Mayan Ruins and Other Touristing

Two days ago, we took a detour from our straight-shot route to check out Palenque.  The place we camped had live music.  There was a pan flute, so you can imagine exactly how awesome it was.

World's Best Flowchart

And then, the following morning, we walked over to the ruins at Palenque.

Snacktime

Creepy.  And not just the accidental date stamp.

The buildings at the top are amazing (as were the shouty monkeys, which were so loud we thought at first the racket was a recording of a lion or something).  And then a jungle-y little trail led steeply downhill alongside a wide, clear stream to more ruins.  That section was a lil' bit spooky and totally gorgeous. Photos wouldn't have done it justice.

Tree Hugger

We camped the night before last at another strange place: a self-declared "nature preserve" in the woods along highway 186.

"This place is a nature reserve."  Because I say so.

There were deer -- Lena chased three of them -- and little weird rodenty things (hopped like bunnies, looked like mice, were the size of guinea pigs) and at least the rumor of wild boar.

Amenities

Education

There were also horses and a donkey that we only knew existed by its braying.

Nature?

Perhaps strangest of all, the "nature preserve" had a double life as a paintball field.  

Bathroom/Paintball Headquarters

Yesterday, we continued eastward toward Chetumal, our last stop in Mexico (for now).

Typical

Caution: Bats Ahead

Mofles?  Does a more ridiculous and hilarious word exist?

We also stopped at Balamku, where we were totally alone with the ruins.

And then, there were coconuts and such things.  

Next up: Border Crossing #2 (or, possibly, How We Attempted to Bribe Belizean Officials to Let Our Border Collie Into the Country and Were Thrown in Prison Instead)*

*Just kidding, parents.  

Coconuts

We arrived at the Caribbean today and, naturally, my first priority was to crack open a couple of coconuts.  Ever since seeing this video of two ways to open a coconut, I've wanted to try it.  Apparently, I don't have the chops (or the machete) to open it like the awesome guy from Trinidad.  It took a little work but I did get it open and Beth was well-pleased with her coconut water which came from a coconut-package off of a tree rather than a carton-package off of a shelf at Trader Joe's. I plan on working pretty hard to perfect my coconut cracking skills while out here.  It's very important to have goals while on a long trip.


The coconut water from the fresh coconut was pretty good but I prefer the dried nutty coconut better so I went ahead and deftly cracked open one of those too.  It's pretty dangerous work whacking on a coconut with a machete but I'm pretty amazing with a machete so I wasn't very worried.  Beth was though.  When I started the advanced machete move of cutting back in the opposite direction toward my hand, I do believe that she called the move "stupid" instead of "advanced."  Beth doesn't really know a lot about the machete arts so I forgave her and, just so she wouldn't worry, I went back to the basic moves.





Beth and Lena took a break from playing "I grab your face" to munch on some coconuts. Lena was pretty suspicious of coconuts at first because I think she thought it was a vegetable.  Then she realized it was some sort of hybrid between a bone and a stick.  This is a very good thing for a dog, so she settled down to some serious coconut eating.   I plan to teach Lena some of the machete arts on this trip so that she can fetch and prepare coconuts for us and we won't have to remove our asses from hammocks. It'll be good for Lena to actually start earning her keep on this trip.  She thinks traveling is all fun and games and sleeping.  Well Lena, it's not.

Guadalajara and Atlacomulco

Yesterday, we drove to Guadalajara, stopped at a super market (whole wheat pasta! gourmet coffee! horrible snobbishness!), and made our way to a little "resort and RV park" approximately 4 km south of town.  A cobblestone road led to what might once have been a resort but what was now a curiosity, a strange and overgrown place consisting of ancient vacation homes built around even older mobile homes, a tennis court long since weeded over, and a very dirty pool that no longer seemed to be in use.  There were acres of huge trees and lots of crumbling structures that may once have been gathering places or outdoor fire pits. Picture everything made of brick, plants everywhere, and the sound of crickets and cicadas (and not much else).

A manager of sorts sat in a too-large, warehouse-style office piled high with decades-old stacks of paper.  He was further surrounded by yellowing boxes containing defunct blood pressure monitors, no less than three visible and apparently functioning pencil sharpeners, a rotting, cat-infested couch or two, and neglected houseplants covering every other available surface.  The room stank.  When he noticed us, the dude welcomed us to the park in perfect English, spoke of his fantasy of one day leaving the "resort," and finally directed us to our spot.

Crazy-cool house in the park near our camping spot.

Settled, we decided to go see the center of Guadalajara.  We had asked the park's manager for directions, and we imagined it would be a quick ride into town.

The directions were foolproof.

And the bus driver loved Jesus.  A lot.

The 15-minute bus trip we had imagined stretched to nearly an hour, but the payoff was worth it.  There were great buildings.

 And an even better market, including a store devoted entirely to glitter.  To glitter, people.

(And fortunately, we made our visit to the City of Roses before some cartel members decided to use Guadalajara to send a message to a rival group today.  Sad stuff.)

****

Today, the rattlevan managed to climb to the town of Atlacomulco, at approximately 8,500 feet altitude.  Not too shabby at all.

The rattlevan finds some shade and interferes with a political campaign.

We were pretty slow on the inclines, so we made only necessary stops.

Strawberries are totally a thanksgiving food.

And finally, meet the new telephone.  The Luddite in me rejoices.  My iPhone and Chuck weep silent tears at the inhumanity of it all.

I shall call her "2003."

Today was a lazy one.  A walk on the beach, a swim, a stroll through town, another swim.  

Tomorrow morning we leave the coast and head for the interior . . . 

Outer space thingies and SAR dudes.

Now that Beth has nicely taken care of an update, I'll nerd out a little on technical matters.

That map thing you see over there is automagically generated by Spot, which is our satellite messaging service.  It's a small device with a GPS unit in it that can communicate with satellites in outer space.  Yeah, I know.  In addition to being able to interface with a smart phone, so we can type messages, it also has a panic button.  If you pull back the little cover and press the red SOS button, you will be swept up into outer space to a beautiful satellite where you will be immersed in a calming environment of safety and serenity. (I'm not sure everyone gets this treatment but I'm pretty sure I paid extra for the 'happy abduction package.')  Well, maybe we don't get to go to outer space but the message does, and it keeps going and taking with it our exact location until the batteries die.  At that point, some serious dudes in black suits, two miles underground in a nuke-proof bunker in Arizona will start pressing buttons and talking calmly into headsets, in whatever language necessary, to local authorities who will sweep in, shoot all bad guys within a predetermined radius, and pat us on the heads and tell us that we'll be okay.  (Or they'll help us change our tire and chastise us about the dangers of wolf-crying.)  

We did opt for the expanded Search and Rescue insurance.  This is an added package which provides private SAR if the local authorities are deemed inadequate for the task.  I imagine these guys as black fatigue wearing, night-vision having, silenced-gun packing, multi-skilled badasses who are taking some much needed time off from terrorizing America's enemies to come rescue pansies like me lollygagging around tropical countries. I don't think they'll be impressed by me in some sarong and a cowboy hat armed with a pocket knife trying to fend off bad guys, but hey! - you work for me! Shut up SAR dudes and get to work slaying my enemies. I need to get back to my snorkeling.

All of this is an added expense that provides an extra measure of chill for paranoid travelers such as myself.  I'll probably look back after this trip and see it as wasted money, but that is the nature of all insurance, and I guess that'll be a gamble I'll have won no matter which way it goes down.

One very handy feature, that's useful even if nothing bad happens, is the messaging feature.  We can send very short text messages which update the map with locations.  These messages are only 41 characters, which make tweets look positively verbose.  You'll probably have to consult with your niece or the interwebs to disambiguate the messages - I'm trying new shorthand to squeeze in as much information as possible.  The problem, for now at least, is that these messages are hard to find.  To see them, you have to click 'full screen' on the map.  Then you'll see a list of messages on the left, click the plus sign next to messages and you'll see the short message below it.  These notes will either have information about where we're heading or let folks know we're fine, but they may also be about important matters such as "Beer Supply Low" or "Tad Warm but Beach Far Away and Sand Hot."  I just posted a message from here that went to outerspace and back in no time.

 The SPOT beacon is one of the safety precautions I've obsessed over. There are others.  In addition to a selection of small, probably ineffectual and legally questionable weapons squirreled away in various places in the rattlevan, I've also made a saferoom of sorts in the bathroom. It's more like a 'safe-ish room' as it's not
 bullet proof and will only stop someone from opening the door if they're more interested in robbing us than kidnapping us, but at least it's more secure than it was. I guess the idea is that if someone wants to rob the rattlevan, they can do it while we cower inside the safe-ish room.  (I suppose there must be a group of low-aspiration robbers out here somewhere who see the rattlevan as a target for more than ancient Toyota auto parts and brown shag carpeting - who knows?)  Maybe the idea, actually, with the safe-ish room was hey - this'll be a fun project for me to work on, I can weld some stuff and drill some stuff.  It was fun and if it ever did come in handy, I'd get to feel like a hero who built something that saved our lives.  That'd be awesome.

Days 1-3 (or, Why the U.S. State Department's Travel Warnings Should Be Ignored)

As I write this, Chuck and I are sitting approximately 10 yards from the ocean at a low, tiled stone table under a thatched shade structure in La Peñita de Jaltemba. 

Not exactly roughing it.

Lena is sleeping, happy and beyond exhausted, in the driver's seat of the rattlevan.  We've just finished dinner, the temperature is perfect, and all is well.  In fact, pretty much the only difficult thing about our entire trip so far has been finding the time, inclination, and wifi to update the spanking new blog. Now I have all three.

Let's start at the beginning.  We were, for whatever reason (ahem:

http://travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/tw/tw_5440.html), a little apprehensive about driving through the border region of Mexico. So when we got up Friday morning in Nogales at the crack of dawn, ready to cross the border just after sunrise, it was with a sense of jumping into the unknown, of entering perhaps dangerous territory, of doing something dozens of people advised us not to do.  And all that apprehension was, of course, totally absurd, at least with respect to driving in this first part of Mexico.

We breezed through the border crossing reserved for "trucks" (yeah, rattlevan!) and were on the highway alone almost immediately. (Apparently getting stuck on a speedbump and laughing about it is a good way to convince customs you mean no harm.) No sign of the hectic urban sprawl into which I somehow expected we would emerge on the other side of the border. We went a few kilometers through cactus and brush, spent 45 minutes at immigration (including 20 minutes convincing a really incredibly nice immigration official to put a probably unnecessary stamp on Lena's "passport") and were on our way.

Miles of well-paved highways and cactus later--and after only one military inspection point where we didn't even have to stop the van (weirdly, a couple of broke-looking Americans in an even broker-looking RV didn't fit the profile of drug smugglers, although a police officer the following day did pose the question to us of whether we were, or were not, in fact carrying guns and drugs in our beater van)--we arrived at our destination for the night. The town was Guaymas or, more specifically, Miramar, and the lodging was the yard outside a grand old hotel that clearly, and wonderfully, had seen better days.

The hotel was devoid of guests save two RV people (Canadian, surely) stationed at the other end of the long parking lot. The hundreds of guest rooms and bungalows stood empty, and there was no sign of activity on the grounds save two quinceañeras getting photographed in their finest. But behind the grand old place stairs led down to the deserted beach, from which we could see a bunch of good-looking islands. Lena had no complaints.

The next morning, I went for a run on the beach after light fell but before the sun had technically risen.  It was spectacular.  

Coconut-fetchin' Fool

And then we hit the road again, not stopping until we literally saw the smoke rising from the pollo asado place next to the road.  Lunch.  

Note Chuck's death grip on his leftover pollo asado.

Toward the afternoon, we headed inland at Los Mochis, stopping at a few roadside vegetable stalls and a fruit stall or two.  The rattlevan survived the insane "topes," or speedbumps, which, as promised, really do sometimes appear entirely without warning.  (Apparently roadside vendors create topes in pursuit of new business.  This tactic probably worked on us.)  We landed near El Fuerte in the yard of a motel, made an awesome dinner composed entirely of things we bought from stands we passed while driving -- the aforementioned vegetables, some super fresh gulf shrimp -- and crashed embarrassingly early.

In the morning, we faced the first actual rattlevan casualty:

That thing is supposed to be attached.

Not good.

Chuck handimanned it up and we set out early for the town of El Fuerte, where we lucked upon a parade/festival for the Revolución Mexicana.  It was only 7 a.m. and the place was packed.

She loves parties.

And then we hit the road again.  (Chuck will probably explain later, but the reason we're hightailing it through Mexico is that we're trying to get across the Belize border within some number of days after our vet and the USDA certified Lena as healthy.  We'll probably spend some serious time here on the way back up.)

All drives should end like that one did: at a campsite literally on the beach.  A deserted beach with miles of sand.   

A swim and a quick drive to the village for aguaschiles, and we wrapped up day three.

Next up: Mazatlan, Tepic, Travel Warnings, Beaches, and Hotsprings (or, Why We Overplanned Our Mexican Roadtrip Because the U.S. Media Told Us To)