Travels of the Bay family and the Yoda Van

I was walking through the kitchen at the guest house we are staying at when I heard water running.  I asked Paul “Is it raining?”  He answered “No that’s Bonnie in the bathroom – a floater.”
Paul is actually kind of a rebel.  He’s not only a male travel nurse, he also crosses picket lines.  He was telling us tonight where and when the strike seasons start up in the nursing industry.  He travels to those areas, gets a male-nursing gig for a couple of months, makes a huge amount of cash and goes back to Florida.  Actually next week he is going to a coffee plantation to offer his male-nursing services, teach them sanitation procedures and learn about their industry.  Oh, and he also wants more Spanish immersion to prepare for when the Columbian orphan from his dream comes to live with them.

I think Julian is fed up with being a blonde.  We can’t walk through town without at least 15 people coming up to us and telling us how beautiful he is, or running their fingers through his hair.  Julian is picking up on a few Spanish phrases, so when they start talking to him he charms them with his phrases like “Hola amiga!” and “No picante!”  It is actually very cute, but today he had had enough.  A family of indigenous Guatemalans blocked our way when we were walking through Central Park in Xela.  They whipped out their camera, lined up all their kids and took pictures of them standing next to Julian.  Then I insisted that I get a picture of some of them with Julian.  Partially I wanted to do this so I could have a good opportunity to photograph some of them in their clothing without looking like a stupid tourist photographing the locals.  There are many different groups and they each seem to have their own unique style of dress.  Some are intricate textile designs and others are very ornate with embroidery.  They all look extremely labor intensive and are beautiful.
         

William loves the food here too.  We all eat street food and have been doing well with it so far (read minimal gastric distress).  (Paul doesn’t eat street food since he doesn’t approve of their poultry handling and swears that we’ll continue to eat street food only until we get a good case of the amoebas.)  This weekend there was a festival in Xela and the Parque Central was filled with vendors of all sorts.  We ate well 2 days in a row.  William’s favorite has been Garnachas, small tortillas covered in meat and tomatoes that are sautéed in oil.  They are delicious.  These markets are a great sensory experience.  They are packed full, smoky (since most of the food is cooked over wood-burning stoves on metal griddles or very well seasoned pans) and a myriad of wafting smells.  Often we are not really sure what we are ordering.  Sometimes it has been ok or good, but more often it has been great.  I’m much more hesitant about the foods I eat than Matthias is, but in the end it really is fun to just try stuff not knowing what it is and having the great surprise of it being so delicious.  It’s also just interesting to see how and what the people here eat.  Did you know that they put ketchup and mayonnaise on their pizza?  When we came home from the festival Paul put on a video “Curious George” on his laptop and set it up for the kids and himself.  He giggled like a little school girl.
We started Spanish lessons yesterday.  Matthias has 5 hours in the morning and I have 4 hours in the afternoon.  I do stuff with William and Julian while Matthias had Spanish lessons and vice versa.  Every day all the students can participate in an activity together.  Today’s activity suited Matthias quite well.  It was a visit to a small town near Xela where they do a lot of weaving.  The weaving wasn’t all that interesting to Matthias, but the fact that it was a front for the illegal production of schnapps was quite interesting to him.  He came home with an old Johnnie Walker bottle filled with a mysterious red liqueur.
Now I’m pissed at Sarah though.  Today she told Matthias we could move in with the Guatemalan family that she is living with.  But today I was talking to Bonnie (Paul’s wife) and she said that Sarah said that she wants Bonnie to move into her house while Paul goes to the coffee plantation.  But I don’t really know why she said that because she is taking off with Jason and going to travel with him for the next week.  But on Friday Sarah was totally interested in this guy from Scotland that stopped by.  So what is the deal?  Is she in love with Jason now or does she like the guy from Scotland?  I swear she flirts with Robert all the time.  And now she wants Matthias to move in to the house she is living in?  Maybe she is secretly in love with Bonnie and that is why she wants her and Mary to move in there.  Or maybe she is bi and that is why she had been talking to Matthias.  I really thought Sarah and I were best friends, but now I just don’t know anymore.

We were quite nervous about the border crossing from Mexico into Guatemala.  We’ve heard from many sources that border crossings are quite an ordeal and can be an all-day affair.  Luckily we have been in contact with a pioneer couple who have gone this same road in a similar vehicle.  (The account of their border crossing will give you an idea of why they can be a bit daunting.)  Miles before the actual border we were swarmed with people trying to flag us down who will help you cross the border (for a fee of course).  If you know what is required to cross into the country you can do it all yourself without using any helpers.  All in all we paid 81 Quetzales to cross (about 11 US dollars in official fees), but we know people who have paid up to US $100.00.  We paid much less than some, but you also have to count the time and energy I put into researching the border crossing.  Our motto in the end was “Only stop for people with a weapon or a uniform,” and it worked pretty well.  The swindling and the uncertainty that accompany are a border crossing are paid for, one way or another.  With kids in the car we chose this option: expensive in preparation, cheap on-site.

Before we left Seattle we stopped by our old hangout Targy’s Tavern.  A regular, Charlie, told us of a friend of his, Bill, who lived in Quezaltenango (aka Xela).  We started communicating over e-mail and he helped us a lot.  He pointed us to a good hotel for our first couple of nights.  We met him at a local pub in the center of town right as we pulled into town and he has been a great help getting us settled.  Plus we now have our own Guatemalen version of Targy’s right here in Xela.
When we first got here we wanted to find a language school and a place to live for an extended period of time.  We ran into a German woman in the tourist information and we asked her if she had taken language classes and if she could recommend a place.  Lucie told us about the place she had been staying.  They offered rooms and language classes in a very central location.  The next day we stopped by to check it out.  The biggest advantage to this school was Mary – the 8 year old daughter of a couple of traveling nurses taking the summer off to learn Spanish. Some time ago the husband Paul had a dream about a Columbian boy they were supposed to adopt.  They decided to start touring the Columbian orphanages and what do you know, the first boy they ran into in the first orphanage they visited was THE boy from Paul’s dream.  The boy said he also had dreamed of Paul (the overweight traveling nurse in levis and white tennis shoes who smokes Marlboro Reds) and how he would come to adopt him and they would move into a blue house in the United States.  What a coincidence that is!  Now they are learning Spanish so they can move to Columbia and adopt this boy sometime in the next 5 years.  He´ll be close to 15 by then if he hasn´t run away by then, but this is their fate in life and that´s the direction they are following.  They have been kind of showing us the ropes here in Guatemala.  They know how to catch busses, and they know their way around town.  And most importantly William and their daughter Mary have had a blast playing together.   On top of that Paul is a wicked barterer.  On our first trip to the market in Xela with them he gave us some good advice “If you aren’t careful these people will rip you off.”  So when I way buying my first pineapple I gave it my best shot to talk a Mayan women from one dollar to 95 cents.  The woman won, and I gave in.  I’m just not a haggler by nature.  I have to get better at that here since it just the way things are done.
The elevation of Xela is quite astounding.  Just to give you an idea how high it is – the roller ball on my deodorant almost took out Matthias’ right eye when I opened it for the first time since our journey up from the coast.  We’re at 7,655 feet (2,334 meters).  The combination of my deodorant and the cool nights at this altitude could prove to be deadly.  One plus – we’ve finally escaped the humidity.  It is nothing but warm days and cool nights here up in the mountains.
The place we moved into is like moving back into a dorm.  We share a bathroom, a kitchen and we have deep spiritual/soul-searching/idealistic conversations until 2 in the morning where we use the word “like” a lot.  We buy wine in cartons and let it breathe all night in case we get too drunk and pass out before we finish it.  What has been cool about living here is meeting people.  If you think we were adventurous for quitting our jobs and hitting the road you should take a look at this guy’s blog.  Rene is a German guy we met here that has been hitch hiking around the world for the last 21/2 years.  (More to come about him later.)  It’s been neat to find a lot of like-minded people.

On Fridays the school has a potluck, which was a great way to meet a lot of people living and working here.  On our second night everyone except us took a trip to the hot springs (powered by a volcano) so we pretty much had the place to ourselves.  We spent the early evening at the festival in town.  There was a large market with food and rides for the kids.

What is really interesting is watching the indigenous people here in Xela.  I’m just of average height in the US, but many of the full-grown women in this town don’t even come up to my shoulders.  They are also adorned in headdresses and textiles of vibrant colors.  I can’t even begin to describe all the impressions we’ve had since being in Guatemala.  I think we could write more about the last 3 days that we could about the entire month in Mexico.  On Monday we start our Spanish lessons.

 
Mexico is not like any other country I’ve ever been to.  We’re crossing into Guatemala and will spend the next couple of months in Central America.  We spent a month in Mexico, and will spend a lot more on our way home to Seattle, but I thought I’d write a bit about some of my overall impressions of this country so far.  This is our version of Bill Maher’s “New Rules” on Mexico:
 

Informacion Touristica: When traveling through Mexico, we’ve occasionally come across what appear to be Tourist Information Centers.  We were used to frequenting these in the US for good information on where to stay and what to do in the area.  Most of these facilities in Mexico resemble small jail cells.  They are concrete slab walls with jail bars in the front.  The one we stumbled across just outside of Acapulco contained one big man with a poncho and a semi-automatic weapon.  He was actually quite friendly.  It was quite obvious (by the tropical storm weather and flooding) that the beach was a dangerous place, but we thanked him with big smiles and quickly moved on.
Desperately In Need of a Pressure Washer: Most of Mexico is really rough around the edges.  A lot of it has some pretty rough climate: high heat, heavy rains, high humidity, etc.  It really does a number on a lot of the building structures.  Many of the buildings have a layer of grime coating them which can be kind of off-putting at times.  But I think really it is not something a good sturdy pressure washer couldn’t take care of.  Their architecture is different and interesting and very resourceful.  I think a lot of it would look much different if someone just sprayed it all down.
Garbage Piles: Mexicans sometimes resort to their own way of waste disposal.  You’ll often see piles of garbage on the side of the road.  At one point we saw a group of 3 pigs grazing in one of these piles.  Keep this image in mind the next time you order a “Taco al Pastor.”
Having your hair braided is not a good idea because the beads will eventually end up in William’s nose.  I got my hair braided in Acapulco and today it was finally time to take them out and give my hair a really good washing.  We were about ¾ the way through of removing all the beads and rubber bands when William said his nose hurt.  He had taken a bead and shoved it up his right nostril.  Matthias performed an emergency extraction in our hotel room with me holding the child down and shining a flashlight up his nose.
I think there are no actual traffic laws in Mexico.  The rules of the road appear to be just suggestions.  You’ll be driving along on a road where the speed limit is 90 kmh, suddenly there is a sign for 30 kmh and for the next 50 kilometers there was no other speed limit sign.  Don’t think for a second that any car (except us) slowed down to 30 kmh.  Signs leading you in the direction of a town will be present and then just drop off.  Lanes are just suggestions.  In Acapulco all the traffic was this chaotic body of white and blue VW Beetle taxis swerving from one side of the road to the other in order to avoid the potholes.  (Matthias was wrong – adults could drown in the potholes in Acapulco).  Also – watch out for livestock and mangy dogs on the road.
The coast is really really really humid in September.  All the guide books say it.  The weather channel reports it as well.  The coast is humid humid humid in the month of September.  It will cost you a lot of money on hotel rooms if you were planning to camp for free along the beach.
The heavy rains make this country beautiful.  We’ve driven through thousands of miles in Mexico and pretty much all of it has been rolling green hills.  The vegetation is so lush from all the rain it is so beautiful.  Driving along to coast with the green mountains and rolling hills is really spectacular.

We were on our way to Tapachula (the last town in Mexico before the Guatemalan border) and we were making pretty good time.  A passing car flashed his brights and motioned for us to slow down.  We had about a third of the way down when traffic came to a stand still.  We had already waited about 20 minutes when we found out the reason  – a group of students were holding a demonstration on the Mex 200 and had already been blocking the road for the last 2 hours.  This is a common occurrence these days in the state of Oaxaca.  There are lots of teacher strikes going, and evidently, students strikes as well.  There was no telling how much longer this would continue and seeing as how we still had 300 km ahead of us, Matthias started talking to others around us for alternative routes.  There were no alternative routes shown on the map, but a local walking through the line of cars tipped off the people in front of us on how to get around the demonstration. The guy jumped in the back of their car and we were told to follow behind them.  They pulled off the side of the road, we drove through a garbage pile and then crossed a soccer field.  That is when it started to get weird.
The terrain is hard to describe, but it really didn’t resemble anything I would call a road.  It was really just a bunch of dirt overgrown with bushes and trees.  It would probably make good testing ground for Hummers, but a road it was not.  There were spots where the right tires were driving on ground that was easily 18” higher than the ground the left tires were resting on.  And it was steep at times – a good 3 feet incline from the rear tires to the front.  It was extremely uneven – huge dips and rocks and mud.
This all happened so fast and I started to get really nervous.  We were off the main road, were at the mercy of this guide, and after seeing this path we had to traverse I didn’t think our car would make it.  To top it off it was about 95 degrees (and I could no longer roll down my window since the handle broke off just as we were pulling off the side of the road) and it was extremely humid.  Have we mentioned how humid it is on the coast these days?
The guide got out of the car in front of us and suddenly 3 other Mexicans with shovels and machetes in hand descended on the scene.  We kept following the car in front of us.  They seemed to make it ok and Matthias said “If they can make it ok, we can make it for sure.”  He had a point and there really was no turning around at this point anyway.  We continued on for a short while until we reached a point where our tires were just spinning.  The ground was so soggy from the daily downpours, and it was so uneven we just couldn’t get any traction.  The men with the shovels moved in and started to dig us a trench.  One guy with a machete started pounding the ground flat, and the other started chopping branches off trees and laid them down over the mud.  They had evened the ground out enough so that we were able to get over this patch.  I honestly thought that at some point along this road we would end up on a big patch of dirt with neither sets of tires touching the ground.
Eventually we came to a closed gate.  The leader was standing in front of the gate asking us “So you want to go through?”  He rubbed his thumb and forefinger together (the international sign for money).  We gave him 50 pesos (about 5 dollars) which we felt was a bargain.  We would have been in a real bind if they hadn’t been there to help us.
We paid our money and he pointed us on our way.  From the way he was waving it appeared to be obvious how to continue, but really the road was even more overgrown and nearly as steep and uneven as before.  But now we were alone and eventually our road ended.  We backed up and tried another path through the shrubbery.  We crossed a mud field and then we came to another closed gate.  The only good thing about this was that the terrain was starting to even out.  Matthias went up to the gate and was able to open it.  There were about 4 or 5 kids sitting there as we drove through the gate.  This put us on a road where we had 3 options – right, left or straight ahead.  We had completely lost our orientation, we couldn’t see the main road and had no idea how to continue.  A truck pulled up behind us and he didn’t know either.  The kids seemed to know, they all jumped in the back of his pick-up and we followed them.
Things seemed to be going smoothly.  The road we were on was a rough, but a well-defined gravel road, not like the one we had just came from.  We followed this pick-up for a few minutes when the road became quite steep again.  We followed him down and we stopped at the bank of the river.  At first I couldn’t believe it, but we were supposed to drive across the river.  The man in front seemed a little skeptical of this plan as well, but the kids leaped out of the car and scoped out the shallowest points to cross at.  Once they had the route, the man hit the gas and gunned it across the river.  His pick-up struggled in some points, but he made it.  I really didn’t want to drive across the river but we had no choice.  What were we going to do?  Turn around?  Try and find our way by ourselves?  That just wasn’t an option.  So Matthias made his way to the edge of the river and hit the gas.  We struggled in some spots too, ran over a huge rock, but we made it.  I really wish I had been able to take some pictures along the way.  But honestly my hands were shaking so badly, I’m sure none of those pictures would have turned out.
The good news is that the road was still blocked by the time we made it back out onto the Mex 200.  I would have felt like a real dope if it had all been cleared by the time we made it back.  All in all it cost us 8 dollars, a bucket full of sweat and our window handle to get through this.  In Tapachula Matthias noticed that the right corner of our front bumper was missing, so I guess we have to count that, too.  We must have lost it along this piece of road.
Looking back we asked ourselves why these guys were doing this, and we think they just wanted to earn a couple of bucks by re-routing the traffic.  We were lucky these guys were there to get us through.  And if we had gotten stuck in the water I would bet money that somehow the Mexicans in that town would have found a way to get us out.  Granted, I’m really glad that it never came to that, and I’m not sure I’d try one of these off-roading adventures again in the Yoda Van, but the good thing is that we made it.
After we were back on our way we were wondering if there was any major damage to the Yoda Van.  I felt that if we didn’t have a break down within the next hour of driving we will probably be able to make it to the Panama Canal and back to Seattle.  We made it through that hour and the rest of the way to Tapachula by way of countless topes, 3 separate thunder storms, high winds, and a group of independent contractors offering their services to cross the Guatemalan border for a “nominal” fee (a good blog entry in itself).  We’ll see if we actually make it back to Seattle in this vehicle, but I do think this car has some good karma.

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.

We found out today that all the posts on Bootsnall after August 16th were deleted.  They claim it is a server error and are no longer able to restore anything after that point.  What a likely story!  I used to work for Microsoft and I know how reliable their software is and how that kind of thing just doesn’t happen!

I’ve tried to re-create the last entries of our blog as best I could.  I know I’ve left some of the pictures off, and the maps we had where we were charting our route are gone as well.  Luckily we had all our entries still saved on our computer, so it wasn’t too much trouble.  We’re still in Puerto Escondido and we changed hotels to one that has wirless, so I was also able to update them without having to go to an internet cafe. 

In the meantime, you can view our pictures here and hopefully we’ll get another post up soon.

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.

When we checked into the hotel the only parking was valet parking.  So there on the front step of the hotel we had to put all our clothes, toothbrushes, and the few valuables we have into plastic bags so we can carry them up to the our room.  The humidity is terrible and sweat is rolling down my face in buckets.  Needless to say, we forgot a few things, so the next day we had to cross 8 lanes of traffic, which resembled a game of Frogger, in order to get to the parking garage where our car was parked.  There are crosswalks, but no one pays any attention to them here.  You cross the street at your own risk, and if you get hurt or killed it is looked at as a form of natural selection.  The parking garage is dingy and has no escape hatches for exhaust fumes.  At first they didn’t want to let us in and we had to fumble our way through Spanish to tell them we only wanted to get a few things out of the car.  We showed them our valet ticket and they called over to the hotel to verify and then let us up.  Boy am I glad that we went to the car because a bag of garbage and ripe avocados don’t do well in 90 degree weather and this humidity in a car with all the doors and windows closed.
We dodged our way across the street back to the hotel, dropped off our stuff and then set off on our way to the zocalo (town square) to see a bit of the Independence Day celebration.  I should also mention that we have been constantly bombarded by people trying to sell us stuff.  It started with Oscar who tried to sell us a hotel room the second we stepped out of the car in Acapulco.  On the beaches there is a steady stream of people trying to sell you clothes, jewelry, food, drinks, beach toys, massages and lots of other souveniers.  (I was a sucker today and had my hair braided on the beach.)  Even the cab driver didn’t want to take us to where we want to go, but take us to some flea-market.  When we resisted he asked us “Well, then.  What time should I pick you up tomorrow.  We’ll go tomorrow.”  Matthias is starting to get very snippy with the vendors and they are driving him crazy.  The zocalo in Acapulco was no exception.  It was really getting old with both of us, Julian and I were cranky, we were all hungry, I was not feeling well and it was about 2 miles back to our hotel room.  After a couple more games of Frogger we checked out a restaurant, decided against it, hailed a cab, then waved him away and didn’t know what to do.  We stopped on the side of the street for just a split second and a big blue Mexican bus stopped to pick us up. Without hesitation we all got in.  This was the coolest bus ride I’ve ever been on.  The bus driver had decorated the entire front of the bus with colorful trinkets, stuffed animals, a pair of ladies underwear and Mexican carpets.  He also had Cyndi Lauper and other 80’s music blaring so loud we could barely hear each other.  The interior was bright blue and turquoise.  I’m not sure if they have scheduled stops on these buses, but it appears they don’t.  It looked like the way to get off was to stand at the back door and rap on the side of the bus.  It costs 8 pesos for the entire family (80 cents) and this was the best 8 pesos we’ve spent in the last 2 weeks.  It was so much fun to ride in this bus that we all left in great moods.  Trying to figure the rhyme or reason to why the bus stopped for us in the first place (there was no bus stop sign), how to pay, how to get off the bus and just sitting and enjoying the ride are the fun things about being here.  Strangely enough, the bus let us off on the corner where our good buddy Oscar was standing, and he came through with a great restaurant for us where we all enjoyed a nice dinner and only had to fight off one person trying to sell us stuff at the dinner table other than the food on the menu..
The torrential rains have passed for now. Today we had so much sun and we had a great day spent under a palapa on the beach and in the pool.  We’re still getting lots of stares, although only half of them now are staring at Julian.  The other half of them are staring at me because I look absolutely ridiculous with my hair braided.  With my sunglasses on I look like a stupid white version of Stevie Wonder.  Oh well.  William and Julian really like my hair and to be honest, I don’t really care.  I have a lot to be thankful for right now – I’m in such a beautiful spot of the world with my family, and there is only more to come.

It has been forever since I wrote my last blog entry and that’s good, because Allison is the one who can actually write proper English. Than again, right now I am feeling so miserable, that it is overdue to do some real wining and complaining.
As I write this blog we are all sitting in the Yoda Van in Zihuatanejo (if you’ve seen Shawshank Redemption you’ve heard of this place) with at least 120% humidity. We drove from 8000feet to sea level today. Let me tell you, right now I prefer the altitude! We have about 14 more days left at the coast and I am worried. I don’t know if I can drink liquids faster than I am sweating. Our fridge holds 12 beer cans and since you shouldn’t drink the water here I’ll be dehydrated by lunch time. We’ll have to think of something how to survive this environment. Than again, we have mastered obstacle after obstacle on this trip and I am sure we’ll find a way how to deal with this nasty humidity.
Let me now tell you my perspective of the last 2 weeks in Mexico, at least all I can remember, because we just met two Germans who told us that Tequila helped with severe perspiration. I think it just makes you care less.  Anyways, after a pretty awesome month traveling through the states I thought we were well prepared to conquer Mexico (after all I am German and I thought conquering was in my blood).We even had a very smooth border crossing and I called my dad right after we entered Mexico, while I still had reception with my cell phone. My dad told me how proud he was and that he was bragging to all his friends about his sons travels. Man, if he would have seen us only 5 minutes later, he would have rethought this statement. It only took 5 minutes to get seriously lost in Juarez (and also many other places). Within the 15 minutes I ran 2 red lights (I still do that, but not at the same pace) and I had several people give me looks and say things that didn’t even sound nice to a non Spanish speaker.
If you have ever driven in Mexico you are probably familiar with “Topes” (speed bumps) or sleeping policemen as they are called here. Those things are everywhere and impossible to see and the van takes a severe beating whenever I don’t pay attention to them. There are also a lot of potholes on the road, many so large that little kids could drown in them. All that in addition to the cobblestone roads makes driving here a real adventure. I am so glad that the Yoda Van isn’t just any vehicle, but an incredible piece of 1982 German engineering. We just passed 5000 miles today and except the cv joint which was no problem for the Wolf to replace, we had no problem with the Yoda Van at all.
My dad probably wouldn’t have been so proud if he had seen us being completely clueless where to stay (Allison already wrote about the hotel in Jiménez). One night we even spent 90 bucks to sleep at a Best Western. It took us 3 days of being in this country before we dared ordering real Mexican food from real Mexicans which ended our white bread and cheese slices dinners.
All of that and the fact that we wanted to sleep in a comfortable bed, do laundry, fill the Yoda Van with drinkable water made us look very much forward to visit our friends (Dave and Terri) in Ajijic. We where able to ask them a lot of questions and just relax and do a whole lot of nothing after our not so pleasant first days in Mexico. Dave and Terri have the widest bed I have seen and the four of us would have fit in it easily, but unfortunately they didn’t offer it to us unlike our friends Lynn and Daren in Las Vegas.  I think there is a reason why people in Seattle call him Dave the Prick and I still envy him for this title. We still had a very nice time in Ajijic. We went to the circus, had a lot of good food, we even had a babysitter for one night. Life was good again. We even had 2 good days after we left Ajijic. One in Patzcuaro and one in Uruapan. We lived within our budget and still enjoyed ourselves, but one thing we haven’t had yet so far in Mexico was one full day of sun. All of us started getting a real sun tan for pretty much the first time of our lives. We were only the second palest people at the pool and now it’s all gone. There is no sun in Mexico. Not only is there no sun, we are driving from thunderstorm to tropical rain to thunderstorm. It was fun in the beginning, but now it starts felling just like Seattle again.
It’s 11:23 pm now. Both the kids and Allison are asleep. The humidity
is still extreme and I am out of Tequila. That’s why I have to end it right here.

Two days later:
I had a very good sleep and a bad headache next morning. I thought we had seen the worst of the rain. Not even close. This day we had biblical rainfall. We weren’t really hoping to see the sun anymore, a break with rain was all we wanted. It wasn’t so much that we didn’t want to get wet. We were wet anyways from the humidity. I was more worried about the flooded roads. We asked Allison’s parents for the weather forecast and it didn’t sound too good, so we decided to try our luck in Acapulco. The drive took us 4 hours and for the most part we were driving in 10 inches or more of water (Thanks again Yoda Van. Several roads in Acapulco were closed, but we still made it to the beach and found a hotel (our search for a hotel room in Acapulco could be a blog entry by itself). We had another white bread and cheese dinner and a very good night sleep. The next morning when we woke up the unthinkable happened. The sun was out!

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 drive through Mexico.  I was thinking that all the way until we got to Zacatecas.
The first 4 days we did a lot of driving and we saw a lot of horrible towns.  Chihuahua was large and uninteresting, you can read my other post about our hotel room in Jimenez and I’ve put a picture of our hotel room up on http://www.flickr.com/photos/thebays.  Torreon was just as uninteresting as both of those cities, although we found a great road-side stand and had a great meal.  Durango was a bit better with a nice plaza, but still not exactly what we were looking for in terms of interesting cities.  Matthias struck up a conversation with a Mexican in a restaurant in our first night in Chihuahua who recommended that we stop in Zacatecas.  When we finally got to Zacatecas I thought “This is why we came to Mexico!”

Zacatecas is a beautiful old colonial town.  The center of town is full of narrow winding streets as the city skirts up the mountain.  We came into town just as the sun was setting and it was beautiful.  We found a great restaurant and had the best meal since we left Seattle.  This restaurant had 1 item on the menu which is “Beef Served in its own Juices”.  First they served us tostadas with refried beans, hot sauce, salsa and guacamole.  Then the main course of beef with beans and a soup (which is just the broth the meat is served in).  To drink we were served a sweetened hibiscus tea, that tasted like an elegant fruit punch.  The owners were so kind, and everything tasted wonderful.  It was a wonderful evening.
After Zacatecas we drove to Ajijic which is near Guadalajara.  Our friends Dave and Terri from Seattle moved here a little over 2 years ago and we are staying with them.  Ajijic is a haven for ex-pat retirees, and we are enjoying speaking English again and having our friends answer all our questions about things that were puzzling us about Mexico.  In the garden of their house there are 3 large avocado trees full with humongous ripening avocados.  About 20 times a day you’ll hear a rustling in the branches in then a loud thump on the ground.  The avocados are falling out of the trees.  William and Julian are good at going around the yard and collecting them.  Dave and Terri have so many that they just bag them up and leave them on the sidewalk for anyone to take.  In Seattle you pay around $1.79 for a mediocre avocado.  The ones I’ve had so far are the creamiest, most delicious avocados I’ve ever had, and there are more than we could ever eat!  The only thing I’m worried about is Julian.  With his tendency for scaling buildings, falling out of beds and catching freak blood-conditions, it is only a matter of time before an avocado falls on his head and knocks him out cold.
We’ll be here until early next week and then it is (most-likely) off further into the highlands – Guanajuato, St. Migel de Allende, Queretaro.  After that we plan on making our way to the coast and onto Guatemala via the Pacific Ocean.