Memorial Day

Memorial Day has no meaning in Mexico unless you operate a tourism business. We’ve been told it’s a busy weekend close to the border, even though the significance of the day doesn’t quite translate. So it’s just Mexico, lovely and messed up, odd and serene, where you can be a traveler and skim the surface of a complex history in a complicated  country. And wonder at an Army that doesn’t fight abroad but struggles to keep the peace at home. 

Driving Through The Heat

We only noticed the 112 degrees when we arrived at the campground and got out of the van. The four hour drive from San Carlos to Alamos (which means poplar trees in Spanish. “Remember the poplar!”) was completed in blistering heat from which we were protected by virtue of being inside lovely GANNET2 with lots of air conditioning! 

We stopped in Enpalme, the town where we had dropped off a stray dog in January, the first of two we’ve rescued on this trip, and were glad to see he’d found a home. We gave Matty Parra fifty bucks to help her good work at Huellas de Angel  (Angel’s Footprints) and we said hi to the three dozen happy friendly street dogs she currently has at her shelter. https://m.facebook.com/HuellasDeAngel.AC/

Rusty sat outside the fence giving us the stink eye until we climbed back aboard with no extra dogs. He is a jealous old hound and does not play well with others. We got on the road, Highway 15 south toward Navojoa just the three of us. 

This was not fresh ground for us as we had driven south along this stretch five months ago. I must say that driving it again with all our Mexico experiences under our belt made for a different drive, a little less agog of course but very happy to be on the mainland and away from Baja. Technically Highway 15 here is a Cuota (toll road):

After you pay the toll the employee switches the sign to say “Buen viaje!” and the light goes green. Only the camera failed to pick out the words! 

Even though this is an Autopista - a toll highway- it slips into neighborly informality as the road unspools. 

Utility motorcycles ride the shoulder  and bicycles of course aren’t allowed. Sort of. 

The activity roadside we had missed in Baja was in full force here. 

I bought a weird yam filled empanada above that Layne thought was disgusting. She bought a Dulce de leche cake which is actually pretty good. How can you say no to these people working to make a living in 100 degrees on the street? Even if you don’t eat it you’ve spent two bucks…

From being a four lane highway through the arid desert suddenly you find yourself dealing with speed bumps and pedestrians and village life! 

And then you are back to serious travel!  The open road!

Aside from the official tolls there are the Indian Reservation tolls. The inhabitants of the Rio Yaqui reservation say they are forgotten by the federal government so they set up toll blocks at each end of their land and charged us 50  pesos ($2:50) to pass. 

Some Mexican drivers blow through but to me the toll is of no moment so we stopped and paid. 

What seems to me to amount to an act of charity drives some Gringos crazy. They rant about the legality of paying the toll and so forth though sometimes you’ll get stoned if you run these blockades. 

They give you a receipt and such is their poverty I can’t think of any reason to get mad.

Standing around in the heat takes dedication too. They aren’t taking welfare. 

Mind you some people complain about paying the official tolls too. That money goes to the private companies operating the toll roads in the manner of Florida’s Turnpike. 

And that’s how you drive the toll roads in Sonora State. They are more or less the sane all over Mexico. Some states have better road surfaces (Jalisco and Colima) and some worse (Sonora Michoacán and Chiapas) and some states have more rest areas (Baja) and some less (Oaxaca and Veracruz) but I much prefer paying a toll rather than increasing my travel time on more topes potholes and hazards on the toll free highways. We use those when we have to but crossing some of Mexico’s vast open spaces is much easier on a toll road. And the public art can be hard to decipher: 

Eventually though we made it to Alamos and got GANNET2 ready to hunker down for a couple of days till the heat calms down next Tuesday. 

Our insulated inserts are in the windows, the shore power is plugged in and the air conditioning is keeping things bearable. With a swimming pool and WiFi on the pool deck I think we will be fine. 

Now I’m wondering if anyone delivers pizza to the outskirts of Alamos? What are the chances..?

Heat Wave

One of the lessons you learn early on about living in a tin box on wheels is that your life becomes weather dependent. It’s not like boat living (and traveling) where every move is a chess game predicated on wind direction and strength but your quality of life in a vehicle is dictated by the seasons. 

Winter in Mexico is ideal as it is the dry season -we’ve had three days of rain in five months and night time temperatures tend to drop low enough for good sleeping even after a long hot sunny day. However it is almost June and things are heating up. This weekend coastal Sonora is forecast to have daytime highs well above 100 degrees and the lab rats aboard GANNET2 are looking around trying to find a way out.

After a week wild camping at the beach we went into town yesterday and loaded up with food and fuel and water in Guaymas and pondered our options as we had fish tacos for lunch. 

Guaymas isn’t so much a tourist town as it is a port and transportation hub. It has a rail line, 

…and a Pemex fuel distribution center with a heap of tankers coming and going,

And a rather uninviting waterfront which we made an effort to visit so we could fool ourselves into thinking we had taken the full measure of the town. 

Neighboring San Carlos provides the upscale resort to the practical

commercial offerings of Guaymas so tourists and snowbirds flock across the bay to San Carlos where bilingualism is the order of the day. Guaymas is a Mexican town infiltrated by Walmart and Home Depot while retaining its commercial core.  

None of this contemplation of the usefulness of Guaymas solved the essential dilemma of what to do with ourselves this heat wave weekend. Over all our deliberations lies the inevitable return to the north, so we are also forced to consider how we will wrap up this six month tour of Mexico.

Because it’s the weekend our wild camp will be invaded by picnic loving Mexicans and their delightful competing musical boom boxes to enjoy the peace and serenity of this superb beach so a strategic withdrawal seems a good plan. 

Last January we were told of the delights of the small town of Alamos (“poplar trees”) and on our visit there we discovered a pleasant little town that seemed to have closed down. We wandered around disconsolately and left. We felt as though we failed to give it a chance to impress us so we decided over our tacos yesterday to take a three hour drive and have another go. 

Alamos isn’t high enough in the mountains to be any cooler than the beach but there is a well shaded campground apparently with a pool and we can use that as either a hideaway from the heat or a base from which to try to discover more about the town every American snowbird loves to visit. 

We will return to the beach at San Carlos in a few days and make an appointment to buy new tires at the Michelin dealer in Hermosillo where we had the tires aligned recently. The rough roads of our winter drive have played havoc with our alignment and we have some hidden tire wear so we will buy five Michelin Agilis tires and have them

installed in the land of inexpensive labor. 

Then we will be ready to go north. Meanwhile we have this heatwave to get through, this portent of the summer to come. There’s no point in having a home on wheels if you don’t use them.  We’d better get rolling.