Travels of the Bay family and the Yoda Van

Yesterday we left Puerto Escondido where we stayed for an entire week – the longest we’ve stayed in one place so far on this entire trip.  For me it was one of the highlights of Mexico so far.  We drove to Salina Cruz which appears to be more industrial wasteland, but this time set on the spectacular Pacific coast.  Matthias describes the town like this: “Next time you come to Mexico stay away from Salina Cruz.  The city looks like a mix between New Jersey and Beirut.  Nasty humidity, oil refineries, pollution and abandoned buildings that look like they were bombed.  Post-war Germany also comes to mind.”
We found a hotel and were then looking for a place to eat dinner when we came across a great playground (by far the best so far in Mexico).  At first we were one of the only families there, but slowly more and more people came and we noticed that they were setting up for Sunday evening.  In Mexico Sunday is a big meeting day at the plaza.  People get dressed up and head to the plaza and sit and hang out.  There are vendors selling food, drinks and toys for kids.  At the playground they were setting up a bunch of activities for kids: a trampoline, battery powered cars and a jumping structure.  (I don’t know a good English word for them, but they are those things they pump full of air and kids get on them and jump around.  Auf Deutsch – Hüpfburg.)
One thing I noticed was the difference in the way these things are run in Mexico compared to how it would go in the States.  To pull something like this off you would first need a small business license.  Then you would probably need a permit to set up and charge admission for this event.  You’d have to hire workers, which means they would all have to fill out W-whatever forms and there are a bunch of child labor laws that you would be required to adhere to.  Anyone selling food would have to have a food handler’s permit and would also be required to have necessary hand-washing stations.  You would have to have height/weight restrictions for who is allowed onto the bouncy structure and you’d have to hire at least one worker to police this.  Then you’d have to have a worker at the front to keep a count of the number of kids on the structure you don’t exceed the manufacturer-specified capacity.  You’d also need one worker on the top to make sure there is no more than one child on the slide at a time.  And finally you’d need one person to collect the signed waivers of the parents or legal guardians releasing you of any liability if (God forbid) your child were to fall while jumping around on this thing and the parents wanted to sue you.
In Mexico it is easy – you pay your money to the 10 year old working the stand and go.  If you get hurt – well tough shit Sherlock!  If there are 10 kids sliding down the slide at the same time, we’ll that just means it’s all a bit more fun.  This lack of red tape and paranoia over law suits sure is refreshing.
Today it is onto Tapachula, which is the border town to Guatemala.  We plan on staying there 2 nights to get everything in order for entering Guatemala on Wednesday.

In April of last year we took a trip to Mexico.  After we came back from that vacation I checked out a few videos from the library on Mexico, trying to relive the vacation experience.  One of the videos was a super low-budget video about a couple of surfers who quit their job and decided to take 3 months traveling down the Mexican coast to surf.  While I was watching this video I got the idea “Hey, we could do that, too.”  Not surfing, of course, but traveling and experiencing this part of the world.  That is how the idea of this trip started.  In this movie, the ultimate destination of the surfers was Puerto Escondido.
Over the last week we’ve really been struggling with the humidity.  I also haven’t been all that inspired to write for our blog.  (It is hard to be really inspired when you can feel the streams of sweat running down your head between the corn rows.)  We considered moving back into the Mexican interior to get away from the humidity on the coast.  But somehow I felt I needed to reach Puerto Escondido, since it was the end destination of my surfer buddies who inspired our trip.  We decided to make one really long drive in the car (which ended up being 8 hours on one day) to head farther south and make it to Puerto Escondido.  Our campsite was north of Acapulco and it took us over an hour just to make it through Acapulco and start on the 400+ km drive.  The map said it would take 6 hours, but there were so many topes on the road it took us closer to 7 hours.
We’ve been here about a day and the humidity is not much better, but this city is infinitely more enjoyable than Acapulco.  Tonight we made it to Zicatela Beach – that is THE surfing beach here and rightly so.  It is ranked the 3^rd in the world in terms of wave size which is currently around 6 meters (15-20 foot waves).  The waves alone are absolutely impressive, and sitting on the beach just watching people surf them is just as exciting.  I could sit there for hours and watch it all.  I promise you, in my lifetime I will learn to surf.  I love the water, and I love these waves, and it is just something I know I have to do.

The only downside here has been all the bad food we have eaten.  If you sit and eat on the beach you shouldn’t expect it to be cheap.  But if I’m going to pay a lot of money for the food, I at least hope it will be good.  I have never eaten so much frozen shrimp in such a short period of time.  Really unfortunate and really disappointing seeing as we are on the coast!  We also figured that we could afford this trip in Mexico because it would be quite a bit cheaper than life in the US.  Totally false.  Mexico is not really all that cheap and we totally miscalculated how much money we would be spending.  We could easily find good campsites in the states for around $20 (often including a swimming pool and Wi-Fi). We assumed it would be less in Mexico, but the cheapest campsite we have had in Mexico was $20.  In Acapulco we paid $30/night.  Hardly cheap at all.  We’ve also stayed in hotels a lot more than we expected to.  We’ll have to see how this works itself out in the long run.  We’ll either have to find more creative ways to save money, or worst case, we’ll come home a little earlier than we expected.  In either case, we’ve all experienced enough to make the entire adventure worth while.
William and Julian also had a great time tonight playing with a couple of Mexican kids.  Julian is used to the Mexicans now.  Since we arrived in Puerto Escondido, two separate girls snatched him out of my arms so their friends could take their picture of them with our blonde, blue-eyed baby.  William is a bit shyer and this was one of the first times William has dared to speak to other kids in Mexico.  He doesn’t feel all that comfortable with the fact that he doesn’t understand Spanish, but he tried to initiate a game of “Hide and Sneak” with two kids.  He kept trying to explain to them how the game went in English, but they only spoke Spanish, and the game disintegrated into playing tag half of the time, and wrestling the other half.  Boys are boys, in Spanish, English or in German.