Into Mexico

The paperwork took 45 minutes for us two and GANNET2 for we were the sole customers and thus leaped to the head of the non existent line. Customs looked at Rusty and the only inspection he got was the usual question in Mexico: Does he bite? Customs looked at our home more out of curiosity than as a search and our fridge stuffed with food was not even opened. Our Motor Home designation on our registration, fresh from Florida, got us the much desired ten year import permit which means all we have to do next time we enter Mexico is get our tourist cards, a ten minute operation. Mexico wants tourists and they couldn’t make it easier for us to visit. 

We had four hundred bucks in pesos left over from our last trip and we had already bought car insurance so all we had to do was drive and we were on the road by 10:20. 

Our first destination was Saltillo four hours away as I had developed a hankering to see where GANNET2 was created and the factory was close by our route. In fact I soon started to see flatbeds hauling brand new Promasters north. 

The factory is in an industrial zone in a valley outside the city of Saltillo  and it’s marked on Google maps as the “FCA Van Assembly Area” even though Fiat Chrysler America is now called Stellantis. 

I know it’s ridiculously nerdy of me but Layne put up with a thirty minute deviation and I enjoyed getting to see the factory. Three factory works ambled by and smiled when they saw our van and I don’t suppose they get too many sightseers at the Ram factory, even the part where they assemble pick ups! 

There are trucks lined up all over the place and where there are trucks there are places to eat. The Promaster gives a lot of work down here to Mexicans who now don’t need to cross the border seeking employment. 

Four more on their way to dealers in Mexico, Canada or the US:

Our idea had been to spend our first night in Mexico at altitude among the peaks of the Sierra Madre to escape daytime temperatures near 100 degrees. The plan worked but what I didn’t know at the time was the presence of a nature reserve an hour from the factory at eight thousand feet. Described on iOverlander it Sounded like an ideal wild camp in the forests. Never mind, we kept on keeping on. 

We passed three police checkpoints on the highways and one actually stopped us and checked our vehicle import permit. He was very friendly and as usual curious about our home on wheels but as we pulled away to buy a cold drink at the convenience store Layne remarked  how helpful it is to be able to speak Spanish with the people especially the officials we encounter. Who they pick for a real inspection seems entirely random. 

It was when we got back on the road after the factory stop that Layne started to feel under the weather. The comment about the delayed reaction to the Covid shot was spot on. 

While I drove Layne spent time on the bed napping, so smooth was the highway and as usual she got all the Covid symptoms, fever chills, sweating and so forth. We neither of us regretted our loud our decision to leave Laredo even though we did consider staying for one more night in hotel luxury. 

I pressed on, there was nothing else to do. Ironically I had been knocked low by the flu shot we got in Houston but neither the RSV or Covid did much damage to me except for a slightly sore arm. 

These aren’t easy vaccines to get in developing countries so we felt lucky to have taken the opportunity to get properly vaccinated before departure. Some people aren’t given a choice. 

iOverlander showed a campground in the town of Matehuala in San Luis Potosí state but we didn’t feel

the need to pay $20 for hookups if overnight temperatures were going to dip into the 50s so we pressed south of the city. 

Layne started to perk up and began her recovery pretty quickly. After some sleep in the back she was ready to sit up again and take an interest in the countryside which to be frank was pretty much all desert. 

The next iOverlander stop an hour south of Matehuala was supposed to be a large truck stop on Highway 57 but ten minutes before we were due to arrive Google maps reported a blockage, probably a bad accident. It was 6:30 and we were passing a Mobil station with a vast open area out back. Good for a dog walk and not bad for a noisy night’s sleep. Actually truck traffic in Mexico usually dies out after ten as most truckers sleep normal hours and drive all day. 

It worked for us and Layne had a bowl of chicken soup as Jewish tradition dictates when you aren’t feeling well and she was in bed by 7:30 hoping to wake up as good as new. 

With gas around $5:20 a gallon and our day’s worth of tolls paid to speed our journey south around $60 it wasn’t a cheap drive but we got south. 

Rusty was perfect all the way, sitting on his pillow patiently and jumping out when I gave him permission to stretch his legs, uncomplaining all the way. 

Webb Chiles made a joke which I rather liked when I mentioned our impending border crossing:

Here are millions trying to get across to the US and you are going the other way.  Typical.

Good for you.

Laredo,

For us Laredo was a destination, our last stop in the US, and now we are here I don’t that that’s going to change. I can’t see us meandering like tourists in a feels-like temperature of 115 degrees and young Rusty is not at all keen to leave the hotel suite we are hunkering down in! 

I know this summer has been blistering hot all over the south even though we managed to stay at altitude and avoid much of it on our travels but the heat has caught up to us, even this late in the year. Sunday morning at seven o’clock Rusty and I went for a walk and Laredo was empty except for himself and me. 

Then an elderly couple cane then the sidewalk. They may have been my age but responsibilities and life were weighing on them. She greeted me in Spanish and I answered in kind which was when she asked if Rusty bites. To their credit they believed me and she petted him while her husband smiled uncertainly behind her. We have to go to work she said setting off down the sidewalk. That question: Does he bite? will start every encounter south of the Rio Grande. 

We got flu and RSV vaccinations in Houston but for some reason Laredo got the newest Covid vaccine before so we made a date to meet Mauricio the pharmacist and his needle Sunday afternoon. Arriving at Walmart we saw half a parking full of US and Mexican trucks apparently waiting for cross border loads. 

There are companies m either side of the river that deal with border crossings for freight. Some trailer loads are transshipped to trailers from the other country, while others are brought  across from the US to Mexico or vice versa with their loads intact for direct forward delivery. It turns out commercial cross border traffic is huge here. In fact there is a truck-only border crossing between the two cities. 

There is a car bridge downtown as well as a pedestrian crossing which we used years ago. In fact we walked into Mexico using our drivers licenses so that dates our journey. Nowadays you need a passport or a passport card to walk across. Our plan now is to take the Colombia bridge, the furthest red mark on the left (below) which is the main tourist route half an hour from town. The next mark is the trucks only crossing and the two downtown are the pedestrian and car crossings. Lots of choices!

Our plan after Colombia, is to take Highway 2 bypassing Nuevo Laredo and setting off toward Monterrey and Saltillo which is the city where GANNET2 was born. Sleeping at truck stops and not stopping to be tourists we hope we can be in Oaxaca at our favorite campground in three or four days. 

The tolls will amount to roughly $110 but they are worth it when you are trying to make miles. We will rest a few days in Oaxaca and after Layne has her skin cancer stitches out in ten days we’ll press on to the coast for a swim before setting off rapidly for Guatemala and points south.

We sorted our paperwork into our travel bag where we keep our passports and Rusty’s papers, GANNET2’s Florida registration, title and Mexican insurance as well as the tourist cards and Temporary Import Pernit we will be issued at the border. It is vary rare for officials to ask to see our papers as we drive around but we keep them close at hand just in case. We also have our international vaccination cards which record our Covid jabs as well as tropical disease vaccinations like smallpox and diphtheria and so forth. What have we forgotten? Something inevitably. 

I always get a twinge leaving home. By now Mexican travel is a familiar thing for us and when I asked the pharmacist if he crosses very often he shrugged and said not in ten years. The cartels make life dangerous for Mexicans especially those who may own land wanted by the drug growers. The pharmacist told me he knew of two family friends who went to check on their plots of land in Mexico and who disappeared. They won’t bother you he said and I concurred as we have no stake in anything. We’ll drive through in a few hours on the main road and be gone.

So it’s time to go and see that which we neither of us have seen before, a new open road. New friends to make along the way, new problems to solve and shears the prospect of coming home to this comfortable easy life in a van, sinners in the US amen big friends and winters on a beach in Mexico. But only after we give South America the old college try. 

Huston

If you ever find yourself looking for a place to stay because you have to be in Houston allow me to suggest Lake Huston Wilderness Park. 

You don’t have an RV I hear you say? And you don’t like sleeping on the ground? In this place they give you the option of an A frame for accommodation. 

They are Hansel and Gretel cute though spartan. This is the bare minimum and no way intends to compete with a Hilton. A neon light, an electrical outlet and mosquito netting with an outside faucet a picnic table and a view of the lake is what you get. 

Of course Rusty won’t be around to add extra cuteness as we leave Saturday. And when I say “we” that will include Layne who is currently in Ohio getting an errant skin cell cut out by a dermatologist. Why Ohio? Because that’s where she could get an appointment to get checked out and when they found a cancer cell, there it was she had to go to get it removed. Thanks MediCare for paying for the job and no we don’t have Medicare Advantage as we use it all over the  place. 

So Rusty and I needed somewhere bearable to sit out three days of u seasonably hot sticky days (and nights).  Lake Huston Wilderness looked good. I think the RV site costs $41 with full hookups and decent privacy. 

However it’s midweek and school is in session so it’s me in space 4 and him in space 2 and this morning when I walked Rusty his pickup was gone. 

For us after a senior discount with taxes and all that stuff it worked out to $30 a night for three nights which seems fine by me.  There are no mountains to find cool temperatures and indeed there is not one acre of BLM or US Forest Service public land in Texas, (Boo hiss). So when we drive through the state in comfortable temperatures we stop at one of the many rest areas lining every single highway. Or, there are some pretty decent state parks if you don’t mind laying to have neighbors. 

I can stand this and Rusty likes walking here in between long snoring sessions in the shade. 

It’s a park filled with activities including sitting on a river beach and walking all over the place. 

Picnic areas for day users, lots of shade and wooded paths and this is exactly what I am in the mood for after weeks of moochdocking and socializing. 

The lake is catch and release but I haven’t seen anyone using the fishing piers. There was a couple picnicking yesterday at the lakeside pavilion but this seems to be a time to be alone with one’s thoughts. And a book…

Saturday when Layne is back the plan is to drive a half day to Laredo and take a room using our Hilton points so we can use their business facilities to organize and photocopy our documents and leave Sunday for the border showered and ready for our first Mexican truck stop somewhere near Monterrey.

You can’t leave without looking over your shoulder and thinking of all the things you’ve missed this time around but we’ll be back to see more of it all. Meanwhile the open road beckons and that always gives me a thrill.

Faubourg Marigny And Bywater

I am not a fan of bicycles or kayaks come to that. I like to walk, an activity that allows me to see and to stop and to travel outside the traffic lanes. I used to do a lot of it in Key West and it never got old.  

Sometimes it is true a rest feels good and Washington Park in Faubourg Marigny, the district next to the French Quarter (the Vieux Carré) is a pretty good spot to sit in the shade. 

New Orleans is not wheelchair friendly. Ever since my time in a chair I have become rather more aware of this need. Key West could do a lot better but these sidewalks are useless if you are handicapped. 

Faubourg Marigny is named for the man, the boy really, who created this district next to, or “in front of” (Faubourg) the Vieux Carré, the old quarter. Phillipe de Marigny de Mandeville inherited his land in 1799 on the death of his father, when the heir was just 14 years old. He traveled to Europe to learn business and came home to New Orleans with a few fresh ideas to make the most of his inheritance. At age 20 in 1805 he sold parcels of his land just outside New Orlean’s overcrowded hub, thus creating a new Faubourg bearing his name. 

So he got his name on the map, good man but also created a district that I find, in the 21st century, to be much more attractive than the overhyped French Quarter. Faubourg Marigny has music food and attractive architecture but it is less hyped and less Bourbon-Street-like than “ the Quarter.”  On a hot September morning it is positively drowsy. 

Heavily shuttered windows are a reminder that much of downtown is owned for seasonal residence not permanent living in the marshes of southern Louisiana.

Street smarts are not my forte but in New Orleans you have to lock up your property and be aware of your surroundings. I lived without a front door key in Cudjoe but that would not be possible here. Far from it. 

There is beauty as well as money in New Orleans with good food and traditional jazz that I am quite partial to, and the bourbon lily is that symbol. 

Its funny really to see all this French cultural attachment in a city that was mostly governed by Spain during its pre-American history. There was a brief window when France took over the city during Napoleon’s costly European wars but he promptly sold the Louisiana purchase to the US as he knew France couldn’t keep her American colonies and he might as well make a buck off them to find his endless wars. 

The net result in 1802, the era of slow transatlantic communications was a city that learned it was now French and no longer Spanish only by the time it had been sold to the United States unbeknownst to city residents. That news arrived months later and made very few people happy. Some left while others hunkered down and refused to learn English or accept their new status.  De Marigny made money and good for him I guess; a new American. 

Rusty seemed to enjoy his walk which we took after I dropped Layne and Kathy off at cooking school in the Vieux Carré. 

Our apartment, which we vacated Tuesday morning was in the Bywater a district further out from the French Quarter than the Faubourg Marigny. The Bywater is more industrial and less touristy than either of the other two areas but the apartment suited us with fenced parking and modern amenities including hot running water and air conditioning. 

Modern American bland let’s face it but quite comfortable with plenty of safe parking for GANNET2 in the fenced lot. I’d come back here.

Just as in our previous life in the Keys Rusty would wake me up at four in the morning and off we’d go into the night, when walking is coolest and with no one around he could be safely off leash stopping as he pleased.

The classic broad median strips with fully grown oaks on them are known as “neutral ground” in New Orleans, a city that has had to learn to cope with ethnic diversity before it became a modern fashion. Neutral ground separated the various factions in town, French Spanish and American and eventually blacks and others who came into the city. 

And as note to ardent French speakers street names are not what they appear. Burgundy Street is not pronounced like the wine but in New Orleans it’s Bur-GUN-dy which sounds weird but there it is. Chartres is pronounced “charter” and so forth. American English trumps Francophone pronunciation. 

Graffiti are everywhere, much of it unintelligible, some crude and a little of it humorous. But it is everywhere in a city seeking self expression one way or another. 

And Rusty found some mysterious crunchy stuff to enjoy. The neighborhood is pretty quiet with not barking dogs or loud cats in the evening. 

You have to admit the straight lines and identical brick buildings in the French Quarter look pretty monotonous by comparison: