June 29 – Lago Atitlán

Editor's note: I have pictures to go with this post, but the internet is no cooperating, so here's the post without most of them.

Lake Como, it seems to me, touches the limits of the permissibly picturesque; but Atitlán is Como with the additional embellishments of several immense volcanoes. It is really too much of a good thing. After a few days of this impossible landscape, one finds oneself thinking nostalgically for the English Home Countries.

–Aldous Huxley

As I write this, I’m sitting on the porch of our hotel looking out at the impossible landscape with the embellishing volcanoes. I don’t know if it’s too much of a good thing, but it certainly is a good thing. And it might be the most beautiful lake I’ve ever seen. But before Atitlán, how we got here:

We spent Friday and Saturday nights in San Cristobal de las Casas in southern Chiapas, Mexico. Saturday we got up late-ish and headed to Chamula, a little Mayan town just outside of San Cristobal. We drove into town on a narrow road with tiny farms and ranches along the sides. When we got to town, there were cars parked all along the street and our path was blocked by some trucks so we just parked. As soon as I got out of the car, an adorable girl game up to me selling hand0made bracelets and belts. I’ve gotten pretty good at turning down beggars and salespeople from living in NY and DC, and even on this trip I’ve learned to gently reject little kids trying to sell me crap. But this little girl was so sweet and adorable and caught me a little off-guard, so I ended up buying two bracelets from her.

We walked into the main square where we had clearly stumbled upon something special. The full name of the town is San Juan Chamula, and seeing as this was the first weekend after the Día de San Juan (the festival we had tried to find earlier in the week), the town was celebrating its patron saint, San Juan Bautista (John the Baptist). A large stage was set up with a band preparing to play and there were many men gathered in front of the stage. Most of the women were back toward the rear of the crowd, many of them selling various produce and the likes on blankets and small stands set up throughout around the outside of the square. There were only a handful of other gringos in town and we definitely felt like were intruding on someone else’s party.

We went into the church and stood at the back watching the townspeople pray. The Mayan in this and many towns practice Catholicism with a bit of their traditional beliefs thrown in there, sort of like Santería. The floor of the church was covered in green pine needles and there were candles throughout. There were no pews and no pulpit. The parishioners would clear away an area of pine needles, sit on the floor, and light candles on the floor or on a table. Many people were making offerings of Pepsi (yes the cola) and some sort of home-made liquor. In the middle of the church were several tables completely covered in candles; there were so many that when we talked halfway through the church, it felt like standing next to an open fireplace. One wall of the church was lined with 4 ft. tall dolls of various saints in glass cases, many wearing traditional Mayan dress. Janet and I stood and watched the people in the church for about half an hour or so, staying toward the back most of the time. A few tourists were inter-mingling throughout the church but we felt less intrusive just keeping near the back. After the church, we ate some grilled maíz from a street vendor and walked through town and shopped at the artisan market stalls. We then stopped at a tiny taquería stand for lunch. We had some great tacos al pastor and split a giant bottle of Fresca. The whole meal cost us 19 pesos, which is a little less than $1.50. Not bad for lunch for two.

After lunch the man on stage directed everyone over to the side of the square and some people cleared a long area in the crowd for someone important to walk through. It was difficult for me to understand many of the Mayan in this area because they had very heavy accents, but I could tell this was some sort of political figure. Mexico is gearing up for national elections on July 5, and we had seen political advertisements all over the country. The man on stage throughout the morning had been making political statements, throwing his support to several candidates. We stuck around for a while, but after no one showed up, we decided to head out to the next Mayan town over.

As we pulled into that town, we were inundated by a group of young girls. As we were getting ready to get out of the car, they were tapping on the windows and trying to get our attention, a scene that has played out several times on this trip. One was even so bold as to open my door, but she seemed shocked at her own impropriety and backed off a little. When we got out they all spoke over each other asking if we wanted to buy their shawls, if they wanted a picture with them, if we wanted them to take a picture of us, if they wanted us to watch the car. We gently refused all the offers and went in to the church. This was similar to the church in Samula, except minus the pine needles, most of the candles, and all the faithful. There was one man praying in a side chapel, but otherwise the church was empty for us to walk around and look more closely at the saint dolls.

We left the church just five or so minutes later and the girls asked to be paid for watching the car. I asked them from whom? This town was practically empty, we assumed most people were in Chamula. We grabbed our umbrellas, because it looked like rain (“Can I have your umbrella?”) and walked through the town for a few minutes. When it started pouring, we dashed for the car and headed back over the mountain to San Cristobal. After unwinding for a bit, we walked into the center of town looking for an English book store (closed by the time we found it) and then went to dinner at El Café París Mexico, a FrancoMex Restaurant. Ignoring that there was no one inside and that FrancoMex is probably not a great idea, we decided to eat there anyway. French onion soup, Filete a la Veracruzana, a Margarita, a glass of Vino Tino, crepes for dessert. Nothing was particularly good, except the pan (bread), but at least now we can say we have eaten FrancoMex cuisine. And also the whole meal cost us less than 8 bucks.

We went to bed fairly early Saturday night so we could get up at a decent hour on Sunday. Sunday morning we pulled everything out of the back of the car and managed to pack it up better than it had been packed the entire trip. Then after our wonderful hot showers (and a hot shave in the nice shaving mirror), we headed out. We made a quick stop to pick up some groceries and found a place to get lattes to go. Once we were on the road we felt pretty rejuvenated: clean car, nice and showered, hot lattes. After driving a couple of hours through some rolling hills, we were pretty close to the border. We made a last fill-up stop at the PeMex, the state-owned gas station that keeps prices around $2 a gallon and headed for the border.

We had read that you crossed out of Mexico into a no-man’s land for a couple of kilometers and then crossed into Guatemala. When we got to the Bienvenidos a Guatamala sign, we realized we had missed leaving Mexico. So we turned around and somehow managed to explain to the Mexican border official who wanted to spray our tires with pesticide that we weren’t actually crossing into Mexico. After making the 4 km trek back and getting our passports stamped out, we got back in the car and apparently let in a gigantic wasp. So we got out. And I swatted it, and it decided to come straight for me and actually bounced off of my neck. So I danced around swatting at it to make sure it didn’t get me, much to the amusement of everyone sitting around the border. After that adventure, went back to Guatemala and this time missed the Guatemalan pesticide-sprayer. So we backed up and got our car sprayed down then moved up to stamp our passports. My passport only had two spots open (one now) and the border guy was not too pleased. Apparently Guatemala’s entry stamp is pretty big. After that we got the permit for the car and we were on our merry way. All told it took less than an hour (including our mistakes) and cost less than $15. Unfortunately, we know that the border crossings get much worse from here.

We could immediately tell why the border was where it was; we were driving through some of the tallest, lushest, and steepest mountains I had ever seen. We had to crane our necks to even see a hint of the sky above. After a few hours of this driving, it began to rain. I guess this was our welcome to the rainy season in Central America. The rain wasn’t too bad, and the road conditions were pretty decent on the whole. Once I had to swerve to avoid a bolder than had fallen into my lane, but the Honda performed superbly (good thing we just got new tires). It was starting to get pretty dark and foggy when we were pulling into the Atitlán area and we were pretty anxious to find a place to stay, none the less, we decided against staying in the crappier towns and overly-touristy towns and headed to a little village called San Antonio.

Atitlán is surrounded by mountains and volcanoes, so to get to the shore you have to descend down a mountain. Halfway down we stopped at a vista to take a few pictures. Janet got out and I stayed in the car. A little boy came up to me and said, ”Pusa una piedra,” which means, put a rock. Thinking I had misheard him, I said, “No entiendo” (I don’t understand).

“Pusa una piedra.”

“¿Qué de una piedra?” (What about a rock?)

“Pusa una piedra.”

Janet had just walked back to the car and so I asked her if the kid had put a rock under our tires. Thoroughly confused, Janet asked, “What? A rock?” So I got out and sure enough there was a big rock pressed up against the rear tire. So I picked it up and threw it away and the kid said, “Dáme una Quetzal” (Give me a Quetzal (Quetzal’s being their money)). I guess he wanted some money for being so kind as to tell me he put a rock under our tire.

Heading back down the mounting, we passed through a few other small towns and by some disgustingly-hideous razor wire-fenced in private property, and finally entered San Antonio and immediately saw signs for our hotel: Las Terrezas del Lago (The Lake Terraces). The signs pointed us down a dirt path that had seen its better days. Once again the little CRV performed admirably, even managing a difficult 7 point turn on a hill, through a little ravine, in the now-almost-total dark (we had missed the hotel). We got to the hotel and found it to be wonderful: the cutest little family runs the place and after we had settled in, the Señora made us some empanadas for dinner and we ate those as we watched the lightning flashes over and behind the volcanoes.

A little side story: Guatemala is known for its chicken buses. I don’t know why they’re called that, unless it’s the way they like to play chicken with you on mountain roads. The chicken buses are all old American school buses that have been repainted in vibrant colors and repurposed as public transportation. As we started seeing them on the roads in Guatemala, we joked about them being the buses we had ridden to school in our youth. As we passed through a small town we saw a few that had not yet gotten their vibrant paint jobs. All but one had the name of their school districts blacked out, but that one:

(FYI, I am a product of Pinellas County Schools)

Back to the narrative. This morning after getting up, I decided to go for a run. The altitude and running up the slopes of the mountains made my run pretty difficult, but the stares I got were pretty memorable. As far as we can tell, we are the only gringos currently staying in our little village, and I daresay they haven’t seen too many (if any at all) jogging through town. Young and old stared, some of the young openly laughed, and one teenager made some sort of joke at my expense. It was a cultural exchange of sorts, they wondering about my shorts and tank top, me about their traditional dress. The men in town, at least the older men, mostly wear red striped tops and brown dotted kilts. The women, young and old, wear turquoise and purple tops and black skirts with colorful trim. I saw one woman wearing a red striped top, I assumed it was her husband’s.

After breakfast, we drove two towns back to get a boat to another town on the lake. We made a friend who tried to rip us off for parking and for a boat ride (100 US dollars for a ride to two little towns). He told us the collectives (public transport boats) would stop running very early and take hours to get to San Pedro. He did however tell us it was Día de San Pedro and that there was a festival in San Pedro. So we left his parkling lot and went to a tourist office, where we learned the collectives ran every half hour until 5 PM and that they took about 35 minutes to get to San Pedro (and cost about $2.50 per person). The tourist office also pointed us in the direction of a parking lot where they charged us less than half what our first friend wanted to charge. So we parked, took the little boat, and walked into San Pedro and found the festival. Every street had been converted into a market and the vendors were selling everything under the sun, including one guy selling light bulbs. After walking around a bit, we found a pork and tortillas cart ($1.00 a piece) for lunch, and followed that up with som tasty ice cream cones (80 cents for the pair). Then we walked down into the fair part of the festival where the games and rides were. As it turns out, carnies are creepy in any culture. And the rides were that much more unsteady-looking. The ferris wheels (there were three) were all powered by converted tractors, with the wheels still on them. One was going about twice as fast as I’ve ever seen a ferris wheel go. We decided to forgo the rides, but I did try to throw some Quertzals onto a floating plate to win a 3 liter bottle of soda. I didn’t win, which isn’t too sad because I didn’t want a 3 liter bottle of soda.

We had heard/read that San Pedro was a hippie town, but so far we had seen little evidence of it (and really few gringos at all). We decided to take a short cut back to the docks and ended up in the thick of hippy town. They had carved themselves out a fairly large barrio of San Pedro and pretty much walled themselves off from the community. It seems that if they were gonna do that they might as well have stayed in the States. There was a playground with hands painted on the wall with the names of the students under it and we knew it was the gringo school because there were two Emilys and a Hannah. Once we got to the docks we headed on a boat back to our car and drove back to the hotel for dinner (steak with onions, peppers, and tomatoes that I cooked… it was only so-so).

And now you’re up to date. Sorry for the length of this post. I haven’t had a lot of time to write.

-Matt

Pictures

Here are a few pictures from our trip so far. I'm uploading all of them to another site, and I'll give you the address once they're there, but you probably don't want to see hundreds of pictures, so I'll try to pick a few of the better ones and post them here.


Natalie & Janet eating Crawfish in Baton Rouge.


Janet & me at El Tajin.


Helado de Tres Marias


At this school you can learn: computation, English,
French, Tae Kwon Do, auto maintenence, and
graphic design. Kinda covers a broad spectrum.


A small Mexican flag outside of
Veracruz.


The Carona bottles we bought had different
football club's logos on them.

June 26 – San Cristobal de las Casas

It’s been a few days since I wrote a blogpost, much less posted one. I tried to write one last night, but we were camping and the bichas (bugs) were a little too attracted to my computer screen. Tonight we’re in an amazing little hotel in San Crstobal in Chiapas, which set us back the horrible sum of ~$32.

So, since I last wrote, we spent two nights (Tuesday & Wednesday) in an RV park in Catemaco, a little town on the shore of one of the prettiest lakes I’ve ever seen. We, of course, rolled into camp at dusk and set up the tent and got to cooking in the dark. Would we have it any other way? Chicken in lime juice with zucchini and avocado. Another pretty darn good camp meal, if I do say so myself.

We got up the next morning and headed into Catemaco proper to find a canoe to rent. No luck there, we headed around the north part of the lake for a hotel that our guidebook said rented canoes. Never found it. When we were about halfway around the lake, we came across a cowboy doing a pretty miserable job of wrangling two bulls. We carefully passed him and ended up on a horrible dirt road. Turning around we carefully passed the incompetent bull-wrangler and stopped at a hotel to ask if they rented canoes. While we were getting out of the car, the bulls came charging through the gate of the hotel (fortunately, we had just pulled over across the street). One of the bulls bumped hard into a car parked inside the gate and then the cowboy managed to get them out of the hotel. ¡Qué toro loco!

We rented a couple of kayaks and paddled out into the lake. There were all sorts of wildlife in the lake, including a ton of different species of birds. We watched a small bird of prey catching fish in its talons and a couple of other bids diving from the sky under the surface to come up with some fish. It was a really cool experience.

After the lake, we headed into the small town of Santiago de Tuxtla for their Día de San Juan celebrations that we had read about in the guidebook. Turns out there weren’t any celebrations, so after cafés lecheros, we headed to the next town, San Andrés de Tuxtla and went to the Santa Clara cigar factory. They let us walk around and watch the employees hand rolling various cigars. The whole factory smelled of fresh tobacco, like a giant humidor, and watching the workers craft the puros (cigars) so quickly was very interesting indeed.
We returned to our camp site and made friends with an Ontario couple who had recently retired to Mexico and a crazy Floridian who had just left her fifth husband for the RV park. They invited us to go to dinner with them at a private home that runs a restaurant out of the front whenever someone shows up wanting food. That too was a unique experience: the food was excellent and we were able to watch her cook just inside the little house while the entire family sat around watching TV and just generally hanging out. All told, the meal ended up costing us about $2 a piece for empanadas, gnauchas, flautas, tostadas, and platanos. That night we shared a few beers with our Canadian friend Dave, including our last two beers that we had brought from the States.

The next day we headed out toward Palenque, a Mayan ruin site in Northern Chiapas. We set up camp in a funky camp site full of hippies (one of whom juggled). It was only around 4:30 when we pulled in for the night so we were able to set up camp, go for a swim, and still have time to cook in the dark. We had bought a hot plate at the Super Walmart (Los precios más bajos… Siempre) earlier that day, which made cooking the chile that much easier. We poured over some guidebooks and got ready for bed a little early, which turned out to be a fortunate move since it started pouring soon after. We took refuge in the tent listened to the storm while watching the lightning. Early in the morning I awoke to the haunting cry of howler mokeys and something even less pleasant: la tourista (a.k.a. Montezuma’s revenge). To make things even more enjoyable, the camp toilets lacked seats. Apparently we were supposed to bring our own.

After a breakfast of regular oatmeal and honey, we headed out to the Palenque ruins. The ruins were really impressive and we were able to climb all over them, something you definitely wouldn’t have been able to do in the US. Climbing to the top of a temple up on a hill, we had a great view of the ruins and the surrounding lush mountains. Some of the ruins were still only partially excavated from the jungle, so we walked around those and imagined what it would have been like to stumble upon them back when they were first discovered a hundred years ago.

From Palenque we drove 5 hours on the most narrow and winding road we had ever drive on for about 5 hours to go only 200 km to San Cristobal and now we’re in our great hotel, a nice break from the camping and it has a toilet with a seat! Hopefully my stomach will right itself by tomorrow. We’re going to a Mayan town tomorrow to see a church that everyone raves about and then Sunday we’re headed over the border to Guatamala.

¡Hasta Pronto!

Central American Insurance

We have it. Yay!

June 23 - The road south of Veracruz

Yesterday felt like the first day of vacation. We’ve basically been driving south all day, every day for a week. We got up yesterday, packed up, and called Grandma Sanborn about our Central American insurance policy. We were able to get a Mexican insurance policy written immediately on Saturday before we crossed the border, but the Central American policy takes some time for processing, something we didn’t read about in any guidebooks or blogs, even though they all told us to get the policies from Sanborn’s when we got to the border. So Janet called Sanborn’s on Skype (the called dropped 4 times) and actually got a helpful young girl (not Grandma). She said she had gotten the paperwork we had dropped off on Saturday and that we would be able to have the policy within the week, which is good news. We didn’t want to be stuck in Mexico and we definitely didn’t want to be driving through Central America uninsured.

With that good news, we headed an hour down the road to El Tajín, an ancient city built around 1000 BC by someone… they don’t know who. It was pretty cool to see our first ruins and it was actually kinda cloudy, so not unbearably hot. Also there were hardly any other people there yesterday morning so we almost had the place to ourselves. After Tajín we headed into Papantla, a nearby town, and had some great tacos at a restaurant on the zócalo (the main square). We also had helado de tres Marías, which was one giant scoop each of vanilla, chocolate, and fresa.

Heading out in early afternoon, we only drove a couple hundred kilometers to a campground on the beach just south of Veracruz. Here, we literally had the run of the place. We set up our tent near a nice palm-thatched pavilion, cooked our salmon, beans, and sprouts and made a creative sauce of spicy Chinese mustard and honey for the fish. It turned out to be quite a good meal. After dinner we took some beers down to the beach and sat watching the waves, bats, moths, lightning bugs, lighthouses, and ships. After a bit it began to rain, so we of course continued to sit there and enjoy our beers and enjoyed the lluvia too. It was a great ending to a great day. Back at the camp, the air was pretty warm and stagnant, so we decided to move our cot (mine) and air mattress (Janet’s) out of the tent and under the pavilion, draping our mosquito nets from the rafters. We watched the pilot episode of My So Called Life that I’d downloaded to my laptop and drifted off to sleep to the sound of the olas (waves).

This morning I went for a couple-mile run on the beach (awesome) while Janet lifted her two-pound weight (for her rehabbing wrist) and made pancakes and coffee for breakfast. We took a few hours to repack the car, finally getting it packed in an organized and efficient fashion, and drove into Veracruz. Veracruz is the first rich city that we’ve been to: there are Audis and Mercedes on the roads and a lot of American chain restaurants and big resort hotels. While driving toward the center of town, I took a left and somehow ended up in the wrong lane. After driving into another wrong lane to avoid oncoming traffic, a man on a bike was facing me down just shaking his head in shame at the horrible gringo driver. Then a bus turned almost into me, and I darted off down another side street. Now normally in this story, I would feel like an idiot for making that mistake and driving like a stupid tourist. But as I headed out of there, I realized that for some reason, this road had the lanes reversed from every other road in Mexico and for that matter, 90% of the rest of the world, and had you drive on the left. There was of course no sign to indicate this as I made the turn.

A short aside: Mexico apparently has a gigantic signage budget (much larger than their road construction/repair budget) because there are signs on the highways every couple hundred meters telling you all sorts of useful information in general: wear your seatbelt, drive slowly, don’t drink and drive, obey the signs, respect the signs, don’t mistreat the signs and of course, don’t destroy the signs. The poderes que sean however don’t really see the need to properly mark things that specifically pertain to the situation at hand, like the speed limit, or when streets are one way. The latter is particularly obnoxious as often the only way to figure it out is to look down the street to see if all the parked cars are headed the same direction. And when I wrote about the topes the other day, I forgot to mention Janet’s favorite tope-related situation, the sign warning of topes that aren’t actually there. Yep, they have signs that cry speedbump.

Back to the story. Soon after that driving incident, we found a parking spot and headed to lunch. Janet and I shared the pulpo cebollado (octopus & onions) and the filete a la Veracruzana (fillet of fish in a sauce of tomatoes, onions, olives, and chili. The octopus was a bit chewy but the pescado was excellent. Janet jotted down all the ingredients to try to replicate it back home. After lunch we decided to take care of paying for our tourist cards. When we crossed into Mexico, we filled out forms much like the typical landing card one fills out when flying internationally. According to the guidebooks and the lady at the border, we just needed to take them into a bank at some point and pay a $20 fee. We had tried to do that yesterday in Tampico, but the bank teller had told us something incomprehensible about going to city hall and in Spanish at 120 kph, I didn’t understand. Apparently though in Veracruz, every speaks Spanish exactly as I learned it, because I understand pretty much everything anyone told me today. So after stopping in at BanMex, we learned we needed to go to Migración, which was fortunately just a few blocks away. At Migración they printed off forms to give to the bank when we paid. Also we needed to get copies of our payment receipts in triplicate, plus one copy each of our passports and the original forms we had gotten at the border. Back to the BanMex, we paid the fees and got all of our copies (after asking very nicely and looking like pathetic foreigners) and walked back to Migración, convinced the guard to let us in even though the office had closed 30 minutes earlier (at 2 PM), and got all of the paperwork straightened out. Our first taste of papeleo (red tape). Fortunately, Mexico is supposed to be the easiest country for border crossings and such, so we’ve got a lot more papeleo to look forward to.

After that run-around, we went to a café to get café lechero. Veracruz is a big coffee growing area and so the coffee here is nice and fresh. The waiter brought us large glasses with a shot of espresso on the bottom. Then a minute later, another waiter came and poured hot milk from a long-spouted tea-kettle, pulling the kettle up 18 inches or so above the glasses as he poured. ¡Qué delicioso!

Now on the road headed 150 km south of Veracruz for a couple of small towns where there is apparently a festival tomorrow. Pretty excited about that.
Para los que hablan español: ¿cómo se dice “u-turn”?

Master Shake watches over us...

June 21 - Topes & Sandwiches

Topes are awful. Topes are speed bumps that the Mexican authorities have decided need to be on every road large and small. Some are tiny, some are so big that we bottomed out… and we’re driving an SUV. Some are we marked with a sign. A few are even painted. Most are unpainted, unsigned, and they totally sneak up on you. Not fun when you’re doing 75 kph.

This morning we went to the supermercado in San Fernando to get stuff for sandwiches for the road. Whole wheat bread – check. Queso Manchego – check. Lunch meat… uh, well. The only option was ham and it all looked disgusting. My favorite was the nasty looking Jamon de Pavo (Turkey Ham). We decided to forgo the ham and ended up eating Manchego, spicy Chinese mustard (stolen packets from the states), and wheat thins sandwiches. But we were planning on camping tonight, so we thought we’d cook ourselves a nice meal.

In Tampico, Janet was driving and I directed her to a nice toll road to go around the city. A bunch of sketchy little roads, a crapload of wrong turns, and about an hour later, we were finally on the other side of town and headed back down the coast. Most of the time was spent circling the base of a bridge trying to find the one road that actually led up onto the bridge.

We got as far down the coast as Tuxpan and decided we would camp on the beach near Tuxpan tonight. So we went to the largest supermercado ever (think Super Walmart) and got some salmon, green beans, and sprouts for dinner. The deli at this store had about 45 types of ham (all gross lookimg) and 3 types of turkey (also gross), so I’m not too hopeful for our coldcut selection for the rest of this trip. We left the supermercado and headed toward the beach. After driving through a couple of small towns, our road dead-ended into and industrial port. Apparently, that wasn’t the beach. It was almost dark now so we turned around and headed back to Tuxpan to find a hotel. After failing to find the one written up in the Let’s Go guide, we ended up at the only big hotel we could find.

I went to check in and had this exchange:

“Nesecito una habitacion doble para esta noche” (I need a double room for tonight)

“Quieres una habitacion con una cama o dos camas?” (Do you want a room with one or two beds?”

“No me importa, cualquiera es mas barato” (Doesn’t matter, whichever is cheaper)

“Hay una persona o dos personas?” (Are there one or two people?)

“Dos”

“Son un matrimonio?” (Are you a married couple?)

“Si” (I assumed it would be easier to say yes and that it might be cheaper)

So she gave me the room key and it turned out the room has two single beds. Apparently she thought we were a married couple from a 1950s TV show. I don’t think Janet and I are pushing the beds together tonight though.

Our dinner tonight ended up being tuna fish sandwhiches with wheat thins (notice a trend) and yoghurt de manzanas (eaten with a fork, we left the spoons in the car). As I handed Janet her crappy tuna sandwhich, I told her, “Well, at least it’s not the worst sandwich I’ve handed you today.”

Tomorrow we’re headed to Tajín (ruins) and hopefully aren’t driving all day. Maybe tomorrow we’ll start our camping and be able to eat our salmon before it completely stinks up our cooler and all our beers!

Money & Beer

We brought a lot. I hope no banditos are reading this blog. That's over $1300 and around 2000 pesos. And like 20 beers. More than the legal limit to cross into Mexico. We figured if anyone cared to ask, they would win themselves a few free beers.

June 20 - Texas to San Fernando, MX

Editor's note: We won't have internet access daily, but we are going to try to write daily and upload all the posts when we can. So the title of the posts will be the date they were written. Below is the post I wrote last night. -Matt

We’re sitting in a little hotel (~$30 US) in San Fernando, drinking beers and planning where we’re headed tomorrow. But the real story is what we did today. And in a nut shell, we did everything.

We woke up around 7:30 in Odem and hit the road pretty early. The plan was to cross the border fairl early in the morning. After a slight detour in Corpus Christi we drove the 2.5 hours south to Harlingen. On the way I called all my credit cards and banks to tell them I was leaving for the country. Some were easy… but for Capital One I had to spell out the name of every Central American country to the guy answering the phone in Bombay. N as in Nancy, I, C as in Cat, A as in Apple, R as in… it took forever. I also booked me a travel insurance policy since I failed at that task the day before by mentioning I had already left on the trip. And I managed translate the CRV’s title into Spanish.

In Harlingen, Janet dropped me off at the mall to go to the AT&T store so I could try to figure out the most complicated way to not pay too much for a phone this summer. The plan was to get a pay as you go phone, port my number to it, forward the calls to my skype number, and still have voicemail set up should anyone who has my resume get the notion to call me and offer me a job. The AT&T guy said he didn’t think I could port my number to a pay as you go phone but he did mention that I could get one of those phones for cheap from Walmart. The T-Mobile guy said I couldn’t port my number either.

Meanwhile, Janet had driven across the highway to the Pep Boys to get the oil changed, check out a weird noise the car was making (turned out to be nothing) and pick up some last minute car stuff. I walked over there, helped pick out the car stuff, and then we went to lunch at the Wendys. At Wendy’s I talked to AT&T and found out I could port the number to a Go Phone and Janet talked to Sanborn’s Insurance to book a policy to cover the car on our trip into Mexico. Sanborn’s is the leader in this type of insurance but is a real Mom & Pop organization and is run out of a hotel in Brownsville, the border town. Grandma Sanborn runs the phones and scolded Janet several times during the conversation.

Once we got the car back (around 12:45), we headed to Walmart to get me a phone and picked up some water and other supplies (including out third compass… the first leaked and the second lied to us). All that in hand we headed down to Brownsville to Kinkos, to print/make copies of important documents. While we drove, I set up the Go Phone and ported my number (around 2 PM). Kinkos was an absolute shitshow, which if you’ve ever been to Kinkos, you understand. While there Janet also called her credit card companies and filled out the forms for the insurance policy while I repacked the car (in the 95 degree heat) to fit all of our new supplies. All packed up we headed in circles to get to Sanborn’s to pick up the insurance company and drop off some trash. When we left Sanborn’s, we stopped by Bank of America and Chase to get some US cash. On the way I set up the Go Phone to forward my calls to my skype number. We then headed into downtown Brownsville to find the post office to mail off the toll that we missed in Houston yesterday. Meanwhile Janet talked to the American insurance company to set up auto pay. We were finally headed for the border and I was testing the Go Phone by logging into Skype on Janet’s iPhone and having Caroline call my number. Didn’t work. Then I tried calling my skype number directly. Didn’t work. So I called back AT&T to figure out how to set up the voicemail on the Go Phone. Then I set up the voicemail. Then I called AT&T back to take off the call forwarding. Tested it all out and it worked.

Janet drove us to the border. We drove through no problem (5:15 PM, just a little later than the morning crossing we had planned), parked, and Janet got out to get the car permit. She came back two minutes later because we needed to get tourist visas first. Somehow in those two minutes she lost her bank card. Searched the car, no dice. Asked the guy at the desk, no dice. Got our tourist permits from another window. Went and had copies made. Took the copies to the car permit window. Needed to get the tourist visas for longer in order to get the car permit. Went to the tourist visa window to get them extended. Went back and got new copies made. Got the car permit. Put the car permit on and headed out. Stopped to get some Pesos from the ATM. Janet found her bank card in the car. Kinda figured out how to drive on Mexican highways. They’re very different from the States. Got to San Fernando, found a hotel, ate some great tacos, cracked open some beers, and here we sit.

You know you've been in NY too long...

...when you are driving by Houston, TX and think in your head "How-ston" rather than "Hyoo-ston." We're a couple of hours south of Houston (SoHo) in a little hotel in a little town called Odem (population 2499). The drive today was mostly uneventful. There are some big things because everything's bigger in TX. Tomorrow we head over the border, once we get the oil changed and the Mexico insurance in order.

The American leg of the journey

The trip has begun. Yesterday, or maybe three days ago…. Or maybe two weeks ago. I left New York at the beginning of the month and spent the next two weeks in “the two Virginias.” Caroline and I drove down to Maryland and stayed with Laura G. for a night (thanks Laura, and sorry to all my other friends in DC who I didn’t call, I was only there to spend the night). Then we drove on down to Lexington for Caroline’s brother Tommy’s graduation from Washington & Lee. Congrats Tommy et al. And thanks for letting me pretend to be 22 again for a couple of nights. I left Caroline with her family for her drive back to NYC and then set off for beautiful Athens, WV. My sister and brother-in-law (Irene & Gabe) were expecting their first child (and my first niece). After more than a week of baby-proofing the house, hanging pictures, putting together shelves, several trips to Walmart (and K-Mart and Target and Michael’s and Lowes…), a day trip to Blacksburg (go Hokies!) , and more getting stared at by inbred-looking and obese West Virginians, we were a week past the due date with no baby. I had to go pick up Janet from the Charlotte Airport on Monday (the 15th) and so I decided to just leave and get the trip started. I packed up the car and started the 3 hour journey to Charlotte. Halfway to Charlotte, Irene called to say they were inducing labor that night. So I picked up Janet and we headed back 3 hours to Athens. We spent a few surreal hours sitting around waiting for Irene & Gabe to go to the hospital and then we went to bed. At 10:45 the next morning, my mom called and said, “She’s starting to push.” Janet and I hurried got ready, put Pico in the basement, and headed down the mountain to the hospital. Margaret Irene was born at 11:26 with the vital stats of: 7 lb 13 oz, 22 inches, and cutest newborn ever. That afternoon we packed up the car once again and headed down the road to Michael & Rachel’s in SC. We stayed two nights there and bought more stuff at Target & Walmart and repacked the car once again and then headed off yesterday down I-85, I-65, and I-10 to Baton Rouge. Natalie and Steve put us up here and took us out for crawfish and beers and sometime this morning we’re hitting the road again for Texas. If all goes as planned, we’ll be crossing the border into Mexico tomorrow morning. So maybe the roadtrip officially begins then. Either way, there are 2200 new miles on the car since leaving NYC and I’m starting to get really excited to break out my rusty Spanish. Hasta pronto!
-Matt