Clean Teeth, Clean Rugs

There is a delightfully cosmopolitan group of children sheltering from the hot midday sun in the RV park, and they are playing under a shelter set to one side for communal use. A great deal of jumping around and waving is involved but what they're up to is complicated to follow. They speak a mixture of French, Spanish and English which is usually suppressed by loud cries of "Français! Français!"

Layne felt well enough to carry out a dental cleaning appointment in Oaxaca at  a dental clinic of that name staffed by a dentist who graduated from dental school in Michigan and speaks fluent English. In the general scheme of things getting your teeth cleaned doesn't require much conversation and the process was mostly similar to what we did at home, signing papers as it was our first visit, and then waiting to be taken back. That's where things got different. 

Full protective gear, much use of disinfectant and and an unusual piece of headgear when being worked on. I sneaked a picture while they were out checking my X-rays, which revealed no problems. And my gums are also fine thank you.

Layne went first and took great delight in telling me all about it when I got back after walking Rusty and was waiting to go in. They charged us a little less than $60 each for a tooth cleaning carried out by the dentist himself. The dental office felt just like any such facility you might use in the US. Dr Angel Gomez told Layne (she's more chatty than I am) he has regular Florida patients who come to see him for all their dental work. We have had our teeth cleaned all over the world and at a cost that would make you grind your teeth with envy.

I saw this poster which looked like it was in excellent shape for a concept that went out of style 30 years ago. I had about 45 minutes after I dropped Layne off and found a street parking spot (Score! Free!) so the plan was that I would walk Rusty around Old Town Oaxaca. 

Street art is all over the place and the sidewalks are mostly pretty good so I could look around as Rusty walked head down nose on high alert. Sometimes the sidewalks played tricks on us.

I had no idea where we were going but I am determined to hit some tourist attractions before we leave the campground. Layne keeps protesting she's a thousand percent better after her heat exhaustion thing. A former math teacher should know better inasmuch as that's either a) impossible or b) a theoretical one thousand percent of zero is still zero. Either way she needs to take it easy after heat exhaustion. Getting her teeth cleaned seemed as much activity as she needed so my exploration of Oaxaca was within a few blocks and they looked like this pretty much.

I happened upon a tourist site totally by accident, the House of Culture a  former convent built in 1730. The Mexican revolution was not kind to the church which was seen as allied to the Spanish. It was expropriated in 1863, bought back by the bishop in 1890 and turned into a cultural center. That wasn't all because in 1933 they all gave up on the project and the building was abandoned until 1963 when they restored it, declared it of historic importance and it is what it is. 

Oaxaca is packed with this stuff, not to be too Philistine about it. Dogs have no souls so they can't go in and we've had enough of Rusty chewing through his leash to join me perforce in photographing interiors.

I found a man selling apples so I bought too many. It turns out 2.2 pounds of small apples is quite a lot so I promptly dropped one, gave one away to a man minding his own business in the park across the street then I ate two and suddenly the kilo seemed more maneagable. I would be grateful if no one points out to Layne I ate fruit with uncleaned skin on it.

I watched the gate go down for a man in a mobility chair who needed to get into the pedestrian zone. Mexico is badly built for wheelchair access though they do try to modify their ancient buildings and occasionally obtuse sidewalks. I like the street names in braille which I think is rather cool and also convenient for those of us who can see and want to know where we are. An "invidente" is a "non seeing" person.

There was no one walking in the middle of the pedestrian zone so Rusty and I walked there by ourselves leaving the sidewalks busy. It wasn't that hot for either of us in the sun.

I have a CPAP plugged in on a shelf above my bed which I have found produces much more restful sleep, no peeing in the middle of the night (a known positive side effect for reasons unknown to me) and it allows one's wife to sleep as snores are suppressed. However it does require the use of distilled water to keep the airways working and that has been a bit of a faff in Mexico. Pharmacies sell it, but as ever of course, not all of them. I scored big on my walk stopping at each one I saw and asking for "agua iniettabile" which is distilled water extra sterilized for injection use. Its quite widely available where distilled water, less pure is much rarer (and cheaper!). I got a month's supply of the more expensive stuff in three smallish bottles. We are knocking off the chores in Oaxaca, I tell you. 

If all else fails you can send a nice wreath:

A mobile command post to offer us a "Safe City" though I have to say I never felt unsafe anywhere in old town Oaxaca, while walking around. Perhaps this is why!

We have a rather heavily loaded sliding pantry door that keeps popping one of it's two locks and we secure it before a drive with a strip of gorilla tape. However this is unsatisfactory so we went on the hunt for a Ferreteria, a hardware store, which we abbreviate to a "Ferret Shop"looking for little bronze eyelets we could screw carefully into the wood. The idea is to string a bungee cord across to help hold the sliding door in place.  The owner of this store had none but he directed us to the one that did. Pretty nice as always in Mexico.

The second ferret shop had a stainless eyelet and that was good enough for Mrs B so we bought a couple and a can opener that would replace the fancy one we brought that she can't figure out to work and stuff like that. If you break an appliance in Mexico someone sells spare parts, often broken down from malfunctioning blenders or irons or whatever it is. It's an amazing small economy.

She also bought a lime squeezer which seems like critical kitchen equipment in Mexico. I also noticed another store selling Stock Island Nikes, the ironic name given to white boots used principally by Keys commercial fishermen. These are about $14.

On the way home I was entrusted with the awesome responsibility of spotting a roast chicken outlet as the chef is still feeling a little poorly. She did walk a few blocks while I was having my teeth cleaned ultra sonically but three blocks and she was dead. Starvation or roast chicken was on the dinner menu.

I asked Layne to pick up some radishes, a common side vegetable in Mexico and delicious, and she ended up getting some cactus too on the theory that after her cooking class she knows how to cook them.

Rusty knew at this point roast chicken dinner was on the menu and was making sure we loaded his share (his and I might add some for... 

...the stray dog at the campground gate). Perhaps he was looking at the dog food billboard. Indeed, some people do feed their dogs (mascotas) in Mexico:

We picked up our laundry in the village of El Tule on our way to the campground, where we had left our rugs for a wash or dry clean as needed. They did a brilliant job I know, because Layne was very happy.

Back at the ranch in the small RV row we now had a lone Frenchman in a four wheel drive Sprinter (a Hymer Grand Canyon more precisely), a Mexican couple in a Ford Transit, a couple from New Hampshire in a medium large Overland rig, along with the Catalans in the Delica and the Germans in the yellow Volkswagen and Alex and Denise from Lichtenstein at the end of the row in their Overland machine. We tend to say "Buenas Dias" when we pass unless we are sure of the correct language. It seems more polite to default to the host country's language. Unless you are too tired to notice:

Campground Life, Oaxaca

We've been at El Rancho RV park since Monday, and we're parked in a large compound 30 minutes from downtown Oaxaca. I've actually spent rather more time within the four very high walls of this place than I first intended but therein lies a story and lots of conversations. 

There are two youngsters from Barcelona, Catalans they said with a laugh, (not Spaniards!) and I talked to Alex and Carlotta the evening of their arrival but they have interior work to be done to their van so in the morning they zipped past on their way to the mechanic; thus I snapped a picture in case they don't come back before we leave. Not supposed to happen but its always a possibility in this life on the road. The van is a Mitsubishi Delica four wheel drive. Much admired in Europe but the first time I've seen one. It looked quite compact.

On the road we often look for wild camping spots, especially in the US where camping is crowded and expensive and I feel like I'm in a trailer park. In Mexico we enjoy wild camping as well but when we visit a city or a tourist attraction we like to be able to park in a place with facilities where we can stay for a few days, do chores like laundry, fill the water tank, empty the porta potty and so all that. Plus we can drive into town, park the van and use it as our downtown base. For attractions where Rusty's not welcome, museums and so forth we leave him in the van. If its hot we can run the rooftop air conditioning. Then when we're done we drive back to the campground and resume life in our spot.

Rusty likes campgrounds as he doesn't have to worry about street dogs and he pretends he's in his own yard. He moves from shade to sun and sometimes under our van and sometimes under a bush. He knows we will be driving again but he takes full advantage of the pauses. He enjoys town walks because there are lots of smells we let him spend time on plus there aren't street dogs in the big cities, which is much more relaxing for him.

An older German couple moved in next door with a bright yellow VW van, a more modern model than the traditional Kombi, but communication is a bit tricky as he speaks only German and she speaks some English, though I think she is a bit shy. I blast my few words and phrases I know in German and am unafraid of making a fool of myself which I think helps them feel less shy. Their dog is eleven years old and has some back trouble but I really like how he just jets off across the lawn with a weird lumbering gait and doesn't give a shit about being nearly crippled. Rusty likes him too so they pee together companionably.

Two youngsters driving a Belgian registered older Toyota Landcruiser were next door our first night, but they left the next day. They are actually Dutch and speak French as they lived in Brussels ( a French speaking city)  and also excellent English, so we chatted a fair bit. I was surprised we had a lot in common despite our age difference, our attitude to travel particularly.  Like most Europeans in this area they shipped their van to Veracruz and are heading to South America so we hope to meet them again next year. 

When we do meet new people Layne opens her notes page in her iPhone and writes down nationality and type of vehicle (yellow jeep or Class C RV or white truck, nothing too technical) and their names so we know who they are. Last night two large RVs arrived and parked in the family section of the park. I spoke to the two little girls as their parents parked the RV in the dark. I was walking outside to feed the stray dog at the gate and they wanted to pet Rusty.

"You're from Virginia?" I asked looking at their tags...No she said, and she was maybe ten years old with her younger sister. 

"I'm from New York. My sister is from Ecuador, our Mom is from Brazil but our Dad is the one from Virginia." Go figure. No problem I said as long as we all keep talking and we laughed. I enjoy meeting people with lives more complicated than my own.

The photo above is the same as the one I used at the top of the page. From the left there is a US Promaster, possibly  a factory built  camper by  Roadtrek, and the owner is a single American woman, who is less a traveler and more a long term resident who drives a small Nissan sedan called a March. I have never  spoken to her but she waves as she drives by and she has a different life goal obviously than a couple of nomads like us. 

The yellow van is owned by a retired Australian couple. Guy came over to chat and he told us they have been on the road for a decade but had a difficult start as they bought the van from a custom builder in Australia and it came with a raft of problems. Apparently the pop top roof is still giving them issues as they plan to ship the van home to Australia from somewhere on the West Coast. Possibly Long Beach in the US or Vancouver in Canada. Those kinds of decisions can be predicated on cost, availability of ships or the difficulties of the required documentation which vary from country to country. Flexibility is the Overlander's friend.

The Vermont registered Class C RV next to the yellow Australian is owned by a French family who live in Colombia and are traveling in Mexico with a New Mexico registered van which is much smaller and handier than the full sized RV. You can register an RV in Mexico for a ten year permit and their idea is to leave the big vehicle here and use it as a vacation cabin!  He enjoys the fact that I speak French so we chat when our paths cross. You just can't assume anything when you see a license plate! 

Finally the big truck at the end of the line belongs to Stefan and Petra two Germans who have been on the road for eleven years. They have lived here a long time, more than year I think, and Petra makes it her job to feed the packs of dogs who are not strays but are not well fed, in the street outside the campground. They speak good English and are a fund of information for the rest of us. Petra below talking to the campground caretaker:

In the photo below there is a Swiss registered RV that has been parked and not occupied since we got here. Petra's dog Mandu is walking past it.

Mandu made himself known to Stefan and Petra when they were in Katmandu eleven years ago and decided he wanted to live in their truck with them and here he is. Rusty and he acknowledge each other but aren't friends even though they look like brothers.

There are two other Swiss campers, one couple we met in San Cristobal, and there is a British truck with Neal a former policeman in Britain and his wife Pat,  retired with daughters in Britain and on the road for years in a big overland truck. They met the Australians in the yellow truck all over South America. 

Neal also pointed out a truck with an unusual license plate and said he saw them in Portugal a few years ago and never expected to see them in Mexico. I went to talk to the couple from Lichtenstein. That's a crazy home base as Lichtenstein is a German speaking teardrop sized country wedged between Austria and Switzerland with a population of around 38,000 people. They have a customs union with Switzerland so they must use Swiss Embassies around the world when they need help. Lichtenstein has four embassies and only one outside Europe which is in Washington. I doubt Mexican officials see many Lichtenstein passports...I went over and met Alex originally from Austria who met Denise and married her and moved twenty minutes across the border. He’s lived in Lichtenstein 20 years, left behind an adult son,  and got his pension so they are on the road.  He is so happy to be gone from that complicated expensive cold and wet little country! We laughed a lot together sharing our pleasure in warm weather while escaping bureaucracy. 

It just goes on and on and you will notice that aside from the one long term resident who lives her own life there are no US travelers... There is a really nice couple of women from British Columbia in a small RV across the way. A friend of theirs was driving down the street  and watched a puppy get tossed from a moving car.  She found a home with the RVers and she is a crazy little bugger bouncing around at the end of her harness, annoying Rusty who does not enjoy hyper dogs or puppies...And on the subject we come to the sad story of the campground. There is no happy ending yet.

She is a younger female about Rusty's size but not his 60 pounds. She's neutered and fed daily by campers including us of course right now, but she has no home.

I posted a these pictures of her on the traveler forum hoping that someone might pick her up and I confess I'd really like to take her but Rusty is the block. No way I'm stressing him out and I've tried to encourage love to blossom but it hasn't so far. Unlike many Mexican dogs she is friendly and clearly wants to live with someone and she loves getting pets (Rusty does not like me touching her so I have to be careful) but I can't see how we can get her back to Key West to a friend who might give her a home.

Before you get too sad her lot could be worse, she is looked after and will not go hungry. I told Petra I'd give her a break and feed the dog while we are here so we also bought a bowl to give her food morning and evening and not just put it on the ground. I give her treats and  keep her water bowl full, but I wish Rusty would take to her, I think he'd have more fun in Mexico with a built in back up on our walks, but there it is.

One more character lives at the campground and he's always got a smile. Cali is his name and he takes care of us, calls taxis, cleans the toilets and does it well. I joke around with him so we get along. I grew up in Italy around men and women like Cali, in polite circles they are called salt of the earth and in case you were wondering, their salt is of the rather more crude sort. He enjoys laughing about the trials of men and women living together. While Layne was away at cooking school we exchanged male pleasantries of a kind that make sure he keeps an eye out for us his new friends but they are rather sexist jokes that I don't need to share here.

He didn't pose for that picture when he was watering the lawn but I admired his Mexican machismo with such a flow and he cracked up.

Layne had a great time at her cooking class, working through the market in Oaxaca and then sharing a kitchen with a dozen other students where she learned how to use the vegetables and fruits and make sauces and so forth. She has promised to dictate an essay for this page with her pictures and I hope we will put it together in the next few days.

She has ironically come down with a stomach complaint and has taken to our bed aboard Gannet 2. This is a good place to be unwell but for me I spent yesterday here looking after Rusty while she was away all day, and today I am here looking after Layne, putting ice in her glass basically, while she recovers. As campgrounds go this is a pretty good one. But still I have seen a tiny fragment of the city. I shall save those pictures of Oaxaca for tomorrow.

She did tell me she catalogued her photos and notes last night before she got sick and that she now knows how to cook nopales (cactus) without making it slimy! We shall see.

On another note I incautiously mentioned to Webb Chiles my noted sailing friend that I wanted a serape, (sir-ap-hay) a wool blanket with a hole for your head that one wears rather like a catholic priest's cassock. It is actually a comfortable way to stay warm and leave your arms free. Layne said the place to buy one was Oaxaca and when she came out of the market she told me she'd found the perfect one, for just $23. You decide.

Bear in mind Layne took the picture from her death bed and it was a hundred degrees in the campground...but the inside is made of soft wool that feels really comfortable. I keep it folded on our bed underneath Rusty's bed. He likes to sleep in his bed on the floor by the open door and the serape is at my feet when I get cold late at night when temperatures plummet. It turns out it makes a perfect blanket ( with a hole) to sleep under. No wonder Clint Eastwood was always wearing one in his spaghetti westerns. It also got Webb's seal of approval though I doubt he'd be seen dead in one. I am a happy to be warm and if someone in the states mistakes me for their gardener I'll survive. I'd actually be flattered.

The Road Not Of Death

 On the travel forums there was a discussion one day that interested me slightly as one intrepid traveler planned a journey from Oaxaca to Puerto Escondido. There were several choices and the poor lost soul was asking public opinion to help him decide, a concept that I, a pre-Internet traveler, still find bizarre. I am traveling in retirement to make my own choices, but I found the discussion interesting.

From the coast the long easy route on straight roads is to drive back to Salina Cruz and turn inland. The gray line looks longer but you have a chance of driving fast enough to be close to Google's estimated time for the journey.  The blue line is the direct route Highway 131 and if you pull it up and look at it you'll see a squiggle reminiscent of a medical textbook's illustration of an intestine traveling through an abdomen. This is The Road Of Death, and is not advised. So naturally that was how I wanted to get to the city of Oaxaca, the capital of the rather impoverished state of the same name.

However...when you remember I am married and intend to stay that way, when there is a third alternative that is NOT labeled The Highway of Death, it will become immediately apparent that we took the middle road. Highway 175 which on the map above is a simple yellow Google highway between the blue and the gray lines and is a mixture of splendid views and easier driving, supposedly. It did have its challenges, though not exactly death defying.

I enjoyed the drive and we took all afternoon to get to the top of the mountains. The road surface was not always brilliant though sometimes it was.

Traffic was light, mostly though sometimes we got jammed up with a bunch of cabs and collectivos who were in a desperate hurry. As you might imagine I had few choices to pull over and it's quite tricky deciding on the spur of the second that the open space is wide enough, smooth enough and level with the highway enough to pull off, a surprise maneuver that might cause confusion in the collectivo van snug on your tail and filling your mirrors. Often it is better to press on and hope for the best.

I love the derrumbe warnings, and looking it up in Google the word means "collapse."  Watch out for the road collapsing! say the warning signs. This derrumbe is getting some work:

And for Layne who does not enjoy riding in the passenger seat overlooking a vast canyon of emptiness the frequent lack of guardrails or shoulders meant the equally frequent voids on her side of the van made the journey something of a trial. Especially as I was enjoying the few, well marked topes, no sudden braking for invisible speed bumps, and the views, and the relatively light traffic.

We went up hill at 20 to 30 miles an hour, stopping when we met dogs wandering along the road. Three times we stopped for them and put food and water out for them. They were skittish and none of them looked abandoned (those are the skeletal mangy dogs) but they seemed to be on a long run home to the villages from fields where their owners had probably been working during the day. None would approach us of course and if they had we would have picked up a headache. Rusty is a one dog van kind of dog and I respect that no matter how much my heart hurts. Food and water seemed the only compromise and I tried not to think too hard about dogs in Mexico, the worst part of traveling for me.

We had our crisis moment of course. It was on a winding shaded section of highway through pine forests at high altitude and we were leading a line of cars, a full sized Sprinter collectivo van followed by a Nissan collectivo followed by a taxi and some trucks. I was in no position to pull over as the curves were tight and frequent but I was looking. Suddenly a huge white Sprinter filled my window as the maniac lunged into a pass. Happily I braked, hard because I had no idea what was around the corner the Sprinter was plunging into. Naturally at that moment another Nissan collectivo came around the corner and as the Sprinter struggled to cross back into our lane the Nissan nose dived as it tried to stop from t-boning the Sprinter. We were stopped and I sat and watched the drama which seemed to take forever. Even the Nissan behind us was stopped and tucked in behind me, all aggression lost in the drama of the moment. 

The Sprinter made it by inches, how I don't know, and just like that the drama dissipated. The Sprinter hauled ass up the curves, oncoming traffic drifted by and I found a turnout ironically on the next short stretch of straightaway. I pulled over and we panted back to a normal heartbeat. I think we were far enough back by the time the two vans might have collided to have avoided any impact but the drama of the moment had our adrenaline coursing.

As we got closer to the top we started to see small restaurants with parking areas and offers of WiFi as phone service was sketchy, I mean non existent for us, in these mountains. I was of a mind to pull over and have an early dinner and spend the night but Layne had set her heart on a hotel recommended by a traveler who said the Sunset Hotel (La Puesta del Sol) in San Jose del Pacifico at the top of the mountain was worth a stay.

It is an unprepossessing village clinging literally to the hillsides with houses sticking out on stilts, one wrong step and a homeowner plunges to their death in the valley out of sight below.  Every scrap of horizontal land is used and there is even the classic covered basketball court alongside the road through the village. San Jose is called "del Pacifico" because supposedly you can sometimes see glimpses of the Pacific Ocean many miles away and 8300 feet below, though this is something of a tourist village, defunded as always by our Covid friend that killed off tourism for these past years.

San Jose sells itself as Mexico's mushroom capital and offers roadside sculptures of wooden mushrooms and rumors of magic mushrooms to eat. There is also a Meso-American cleansing ritual on offer to improve health and vitality and so forth in some sort of ceremony that I in my clunky Western way have no interest in. I am a Moderna man and looking forward to my second booster. Of more interest to me was talk I read about in the guidebook of trails through the hills though at 8300 feet my breath felt completely cut short. It is quite surprising and rather shocking to find oneself panting hopelessly after a mere fifty foot climb up a hotel pathway from our room. If that's what emphysema feels like I want no part of it. It is horrid being short of breath.

The views were cut off largely by trees but it was. a lovely alpine spot, warm in the sun and cool after dark. We could have spent the night in the restaurant parking lot next door but we took the room for the hot shower and the WiFi which exacted a special toll of staying outdoors or with the door open to work, and we ate dinner at the restaurant next door.

We ordered a mixed grill to share, sausage, grilled jerky and flank steak and potatoes and zucchini, quesadillas and cactus all kept warm above the hot coals. It has been the best meal we've had in Oaxaca so far, a land of bland foods I find, and it cost us as much as the room ($40) with flowing margaritas and craft beer. It was a night to celebrate being alive!

Of course there was music into the night from some other cabin (Layne couldn't hear it so perhaps I am overly sensitive) and our Mexican neighbors had a dog they left out all night to roam the hotel grounds which I thought was weird. It sat on the deck and I offered it water Rusty didn't want as we packed to leave and after it drank the whole bowl one of the Mexicans took him onto their room and glared at us when they left ahead of our slow departure. I, who hauled Rusty's vast bed through the oxygen-free atmosphere did indeed think poorly of their treatment of their dog, but I was polite and cheerful nonetheless in the face of their darkened brows. One offends so easily where pet husbandry is concerned. I remained glad the sad creature got some water when it needed it.

The road down was more of the same and we stopped to buy fruit and some lethal coffee/mescal mixture in a bottle. The lady gave us a taste and it barely touched my lips thank God, because it was actual firewater and I was driving. These roads require full attention. Layne lapped the stuff up as though born to sup mezcal.

Buying stuff by the side of the road is great fun, ridiculously inexpensive when translated to a dollar economy, and it helps out the people working for a living. Plus you learn stuff, and taste new stuff and if you mumble any Spanish at all you can learn a little about what goes on. I startled one roadside seller when I discussed with him the annoyances of living in one state and earning a living in the state next door. He looked at me and appraised me a while and said he'd never met a gringo who thought like that. Frankly I was surprised. There's a presidential vote coming up in three days. I shall watch the results with interest. Probably while scooping one of these delicious guanabanas with a spoon:

It turned out that by the time we were down to Oaxaca's level of around 5,000 feet we decided we had taken the road in the best direction, making the hard climb first..

...and spitting ourselves out into a dry desert of heat, smog and easy driving at the end.

We stopped for sandwiches and cappuccinos in 96 degree desert heat. We sat under the awning in front of the coffee shop at the gas station and Rusty laid down in the shade behind us. I am going to miss the easy living in Mexico, outdoor eating, dogs that don't matter (in a country that doesn't treat them well) such that Rusty can follow us almost everywhere, and parking as you can because traffic flows without getting mad. I am looking forward to being back in the States and seeing how I react to the life that used to be the benchmark before this extraordinary driving experience!

The night before, while we were having our splendid dinner at the the hotel I overheard the only other two people on the terrace speaking English.  There is a fashion among Americans in Mexico to ignore other gringos so I turned around and said "English speakers! Are we ignoring each other?" They smiled back and I was ready to let it go there, acknowledgement is enough, but they engaged with us and we heard what is undoubtedly a common life story of work and travel but was new to us and fascinating. It turns out he was a California native and she was Mexican and they met while teaching overseas, fell in love and got married and continued to work overseas on two year assignments. Now retired he is enjoying Mexico with his wife who works as a librarian at the British school in Mexico City. It was a wide ranging conversation discussing education, different countries and the pleasures and vicissitudes of life in Mexico. Layne has always wanted to live overseas and yet she never did try that life. She applied at my insistence to work as a Public Defender in American Samoa, but luckily for us dogs need to be quarantined, Samoans care less than Mexicans for dogs apparently, and the idea of living on a remote small island with Emma and no vet was not on, especially as she had to be caged for four months to gain entry. To live surrounded by stray, ignored dogs was not on for us and is tough as a mere traveler. We stayed in California until we went sailing.

The campground outside Oaxaca used by Overlanders (we are mere travelers in our own minds) is outside a small village called El Tule. Packs of dogs roam during the day and are locked away at night because they aren't strays they just live on the streets in juvenile gangs which intimidate Rusty. It's actually not a bad life when you consider how many dogs in the States live locked away in apartments by themselves and rarely get to run and enjoy the open air. Rusty enjoys the open air in safety behind the massive walls of our First World compound.

There are some Germans here on the road for eleven years who were adopted by a street dog in Nepal. That he looks just like Rusty doesn't mean they hang out together. Dogs are so weird.

Yes, eleven years on the road and not attacked, killed, robbed or living in fear.  When we talk to our well traveled European neighbors fear is the last subject on the agenda. I wish more people back home could hear them dismiss American fear with a shrug of indifference. Mexico has its problems but we see a country filled with color and life and I feel so happy to be here. I'm glad I'm not alone in that. Layne is off taking an all day shopping and cooking course in the city. She took a cab by herself, arrived safely of course and sends me a text from her class: "Everyone is lovely. I'm learning about mangoes." and sent me this picture:

I'm in the campground with Rusty, the English couple left their massive truck and took off into town on their Honda 300 scooter. I wish them well in the traffic but I don't need to break my pelvis again here, thanks. This is how you blog in El Rancho RV park:

Rusty keeps an eye out for potential intruders, sort of:

We avoided death on the road and life continues.