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Published: February 10th 2018
Hello folks, and thanks for checking in with us again. It's been a few weeks since our last update. Since then we've traveled from Mazatlan to Acapulco, from beaches to mountains, through a couple of really pretty cities and towns, and back to the beach. In Mazatlan, we met Jen and Gavin, a British couple who were more than a year and a half into a 2-year trip up and down (or down and up) the western hemisphere. We hit it off with them really well, although being the only American in our foursome, I often found myself trying to decipher what seemed to be a foreign language at times. Between references to car parks and crisps, lifts and lorries, I had better luck with the Mexican Spanish. They were, and have been, a lot of fun; we've spent quite a bit of time with them from Mazatlan to Acapulco in the last couple of weeks, and have enjoyed every moment of it. From Mazatlan we headed down the coast and inland, via Lake Chapala, through the pretty, colonial town of Mazamitla towards Morelia: a city with a beautiful, Spanish-colonial center where every building is made out of some kind of
Tortuga being fixed in Chapala
We had an oil change and some repair work to the alternator done here.stone, and you can't swing a dead cat without hitting a 200+ year old Catholic church that's big enough to play hockey in. The ornate plazas with sidewalk cafes and bustling nightlife reminded Fi of some European cities that she's traveled to. We spent a few nights there, having met up again with Jen and Gavin, and took in a tour of the Monarch butterfly sanctuary nearby. Apparently, these butterflies travel thousands of miles from here (once they wake up, develop, and sprout wings from their pupa stages) into the U.S. and Canada, taking several generations to get there (I guess they only live for a couple of months). My dad said something that I hadn't thought of but makes sense, that it's hard to imagine how they can fly 5 feet let alone 5000 miles considering how they flop around in flight. Nonetheless, they manage it. At the sanctuary, with Jen and Gavin, we must have witnessed at least 100,000 Monarch butterflies darting around in the sky at any given moment, and hundreds of thousands more weighing down the tree branches. They often land on people's heads, whereby one must resist the urge to whack at it as if
Pastry paradise!
Ken couldn't believe his luck when he discovered he could load up his own entire tray of donuts and cookies in this supermarket! it were a bug. It was a really enjoyable experience.
After Morelia, we backtracked about 25 miles to the very pretty town of Patzcuaro, and camped at a hilltop ranch (well, more like a defunct petting zoo) complete with chickens, turkeys, donkeys, sheep, and a bunch of dogs. Two of the dogs were cute little puppies though. I'll get to that in a moment. It was there that we met up with Roque and Sharon who retired from their high-flying careers in civil service and have been on the road for about 13 months, having left their former home in the D.C area en route to Panama (Roque's birthplace) where they intend to live... via ALASKA! Not the most direct route, but it looks like they've had quite a trip so far, having amassed 60,000 miles since their trip began. On the one hand, I wondered whether they had forgotten to pack a road map, but upon learning of the array and quantity of stuff that they had packed - 300 pounds of clothes, enough tools to fix a boiler or build a small airplane, at least one juicer, something like four spare tires (two for the
truck, 1 or 2 for their travel trailer), and even Roque's tuxedo (for those more formal campfire nights in Central American campgrounds) - I realized that this probably wasn't the case. I also realize that Roque, a former Outward Bounds instructor/counselor probably knows his way around a compass and a map, and to be fair, they're on a one-way trip to Panama where they will eventually live, so they get a pass for packing heavy. Who are we to make fun anyway, considering that we forgot to pack essentials like bed sheets and a blanket at the outset of our trip. All in good fun; we really enjoyed meeting and getting to know Roque and Sharon over the last week or so, and greatly enjoyed their company. Like Jen and Gavin, they're good eggs, and I truly hope we reconnect with them again further downstream.
While in Patzcuaro, we also met and hung out with Gary, a laid-back guy and an extremely talented musician, and his (and his wife's) 6-year old daughter Harper from Lafayette, Colorado. Gary's wife, an actress, was back in the U.S. working for a week or two when we met him, so he
Cathedral in Mazamitla
The beautiful village of Mazamitla, in the mountains south of Lake Chapala, where we stopped for lunch on the way to Uruapan. Unfortunately it was really cloudy so the photos don't do justice to how pretty the town is. and Harper were on their own with their dog and cat, navigating an RV large enough to be seen from space through the narrow, cobbled roads leading up to the ranch. Bear in mind that minutes before our arrival to the ranch, I managed to take a wrong turn up a narrow, cobbled street that led to a dead end. So narrow was the street that I had to back down with about 6 inches of clearance on either side and no rearview mirror, and a leaky brake cylinder, for about 200 yards, with a growing audience of onlookers and wellwishers emerging from their front doors and peepng out their windows. Darting my eyes wildly back and forth between right and left side mirrors while watching our camper miss parked cars, ditches, and telephone poles by inches, and swearing incoherently at GoogleMaps, I finally noticed Fi coming into focus through the side window as she was standing in the street trying to direct me down the hill in reverse at walking pace, as if I was trying to bring a 747 to the gate. By that time I was covered in saliva and sweat (it was a mere 65-degrees and
T shirt in Morelia
This rebuffal of Trump made us chuckle quite a bit! It translates as 'What wall?' cloudy that day) with eyes flitting around like a caged animal, I must have looked like Jack Nicholson did when he poked his head through the bathroom door in The Shining. That small experience was enough to make me just about lose my mind, so I am duly impressed with Gary's navigational and "ship-handling" skills, wielding his motorhome through these smaller towns with their tight, unmarked streets. Gary's daughter Harper was a lot of fun; ebullient and energetic, as 6-year-olds tend to be, she quickly identified me as her favorite chew toy, whereby I found myself giving piggyback rides and playing a bunch of other kid games, often against my will. Well, not really. Harper was actually a lot of fun, very engaging with a razor-sharp wit. We really enjoyed getting to know her and Gary.
That brings us back to the aforementioned puppies, which were about the cutest ones I've ever seen. Young girls and puppies seem to be drawn to each other like a magnet to a refrigerator door, so I enjoyed ribbing Gary about how I planned to tell Harper that, "Dad said you can keep both of the puppies... and have chocolate cake
for dinner!" Needless to say, I saw a fleeting look of panic come over Gary's normally super chilled-out and relaxed expression. Gary already had a child, a large dog, and a cat in his motorhome. My guess is that he was not in the market for another couple of furry mouths to feed. This was kind of a running joke for a couple of days until I noticed Fi becoming more attached to the puppies than Harper. Suddenly that look of panic, mixed with confusion overtook me. Fi began to suggest, in an almost beseeching tone, that traveling with a puppy across international borders in Central and South America wouldn't be so tough (in the same way that flying to the moon isn't so tough anymore). This indirect suggestion devolved into an outright, "Can we keep them, can we keep at least one of them?!" by Fi (who is a grown adult and not a 6 year old child). Gary picked up on this new dynamic and leveraged it well, ensuring that I never brought up the subject of puppy adoption again in Harper's presence. In exchange, he promised not to encourage Fi's puppy-wanting overtures. I am happy and relieved
to report that we are puppy-less at this time.
From Patzcuaro, we all said goodbye to Gary and Harper and headed south to the coast. One thing I can surely attest to is that the southwestern coast of Mexico is HOT! Like, Africa-hot. Like, soak-through-your-clothes-by-lunchtime hot. In Patzcuaro, we were wearing jackets in the mornings and evenings; on the coast near Acapulco, a linear distance of about 150 miles, it's so hot that you could probably fry an egg on my forehead. A pretty dramatic change. But that's one thing that I think we've come to enjoy about Mexico thus far: the diversity in climates, and the micro-climatic regions, creates a lot of other kinds of changing topographies and cultural diversity scattered in pockets across the country. We've generally really enjoyed our travels through Baja and western Mexico so far, and look forward to exploring more of the southern end (Oaxaca, Chiapas) as well as the Yucatan in the weeks ahead.
Oh, we almost forgot to mention that we finally saw some whales - breaching just a few hundred yards offshore from last night's beach camp! So now we have butterflies and whales on the list
of creatures that we've actually seen instead of just hearing about from every other traveler we meet!
So that's where we've been and that's where we're headed. There are about 31 photos attached below. Thanks for checking up on us!
Cheers,
Ken
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Jen and Gav
non-member comment
How about a cup of tea and a good read?!
Hey Fi and Ken, we had a superb time with you and hope to see you again soon! Ken, you are an honorary Brit-you have a great sense of humour and took all the ribbing we gave you! Great blog-it made us smile so much. Hope to see you soon x