Puerto Lobos, Sonora

New Year’s Day in the fishing village looked pretty much like any day. The wind honked all day, sweeping across the rocky peninsula with a chill blast that kept us in the van except when we dressed up to go for a walk in the bright summer sunshine. This was not what we came south to enjoy. 

Rusty was driven indoors by the wind too and our plan to set up table and chairs and mooch around working on our faded Florida tans went by the wayside. 

The Sea of Cortez looked dramatic with the onshore wind and waves built up in the vast arc of beach that Rusty and I walked in the morning. He ran and I followed and eventually we got back to GANNET2 flush with exercise and a frost bitten nose for me. 

The dinner menu as planned by the chef of Café Gannet called for a sausage stir fry with quinoa however amongst all our stores we lacked a vital ingredient. We got dressed for a bit of polar exploration in pursuit of the elusive Red Onion. 

We met no zombies on our walk but we did meet dogs of all shapes and sizes, not emaciated but outdoor dogs certainly who came into the street to inspect Rusty. They are all bark and no bite and he soon figured out his place. 

I didn’t get to see the store as I stayed outside with Rusty and an overly friendly dog who tried to nose between me and my bud and he was not happy. Then some arse in the village set off a couple of loud fireworks and Rusty got a panicked look.  I put him on the leash and kept him close. It’s PTSD from his time as a stray when Everglades farmers tried to shoot dogs abandoned on their land. 

Layne found the red onion and we headed back to the van. The welcoming committee was over it and we passed the house with a million dogs amid a pack of sleeping indifferent locals. Rusty’s tail went up, his bounce came back into his strep and all was well once again. Plus we had the onion. 

We took a short cut bored by the walk along the road. We wandered through mangroves, stepped over a fast running salt water creek, through another one, through sticky mud and over soft sand. Rusty got bored waiting and wandered off with a couple of new friends to explore. He met us up the street as we climbed the hill back to the van in our exclusive windy vacation home neighborhood. 

Later, after lunch and a nap we walked out for the last time across the beach, round the hill and up to the lighthouse. It was windy as hell and cold. I looked out across the frothy white water and decided it was time to go. South. 

Back at GANNET2 Layne was in total agreement and we plotted our escape. The idea is to stop in Hermosillo and pick up some fruit and vegetables in the city and then move south to see if we can find some Florida temperatures for outdoor living. We’ve proved to ourselves we can handle cold and discomfort. The van is perfect for our needs. 

We got six month permits for ourselves and our vehicle at the border which along with our six month insurance policy means we don’t have to leave Mexico before the end of June. At this stage we are keeping an open mind but it’s on the cards we may spend more time exploring Mexico and skip Alaska. We know we can be cold but it’s not brilliant fun for us. 

Those considerations are for later and we shall see. Certainly there is no point in crossing to Baja where it will be just as cold. We crave outdoor living not polar expeditions. 

This was the perfect first stop for us, a way to ease into a new culture, a way to avoid the New Year’s noise and a place for us to slow down and find our feet and we are very grateful to Todd. 

Time to roll. Six hours to Guaymas from here with a stop at Costco in Hermosillo, mostly to see what they offer in Mexico as our needs are modest. 

It’s a pretty place off the main road but we would like to be in a town with some life. Everyone wears masks in Mexico, no discussion. A sidewalk café, some beer and tacos, some window shopping as we walk Rusty, all in shirt sleeve weather; that would be nice. 

Rusty’s adaptability and his curiosity and his happy wagging tail make our van a home. This is a poor country in these marginal places and people don’t have much but their dogs have even less. He’s a lucky guy and my priority is to reassure him and keep my distance from the little beggars. We carry food for them but I’m not here to change their lives. Rusty sees to that! 

We shall remember this place fondly but we are ready to be explorers. 

Forgotten By God

It was New Year’s Eve and we were 90 minutes from our destination at the beach. Cousin David’s neighbor in Tucson has kept a vacation home in a tiny run down fishing village and he offered us a space to park as we were looking for a quite spot to rest and relax keeping Rusty from scary fireworks. The plan worked perfectly. 

We left the dank gray truck stop around 8:30 after a peaceful night wherein no one bothered us, despite Mexico’s scary reputation. What did bother us was not being able to pull down pesos from the Scotiabank ATM in Caborca.  US banks aren’t allowed affiliates in Mexico but Canadian  banks differ from no such restrictions. However our debit card failed us: no money. And we needed cash for our trip to the beach and a fishing village stay where we expected to find no services. We weren’t wrong on that. 

We had to call First State Bank of the Florida Keys who activated our card for Mexico use and off we went to get cash. A nice young Mexican who “wanted to practice his English” helped us with done of the strange extra moves required of the bilingual ATM. Did we want a conversion? That it turned out meant  did we want Pesos or Dollars? What an odd question. Travel and learn! 

The coast road was long and straight  and deserted. We drove forty minutes and saw maybe three cars…and a few thousand saguaro cacti. 

The prospect was a quiet parking spot in this place: 

To get there we had three miles of washboard sand track to drive. No problem once we were sure of our direction. The problem arose when we reached downtown as it were. 

All we had to guide us was a picture of Todd’s house and a promise that Arturo would guide us to a parking spot. There were a surprising number of sandy streets to drive. 

“Follow him,” Layne said as the van passed us. “That looks like the most traveled street.” Good enough. But it didn’t get us anywhere. We turned around at water’s edge. 

The villagers must have been laughing as we drove back and forth. 

Eventually Layne texted Todd and we got a call from Arturo. In perfect English he explained he was away, doubtless seeking family and bright lights for the special night. Find the blue house near the lighthouse with fishing boats and a truck with a water tank on it. Sounds vague enough, right? It worked perfectly once we backtracked and followed the most used wheel ruts in the sand. 

Arturo senior didn’t speak English ( to us at least) but he knew the way, showed us where to park and disappeared. We were alone. I stood in the breeze outside GANNET2 and watched the pelicans. 

The rain, the industrial scenery, the frigid temperatures, the serious Mexico of industry and commerce was behind us. This dusty fly blown messy trash filled village, resounding with out of season silence and blank facades was where we wanted to stop for a week. 

The main part of the village is filled with local dogs which in Mexico live on the streets, fed more or less and hanging out in clusters like naughty school kids on recess. Rusty finds them annoying. In our upper class neck of the woods where the empty visitors homes cluster there are no dogs.  Bonus. 

The views, once you get past the trash and rusty barbed wire fences is quite surprising, waves, turquoise waters and arid hillsides.

AsLayne pointed out we are better off not on a soft sand beach where the breeze will send sand particles into every prefixes of ourselves the van or the dog. 

The street dogs crowded Arturo’s car as he led us through the village. They stared in awe at our vast overwhelming Golden Van, and stood respectfully aside.

Rusty inspected the area round the van and then spent the afternoon passed out. He has a bad influence on me do I laid down next to him. Layne followed suit and put her feet up in the seats and soon we were all snoring the afternoon away. Great way to refresh our journey worn bodies. 

The idea of not driving for a few days…cell phone service most of the time…vast stretches of sand at low tide and so forth. Well we could manage that I think. 

This isn’t a fancy place, a resort or a wealthy gringo playground. They have purified water for drinking, electricity and street lights, but oddly we saw no church. Fishing and self reliance, ignored by the outside world. I wonder if we will get a peek inside their world. Forgotten by everyone else. 

This will do nicely as a place to wind down and slow the pace. Thank you Todd. 

Crossing To Mexico

The sentiment I saw scribbled in Old Bisbee reminded me of the tensions in Key West where some tired residents referred to visitors rather unkindly as “tourons.”  Rusty was well walked and I was ready to leave Bisbee and take my home away.  Layne was chomping to get south.  It was nine o’clock Thursday morning and I only missed one turn on my way to Mexico. 

The US border officials stopped us at the last possible moment just to make sure we really wanted to go to Mexico. They were a really nice post of cheerful young men and women in Naco Arizona. I hope we get to cross back here. 

Mexican Customs agents pulled us over for an inspection as we entered Mexico but it turned out they just wanted to check out our van. We talked prices and features and they laughed at the idea of making a van a home. I explained that in my corner of the US it made for an inexpensive home. Layne pointed out it was a good thing to talk Spanish. 

The immigration agent (above) was efficient and kind. He copied our documents himself, apologized for the slow internet connection he had to work with and offered us chairs while we waited. No problem I said we’re retired (“jubilado”) and we have no appointments. We laughed. He told us about his home town of Los Mochis and the ferry to La Paz and how he was going to spend New Year’s in Naco. $31 each and we had a six month permit. 

It was raining hard and got harder. We could see a light dusting of snow in the mountaintops. It was cold and wet and gray. Welcome to Mexico. 

In order to be able to travel outside the easy tourist area around Baja a US vehicle in Mexico has to get a $51 permit. The government treasury bank Banejercito (impossible to pronounce) issues the permits. The office in tiny little Naco where very few people cross (lovely-no lines!) has long since closed. We were told to visit the office in Cananea 45 minutes down the road still in the Hassle Free Zone. The nice lady sorted our papers in the by now usual half hour and we were all legal anywhere in Mexico. Our insurance we had purchased online in Tucson. Mexico was ours to explore and it was barely lunchtime. 

The road from Naco to Cananea is pretty rough and bouncy. We did not enjoy it. After that it improved considerably but we were well off the tourist route.  Naco in Mexican Spanish means roughly “trailer trash” in slang. Cananea comes from two Apache words that mean horse meat. Seriously. They are not, either of them, attractive towns as they are dusty, poor and suffering from Covid mangled economies.  We were the sole tourists on Thursday’s quota. As I dodged lumpy asphalt the locals, the few cars, whizzed by unconcerned. 

As rain poured down and cut short Rusty’s walk, Layne made tuna fish wraps a healthy alternative to rice and beans in the Mexican style. It was lovely to be in our home on the street. 

The big question after all the government paperwork was to figure out how to get connected online. After some thought we decided to keep our Verizon iPhones  on our plan with minimal date and free text and talk in Mexico. The trick was to get a SIM card from Telcel to run our JetPak for internet connectivity. I used Google maps briefly to find the government offices and later the Telcel shop both in Cananea. 

We parked the van and splashed to the store and back. If Mexico sounds exotic it really doesn’t have to be. There are lots of places that aren’t tropical resorts. Most Mexicans live normal lives just like you. (I’m retired, remember?). 

It was a long hard slog to Santa Ana by way of Imuris if you are following along on Google maps. We saw a couple of road blocks but the police checks were in the oncoming lanes. No big deal: we have our papers ready to exhibit. 

Driving in Mexico is different and I don’t mind it. Drivers rely more on their initiative and less on being told what to do and which lanes to stick to. It sounds chaotic but I saw no road rage even in desperately slow -15mph- lines behind huge 28 wheelers (full double trailers) struggling up huge winding grades. Cars passed when they the way clear, not when yellow lines were dotted. Trucks stopped to let cars out of side streets. It was strangely relaxing when I figured it out. 

In Imuris, a bizarre town lining a single road with all kinds of small businesses and no apparent central location, we joined the main road from  Nogales where the US tagged vehicles showed up in not great numbers. Never saw an RV all day. This road became a Cuota or toll road and cost eight bucks over one hundred miles roughly. 

In an effort to slow traffic Mexican roads are littered with “topes” (tow-pays) which are humps across the road placed randomly. I got two at speed and we bounced which did not make me feel good. The best way to spot them is to watch other traffic slow to a halt apparently at random. They are the best reason to not drive at night and to take the toll roads mercifully free of them. 

When we came upon a sudden slow down on the highway traffic slowed in good order and moved forward patiently. We inched ahead and discovered there were only two open toll booths hence the twenty minute delay. We paid thirty pesos -a buck fifty- so there was no great damage done to these retirees.  

I persuaded Layne to take a nap and she went to bed with rusty and I drove on doing 60 in a 70 mph zone.  There was not enough traffic to clog the highway and not everyone seemed to be in a rush or possibly the four dollar a gallon gas (20 pesos a liter) was worth burning more economically. I got in, it was pleasant driving waiting for the rain to dry up. 

I had seen a couple of truck stops listed on the iOverlander app, one at Santa Ana and the other in Caborca an hour and 60 miles further down the road toward the coast. The first stop looked small and crowded and I figured if we pressed on we could make the spacious stop at Caborca before night. Note the Arizona tag on a truck loaded with holiday gifts heading south from the border. Migrants travel both ways: 

The truck stop was to all intents like one you would see in the US. Free parking they said with food, an American style convenience store and three stray dogs who barked at rusty freaking him out. I got some Pedigree kibbles from the store and fed the strays who wandered off to do their rounds. Most dogs are loose in Mexico but most belong but these guys didn’t. I can’t fix their lives but I can give them food so I do. And make sure Rusty knows he’s number one. 

We put the window shades in, Layne heated Trader Joe’s quiches and we all settled in for the night. Traffic noises don’t bother us and temperatures were well above freezing at sea level. 

We were 90 minutes from our planned beach stop. A friend turned us onto it as an isolated spot to be away from New Years fireworks to spare our boy. We may therefore lose even Telcel connectivity! If we do we will be back with more stories from the road as soon as we can. The nature of this journey brings with it some uncertainty for which I apologize. 

HAPPY NEW YEAR, wherever you are, whatever you are doing, and may you remain Covid-free.