The Road To The Coast

We drove a hundred miles yesterday. And took our time as usual. Google says the drive should take two and a half hours but we stopped to shop, have a coffee, study our route and then we got jammed up in long calm lines waiting to pay the tolls. So we took a lot longer. 

We left the campground in good order before nine after we showered and exercised (not in that order) and as usual I was looking forward to being on the road. Puebla is a half hour from Cholula but our first stop was Costco to pick up some salad and other stuff which is hard to find on the road. It’s a blazingly clean bright environment! 

By the time we got to downtown Puebla it was past ten and the street parking situation was dismal, dare I say hopeless. We ended up catching a glimpse of the old town and found ourselves heading out. Off street parking wasn’t tall enough to accommodate our 9’6” (3 meter) air draft. Everyone fusses about overlanding with low ground clearance but the overall height of the vehicle is much more critical for us so far. The “E” to the right in the picture below is typical off street parking (“Estacionamento”) and too low for us: 

We had no choice but to admit we made a mess of Puebla. We arrived late and weren’t settled in when the day got started. We decided to keep going and reserve this city for a properly organized return visit. Traffic was heavy at nine during rush hour but it eased off by the time we gave up looking for parking. The open road beckoned:

We started in Cholula at the red dot and ended at Orizaba at the blue dot. The toll road was smooth and well signposted so we were cruising at 60 miles per hour. The Promaster’s instruments can be converted to metric measurements but we stick to miles on the dials and on Google maps. I can translate kilometers to miles in my head for speed but I find it easier to use miles calculating fuel reserves and distances. A bit weird but it works for us. 

That’s Mount Orizaba with snow on top, an extinct volcano 18,500 feet tall and Mexico’s tallest peak. At least I hope it’s extinct. 

The winding mountain road had a very Alpine feel to it, as we wound through the mountains dodging slow moving trucks and dipping in and out of well illuminated tunnels. The scenery was filled with steep hillsides and vast canyons not easily photographed while in motion! Trust me it was a spectacular drive.

It was a great drive and suddenly it ended as we came out on a plateau and saw the city of Orizaba laid out below us in a valley. We might have been in Switzerland. I’ll tell you what though; it’s lucky we have Google maps to find our way! We both agreed the system isn’t perfect but we put the Del Rio hotel into the map on the phone and the blue line brought us right here with the phone in airline mode to save Verizon gigabytes. 

The carriage entrance to the hotel was tall enough for our 9’6” van and we got a room for $26 for us and four for Rusty.

I would prefer a campground but there aren’t any close by. There is one with not very good reviews near Cordoba 15 miles away and another intriguing place in the woods but the road is described as difficult which put the Admiral off.

Our room has air conditioning and decent WiFi (hence this update) and after a noisy afternoon, including a keening cat tied up outside a room(!) there seems to be a chance of a decent nights sleep. Rusty is snoring on his bed as I write this. No surprise as we took a walk around town right after we arrived. 

Orizaba is a clean tidy organized tourist town with a population of 120,000 people set at 4,000 feet. It is said to be much prettier than the neighboring town of Córdoba 15 miles down the road toward Veracruz, the city on the coast we are aiming for. 

It is famous for being the home of the Iron Palace the only Art Nouveau building made out of metal. It was designed by Gustave Eiffel and apparently houses several museums.

Rusty and I walked around it while Layne rested in our room. 

There is also of course a picturesque church. The clock was wrong because we walked around last night around 6pm…

Orizaba is famous for a cable car ride above the city which we plan to do on our second day in town but Rusty agreed to walk with me along another tourist attraction: a river walk. 

Coming across a man eating dog on the narrow walkway tested the nerves of the Mexicans we met but all went well because Rusty is patient and well mannered. He ate a few women and children though. Especially the noisy ones. (Please dear god understand that is a joke. A feeble one but a joke nonetheless. He is very shy and well mannered in public). 

Does it blow your mind these lovely places exist and we’ve never heard of them? My mind is reeling. I can hardly believe I am here, and this place should be packed with US visitors but there is no sign of any gringos. Locals love practicing their English on is. You would be treated like royalty if you came to visit. 

Of course Rusty who doesn’t like bread found a discarded meat sandwich and made me stand around while he delicately picked it apart. That’s your hint there are no street dogs here. 

Rusty started to head back to the hotel using his remote control radar and he got a bit stubborn when I told him we had to go the other way to shop on Layne’s orders. Rusty sat on the sidewalk and ignored me. Grrr. 

Eventually I out-stubborned him and he sat outside the convenience store while, with the help of the lady owner and her customers, I bought bananas, flour tortillas, crackers and sodas for my wife who was at the hotel overcoming an apparent bout of Montezuma’s  revenge. Weird whatever it is because we eat the same stuff and I’m fine. I think it has to do with her coughing bout from back at the dusty campground in Cholula. For bread rolls I was directed down the street to Ximenez’s bakery. Would you believe it they had pastries with creamy rich custard in them just how I like them!

While Rusty sat patiently outside I took a tray and a pair of tongs and helped myself to baked goods. I was fairly restrained I thought and got Layne her favorite which is elephant’s ear. A dollar for four rolls and three pastries. 

I gave Rusty his head and we cantered back to the second most important person in his life where we settled in for sandwiches beer and TV (Britbox) on the powerful WiFi. Short mileage. Long day. 

Stillness

We weren’t ready to move yesterday so I called for a rest day and Layne agreed. I still find it difficult to believe we can simply stop moving without consequences. We are answerable to no one  except each other. Imagine deciding to not leave your home today, a whim you choose to indulge when you wake up. Absolutely no one expects anything from us. We are totally free of consequences for any action we take. It’s extraordinary in a world as regulated and demanding as the one we live in. This life is utterly brilliant. 

I can paint myself an idiot and no one cares. My reputation means nothing. I have no job, I am answerable to no one. I can make a face on the street as I chew a handful of grasshoppers and I am not late for anything anywhere. No one expects me to show up or decide anything for them. My wife laughs as she makes the photograph and we are two totally anonymous shadows on a street in the middle of nowhere. In the middle of everywhere.

They were emptying the pool of some of the water yesterday to do some sort of cleaning and one worker was holding a hose spraying pool water on the lawn. Could I wash the van? He smiled. 

I asked Jim, another newly arrived camp resident, if he wanted to have a go. He shook his head. He thinks a dirty van will protect him from bandits. Huh? It turns out he believes he will look less like a target if his van looks shoddy. Really? Oh yes he nodded his head firmly. Okay then I said puzzling his theory out in my head. I’m going to find twenty pesos ($1) for the guy with the hose. Jim the Scotsman got frantic saying I shouldn’t give him anything. Mine was the van of a rich man ripe for robbery. I even hosed the underside to wash off any accumulated crap. I still thank Wayne in my head for insisting I get GANNET2 undercoated to help slow rust. We did that in Miami and I’d not tell Jim it cost five hundred bucks lest he have a heart attack. 

Jim the European it turns out is no more free of irrational fears than any of the US travelers he mocks. On travel forums about Mexico I read of people who want to visit Mexico but fear cartels, mysterious bogeymen who lurk south of the Wall waiting to pounce on innocents from the US as they cross into lawless fearsome Mexico. Jim believes Mexicans view him as a target, an ATM to be plucked and a clean vehicle tells bandits he has cash on board. 

Thirty years ago I’d have torn strips off him for being an idiot. Luckily I am older and if not wiser then more experienced so I say nothing and keep my own counsel. As an example of trying to blend in he has no clue. He tells Mexicans how to live and like the Lone Ranger he rights wrongs and overturns injustice as he travels through foreign lands. I find it exhausting to imagine dealing with all the drama.

One example: a Swiss guy on a  tent camping tour, parked his car and set up camp next to the carpenter’s shop in a campground as Him told the story. The carpenter apparently felt hemmed in and that morning made a lot of noise, as only carpenters can, so much so the hammering drove the Swiss guy to move to another spot. The hammering stopped. At this point Jim proudly told me he gave the carpenter a dressing down telling him he is a poor ambassador for his country. I was curling up with embarrassment. Not your business I wanted to scream. I am a grown up so I said nothing. Thank god I wasn’t there to witness the dressing down! 

In speaking of our plans to travel South America Jim fell into the usual trap not of celebrating our hopes but of trying to crush them and I admit I was disappointed. Ruta 40 will tear your van up. Oh I said when I was waiting for 911 calls I would travel the world on Google street view. The phone signal has improved here even as WiFi has vanished and I pulled up street views of the famous trans-Patagonia Highway - now neatly paved. Oh he said, changing tack, the winds down there will render you mad. Low hanging wires will catch in your van. On and on. I dream of Patagonia’s wide open spaces, the cowboys, the hazy mountains in the distance, the little villages on the way…Jim says we’re going to wreck our nice van. Sigh. The locals wear masks but the gringa doesn’t. She belongs to the Jim School of Mexican Travel. 

I am used to people tearing me up for wanting to follow my own dreams and I even got a little of that on this page. But to get it from a fellow traveler was rather annoying. Especially as he thinks very little good of Americans. He mocked us for exercising, the self deprecating mocking where he says he himself is too dissolute to be disciplined enough for exercise. I showed him photos of the Catastrophe, me in a wheelchair, the motorcycle pretzeled on Highway One and Trauma Star flying me to Miami. He shut up. Layne has a new shoulder I said. The doctors said she’d never raise her arm that high but she can thanks to diligent exercise. Nothing more was said. But I ask myself why need I explain?

Jim has run out of van life and he is pining for the familiar. He masks it by saying how cheap Mexico is and he wonders why there is so much poverty. I mentioned the export of wealth from South America, the looting by Europeans over centuries and he looked blank. He spoke of India as his next country and I recoiled. Indians he said are friendly for friendship’s sake, not like Mexicans who are friendly for money. Well, I thought to myself aren’t you in for a shock. I told him I had been to India when I was twelve and didn’t much like it. He had no interest in my experiences. Layne remarked mildly later that he doesn’t really understand how much we have traveled. Oddly enough there are Indians in the campground walking each evening after a day of sober working in the Volkswagen factory in Cholula. They and their families live in rental apartments at Las Americas campground. They won’t speak English to us but speak only Spanish to create a barrier. I wonder why, but Jim doesn’t. Especially I wonder when I watch them smile and wave to Layne. She likes Indian food and it must show. “They’re very friendly,” she said. I fear I was accidentally tarred by Jim’s brush of social indifference. I sat too close to him. 

We retired to watch a movie in our newly cleaned van, the bandit’s target. Rusty sprawled in the sun at ease ignoring the occasional fire crackers bursting over the city. We lay on our bed with the iPad Blu- Tacked overhead in an eccentric viewing room of our own design.

I am glad we are nomads for there are no consequences to an encounter with loneliness, it’s not like moving in to a grump next door; here today, gone tomorrow. I have no answers to the poverty or unhappiness I meet along the way but I don’t fool myself  that I count for more than I do and yet I do try to be respectful in my own small way of the customs I meet along the way even if they make no sense to me. Jim interferes and tells people how to manage their lives. Rusty took a dump on the grounds yesterday and a voice started remonstrating which wasn’t real smart, dogs shut when they have to just like us. Yelling don’t stop them. I called out in Spanish to anonymous and said (rather snarkily it must be said) “I’m here, a gringo with a plastic bag. All is well.” The voice said nothing as I picked up Rusty’s eggs. No anonymous voice called out thank you but I didn’t make an issue of it. I could have pointed out the owner’s huge dogs wander free with no plastic bag in attendance but that’s life in a van. You have to work twice as hard as sensible people of substance in homes to be half as good as them. It’s a choice I make happily. Jim seems to carry resentment and it’s a shame he berated locals as he goes.  Perhaps it is travel exhaustion. 

I have known for some time that dogs aren’t allowed in National Parks in Chile and Argentina and that came up in conversation. “Oh,” Jim said and my heart sank in anticipation. “You can ignore that. There aren’t any guards”. I said nothing but I just don’t see the value in travel as an outlaw. He told a story of being told to leash his dog in a US National Park and the stupidity of the rule. Of mocking a neighbor who crossed the street with her dog to avoid his dog running free and his pursuit of her to annoy her when he was staying with a friend in the US. I don’t have that certainty that my way is best. My way works for me but I have no desire to run others’ nose in it. 

I have my gringo moments! I shout at the moon asking myself why there are so many topes in Mexico and why do few trash cans when signs litter the countryside telling people not to dump trash. Mexico is chaotic Jim says, but it works and he shakes his head in wonder. It only works as long as you obey the hidden rules first among them to mind your business and let others mind theirs. It’s a tough lesson to learn but he is ten years younger than me and time is in his side. I hope he uses it wisely.

I have learned patience and resilience and avoidance of drama from Rusty. I ask myself: what would Rusty do? And always I seek the path of least drama. I guess I have matured. 

The Biggest Aspidistra

I enjoy the Internet because I like having history, geography, literature, biography, music and art at my fingertips. I don’t mind being offline  if that is a necessary condition of travel. However I do get a teeny weeny bit frustrated when the promise of connectivity is not upheld. 

I mention this because our situation currently is such that we pay $12 a night to park in the city of Cholula where we have a grassy parking lot with water faucets, household plugs for electricity, a toilet with seat but no paper and a cold shower. The swimming pool is lovely but cold at 7,000 feet though Layne and I enjoyed it but the WiFi is a sad case of “oh what a failure!” and the Telcel phone signal isn’t much better.

Mike from Yorkshire, below, cleaning his solar panels. I climbed the tower in the campground to get the aerial pictures. He rescued the brown dog in Baja. The campground husky pisses on everything which is why my computer case now looks so shiny and clean: 

Campgrounds are useful places in Mexico. A friend told my wife a place to park in Santa Cruz California charges $150 a night. We fell about laughing at the idea of paying 3,000 pesos to sleep. I understand a hotel room in Key West goes for a thousand dollars a night. We could live for three weeks on that if we didn’t drive or shop at Costco. 

Mike and Galleta (Biscuit) caught in an uncharacteristically pensive mood. He has a British registered 2002 Sprinter van built for the French market painted red and driven from Argentina to Alaska. The Swiss Toyota camper was driven by two young kids on their honeymoon on their way to Chile. Nice people but they left after one night.  We are moving out of the sphere of fear filled US RVers into the world of casual European overlanders.  We feel like neophytes but they like our ridiculously comfortable fat two wheel drive home. So do we. 

Laynes sister has organized a family reunion near Zihuatanejo next month and we have four weeks to spend in southern Mexico to be around the family April 11th. We dreamed up a Southern Mexico itinerary instead of heading north as we first planned. Our plans are changing constantly but it looks like this, starting today: Puebla, Veracruz, Villahermosa, Tuxtla Gutierrez, Oaxaca, Morelia, Zihuatanejo - all subject to changes deviations and side trips following the letters of the alphabet on the map below: 

I am looking forward to spending a few weeks wild camping on Baja beaches deserts and mountains after the family reunion but for now we will poke around campgrounds close to cities and see what we can find. Probably not many Americans as this area is considered a long way from the Rio Grande, too far and too “risky” and it is a long drive but even modest Cholula has its fascinations as we found out yesterday. 

It was Mike who turned us on to a fabulous pastry shop in Cholula five minutes from the campsite, flaky pastries filled with English style creamy vanilla custard. Layne prefers more austere crispy elephants’ ears: flaky sugary pastries. Once beyond that awful temptation we parked the van, walked Rusty, put him in the van and then by ourselves struggled to find the entrance to the Biggest Pyramid in the World. Where dogs aren’t allowed. 

And you have to decide how much toilet paper you’ll need before you go into the toilet (sanitario). Mexico is magical I tell you. 

If you look up the giant pyramid of Cholula important writers will tell you it is the largest pyramid by volume in the world. An unimportant writer like me will suggest you listen to Gracie Fields, a beloved  British music hall singer from generations ago singing one of her most popular songs about a plant popular in the North of England last century, a symbol of respectability called an aspidistra. Her brother crossed it with an acorn and her family had to live with  The Biggest Aspidistra In The World. This is the song that went through my head as we walked the desert dry field around the World’s Largest Pyramid.Gracie Fields Link 

But before we found the barely marked entrance to the Biggest Aspidistra In The World I had my Anthony Bourdain moment. One audio book we have listened to on our journeys is by Tom Vitale the TV chef and traveler’s director on his show made famous by CNN. In The Weeds  is a funny and revelatory book in that it describes Bourdain as a multi faceted human being and not surprisingly he was not in real life the person we saw on television. One nugget I found especially intriguing was that he was not especially into weird food. He ate it to be polite and no doubt to feed a story to the camera but when I was faced with a bucket of fried insects in Cholula I thought of it as my Anthony Bourdain moment.

Yup. I ate several scoops of different flavored fried grasshoppers, legs and all. The texture was that of a papery cracker and the flavor was imparted by the seasonings. Garlic was my favorite. 

If you check Layne’s Facebook feed no doubt you’ll find a picture of me on there stuffing my face with grasshoppers. She tasted a few and pronounced them “okay” but I had to persuade her to buy a dollar’s worth to take back to the Gannet Cafe for a more thoughtful taste later. We also bought fresh macadamia nuts in their shells, a first and some blackberries and delicious cooked sweet potatoes.

Next time you think we are being too gringo by shopping at Walmart or Costco remember we ate grasshoppers in Mexico. Legs and all. 

I’ve added a bunch of pictures here of the pyramid so you can see for yourself but beware this place has an odd, unexpected effect on some people. 

Let me confess right away I was underwhelmed by the place. We weren’t allowed to walk anywhere near the ruins, there were no cement walkways or access areas to get a feel for the place. 

I envied Rusty his cool shady bed in the van. 

Much of the pyramid is buried and it’s story is vague at best. 

When you read about ritual child sacrifices one’s bourgeois natural revulsion tends to rise to the surface unbidden. 

Why in hells name you’d put children in pots and bury them here I couldn’t say. But whatever the reason I came away from looking at this hole thinking not much good came from the Spanish  conquest but these people too had a few things to answer for. I’m glad I live in the 21st century for all its faults and failures. 

We haven’t learned much have we as we keep sacrificing people instead of nurturing them. 

The other profoundly odd thing about this place was the Catholic church’s need to lord it over these early heathen  influences. There is a church on top of the pyramid. You reach it by a separate free acess path. At noon it celebrated the Angelus by having the bells play Schubert’s Ave Maria which was a first for me. When I was child in Italy we said a short prayer at noon when the church bells sounded but we never heard popular classical songs ringing from the bell towers. Magical Mexico interrupting the Biggest Aspidistra In The World. 

Catholicism brooks no competition.

The Angelus (/ˈændʒələs/; Latin for "angel") is a Catholic devotion commemorating the Incarnation or the Annunciation. As with many Catholic prayers, the name Angelus is derived from its incipit—the first few words of the text: Angelus Domini nuntiavit Mariæ ("The Angel of the Lord declared unto Mary"). The devotion is practised by reciting as versicle and response three Biblical verses narrating the mystery, alternating with the prayer "Hail Mary". The Angelus exemplifies a species of prayers called the "prayer of the devotee".- Wikipedia

I was rather relieved to get out of there and return to the world of crass commercialism outside the fence. I have a hankering for a sarape (a poncho for you illiterates) to keep me warm at altitude but Layne says we must get it in Oaxaca as they have the best. As long as I get one before we tackle the Andes. 

We drove downtown and parked near the zocalo for some dog walking and people watching. We bought some home made chips sprinkled with hot sauce to restore our grasshopper’ed taste buds to normality.

Police canine training on the central square: 

Shopping and they had some delicious looking ice creams. Layne said custard counted for a weeks worth of sugar. Grrr. 

The parish church where dogs are forbidden. Dogs don’t have souls in Catholic dogma which was the last straw for me. 

And yet, glorious architecture: 

Abbey Road. Sort of. Cholula has lovely clean modern streets with easy sidewalks and lots of small businesses, few street dogs and a general air of modern prosperity. 

Most people wear masks so we do too even while outdoors and socially distanced. It’s polite to follow community standards. 

We accidentally parked near an Agua purificada store and this added 15 gallons to our water tank and Layne spotted  a key maker during our travels. 

We wanted a key to open the doors so we can have an extra secreted outside and never get locked out. The van has the modern remote key fob arrangement so all we wanted was an extra key to unlock the door. 

It’s a family bike shop. She sells he fixes and he took time away from a fork rebuild to find a blank that would fit the Promaster lock. He looked grim. “It will take some time.” Our faces dropped. How long? We wanted to leave tomorrow. “Oh about 15 minutes.”  We retired to the van to have lunch, roast chicken wrapped in tortillas. Half an hour later I handed over 200 pesos ( ten bucks) and we have our extra key. Magical Mexico. 

We returned to the campground where we had a swim and Mike brought us coffee poolside saying the water was too cold. He then found himself cornered by a Mexican widow who took a fancy apparently to van life and Mike. There is no accounting for taste… but she moved in on him hard core. He was squirming at the attention  but if I had been single I’d have taken her out to lunch. She was sweet and funny and apparently has an adventurous streak. All a van lifer needs in a partner. I left him to it and walked Rusty and then climbed the well worn water tower in the campground. 

The view from the top: 

Solid more or less but oxidized.

The biggest pyramid in the world on the horizon. 

The other altar of worship: 

Mike who had no desire to climb the tower. The bottom part was I’ll admit a scary rickety ladder.. .

And there endeth another long day. A shared box of wine with Mike and some stories, with a final parting planned in the morning. We are headed to the sea at Veracruz over some reputedly lush tropical mountains while he is possibly going north to find a new clutch for his Sprinter. That’s how you make friends and lose them on the road.