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Published: January 21st 2011
Rendezvous at the Wal-Mart parking lot.
Friends expressed concern about us traveling with total strangers. Surprisingly, we have been together for almost two weeks and all are still getting along well.Wed, 12 Jan: We are parked right on the beach at Playa Huatabampito at El Mirador RV Park. Roughly, this would be pronounced Oo-ah-ta-bam-pee-toe. We are backed up against the seawall only a few feet from the mild but loudly crashing surf.
Our location is fairly isolated – no village within walking distance but the park has a bar and restaurant. We were given two complimentary Margaritas at registration. What more can you ask for! In addition to the usual amenities of power, water and sewer, we have internet and TV (in Spanish) of course. Because we are on a bay, we are able to watch both the sunrise and sunset over water by merely looking right or left. I don’t recall ever having this opportunity before.
To start from the beginning: After several unforeseen electrical and mechanical problems, we got on the road Tuesday, Jan 4th. Thankfully, we had been unable to leave on Monday because the Grapevine was closed for hours. It was frightfully cold and there was still plenty of snow and ice at the Flying J Truck Stop Tuesday night. We spent Tuesday night in a Casino parking lot near Riverside. The furnace kicked on
Dave and Gloria’s rig.
. They were the last couple to join our happy group and the first to leave. Hopefully, we will reconnect with them while we are in Mazatlan. about every half hour. Ray picked up about thirty bucks in the casino. We rolled into our favorite Phoenix campground, Apache Palms, about 5:30 Wednesday evening. Phoenix has completed their light rail system since our last visit. Fortunately, for RVing snowbirds, the area has a very efficient public transit system. We spent three nights at Apache Palms, visited and enjoyed cheap dinners at both the very friendly Mesa American Legion where they allow smoking inside and the stuffy Scottsdale post where they don’t.
Saturday morning we drove on down to Nogales where we were to meet our travel amigos and overnight at the Wal-Mart parking lot. Our group consists of three Canadian (or as Paul calls them Unarmed Americans on Medicare) and two American couples. We could not have teamed up with a more compatible group. We all seem to be moderate drinking, casual dressing, and politically liberal.
Our leaders are Paul and Terry Beddows and their dog Tomas a Mexi-dog they picked up in Baja seven years ago. They are from Abottsford, BC. Paul is retired from the TELUS telephone company. Terry is a chemical environmentalist. She is on long term disability from her teaching job at
the British Columbia Institute of Technology because someone dropped a 250 pound counter top on her foot. Both have traveled extensively backpacking and diving all over the world. Paul has visited about 60 countries and they have several years experience traveling in Mexico. They, too, travel in a truck-camper. They want to see the migrating monarch butterflies in the state of Michocan then spend the rest of the winter at Melaque in the sunny state of Jalisco south of Puerto Vallarta. We met Paul several years ago when he was conducting a factory tour of the Host Camper plant from which we bought our rig. We have followed his blogs and his well informed postings on RV forums for years so we were very pleased when he offered to form a group to travel together at least until we are well past the border problems.
Paul is the administrator of the following web sites: www.natcoa.com/mexico2011 and www.mexicorvforums.com
The rest our group includes Dave and Gloria Broughton and their two yellow labs Maggie and Jody. They are from Calgary, Alberta. Gloria was a dietician with Science Diet, the pet food people until she was laid off. After his retirement
from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Dave founded his own private investigation firm. They are traveling in a very comfortable 5th wheel which we used for our first meeting as it is the only rig that can accommodate our group of ten. They were the first couple to leave our happy group. They left us at here at Huatabampito to travel to Mazatlan where they will spend the winter. We were sad to see them go.
Pat and Gordon Thomas are from Vernon, British Columbia. They are towing a brand new 17 foot travel trailer. Gord retired from the BC provincial school system and park service just prior to embarking on this trip. Pat gave piano lessons to individual students. This past summer Pat spent six weeks at an immersion Spanish language school in Antigua, Guatemala where she lived with a host family and spent four hours each day with her personal instructor. She traveled extensively in Guatemala on weekends. They plan to travel with us as far south as Melaque where they too will spend the winter.
The other Americans in our group are Bill and Jane Wilkinson and their poodles Milo and Pancho Villa from Lake
Oswego, Oregon. Jane, an attorney, is a labor arbitrator and speaks fluent Spanish. She is currently working on a couple cases. She generally only takes cases in Oregon, Washington, and Northern California. Bill worked in the shipping industry. They have been wintering in Mexico for the past few years.
Jane created a beautiful website, www.gringodogs.com to help other pet owners find pet friendly accommodations in Mexico. Her website chronicles their trips and contains many excellent photos of their travels over the past few years. Jane has since turned the pet accommodation portion over to another couple. She still owns the www.gringodogs.com (dogs plural) domain name.
The new folk's web site is www.gringodog.com. (dog singular). This site is more commercial but surely helpful for people traveling with pets in Mexico.
Bill and Jane also travel with a truck-camper. Their dogs, like children, fight over who gets to sit in the front passenger seat so Jane shares the backseat with which ever dog whose turn it is to sit in back. They plan to spend most of their winter in San Miguel de Allende which is considered to be one of Mexico’s most attractive colonial cities and is very
Our group at dinner at El Mirador RV Park at Playa Huatabampito.
The couple in the foreground joined us at dinner. The rest of the group from left to right Gloria, Pat, Gord, Ray, Marcia, Paul, Terry, Jane, Bill and Dave. popular with artisans and expatriate Americans and Canadians.
Your humble bloggers, Ray and I are from San Jose, California. We travel with our cat Furgie who will be 19 in April. In addition to occasional visits to border towns, this is our fifth trip into Mexico. We also travel in truck-camper. We hope to travel along the coast with the group then tag along with Paul and Terry to see the butterflies then travel north to visit some of the colonial cities then back over to the coast to enjoy the sun, sand and suds before heading home to our dreary lives in early April. If she can get time off from work, we hope to bring our granddaughter Amy down to Puerto Vallarta for a few days.
Backing up a bit, we crossed the border on Sunday morning just south of Nogales at the Mariposa gate and completed our immigration paperwork just south of there at the stop known as KM 21. It was pretty chilly but officials were friendly, courteous and efficient. We were out of there in no time. We spent two nights at Totonaka RV Park in San Carlos. The park was pretty full
and we had a great time visiting with other RVers. Our group went out to dinner the first night at Charly’s Rock where Ray and I each enjoyed shrimp dinners for 120 pesos ($10.00) each and pretty potent two for $5.00 Margaritas. Ray and I went back to Charly’s the next night to share the shrimp mignon dinner that Terry had had and a couple more of those Margaritas. Yummo.
We walked the length of San Carlos from the campground to the marina hoping to catch up with our Vagabundo (boating) friends Dan and Shirley Atkinson who live full-time in San Carlos. Dan and Shirley have two boats, a 28 footer that they trailer up to California and the Pacific Northwest most summers and a 46 foot trawler on which they live much of their time while in San Carlos. When they get tired of the water, they stay in their water front condo. What a life! We just missed Dan and Shirley so called them and met for breakfast at Rosa’s Cantina where I enjoyed a Rosa’s special – a chorizo omelet covered in salsa. Heart attack on a plate but oh-so good.
Dan and Shirley’s friends
Monte and Michel Mohr who live most of the year in Durango, Colorado and winter in San Carlos joined us for breakfast. We had met and really hit it off with Monte and Michel while immigrating at KM 21. They are in the process of selling their 35 foot sailboat. They are long time sailors but the boat is getting to be too much for them. Sad, but we’re all getting older.
The drive from San Carlos to Huatabampito was leisurely and pleasant. We listened to XM radio all the way. Don’t know how long that will last. We plan to spend two nites here then head inland to El Fuerte and take the overnight Copper Canyon rail tour to Creel while taking turns watching each others pets.
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