Art Aboard

Rachel wrote and asked me to post some pictures of our artwork aboard GANNET2. Visitors sometimes express surprise that we stick souvenirs of our travels in the walls of our monsters home but we like to brighten things up. This collection of found objects and buttons we picked up in Franklin Tennessee when Gary and Barbara took us on an outing to the Carnton House before saying goodbye in January. 

This picture below is on our fridge and gains significance as we prepare to launch towards Panama. It was us with Emma and Debs on Miki G our 34 foot Gemini Catamaran just before  the Panama Canal in 1999 as we prepared to transit to the Caribbean Sea. 

Paula from Ireland gave us this fridge magnet before we left Key West. Ever since I discovered one grandparent was Irish I have tried to come to terms with my Celtic ancestry. I was quite happy being English. But one cannot reject any appeal to luck under our circumstances! 

We covered up a failed hook placement by sticking some small rocks over the hole and creating art. All our souvenirs have to be small to fit in our van life. 

The sunflowers we bought in Quebec City in a market in 2016. Sunflowers are Laynes favorite and she says that was the first piece of art we bought for our future van. We planned ahead. 

We seem to end up collecting bits and pieces that resemble creatures of the sea and I don’t quite remember where they all came from. 

We bought this painting below in Dubrovnik in Croatia when we drove around the Balkans for a second time in 2007 and we wanted a small souvenir to take home. 

This year we went to Monument Valley Arizona and got this:

This mask we bought at Monte Alban, the archeological digs outside Oaxaca:  

This was us getting married in Santa Cruz in 1994 in a friend’s expansive back yard. It was a sunny summer in California that year. 

Layne went to Turkey with some girlfriends a few years ago, well before Covid and brought back some oval charms which are supposed to ward off the evil eye. The sousaphone player she bought in New Orleans to remind me of my youthful musical efforts. 

We bought the painting below as a reminder of our pleasure in the desert southwest. We happened upon a street fair in Mesilla, New Mexico and liked the art. In front of it we bought the tall wood statue in a museum in Alamos last year in Sonora State, next to it the day of the dead statue and next to that one of our more recent pieces a wheelbarrow from the mining town of Real Del Monte. 

The paper towel holder we like as it’s not like the regular holders and I like the cheeky sombrero art. We found it in Tzintzuntzan on the shore of Lake Pátzcuaro last year. 

Layne finds odd spots for various pieces and when she goes by looking she always asks for the smallest examples. We live in a Casa Rodante - a moving home. 

We don’t have anything much from Key West now I’m looking and I find that disappointing. I do have my going away police medal stuck above my desk. It reminds me where the money comes from to live this life on the road. 

The latest was the black clay mask in San Bartolo Coyotepec.  Small of course but beautifully detailed. 

All this stuff travels around with us. Last years’ haul is stored on our storage locker in Miami for now. 

Decoration in our van makes it a home. Cheers. 

Adding art is an ongoing process and I forgot a few. 

Layne’s favorite turtle above has never moved in 70,000 miles. Below we bought a basket to hold our Berkey water filter and it’s worked perfectly. We thought it would break and we bought a spare expecting the worst. So far so good and the spare basket is stashed under the bed. 

A piece of weaving art purchased from a family owned weaving shop near the Oaxaca cathedral. 

And two views of the pyramid preferred by Trish. Also used to hold papers and permits and stuff. 



Note the nice clean art -free area at my end of the bed. I’m holding out against dust catchers. 

Market Day

We had planned to be on the road Sunday but we got delayed. We have purchased a Starlink satellite receiver to accompany us across Central and South America.

The Mexican cost is a lot less than the US at $415 for the receiver hardware and $75 a month for unlimited service from Alaska  to Argentina. Travelers we have met tell us service is close to universal south of Mexico where it is already widely used and attracts no attention.

For us we have no need of Starlink in Mexico where our US phones work as they do at home but from Belize onwards we have to buy local SIM cards in each country to get phone service. Starlink will be an excellent back up for mapping and communication. So there it is, now we wait a few days for Starlink Mexico to deliver our antenna.

As we await our Starlink we continue our tourist tour of Oaxaca State. Sunday we went to Tlacolula de Matamoros 45 minutes south of the El Rancho RV Park.

It is decidedly a locals’ market. We did pass a handful of other gringo visitors at the stalls but the streets of the village were packed with Mexicans including lots of Mixtec Indios. Our walk was in large part a step aside to avoid clumps of eager shoppers. 

Above mangoes in a sweet sauce and below salted fish! 

Bread is far more visible than I remember it from years past. Corn or wheat I like tortillas or buns. 

This woman selling her nuts thought I was a goofball with my camera but her young daughter fascinated by the foreigner shook her head at the thought of her picture being taken. So there. 

We bought one of these etched gourds to decorate our home.

I spotted the husband, below,  rolling his princess home in his tricycle carrier. 

This lady was offering fried chicken taquitos and some fried meat crisps which was what we went for  in the right dish below. 

Of course when we sat down the meat ball things were smothered in lettuce and salsa. Crisp and filled with spicy chorizo meat. 

We drank rice milk (“horchata”) with crushed pecans floating on it. Sweet vanilla flavored and delicious  as a contrast to the well spiced food. 

A word about Rusty: he coped brilliantly. We left GANNET2 at a public parking lot a short distance away and my thought was I could take Rusty back when he got fed up with the crowds. However as usual Rusty surprised me. He managed the people and wheels and smells and sights with ease. I was so proud of him as he used to be scared of any crush of people especially in Mexico where dogs wander. Instead he had a great time. 

Most of the market was quite shady thanks to the awnings pulled across the various streets. This one below was at my eye level and I’m 5’6” so you can imagine it was hanging low! 

It was actually pretty tough walking the shady alleys while keeping an eye on Rusty and trying to make pictures in varying light. In the end I had to put him on a leash to keep him in the glow of foot traffic and make sure he didn’t pee on any objects for sale. My camerawork suffered as a consequence. 

After a while Rusty started leading me back in the direction of the way we had come. I too had had enough of market day. 

I sat for a while with Fabian sitting on a step next to me and we discussed the relative merits of temperatures in Miami (none) versus the nice cool nights in Oaxaca. 

Then the others caught up and we walked a black together back to the public parking lot. 

From left to right we brought Duwan, Omar, Angelica, Layne, and Greg.  They went on. 

Rusty and I had a rest in the parking lot waiting for them to finish their tour.

I cleaned the kitchen sink and sorted out a storage bag that was a mess and listened to some music from over the wall. 

We got wedged in by so many parked cars but miraculously there was a way out when the time came…in Mexico every problem has a solution.