems to be heading toward some sort of confrontation as the country runs out of food and fuel and the Supreme Court has told the government to use force to clear the blockades paralyzing the country. As it is we can’t continue south and it’s bumming me out sitting still. So on Sunday we are leaving and getting back on the road. 

Layne sharing Mexican touring tips with Austrian Lisa: 

Either we go south or we explore some more of Mexico while we wait for Guatemala to sort itself out. The campground is very nice but sitting around chatting reading and eating is not the sort of exploration we had in mind.

Austrian Sandro happy he’s finally fixed the brake caliper on his Eurovan: 

There isn’t much to write about and not much to photograph around here. I hope next week one way or another we will be back traveling the way we enjoy with less sitting and more driving. 

Ceviche enjoyed by Layne and her women friends in town and it looks pretty good: 

I’m reading a book about paddling Alaska, nothing I’d ever want to do myself but the author has a way with words that I find surprisingly enjoyable. She emotes but paddles an inflatable canoe (!) with practical common sense tinged occasionally with fear. She cooks with gourmet pretensions that astonish and for me she doesn’t go too deep into spiritual musings that might make me squirm. She also gets me out of this RV park and for that I am grateful. 

We haven’t traveled far enough to recharge our batteries! Movement! Change! Horizons! Discovery! 

Next week I fervently hope.  Till then I shall twiddle my thumbs. 

Why Mexico

In case you weren’t aware I should warn you the Earth’s magnetic poles are about to switch and a catastrophic tidal wave will engulf the planet or causing end time climate changes. Right you are then. 

I was lying on my back in the middle of the lawn at El Rancho RV park after a strenuous game of bocce and my neighbor Chris says he’s waiting for the end times. All I’m waiting for is Guatemala to open up so we can get moving to Panama but the political crisis in Guatemala shows no sign of easing. 

Chris then started in on oppression and our overlords taking away our rights and poor us and so forth.  I simply disagreed, told him to read some history and to travel to learn about real oppression and see real people suffering poverty and he drifted off. I’m not into conspiracies or magic or supernatural stuff. If I can’t see it it ain’t there. I don’t look for scientists on YouTube or snake oil salesmen on Facebook.  I think I annoyed him and for that I’m sorry but in this travelers environment keep your nuttery to yourself. Overlanding is no place for conspiracy theories, the road is hard enough and we mostly stick to travelers talk. 

Above you see a couple of the nicest retired Germans you could wish to come across. Matthias and Sylvia have toured Europe, North Africa and South America in their a Sprinter four wheel drive box van conversion whose diesel incidentally has given them hell across the high Andes passes where the oxygen is thin. 

We get along famously and he’s promised to drive the Silk Road with us if we ship to Europe after South America so that offer whetted our appetites. He wears no tinfoil hats and is if possible more pragmatic and certainly more cautious than me. 

Below, Cali the caretaker napping after another exceptionally long day. This is how phone photos look rather than cameras with proper lenses! My camera was safe aboard GANNET2!

I’ve noticed that self identified victim status a lot of expatriates wear as a mantle in Mexico and it doesn’t make me want to hang out with them. I travel in Mexico because I enjoy it and I also enjoy being in the States. I enjoy the variety but I don’t want to live anywhere else. I’ve had a great, if modest, life in the US and I feel extremely fortunate. I never sought to make a fortune or alter history and in that I succeeded splendidly! But I’ve had a great time. 

Last year we met a lovely couple in a beach campground driving a huge truck and trailer with a bunch of toys. We really liked them, in their fifties and retired from Alberta. Then they went off the reservation talking about how oppressed they were in Canada and how they had to flee to Mexico to a country whose culture and language did not interest them. 

I was actually quite shocked but said nothing. He was a superb mechanic off the oil fields I believe with a high school diploma. Canada had allowed him to make an excellent living and retire early and far from oppressing him gave him an excellent quality of life. His ingratitude surprised me.

There’s another oppressed Canadian here in Oaxaca who talks about fleeing from the nut job Prime Minister Trudeau. He owns a massive Ram pickup now with Mexican plates and  a large travel trailer any Mexican might envy. He is not the poster child for refugees escaping oppression.

The world seems to be spinning into real violence at the moment and I suspect more refugees will be struggling to escape to a place of wealth and peace. Southern Mexico is littered with Venezuelans walking north, living rough and taking their families with them. I look at them and wonder where my neighbors forgot their sense of proportion. 

They say travel broadens the mind but I’m not sure that’s always the case. I have no idea what the point of living in Mexico might be if you don’t have any interest in the place beyond the cost of living. I like visiting but I know where my home is and I know where my travels will end. And that’s not here. 

My Happy Place

Not every day on the road has to be a disaster and some days, even if they start before dawn can work out okay. Pretty good actually after a peaceful free night in the back lot of a gas station, we came late and left early. 

We drove fast to Oaxaca, three days from Laredo to our campground and we used toll roads, about $120 worth of four lane. We slept in the truck stops and pressed on. We’ve talked to other overlanders who think truck stops are noisy and unsafe and so forth. We find roads go dead in Mexico late at night and truckers don’t idle like Americans so we sleep pretty well. 

Our summer in the States showed us how overdue infrastructure maintenance and repair is at home. In Mexico some freeways are excellent and others are just as ghastly as we’ve seen. I was encouraged by our van check up that we had no damage to our van from the holes, ridges, speed bumps and dirt.  

Some travelers turn their noses up at toll roads saying you don’t get to see the “authentic” Mexico from toll roads. However in this country Mexico comes to the highways and you will find yourself driving a four lane through villages with food sellers on the median and tire shops she roast chicken stands lining the travel lanes. And if you want to get somewhere the toll roads save hours of dodging speed bumps. This was not an official rest area but it worked well to give Rusty a walk plus we got to dump our trash. 

While we wait in our safe comfortable campground to see what happens in Guatemala I have to confess I miss driving. Some overlanders here say driving is a necessary evil and most drive to see things they can’t find at home, mostly the sort of natural phenomena like canyons, lakes wildlife, waterfalls and volcanoes. This picture below looks more like a painting as I was stretching a short lens to do a telephoto’s job. It’s a cone called Popocatépetl.

Mexicans call the volcano Don Goyo or El Popo and last year it erupted throwing enough ash into the atmosphere to close down Mexico City’s main airport. The nickname “Don Goyo” comes from a local resident called Don Gregorio who communes with the spirits in the mountain and warned his neighbors of imminent danger. 

Middle class housing along the road with water tanks and satellite dishes and high walls. Many Mexicans are much more fearful of Mexico than travelers. We have friends who refuse to eat road food and if you listen to non travelers every road is perilous. 

Life in the campground is pleasant of course and easy but I miss the color and variety of the road. Layne saw a tamale vendor alongside the toll road so we pulled off. 

Rusty likes to keep an eye on her when she wanders. 

$2 corn husks for breakfast…

Soft savory corn meal sprinkled with cheese and peppery jalapeños were what we really had to break our fast. And yes it comes in styrofoam in a plastic bag and single use plastic forks. 

Rusty had his breakfast, he doesn’t eat much in the morning and then he took his ease in a patch of grass in the sun. He loves to sunbathe. 

We didn’t spend the night but we could have. Van travel allows you to close the door and live in your own world when you are on the road. We eat our food and watch our TV (on an iPad) and read our books and sleep in our own bed (and Rusty on his). It’s 70 square feet but it’s home. 

We are working on a couple of plans to get around over or through Guatemala but the political situation is getting worse over the weekend. The party of the outgoing President is claiming election fraud, and doesn’t that sound familiar, so the people who voted for the President -elect (who is supported by the US) have taken to the streets. From 20 road blocks last week Prensa Libre, a Guatemalan newspaper yesterday reported 50 with students and shopkeepers joining the peasants and the Mayans on the barricades. 

If the ejectors losers don’t back down this could take a while especially as the outgoing President who was term limited out of office is threatening to declare martial law to get his preferred replacement into office. And you thought Mexico is a mess? Clearly Guatemala is no place to be but we are not giving up. We are looking at some creative solutions to ship our home and ourselves around this problem. I miss the road but I’m not a fan of being stupid for no purpose so we shall see. 

I’m Toad of Toad Hall hankering for the open road! 

El Tule

I am not a fan of bicycles and I know it’s an awful thing to admit but bicycles annoy me. They are inherently uncomfortable as the seat will numb parts that should never be numbed and the fact that you are pedaling and not walking puts you in the traffic flow like any other machine. I like walking, looking, seeing, pausing, photographing and bicycles get in the way. Rant over. 

It cannot be argued that bicycles are efficient so I took a bicycle for a brief excursion into the nearby village of El Tule. Layne thought out loud and muttered she’d love a Coke. Your wish is my command so I put Rusty in the van with her so he wouldn’t miss me and I took one of the campground bicycles out onto the dirt road to El Tule, numbness be damned.  A pause for a black and white industrial view in the back of town. Grim, eh? 

I have no idea what the villagers think of these camper gringos rolling through town every day but they treat me with calm indifference. I weave through their lives and zip back to my campground, the walled off diplomatic zone just out of town. 

Laundry in a two way street indicated by the double headed arrow. In Mexico laundry is typically done for you and returned folded and stacked in plastic bags for not much money. Yeah and they pump your fuel for you at the gas  stations in Mexico. Little touches of luxury on the road. 

The streets of Mexican towns are lined with small businesses and everybody is busy doing something. They paint their advertising on the walls which gives these stores an air of permanence. 

And then there are the dogs. They are everywhere and the reason I can’t easily walk Rusty here. He just gets overwhelmed even if I keep them away. You scare off Mexican dogs by bending down and pretending to pick up a stone because Mexicans throw them to hurt. 

They aren’t necessarily strays either and their lives in the streets aren’t as terrible as you might think. People do buy dog food, it’s in stores everywhere but for working class Mexicans dogs aren’t indoor animals. They are free to wander their neighborhoods and they play together in “street gangs” and I wish they were loved and cherished the way Rusty is. I carry extra food and hand it out in a vain gesture of …solidarity?

The town functions without us, the dogs live their lives and we are here and gone tomorrow. 

Guatemala is still in an uproar over election stealing by the outgoing party and most of the country is expected to be shut down until Sunday at the earliest. Our neighbors have friends in campers on the road in Guatemala and they are stuck in a small village. They were in touch with the German embassy staff who told them to expect to be stationary through the weekend at least. 

I cannot deny I have a desire to be on the road, I want to see new places and I really enjoy piloting the Promaster on these roads and the fact that I cannot is making me restless.  

I’ve been reading an endless Ken Follett novel “Pillars of the Earth” and I struggle to concentrate. My non fiction book is 1939 about daily life in that pivotal year. And yet I struggle to stay focused. I get up and check the situation in Guatemala, I check the map and I ponder choices. 

Rusty likes it here, that’s all he knows. 

Karrie and Roan from Central Florida are experienced travelers going in our same direction also in a Promaster van…levity to talk about as we wait for the roads to reopen. They got some local mechanics into the campground to change their oil…

…and Mattias from Germany in a converted Sprinter took advantage of them being here and had them rotate his tires. Job done! 

So it goes in El Rancho. I brought back some beers for Sandro our Austrian neighbors and a Coke for Cali the caretaker. 

And a couple of Coke zeros for us and we watched a British cop show and listened to the rain and pondered pizza night on Saturday. Seems like we’ll still be here for that!