Our House Camping

You'll see this white wall driving into Barra de Potosi, and the main gate is imposing. The side door is unlocked and we come and go as we please, though Rusty has to get one of us to open it for him as he can't reach the door handle:

Inside the ground is sand and most of it is firm but as we have shown there are soft spots. To the left is the usual parking spot with the shower and toilet beyond.

You drive in where Rusty's walking and then we backed up the left hand side of the hedge aiming to get back opposite the toilet and shower. The soft sand stopped us halfway.

The toilet and shower are simple but effective.

Its so hot a cool shower doesn't feel cold in this climate and on the contrary it refreshes. Hot showers are a rarity in shared or public facilities. The owner of the property lives in an old aluminum Mansion trailer. I’ve never heard of it but here it is ( for you Wayne):

The apartment and the house (Link) are on the beach, small and torn up by hurricane surge. The water is swimmable much of the time but some days the swell is vicious.

Rusty stretched out by a wide angle shot:

The best cellphone signal is about here! If you don't have an iPhone this is the only spot I can send you a text. WiFi works at the back and at the van. Life is compromises!

Looking down the shore  at the village of Barra and the tiny remnant  of the post-hurricane beach. Dale the Canadian says the sand is slowly rebuilding but the beach used to be wide and long before this past summer.

Across the main road and opposite the campground gate Señora Rita presides over a kitchen inside a shack, which is also a focus of delivery vehicles and workers coming in for lunch. Layne loves having fewer cooking duties and also eating with the locals.

I have no idea if this would pass a health department inspection but I've been in Mexico often enough I don't care. The only inspection this food needs to pass is the diners'.

One day we saw Rita's daughter handing food over the wall into MY House for our landlady. Oh, Layne said, that's an idea. So...she got barbecued octopus and I got breaded fish. Dinner tends to be some cheese and a salad. 

It's not all fun and games I should point out. Ana offered the use of her outdoor fridge so Layne emptied ours and defrosted the freezer and cleaned every shelf and container.

I carried the food back and forth as part of our plan to have Gannet 2 clean and ready for the return to the US before we settled into our apartment for a week completely off. We have access to a household three pin 110 volt plug so we can run our electrical system as we like.

That job was a weight off her mind.

Then we swept and dusted and wiped down the wood. Layne pulled out her drawers and looked for unused stuff and lost items. She found a rolling pin we never used, gave it to Bonita in the apartment who has a new pizza oven at their home in British Columbia.

Ana came by with plate of her favorite cheese, from Oaxaca, slightly salty and drier and more flavorful than the usual white cheese (queso blanco) found in Mexico.  She cut us a slice.

That's life in the campground. Wake up. Walk Rusty. Make tea. Do an exercise tape. Tray for a swim. Shower. Clean the cabin. Read. Get lunch. Another try for a swim. Another rinse off. Nap. Walk Rusty. Dinner. a TV show. Sleep. Call Rusty in. Sleep. etc...repeat.

I forgot! Clean the microwave. Then collapse in our recliners.

New developments for sale:

Swimmable? Probably...

I want to drive that!

Señora Rita keeping an eye on the customers:

Barbecued shrimp for Layne fried fish for me.

Rusty hanging with us:

Not really brilliant dog walking and not much in photography either. Minor glitches I think.

Walking To Barra

 Life since we arrived Tuesday night has sunk into a routine worthy of a long term camper. We however will be leaving this weekend and next week will be stationary in Zihuatanejo. We sleep with air-conditioning because we can with a power cord to keep our batteries charged night after night, and because its hot. We're looking forward to mountain travel even though we will be leaving the beaches for a while. The mountains will be cooler and the cities will be hopefully more historic. The worst of our current campground is the lack of interesting photo opportunities. Rusty isn't too keen to walk much so I may considering taking off by myself to see what I can find. There is a dog in the far left hand side of the picture below. The Coconut plantation is across the street from our campground.

Our Canadian neighbors who live in British Columbia have been coming here for years. They rescued an abandoned dog and give money and fish to a local family they have befriended. Fish you ask? Yes, they love to fish along this shore, damaged by hurricane activity this summer:

They're pretty good at it too. Catch and then release to a local family:

The weird part is the local North Americans, people who travel here year after year and overwinter. Suddenly I feel like a "Touron" in Key West and it cracks me up. Some locals in the  Keys love to treat their meal tickets like nuisances on the streets and as I've said before I empathize with exhaustion in a tourist resort but you have to acknowledge the value of your local industry, especially tourists, and I was always polite to visitors. Around here the North Americans are like a close ranked private colony in the village. Its a pity because I enjoy Dale and Bonita's stories of coming back here year after year. The ones I meet on the street studiously ignore me which makes me feel like an invader in their private corner of Mexico. I love being on the road and perhaps my happy smile makes me look weird  or creepy?I have always even on my crappy days exchanged good mornings with passers by on the streets and I still do that here. My mother would give me a talking to if I didn't. Serious joggers get a pass.

On the whole I prefer towns without a strong gringo presence. I know we shop at Walmart and Costco but we take pleasure in checking out small stores and poking around the local neighborhoods. I startled a North American coming out of his home with two adopted Mexican dogs who were barking wildly at my silent companion. Good morning I said as my mother taught me. He just stared at me. A woman with a shopping bag on her arm scurried past me, both of us masked as the town prefers masks to be worn even in open air, and she glanced away as though I were infectious with something worse than Covid.

It's just weird. I really like wandering around Mexico and I'm always ready to share the joy. Mexicans often start a conversation by saying how fat our dog is. Me too I reply, can't have a thin dog with a fat man. To think Rusty is fat gives you an idea how lean local dogs are, but then Mexicans themselves live in pretty lean times. By contrast a young woman and an older woman striding out of town ignored me as I watched them go. Rusty sped up and I passed them as they were studying and photographing some form of honeysuckle common to this area. Good morning I said and the young woman replied overly loudly to my greeting while the older women continued to ignore me. She wasn't deaf as they were talking together as they walked.

These kinds of encounters put me off the idea of ever settling in Mexico certainly in places where Americans "feel safe" doing just that. I don't want to be part of a colony, an isolationist outpost, and I don't want to feel that "touron" mentality towards outsiders again. I had enough of that in Key West. I don't even have work as an excuse to be grumpy nowadays and if you're spending a whole winter in these lovely places you should express your good fortune at least with an appearance of joy even if inside you are burning up with disappointment. I read Doug Bennett's posts from Key West (This Week On The Island is his blog) and I want my final resting place to be like that. I want my time on the road to be cheerful, and expression of the joy of the place and time, as he expresses with his pictures and words. I wouldn't mind being neighbors with someone like that.

It's a ten minute walk from the campground into the village of Barra de Potosí. Alert readers will have noticed quite a few towns called Barra de Something on our journey down the coast. Barra simply means sandbar, so any city called Barra de Something is located on sand and usually next to an estuary on the coast. In this case de Potosí. Potosí. apparently means fortune but that seems rather obscure in this case.

They've figured out the value of park g tin the village and I saw a ton of signs offering estacionamento (parking). for up to three bucks a day. The restaurants at the end of the village overlooking the water have prominent signs banning dogs so that's a non starter for us. If you look at this photo you could just shrug and say what else do you expect but its not that simple.

The town is actually quite clean with paint, swept streets and trash cans. This was actually a collection of trash, poorly binned, but swept up. There weren't people around as I walked Rusty early before the 90 degree heat kicked in.

Rusty prefers being on a leash and I worry less about him darting into the street to avoid packs of local dogs. Usually they aren't aggressive but three or four on one overwhelms little Rusty and he gets fearful. Sometimes I bend down to pretend pick up a stone to get them to back off. When he's happy his tail flies like a flag.

Mask rules at the entrance to town, and I just put my mask on despite being outdoors and socially distanced etc...it just seems polite.

If you look closely at the washing line you'll see I caught a bird in flight...entirely by accident.

Bonita who lives in the apartment in the campground told us dogs were everywhere years ago but these days the strays have been removed and the dogs on the streets are owned  and you can even see collars on them. In Mexico dogs actually live with a. lot more freedom than US pets cosseted and tied upon leashes or herded into yards. They run around all day and play and come over to inspect newcomers. The leash gives Rusty confidence I have his back. When he feels safe off leash he shakes his head and if we're off the main roads I let him go.

Rusty spends most of his day snoozing and watching people come and go form various spots in the sand. At night we have to practically drag him in to eat dinner and then later to make sure he sleeps properly in his bed. I'm not sure why it matters but I'd feel weird if he was outside perfectly safe in this tightly closed compound but I want him in the van. If one of us gets up to pee we let him out after five in the morning and he sits outside quite happily until I surface and take him for a walk.

A happy dog in Mexico.

Barra De Potosí, Guerrero

Layne has fond memories of Zihuatanejo, the city of women I'm told in the Indio language of the area. However her nostalgia dates back to law school, and she has no proven history with water bombs at Hastings School of Law I should note. Back in those distant days of the Pleistocene Era Layne and friends would come repeatedly to Zihuatanejo on vacation. "Rather," I said. "In the manner of people who return to Key West year after year for the same vacation experience?" She glared at me as she prides herself on being an explorer of different places each vacation. Finding ourselves unexpectedly close to Zihuatanejo we were going to look for a place to stop for a week.

I am including here some road pictures taken by me with my Panasonic Lumix LX100, my pocket camera which I keep in automatic mode at my elbow while I drive to snag pictures as we as we go. I haven't edited them or cropped them, they are direct from the camera to show you what one main road looks like on a typical drive. Obviously there are miles of nothing much, greenery, stretches of  no shoulders, a few guard rails and so forth between pueblos, miles of little of interest to photograph.  Then every now and again the main road, and even the toll roads pass through pueblos (villages) full of life. In the picture below you see the sign on the right and you can hear Layne shouting "Taupe!" to remind me to slow the eff down. In the middle of the road at the second tope (speed bump) is a guy selling bread rolls (which we had just bought from a señora standing in the road). He stands where the traffic is forced to slow and holds out his plastic bag. A buck fifty (30 pesos ) for four. We gave our seller two twenties and left the change. Fifty cents to brighten her day a bit.

Some gringos on travel forums complain about over tipping setting a bad precedent but when I dropped a five dollar bill in a beggar's cup outside Walmart I took on faith he really does have to use a wheelchair. His lack of one leg was a pretty good hint. Yeah, I over tipped him but so what? Gouging gringos in the nicest possible way is a way to make ends meet in Mexico and I'm okay with that. I can afford to pay more and leave some extra money for people and put out some dog food for street dogs. I can't save the planet but I can do something that is more than nothing. Others don't have to, and I hold no expectations, just as Mexicans and their dogs hope but don't expect. You’d be surprised how generous North Americans are when they make a connection to a place, with scholarships, animal rescue, and civic projects galore.

 We knew Guerrero is a wealthy state when we saw street signs like this below, never before seen in Michoacán.  The white collectivo van is about to deploy the magic third lane by edging onto the well marked shoulder. I did the same as I saw the cars lining up to pass. I enjoy driving Mexico.

Check out the next few pictures to see what a hive of activity a pedestrian overpass might be. I always thought a bridge like this might be useful over North Roosevelt Boulevard instead of the traffic lights but clearly I am no urban planner. They use ramps not steps to allow pedestrians and wheelchairs and bicycles to cross. Which isn't to say people actually use the bridge!

The bridge also serves as a bus stop for the Nissan and Toyota minivans that act as collectivos between cities (as mentioned above). A collectivo is a minivan that serves a fixed route and picks up and drops off passengers as they go. It's cheap and reliable  and absolutely universal by any name in less developed countries (tuk-tuk or guagua for instance. Google knows!). You'll see them hovering around bridges like buffalo at a water hole. Note the tope below...were you braking for it?

North Americans will squawk a lot about armed police in Mexico, military, sailors or Guardia Nacional and people who watch too much television talk a great deal about corruption and bribes and if they only know one word of Spanish it will be the word for bribe. What once may have been is not any longer but it's impossible to change people's minds. Mexico has a tremendous problem with drug cartels, organizations that shoot each other up and are now so loaded with cash they are struggling to launder themselves into legitimacy. In between all this the Mexican government armed by the US is trying to keep the peace. If you've ever been to Los Angeles and not worried about the Crips versus the Bloods having a turf war you can do the same in Mexico. Its true the price of limes has shot up as well as avocados owing to the cartels buying up farmland, or blackmailing farmers and wrecking price balance, but for those of us trading with US dollars the price increases on our vacation shopping are insignificant. Small restaurants are hurting and limes to squeeze on your food are getting fewer and smaller and less juicy. Please don't use Mexican cocaine and create demand for the cartels. Thank you. Do your bit.

People take great joy in crushing the hopes of others in so many walks of life it shouldn't surprise me when I see mischievous lies repeating themselves about travel in Mexico. It can be dangerous and shit does happen. Real shit, armed robberies by punks, not cartels who ignore tourists who stick to the roads and their vacations. Police do their jobs and I always suspect attitude tickets when I hear people bitching about corruption and on the spot fines. There may be some efforts to extort a few bucks from an inattentive driver and I read lots about it in Baja where I suspect a lot of visitors come with attitude to "their corner" of Mexico. Frankly I'd pay twenty bucks to get on with my life if I made a stupid driving decision. On the mainland I've seen nothing but courtesy and kindness from Mexicans in uniform and civilians. I never saw any corruption in my years at Key West PD but I saw a lot of attitude tickets. It's a worldwide phenomenon. Imagine how many attitude tickets the average server would give to the public if they could! 

Next Monday we are renting our AirBnb apartment in Zihuatanejo for a week as there aren't any decent options for camping that we like. We checked out the address and found a business nearby to park the overly tall Gannet2 next to the apartment house. There is an arch over the entrance that will prevent us getting the van inside but in Mexico there is always a solution to any given problem. I asked Eric at the car cleaner and he said no problem, see you Monday. Of course things may change by then so I count on nothing for sure! More on all that in due course. We drove through Zihuatanejo and headed for Barra de Potosi and a campground rumored to exist on iOverlander.

Twenty minutes south of Zihuatanejo we found this place run by Señora Ana who rents out her house and an apartment and has room for a couple of smaller RVs though she prefers to rent the camping space to one vehicle at a time she says. We are the vehicle this week. It seems her rates are high as she charges twenty five bucks a night or 400 US dollars a month. A couple of sets of Canadian campers have been put off by the prices, thank God, and we rich Americans are alone in her garden. We have WiFi so I'm typing this not on my iPhone but on my MacBook for a pleasant change as it helps reduce the spelling mistakes and syntactical nonsense that seeps into long phone messages. We also have a cold shower, a toilet with toilet paper and a beach which though small does allow some swimming on days with no wind.

We have landed on our feet though I have to point out our heavy camper did decided to sink us into the sand quite unexpectedly as we backed into the camping area. Thank God we backed in else we'd have had to call a tow truck to get us out eventually. As it was... (drum roll please)...we winched ourselves out! How d'you like them apples?

I tried the orange Go Treads but when the van reached the end of the tread the front wheels broke through the crust of hard sand and the back tires sank in and we stopped. So I deployed the winch as well and tried driving out while pulling with the winch. Mixed success as we went further but still got stuck...I gave no signs of my inner desperation to my wife.

In the photo above I am clutching the metal shackle and dangling the yellow rope shackle which I actually didn't need. Just in case you were wondering. I was wondering when I first saw it. I didn't get fancy. I ran the rope around a palm trunk and used the metal shackle to secure it. Then I sat in the driver's seat and used the remote control to tension the winch. I put the van in first gear, locked the front wheel drive to create an electronic "locked differential" with the ESC button and we flopped around digging into the sand while being dragged by the winch. That's not good I thought too myself continuing to smile as I worked on the puzzle.

Running the winch with the van in neutral produced a satisfactory tug but then the winch paused and tugged again and paused and tugged which was working but not well. So I revved the engine in neutral which increased amperage and gave a  a very nice steady pull without the van driving at all. Out we came and suddenly Gannet2 was sitting atop the sand. We were free. Amazing!

Rusty was useless during the entire process, not even as a cheerleader but now that we are settled and the tools of sand removal are put away he is a happy camper, sleeping in the shade, walking twice a day and sleeping outside at night until we feel obliged to call him in. He loves being outdoors.

We plan to be here till Sunday so expect to see more pictures in the days ahead. I have to say I enjoy the solitude and the restaurant across the street more than we even enjoyed Barra de Nexpa and the surfer camp. No one to water bomb us here! No dogs to bother Rusty and he is very respectful of Ana's rooster and two cats. Peace and harmony; just the way I like it. But first a little clean up!

My super duper folding shovel came into play. More fun than answering 911 but this whole episode smacked of work.

We ended up backing up a little after I smoothed out the extensive divots...gouges really.

You have to keep tension on the winch rope as you wind it back up to prevent the rope from riding over itself. I have the remote control in my left hand:

We backed up a little to get more shade but the campground is all ours.

Our small beach with a lovely sunset view.