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. 

San Carlos

I did a bad thing today, I helped to subvert a nice young man from the path of productivity and proper social behavior. I wasn’t alone and it happened in two parts. Layne was with me both times and added her own fuel to the fire.

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He was traveling alone in his Minnesota registered car and he stopped by to ask for some travel advice which of course is the right and proper thing to do.  We told him about the iOverlander app with all its camping and useful facility information. We discussed how to buy safe drinking water and we showed him how to use Google maps with minimal gigabyte wastage. After a while he meandered back with a rather important question: was he in Mexico illegally? It’s easy to do as crossing the border is the first step in learning how to take care of yourself, Mexican style. 

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When you leave the US you drive straight through, no one checks you when leaving by road. The trouble is, when you enter Mexico no one checks your papers. If customs (aduana) finds you interesting they will pull you over as they did us at Nacho, but they were bored at the small frontier post and they were curious about our camper. Then we were free to go, however we were fortunate in that we knew what to do: we found the immigration office and got our 180 day permit to be in Mexico, no problem. Then we asked where to get our Temporary Import Permit for the van and the officials said to go an hour down the road to Cananea. Who knew? We put Banjercito into Google maps and followed the blue line to the tiny office where the clerk gave us a 180 day permit for our van. But no one told us to follow those steps. And guess what? Young Justin breezed through Nogales with his paperwork prepared, and his deposit paid online but he arrived in San Carlos, four hours south without the precious office stamps showing he had been formally entered into Mexico. What a scofflaw!

For some reason an alarm bell jangled and he came to ask us if he was okay, which he was not. I showed him where he needed to go on Google maps and his shoulders sagged at the prospect of an eight hour round trip through the desert to put himself straight with the law. He started muttering about this all being too much work so Layne and I set him straight. I don’t suppose he really did plan to go home to Minnesota to resume chiropractoring but I wanted to make sure he knew what he would be missing if he stopped short. I know I got through twenty years of sitting still by remembering our sail through Central America and other journeys and I reminded him that when he did come home and settle down he needed travel memories to sustain him through his work years.

I suppose it goes without saying I saw myself in him, thirty or more years ago. I envied him his car and his tent with Mexico laid out at his feet. I am psyching myself up for five dollar gas, leashes for Rusty and Covid precautions that will isolate us in a country determined to override masks and social distancing. Tuesday we leave San Carlos and drive towards the border. Wednesday we get up good and early and go meet the nice folks in green at Naco and pop back to reality after a winter spent through the looking glass. 

Apprehension and excitement. Many people to see and more places to go. Change is good. I expect I shall feel the same way when we return to Naco in December going south with no plans to return. 

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. 

Fine Fast Food

“I think he wants you to stop around the corner,” Layne said as the police officer mimed at us through the window. When we got it open his words confirmed the gesture. 

“You were blocking the crosswalk,” he said as he took my Florida driver’s license. 

“I was waiting for the red light to change,” I replied but my words were incinerated in the bright white sunshine outside the confines of our air conditioned Promaster, the big golden blob that might have blocked pedestrians crossing the street had there been any. “Follow me” he added, ignoring my protestations  as he climbed on his motorcycle with my driver’s license in his pocket. I had a momentary urge to peel off and head for Navojoa on highway 15 and forget Huatabampo ever existed, but that would have been silly, as I don’t at all resemble any kind of desperado I’ve ever heard of, and the Promaster has to be the world’s worst and most conspicuous getaway car. Besides this traffic stop was a new one on me. I’ve been pulled over in so many different countries, never previously in Mexico, usually for speeding which is my vice, or was before I got a van, but suddenly being deemed a crosswalk scofflaw of all things in a country where do-it-yourself is the best rule for pedestrians was a whole new experience, and I was curious where this bizarre turn of events would take us. I hoped there was a story in it. 

“I wonder if he’s taking us out of Huatabampo to ask us to pay the fines in the riverside shrubbery,” I said rather dubiously as the motorcycle cop led us west to the distant edge of town. I had visions of the two of us doing disreputable things hidden from view on the dusty river levee and I wondered what sleight of hand would see him satisfied.

But then the giant white palazzo of the police department came into view: we seemed to be doing things properly. I parked in front of the police station on the red line on his orders (!) and followed him inside.

We walked inside followed by the stares of the front desk mob. I got special treatment  by being led back through the rear courtyard past the vehicle impound lot into a rear office. I was introduced to the boss, a blank faced bureaucrat in a teal polo shirt. He did the “shuffle the papers in silence” number to try to make the suspect  nervous and not eventually looked up. “You were blocking the crosswalk,” he said. 

“Apparently so,”  I  replied. 

“It’s an offense in the municipal code,” he said. 

“I’m sure it is,” I said. 

“Where did you come from?” They always ask that question whose purpose baffles me. 

“Álamos,” I said 

“Where are you going?” I wanted to say it feels like the direct path to hell but instead I told the truth. 

 “Playa Huatabampito.” 

“You are a tourist,” he made it sound like something unpleasant under his shoe. “Have you been here before?” 

“Yes in January.” 

“So you like Huatabampo,” he said 

“Well,” I replied, “I liked it more 15 minutes ago,” the boss looked through me as the motorcycle cop at my side smothered a giggle. 

“You have to pay a fine” he said shaking his head when I asked if I could get a warning. It didn’t look good and I was wondering how much he could skin me for. I imagine he was thinking similar thoughts. 

“Are you on vacation?” 

“Retired,” I said, ”after 17 years with the police in Florida,” I played my ace. I hate doing it but it got me out of a fine in Croatia when I got zapped going too fast and my wife told the radar cop I worked with the police. I was too embarrassed to bring it up myself. Actually I retired from being a civilian dispatcher and 911 operator  but this didn’t seem the time to quibble about badges of rank. “You were police?” The motorcycle cop said and I nodded. I actually think he was regretting this whole caper. 

It didn’t matter, the pound of flesh was the only way to satisfy the boss that much was obvious. I got the strong impression the motorcycle cop had been under orders to pull someone in and it seems I was it. Job done.  

“One thousand pesos,” he said. 

“We’ll, that’s that then “ I said. 

“Yes,” he said. I told him I’d better go and get the money. He nodded, my license sat on his desk, discarded but out of my reach.  

My wife looked distraught in the corridor. 

“They wouldn’t let me in.  They said you were with the judge.” She used to be a public defender and she was looking like she was suffering from ineffective assistance of counsel syndrome. I reassured her it was not so far a hanging offense but they were waiting for me. 

“Weirdest judge I ever met,” I said and went out to the van to get the money for his honor. Layne very sensibly hadn’t brought her purse on the grounds our fine might  be tailored to match our available  funds. Fifty bucks seemed quite enough for blocking an empty crosswalk. I walked back through the police station waving two brown Diego Riveras so everyone knew how much I got zapped. 

“I hope you lot get to share a nice dinner on me,” I said to the gathering crowd of officers in the back hallway, lounging next to the armed sentry, all there to see the gabacho getting fleeced. It turns out two Diego Riveras are worth one Florida driver’s license and I made the exchange on his desk. I asked if I could go and we said no more about a receipt. 

On my way out I noticed the mural on the wall where arrest photos are taken. I handed my phone to one of the cops and asked him to do the honors. Much laughter as I swiveled like Al Capone in his famous booking pictures. Come to think I never did do that at Key West PD though I did try being properly handcuffed once by one of my sworn colleagues and let me tell you that is a very disturbing sensation. Much worse than this.  

I shook hands cheerfully with the motorcycle cop in some sort of grotesque professional courtesy and got in the van and sighed.

 “Well that sucked,” Layne said with full judicial understatement and then quickly added: “turn left here otherwise we’ll go back past the same spot and now they’ve had time to dream up some other crap charge.” So I turned left and we went and had the best grilled beef sope we’ve had anywhere in Mexico even after meandering all over the country for the past six months.

It was the main reason we came back to Huatabampo, a pleasant provincial town near the coast in southern Sonora.

Then there was  the superb flour tortilla lady who unfortunately was closed which was a shame,

but the guy at the agua purificada store remembered us and we chatted about our travels over the winter while I siphoned water into our tank. 

The vet up the street still carried the most effective  fly killer powder, Totenfli, I’ve ever seen:

so we got some more of that and  with a quick stop at an actual self service car wash, the only one I’ve seen in Mexico,

We were done with Huatabampo and retreated to lick our wounds with some lovely wild camping at the beach. 

It’s a pity really but I don’t think we will go back. I mean, I don’t want to be a bad sport but even for the best sopes in the world fifty bucks seems a high price to pay.