Travels of the Bay family and the Yoda Van

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.

The border crossing from El Paso, Texas into Juarez, Mexico went really smoothly.  We did get the red light (for those of you who have been to Mexico know what that is all about).  However, the woman who was searching ... [Continue reading this entry]