Travels of the Bay family and the Yoda Van

Our faithful readers will have noticed that we haven’t been updating our blog very much lately.  We’ve been in Ajijic for nearly 6 weeks and have only posted a few blog entries.  The first week we were here we enrolled William and Julian in a pre-school here and we’ve had every morning (Monday – Friday from 8 AM – 1PM) without William and Julian.  It really hasn’t been for lack of time that we haven’t been writing blog entries – simply laziness.  It had been a long time since we have had so much “free” time and we’ve really enjoyed it.  The main thing we accomplished was to become totally addicted to the TV show House, MD.  We downloaded and watched all 3 seasons in less than 4 weeks.  That is a total of 70 episodes.  If you realize that we have been watching that much TV it is no wonder we have not had any time to write blog entries.  And even if we had gotten around to writing, what would we have written about other than Dr. House?  We haven’t been doing anything else except watching that show?

Traveling for 9 months is hard.  I know no one really has any sympathy for us, but we had heard it from other travelers early on in our trip – most travelers are tired of traveling around 7 or 8 months.  We needed these 6 weeks to decompress and muster up enough Wanderlust to get us through the last stretch (~3000 miles) back to Seattle.  Matthias said he’s not ready yet to hit the road.  I’m almost there, and I think my desire to again be in a familiar, comfortable place is what makes me ready to leave.  We are leaving for sure on Tuesday since we are meeting my parents in Disneyland in 3 weeks.  I think we’ve left ourselves enough time to take a nice leisurely trip up the Baja Peninsula and back into southern California.  The next time we travel like this (which we are definitely planning on doing again) we are thinking we will need to stay longer in fewer places and move around less.

William and Julian have been doing pretty well at their school.  They have definitely picked up a lot more Spanish in those 5 weeks.  They wear uniforms to school and have homework and I think they genuinely enjoy going to school there.  Last week William turned 5 and he celebrated his birthday at school with piñatas and cake. 

   

In Seattle full-time daycare costs around $1000/month per child.  Here we paid $170/month for both children.  (It was only half day, but still it is WAY cheaper than in the US.)  We also have a babysitter here who charges $2.00/hour.  By Mexican standards it is very expensive, but it is such a steal for us.  In one of the bars here we heard that a worker earns about ten dollars for a full shift (plus tips of course).  And apparently at this bar they are being paid twice the minimum wage.  When you hear these numbers about salaries here it is no wonder why there are a number of kids that don’t go to school.  Families either can’t afford to send their kids to school (due to the costs of supplies, uniforms and tuition) or they can’t afford to live if their kids don’t work.  Often during those hours when our kids are in school we have been visited by other kids selling stuff – bread, avocados, dried fish, flowers, etc.  Child labor is been commonplace in much of Central America as well.

Overall it has been a really great stay here.  The rainy season has also eventually started and we got to witness some amazing lightning storms and the thunder echoing and rumbling between the mountains around us.  In just a few weeks we’ll be back in the United States and Matthias and I are both very nervous about returning.  I’m starting to formulate some impressions and opinions about the things we’ve seen and experienced over the last 10 months and I have a feeling they will be magnified once we finally return to the US.  I promise that eventually we’ll write about it, but for now we’re still mulling it all over. 

After we leave Mexico we’ll have some time in California.  If you have any good advice about what to do or see in California please e-mail us some suggestions.  Neither of us has seen much of California and so far we are flying without a guide book. 

 

When you drive into Ajijic there is a sign that says “Riviera Alta.”  You might think it means the OLD Riviera since aside from the dozen Mexicans that live in this town all you see here are ex-pat retirees from the US and Canada.  High-water socks, bad Hawaiian shirts draping over big bellies, thick wide black old people glasses, canes, grey hair, etc. are all encountered every time we step out of the apartment.  Really “Riviera Alta” means the high Riviera since the elevation here is over 5000 feet, but I chuckle every time I see that sign since “alt” in German does actually mean “old”. 

 

Our first morning here we decided to go out to breakfast and we even found a Mexican version of Denny’s.  They serve mediocre breakfasts well into the afternoon, weak coffee in thick porcelain coffee mugs and the place is packed with retirees.

Ajijic is actually a very pleasant small town.  We are about 5 blocks from Lake Chapala (the largest lake in Mexico), there is a nice old church, cobblestone streets and the weather has been nice and hot.  Our friends Dave and Terri found us a nice 2 bedroom apartment with a swimming pool and it has been great.  They have given us tips on where the good restaurants are, a good fruit and vegetable stand, they hooked us up with a babysitter that charges $2.00/hour for both of our children and we are no longer strangers in the good gringo bars in town.  The other day I was walking by one of those gringo bars and saw a big white Cadillac parked next to a horse that was tied up to the front of the bar – such an accurate juxtaposition of all things Ajijic.

During the first week in our apartment complex I noticed that we were by far the youngest in our building – by about 30 years.  We watched an older woman come and go – cane, big dark glasses, oversized polo shirts, white retiree/nursing pants.  My first impression honestly was “oh, just another retiree.”  When we actually got to know her we found out she is really an amazing woman.  She has lived in Ajijic for the last 16 years, and referred to her time here as “interim”.  And when we met her she started to tell us about where she was moving to next – Cyprus.  She is flying to Madrid with some family members, will book a cruise around the Mediterranean, they’ll visit some friends she has in Greece and they are eventually planning on finding a new home in Cyprus and settling down.  Now get this – she’s 82 years old!  When I got closer I realized her big dark glasses are a much hipper design and even had Swarovski crystals embedded around the sides.  And later I watched her whip around town with her cane and was impressed with her speed and finesse.  To be so fit and adventurous at 82 is truly amazing and also inspirational.  What I wouldn’t give to be able to take advantage of life like that so long into my life.  We said goodbye to her today and I think she is sitting in a plane right now as I write this. 

Through our friends Dave and Terri we also met a man who now has two sons in college but when they were young, his wife and him took their sons and traveled around Asia for 6 months.  He understands how great traveling like this can be – especially with your children when they are young.  He told us how important it was to be able to spend that time with his kids when they were young.  It seemed to him that just being together at that age was the right thing to do, even if all you were doing at the time was walking down the street holding hands.  There aren’t too many people traveling with children like we are, and it is so neat to meet other people who have done it and reinforce the fact that we will wont regret what we are doing.

One of the things we are looking forward to here is the change from the dry season to the rainy season.  Some people in this part of the world call it the change from the dusty season to the muddy season.  Typically during the rainy season you get rain every day for a couple of hours, often around the same time every day.  I think that change might have happened last night.  About 9:30 PM the thunder and lightning storm started and it started to rain.  The lake is surrounded by mountains so the thunder just rumbled and echoed for hours around us.  The rains weren’t super strong, but it was a good solid rain – much more of a rain than you would usually see in Seattle.  Most of the land around us has been crispy and brown since we started heading back north from Costa Rica, and doesn’t look so great.  But once the rainy season really starts, everything should turn lush and green within about a week or two. 

This weekend we are going on a little road-trip.  Guanajuato is a small town a couple of hours from here.  It is supposed to be one of the most colorful towns in all of Mexico and there is a famous mummy museum.  We’ll post some pictures on the blog when we get back.

We entered Mexico a week ago today.  The first 4 days were mostly really bad – so much so that I started to wonder what we were thinking we said we were just going to get in our car and ... [Continue reading this entry]