Goodbye El Rancho

Cali the caretaker and I crossed paths outside El Rancho and we joked around for a moment about our imminent departure but honestly I will miss him. The plan is to leave El Rancho Tuesday morning. 

We met a young couple last night, Jennifer and Paul from Montreal who wanted to see Mexico up close so they got in their Equinox and decided to drive to the beach resort in Huatulco just south of here on gje Pacific. Just like that. “We don’t like to fly,” he said as though that needed an explanation. Neither do I.

I shall miss Mattias and Silvia but the best part about travel is that you don’t say goodbye, you simply say “I’ll see you down the road.” And often you do. Places like El Rancho are a crossroads where overlanders meet. 

Then there are the vehicle dwellers who settle into one place and don’t move. They conduct business loudly over the phone in communal spaces, sneak other peoples’ food out of the fridge and don’t clean up after themselves. Campground life is in some ways not far removed from college life. 

Rusty will miss this place despite the squealing children riding at speed through his neighborhood. He is free of street dogs in the compound and he spends his days lounging in the shrubbery and hanging out with Mattias’ dog Laika. 

Silvia tells me Laika, named for the first dog to die in space, is as averse to posing for a portrait as Rusty is. She has been all over Europe and North Africa and all over South America. 

Cali mowing the lawn while conferring with the campground owner Paco. Paco and his brother Pepe used to advertise this place as a space for events and family gatherings like weddings. They said that was such a pain they stopped doing that and in a visit to the US they figured they could create a US style campground. Much easier to manage because we are all so grateful. 

The cool winds of Fall have started up and when we paid our bill to Paco ($20 a night with the seventh night free) he said locals believe the cool winds are the spirits of the dead coming back for their holiday on November the First which is All Souls Day or el Dia de Los Muertos. Last night  it was below 60 degrees and today it barely reached 75. 

We don’t walk much as the surrounding countryside is pretty much a mixture of agricultural and residential with lots of loose dogs who bother Rusty so he’s happy to loop the campground with me. 

This is how you get into El Rancho. Outside is Mexico inside is a Euro/US slice of life. Dogs are well fed, trash is picked up, and English is spoken. You have to have a communal language when there are Germans Belgians French Americans and Canadians. I try to cross language barriers but sometimes people prefer to keep to themselves and in this lifestyle that’s perfectly acceptable. 

The road to the village of El Tule is a dirt BMX off-road course full of potholes and trenches and sleeping dogs. It’s in terrible shape for half a mile because neither the county nor the municipality want to take responsibility for it. So there it is. 

Life at El Rancho, what a great place to camp. 

Check out that wall below! Thats the campground keeping Mexico outside. 

Rainy season clouds. The rains come down from the mountains as do the winds of the dead. 

Cali on anti mosquito patrol. 

Out buying mezcal from our favorite local maker in the village of Güendulain. Mezcal easily induces  me to drink too much but it never gives me a headache. 

Silvia training Laika. In Germany Silvia volunteered as a dog trainer. 

A terrible picture of two Americans also driving a Promaster van to Argentina. Roan and Carrie from Utah are also waiting out the Guatemala situation. However they  are smarter than us as they are now waiting for friends to come down and celebrate the Day of the Dead in Oaxaca, the most famous such celebration in Mexico. Their YouTube channel is called The Wayward Travelers. 

https://youtube.com/@WaywardTravelers?si=v-QN2li-t06xtQO6

 

He’s going to miss this place! 

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!