Meeting Mainland Mexico

(Jan 10) Departing the ferry in Mazatlán (meaning “place of deer” in the Native Nahuatl tongue), we had almost as much apprehension as when we crossed the US-Mexican border. Despite our growing surety in Baja, this was Sinaloa, after all – listed by the US Government as a state worth a “Do Not Travel” label.

Sinaloa (and Sonora) originally comprised mostly of the Cahitas, a native tribe deriving from the Mexica, I think? Their populations, of course, were decimated by the Spanish invasion (despite the Cahitas superior manpower due to the Spanish’s superior weaponry) and then smallpox. In the late 1800s, Mexico, fearing resistance, started separating the remaining Cahitas from each other/their homelands and moving them to other states, most on the opposite side of the country.

The area is now a beautiful and bustling city. The historic downtown is cute and cozy. Its tight-fit streets and rare parking-spot finds are what make it such a nice place to stroll around. The square is full of artistic vendors, romantic restaurants, and ancient hotel buildings.

Our worries about the Mainland were put on the back burner. We were just happy to be out of the “touristy” Baja part of Mexico and finally at the “real” Mexico. We were looking forward to being fully immersed in the culture and language.

Despite all this, we somehow found our most expensive hotel to date (over $200 USD) that, we found out later, was owned by an American: La Casa de Leyenas, a beautiful boutique hotel with six rooms just off the malecon and was the only hotel we could find close by that allowed dogs. And that night we ate at an American owned restaurant in which only Americans seemed to congregate.

The next night we retreated to a less glamorous (but still so lovely) AirBnB home. And we had a bit of fun with the camera.

This brings us to the necessary pause to preach the greatness of AirBnB. In small towns, it’s easy enough to find a hotel or hostal that allows dogs. But in the cities, we have to go from hotel to hotel, asking if they allow dogs or know a hotel that does. Then, after a half hour to hour of searching, we usually find one. But the fee ends up being 500 pesos per dog per night. And we’re not about that. AirBnB is just so much more convenient for the simple fact that we can limit our searches.

In between the hotel and AirBnB was an attempt at driving an hour north to see Las Labradas, a nearby petroglyph site. Unfortunately, though understandably, it was closed. Though, it was closed in the oddest way imaginable. The locals had dug a trench about a foot deep across the dirt road some 600m from the site itself, instead of (say) amending the official signs directing us off of the highway some 10k ago (!).

— But also! This just in from a Google Search, we read that people of little towns in Michoacán will dig trenches in order to prevent the Cartel from being able to enter. So, maybe the same here? Sinaloa is, after all, a “Do Not Travel” state. /bulletin —

We ended up taking a hike to Mazatlán’s highest peak, on which a lighthouse was built. While the views were pretty, the sewage plant that was built right next to the hill made was wonder what the heck they were thinking building a sewage plant right next to one of their main tourist attractions.

(Jan 12) We didn’t hang around Sinaloa for long, but not because we were worried, rather we were just eager to find other spots to see.

South of Sinaloa is Nayarit. Nayarit had four indigenous tribes that once ruled the area: the Tepehuanes, the Coras, the Huicholes, and the Amecas. But the story of their eventual loss of territory is similar to that of the Cahitas – what with the decimation of populations either through arms or illness and the colonization of their land.

We tried to visit Mexcaltitan de Uribe because it’s this tiny island completely surrounded by swamp and jungle. It looks absolutely incredible from the pictures. But, once we got close, the streets were closed off, as we guessed would be the case due to Covid.

This trip was not without a memory made, however! For we. saw. FLAMINGOS!!! IN THE WILD!!! Like, not at a zoo. Ya digg? It was pretty frigging awesome, okay, man?!

— Edit: Psych! Did not see flamingos. We saw roseate spoonbill. So, still cool! Just not what we thought it was. (Note that pink dot in the pic below)–

We also saw some rather large birds that we don’t know the name of – smaller in height to the non-flamingo, though heavier. Their feathers were varying shades of brown with some black splashed on for good measure.

We eventually continued on south to funky San Blas, where we boondocked at an iOverlander site just outside of town on a beach road amongst the coconut trees.

It was probably a good thing we arrived at dark because we woke to a group of dogs scavenging around a rather large pile of trash that was resting not more than 100ft from our van.

While it was a bit off-putting, it wasn’t unexpected. The sweet, rotting stench of garbage and sewage is never far in Mexico. It’s not uncommon to see the sides of streets lined with litter and piles upon piles wasting away behind a hill or bush. The firefighters are often busy, tending to the fires that got out of control by people burning their rubbish.

It’s an interesting topic. From 2015 to 2016, citizens of Lebanon protested the government because there was a huge trash pile up. Lebanon had not had a president since 2014, and due to an inability to agree with one another, the government neglected the issue. Beirut had literal walls of trash piled up along the streets.

It’s still an issue to this day. People are burning their trash and causing health issues for themselves and their neighbors. Human Rights Watch reports that nearly 90% of Lebanon’s waste is able to be recycled or composted. Their government just is not handling this issue very well.

Mexico isn’t this bad, but it is pretty unsettling.

Anyway, we’ve found a few more uses for iOverlander this trip. One of those uses being that the app has icons on the map that tell you where military checkpoints are, where civilians have taken control over the tolls, and where someone has gotten robbed/held up at gunpoint.

The other useful thing is that it tells you of some sight-seeing activities. There were two listed for San Blas. Both were of ruins. The ruins of the fort were cool.

But the ruins of the church were absolutely brilliant. All of its walls were mostly standing.

Nick and I entered through a small room that was blanketed by plants growing along the walls and in tufts where parts of the stone bulged out more at one part than another.

When we walked into the cathedral, I let out a quiet “Woah.” The stone rafters were flimsily dressed in sprawled-out moss and the occasional green vine, their leaves just barely poking out.

The windows lined the walls in equal increments of decrepit beauty, with only a side door interrupting them as they hold out as payment for the workmanship put into making them.

And the doorway, small compared to the church’s overall stature stood proud and bold, despite its wear.

It felt as though we were character of an adventure novel. The tree just outside as ancient as the church, waiting there with the town’s stories seeped into its bark, carrying the memories like it carried the strangling fig at its crown.

I waited a moment for a trap door to fall or a secret passageway to open. If the mosquitoes didn’t have us fleeing back to the van, I would’ve stayed there for ages.

It was a bit of a bummer to leave San Blas, because I felt as if there was still some exploring to do. Although, that is likely due to the crocodiles we saw, sun-bathing in a shallow lake just next to this turn-out we would’ve missed had it not been for the wooden fence drawing our curiosity.

Two small signs stuck out from the lake to read “Crocodile Sanctuary”, followed by short tid-bits of information. The birds there were just as unbothered by the crocs as they had been by our van pulling up, concerned only with each other and whose dance was better.

We ended up having lunch at an awesome stop-over in tiny Chacala, where we ate camarones del diablo and tiny and salty ostria on the half-shell, in a palapa restaurant with its resident goat, “Pinky.”

What really made this place, other than the baby goat, was the mountains that overlooked the ocean, and how they stretched out beyond the sand.

The sea urchins attached to rocks that jetted out along the tidal zone. They were so precious that I had to get their picture, despite the rising seas and rather poor timing of large waves soaking my skirt up to my knees.

Nearing night time, iOverlander led us to a dead end road, just on the outskirts of Puerto Vallarta (Bucerias) and next to a restaurant that had the unfortunate (in today’s slang) name of “Karen’s Place.”

And there we listened to many Americans speaking English with songs sung in English. The restaurant, while not owned by an American, was owned by a Brit. And it occured to us that we ended up at these places that seem to attract Americans for the same reason that everyone else did. Whether by name or appearance, the familiarity of these places was a welcome break in a land of unknown.

Sometimes it gets frustrating going to places and hearing people speak English or playing English music or seeing American movies or American chains. Britney Spears, Queen, the Beatles, Disney, and others are played on repeat in every other shop and every other restaurant.

It’s as if we left the place, only to be followed incessantly this little no-see-um that just keeps biting at you with you having no idea on how to get rid of it. I think one reason it can be something that irks us so, is that sometimes we get the sense that our country (granted, Queen and the Beatles came from Britain) just overruns or dominates others, that it’s just such a looming figure that there is no escape from it.

At the same time, we often miss our country deeply. Knowing what to expect, knowing the norms and the language, and knowing general attitudes about general subjects is a comfort all on its own.

Everyday we know near to nothing. And it can be maddening. Things as simple as parking are a huge daily endeavor that we just don’t always have the energy for – what with people constantly yelling and whistling at you to use their parking lot.

Then that calls for knowing a simple thing such as who to pay. If you pay when you enter, that’s easy enough although doesn’t always work as sometimes the attendants switch shifts or claims you didn’t pay the right fee and there’s no receipt to prove otherwise (happened to us only once, but we simply drove off after having stated that we had already paid).

If you pay when you leave, then you have to find the person that you’re supposed to pay, which isn’t always stated or clear. You’d think they’d wait by the exit, but you’d be wrong. So, then you have to go find the person in a sometimes expansive parking lot to validate the ticket, so you can then put the ticket in the machine that lets you out.

Ordering tea, buying bread, getting gas, going to the grocery store, basically anything is often met with confusion and being out in the dark. Of course, this is the price to pay for going to a country that you don’t know the language of. I’m sure half these problems would go away if we could only communicate better. However, as it is, it’s exhausting.

(Jan 14) In busy Vallarta, $25USD will get you a rickety AirBnB within a stone’s throw of the melacon and cathedral, up the steepest road ever. We abandoned the van downtown and walked everywhere. It’s a cute city, no doubt. But it’s a city.

They had a mural that we found interesting. It was of George Floyd for half of it, along with the names of black victims of police brutality.

I wonder how much of that was written by someone who once lived in America and how much was written by someone who wasn’t from there. I wonder how much of our country’s culture and news reaches Mexico – and other countries in general. I get that it’s a lot.

But I mean, when they hear of BLM, do they feel angered with us? Do they want the same things we do? Do they cheer for our social liberties? What is their perception of our country? Do they resent it? Do they know how big a problem racism is in the States?

What weight do our issues carry for others? Do their problems carry similar weight for us? And why do these questions nag at me so?

And then I came to the realization of how little it should matter who feels what about whom. These aren’t the things I can control.

The other half of the mural was a woman’s rights slogan “Ni Una Menos” or “Not One (Woman) Less”.

Ni Una Menos is a movement that started in Argentina as the result of violence against women, more specifically femicide. It gained popularity through the years and became the slogan of annual protest marches throughout Latin America, to include Mexico. It’s now a campaign against gender-based violence and for reproductive rights.

The spinning tower of Totonac Indians was there, in dress, but inactive. Ate some decent mole and red snapper “arriero” at Sí Señor, before heading down the coast the next day.

On the way out, we stopped by the Vallarta Botanical Garden and learned about plants and shit. It was nice to know the names of things for a few minutes. Unfortunately, we’ve since forgotten those names and somehow lost the pictures of the map outside that listed a few birds and plants.

One thing that doesn’t escape our memories is the restaurant we went to. The food was decent. Unfortunately, I had the alfredo. And. Listen. I have very high standards for what alfredo should taste like. I knew that going into it, okay?

But that wasn’t the point. Listen toooo meeee! So, we’re sitting there, chillin. See some pretty cool birds.

And then I look around me and see all these Mexico flags. Like, everywhere. It occurs to me that I haven’t seen so many flags of one’s own country since leaving the States (which always seemed a bit redundant to me – like chanting USA during a match between two US teams or during an election – like… obviously you’re for USA).

I snicker to Nick as I gesture to the flags, “I bet you an American owns this place. Only an American is insecure enough about their place in the world to need a million and one flags confirming their place in the world to be placed everywhere.”

And I shit you not, maybe 5 or 10 minutes later, we hear the table behind us talk about how he’s originally from whatever US state and moved to Mexico for whatever reason and bought the Botanical Gardens because whatever the fuck. When I tell you I was beaming from ear to ear, y’all. I really was just so proud of myself.

It didn’t occur to me until much later that he might have heard me, to which I say, “Good. That was a pathological number of flags, sir! But also, your gardens are awesome. ktnxbai.”

Leaving there left us to sleep well near Pérula.

Pérula is a tiny fishing village on the Costalegre about midway between Vallarta and Manzanillo, which, fondly, Nick remembers visiting the latter with Nancy Wolfe when their Hannah was a wee lass, and which sadly, we would never get to, as we took HWY 80 over the hills towards Guadalajara on a whim. (Mistake, as the HWY through Colima is better, but it wasn’t like I didn’t ask my “On The Road in Mexico” bookface friends for advice on heading inland.)

A crazy Saturday night in a sleepy town called Autlán de Navarro (or Autlán de la Grana – depending who you ask)–I dare you to find it, but if you do it will be in Jalisco–where we slept on three different streets and tried to drive through a maize field to leave town before daylight, this having failed to find a boondock site below a mine on the side of a mountain. The road we took across a dry river bed (twice) was so sketch, y’all. (We really need to rotate our tires.)

We’re still learning the rules of the road, such as when to actually stop at red lights (!) and thus a harrowing 200km later, miles filled with curves peligrosos (dangerous) and trucks of all sizes shedding sugar-cane, dead cats and livestock-sales by the highway, and we’re in Tlaquepaque shopping and strolling like it never even happened.

This is a nice little hood, famous for its pottery and tile. Unfortunately, though understandably, most of these places were closed. We also found a neat wood-art shop along the way, along with a mural dedicated to historical events and people from Mexico.

Tlaquepaque was a highlight of our first day in glossy Guadalajara, a place that reminds Nick a little of Paris, though the udon at Peko-Peko wasn’t bad either. We did check out the Templo Expiatorio around the corner, and looked for some Orozco murals nearby, but everything is covid-shitty, as Molly puts it.

This is being composed at a far-from-empty AirBnB hostel on a busy street in the midst of the city on a Sunday, and the quiet demonstrates just how catholic this country is.

Even the college bars close early here. Next week promises splendor, however, as Guanajuato and the colonial towns, volcanoes and lakes of the central highlands await.

We decided to head to the beautiful pueblos of San Juan de Lagos. When we got there, Nick had turned down one narrow street too many and ended up in the middle of vendor-market central. People were whistling, yelling, and waving at us relentlessly. When we turned down another street just to get away from them and to have a minute to gather ourselves from the stress of it all, it turned out we had to endure even more.

It put me in a really foul mood, and I wanted to leave the town immediately. Instead, we found a quiet street to park on and walked around. It was cute, as all the bigger towns we’ve visited have been. The church was pretty, though the square was, of course, closed off due to Covid. We didn’t spend much time there before deciding to move on to Lagos de Moreno.

Google Maps said it would take about an hour to reach, so we put on a podcast (History on Fire) and set out.

Early on I had made a wrong turn, so Nick had to get the Map app out once again and put the address in. We followed the signs for Lagos and a mere 10 or 15 minutes later, we arrived.

Admittedly, it was strange it had taken us such a short time to get there, but it wasn’t uncommon that we accidentally left the app on “Walk” mode. We drove around a bit before we found some parking close to downtown. I noted the yellow stripe going along the road and muttered something about not being allowed to park here. Ultimately, I cared more about my nap than I did to argue. So, Nick went exploring the central and I cuddled with the dogs for a quick siesta.

Not 5 minutes later, the police showed up and blared their horn at me. I stayed there for a minute, hoping they’d go away and just let me sleep. Alas, that was not realistic.

So, I crawled out of bed and drove around to find another spot to park. As I was driving, I saw a tunnel too small for our van that had looked really similar to the one in the last town, and I thought, “Wow. These Mexican towns sure all do look the same.”

I found a spot that was just a few blocks up from where I’d left Nick and figured it’d be easy enough to send him directions. I waited for a few minutes, debating whether or not to text Nick because I didn’t want to ruin his time downtown.

Eventually, I figured I’d just tell him to take his time. So, I opened up Maps and couldn’t shake how familiar this town’s layout seemed. But before I could focus on that, I needed to make sure Nick could find us. So, I sent him the step by step.

Afterwards, I started to wonder, again, how we got here so fast. I zoomed out of the town a little more and read the name, “San Juan de Lagos”.

Y’all! We were in the same town! We never frigging left it; we followed the wrong Lagos! We were just on the opposite side of the centro! Like, no fucking wonder we made it in such short time! Truly, it’s a wonder it took us so long. Ah ha ha!

We were both laughing our asses off when we found out. Nick had said that when he got downtown, he had thought the same thing about how these Mainland Mexico towns sure do look the same, until he made it to a vendor he knew he’d seen before and realized we were in the same town. He would’ve just turned around and came back to the car, but he thought I was napping and didn’t want to wake me.

Anyway, Nick decided I should navigate this go around, otherwise we’d never get anywhere.

An hour later, we arrived at Lagos de Moreno where we spent two luxurious nights in the Casa Zul Hostel in the stinky side of town.

We get there, and one of the teens working there showed us to our room. We were blown away by the living room and TV, with the gorgeous bathroom right next to our bedroom, and a beautiful balcony right outside our door. What a steal for $600 MXD! Absolutely beautiful.

We shut the door and hung out on the couch for a bit. When our stomachs called for food, we found a restaurant just behind the hostal.

There was a huge communication error which started with us just wanting to drink wine on the restaurant’s rooftop with the dogs and ended with us ordering a full course meal in a private room with the dogs. The waiter and owner were both very gracious and kind. We left with our tummies fuller than intended and walked around downtown.

When we got back up to our suite, the door was wide open. And the girl who had shown us our room was standing out on our balcony with her boyfriend. Nick and I exchanged glances before shrugging it off and heading to bed.

The next morning, Nick and I were lounging on the couch (thankfully clothed), watching TV, when in walks in one of the men who work here. I look at Nick like, “What the fuck is going on?”

The man says good morning and walks into the bathroom, while one of the other female workers is out on the balcony again.

We’re both just like, “Okaayyyyy.” I start Googling, “Is it normal in Mexico for people to just walk in and out of your hostal room?” I can’t find any results, so I whisper to Nick, “I hope he’s not pooping.”

Nick shakes his head, as if I’m the absurd one. “No, he’s just painting.”

The toilet flushes. “The toilet just flushed!” I hissed at him. We start nervous laughing at one another. “What do we do?” I asked, becoming anxious at the thought of confrontation.

And then. Slowly. Ever so slowly. We realize.

“This isn’t a suite!” I practically yell at Nick. And he’s already figured it out and is shaking his head. “Our room is all we rented! We’re sharing the living room, the bathroom, and the balcony!”

We laugh at our stupidity and start thinking of how we must look in their eyes. Our clothes, money, and books are sprawled out all over the living room. My flip-flops, underwear, and towel are laying on the bathroom floor along with all our toiletries (admittedly, only a small bag). Like, we must have looked like such assholes! Fucking arrogant Americans thinking they own whatever place they walk into!

The kids running it were super-sweet nonetheless, and it was super-affordable, despite it not being as spacious as we originally believed. (We need more escuela de lingua, malo.)

This general area, at the intersection of Jalisco, Queretaro and Aguacalientes is among the most developed and richest of Mexico, due to its history of cattle and horses. Prior to those, however, was sugarcane, and this was one of the most productive areas in the world for this worrisome crop. The worries persist in the marketplaces where, milk and sugar caramel dominate. F-ing chewing gum is no longer innocent, after this trip, but more on that after we visit the Yucatan, dios willing.

Patrick Oster, in Chapter 15, El Comico, of his aforementioned “The Mexicans” helps to explain why such a warm and hospitable people can be so rude at the same time. People will not hesitate to take an open teller at a bank, ahead of your place, for instance, or will brush you off a narrow sidewalk to get by. They assert their power in little ways, apparently, because they (historically) have lost the poder (power) to do so in larger ways.

I can’t certify to the completeness of this explanation, but it fits in with Mexico’s unique sort of machismo and even the long-lived resentment of the US.

Oster makes the point that the Japanese got over Hiroshima and Nagasaki to become one of the world’s top 5 economies, whereas Mexico, with the 10th largest population, and amazing mineral wealth, have only the 15th (in terms of GDP…it’s much lower when compared by per-capita expendable income). Of course for a gringo to tell a Mexican to get over the US’s theft of half of your country is rich.

As we’re signed up for a week of classes in Guanajuato starting on Monday, we have plotted a circumlocutionary route to get there, starting in beautiful Morelia, capital city of Michoacán.

Despite all of the museos being cerrado (closed), the colonial heart of the city is muy bonito, and we happened to arrive when that very area was shut off to all but pedestrian traffic. (If only more cities followed this lead.)

It’s obvious that this city has a boomtown past, and retains a vibrant present, with street-side quartets playing classical music under handsome arches of the area’s famous pink cantera stone. Mucho gusto.

We strolled around and drank some tequila at an open-air restaurant with a beautiful ballad cantador, who stole K’s corazon. We also caught a minute of Kamala Harris’s swearing-in ceremony today; wow, and just wow. (And sure, Joe Biden’s inaugeration is a relief.)

The question still nags: how sustainable is this incarnation of van-life. Nick feels like he is distracting Karyssa from her life-plan and career choices, but she is quick to remind him of her autonomy. The gap between retired at 55 and jobless at 30 has never loomed larger to me, however.

Patzcuero is a short trip south, so we headed to this lake region with its famous zocalo–2nd in size only to Mexico City’s and the only one sin (without) cathedral–and tried to recognize the local indigenous flavor (red-tiled roof, is mostly what we noticed).

It’s hard to boondock south of the border, and it’s hard to say why. While we feel safer parking on the side of a random road here than in, say, Florida, there is much less publically-held land here, and what is private isn’t as clearly marked as such.

To illustrate, we just now stopped at an iOverlander site overlooking Lake Patzcuero, and it was beautiful, if trash-strewn, but eventually a haciendista, or one of his workers, waved us down the hill to join in a soccer match. To do so would have entangled us in their affairs, when all we wanted to do at the time was sleep, but to not do so meant moving on, in a weird way.

Moving on, however, implied either a hotel room or a parking spot in front of municipal police station in the tiny lakeshore town of Tzintzuntzan and we opted for the latter, even if the public banos are closed and the dogs are afoot.

The odd name of this town was explained to us later by Jesus, a guide at the Parque Nacional Barranca del Cupatitzio in Uruapan. One hummingbird says “tzin” two say “tzun” while a bunch say “tzan.”

The Tarascan “yacatas,” massive semicircular lodges, five of them, and dating back to between 900 and 1200AD, watched over the town and lake but remained enticingly out of touch behind hurricane fencing and locked gates: cerrado.

The Antigua Convento is open, and the olive trees, planted by Vasco de Quiroga himself back in the 16th century, still provide shade. The convent is massive, and is said to contain stones stolen from the Yacatas up the hill.

We checked out some other pre-Columbian archaeological sites between Patzcuero and here, Uruapan, even if they were officially Covid-closed, meeting a aguacate (avocado) picker along the way to the ruins at Tinganio, near the village of Tingambato.

Later, watching gringos clamber over the walls, which predate the Tarscan empire, let alone the Aztec one, at the amazing pyramids and ball-field of Ihuatzio was disturbing, as we could literally hear the stones fall beneath them, but tried to keep in mind the innumerable sites of this sort around us.

Uruapan ain’t especially precious, either, besides the Parque Nacional (National Park), which was the private property of one family who made the unfortunate mistake of inviting President Carlinas Gortari to check out the hacienda in 1938; he liked the place so much that he nationalized it (this according to Jesus).

An aquifer-fed river emerged from where the devil put his knee down, according to Fray San Miguel, according to our tour guide. San Miguel certainly left his mark, starting in the 1530s.

But Jesus really helped make the experience. We wouldn’t have seen or learned nearly as much without him, and he kept making sure that we were taking pictures, even after we stopped wanting to.

The trip is well documented.

We’re now boondocking by a neighborhood park across town where teens show off their cars and chat up their conspecifics like anywhere else in the world.

We woke to a note left gently under a windshield-wiper; fearing the worst, it turned out to say the following, in part: “Estimado lector/a. Mi nombre es Marta. Soy testigo de Jehova. Deseo contesotar con base biblica esta importate pregunta: ?Cuando gobernara la tierra el Reino de Dios?…” (Some such religiousness) WTF?

What a wild Sabado this (Enero 23) turned to be. A few km south of Uruapan is La Cascada de Tzararacua, a 30m fall of the Rio Cupatitzio–the same river that emerged in the Parque Nacional of yesterday–and a popular destination for local families.

557 steps (or a horse) take you down to the plunge, which is grey and smells like it may be Uruapan’s main sewer.

The pollution of Mexico that is evident almost everywhere is a real shame. This waterfall would’ve ranked among my (now (for only two more sentences) Karyssa) favorites had it not been for the stench and off-color of the water – not to mention the piles of litter stuck along the banks.

Still, the semi-circle of cliffs that the water falls from, as well as the steep climb anywhere nearby could’ve been from a movie – again, if not for the pollution.

We think we saw a Mountain Trogon, a crazy-looking parrot-like bird.

Despues (after), was the famous Volcan Paricutin and, therefore, the odd Purepecha pueblo of Angahuan, an hour north given Uruapan’s horrible traffic (which seems mostly due to construction, so it may be worth it).

When we arrived, Angahuan had a funeral pouring into its cathedral, La Iglesia de Santiago Apostal, and at least two weddings with over-amplified bands going on in the other end of town.

This meant that every other street was shut down, and we needed to get to the “Centro Turistica” to get info on the volcano. A nearly impossible task that was testing Karyssa’s navigation skills and her patience.

Purepecha is an indigenous tribe that was one of the only to not succumb to the might of the Aztec. In fact, they never so much as lost a battle with the giant. They held off the Spanish colonization the first two times that the Spanish had attempted to overtake their land. But then, the third time they gave in.

However, legend has it that a teenager by the name of Princess Erendira refused to follow the surrender. She took some Spanish guy’s horse and taught her fellow tribe members how to fight on horseback. This badass chick then led her tribe to fight against Spain. It worked for a while, until her father ended up dying… I think killed? It’s on Wikipedia.

But the best part of this story is Lázaro Cárdenas used this story and amplified it when he became governor of Michoacán and, later, president of Mexico. She’s an important hero – even if there is no evidence of her existence – because she’s a source of indigenous pride for having resisted the Spanish.

In Mexico, being indigenous can go one of two ways. Either it’s the worst thing you could be or the best. Princess Eréndira makes it the latter. 🥰

As soon as we left the highway and entered the town of Angahuan, we had a caballero (cowboy) running alongside the van, trying to coerce us to ride with him to the volcan. Everyone else seemed almost scared of our presence, especially the niños.

It’s almost as if they’re aware of how we gringos have decimated their population… jk, unfunny.

I’m really proud of how we resisted, then managed to communicate our special needs children’s needs (viz., Daisy, Frida) and to thus decline their services. The guides speak only Tarascan, the lengua of the Purepecha, we’re told, by a guide that speaks español?

Instead, we walked 2km or so down to the lava field and the half-buried villages. On February 30, 1943 a farmer went out to light his trash on fire when he realized that a crack had formed in the earth. Smoke was rising out of it. Eventually, the smoke was accompanied by hissing, crackling, and stench(ing). Thus Volcan Pericutin began erupting. Apparently it started slowly, then became abrupt, and began to erupt more slowly.

In the end of it all, the volcano killed 3 people and buried two pueblos and, claro, most of a cathedral. It chilled out in 1952, becoming dormant but also becoming scientists’ first ever volcano that they could study the whole life cycle of as well as the youngest volcano in the world!

No one had room for us to even park, given all the fiestas in town, and thus we paid a few pesos to park overnight here in the woods. The party seemed to continue for most going into domingo (Sunday). We made our way out of town that morning and west toward Guanajuato.

Nick stopped for some roadside “comida corrida” but otherwise it was a 4-hour slog until the multicolored houses of Guanajuato appeared. Then Karyssa drove through the famous subterranean tunnels originally designed to divert floodwaters but late refashioned to divert traffic.

What makes this town perfectly suited for pedestrians makes it a challenge for autos, however, and frankly it’s tough for both, and we ended up having to park about a mile from our AirBnB.

Walking only a mile in the maze of calles, footpaths, alleys, that are Guanajuato wore us out, and we ended up using a taxi to get us to and from our van, but eventually got the bare necessities–dog food, phone-chargers, etc–to make a casa.

But what a casa! A few minutes and we’re in front of Teatro Juarez (a theater) juking and jiving to mariachi bands of all sorts and styles, and yet the block is quiet and the house safe and sound. We had a blast, despite being exhausted, and stressed about español escuela beginning at 8:30 tomorrow!

Hoy es Lunes, y nosotros estamos en la ciudad de Guanajuato para estudiar espanol. Nuestros primera classe con Ramon y Javier con el “Spanish Experience Center” (www.secgto.com). Mucho gusta.

A day later, we still haven’t resolved our parking situation, and Daisy’s picked up an injury, but we survived our first day of school, gathered more provisions and got to know el barrio (the neighborhood).

Yo estoy muy cansado (I’m very tired). Daily pattern: wake up and walk over the hill to the van, buy some bread from the same woman we walk by, drive fifteen mins to school out in Marfil, five hours later, drive home, wiped out. Try to nap, then walk down to el Zona Centro for cena (dinner).

Mexico makes me (now Karyssa) wonder how people do it. Granted, in the States I’ve wondered the same thing over and over. But seeing the same people on the same routes, standing and selling bread, whistling and waving at us to use their parking, and sitting at the shop day after day, having the same conversations, going through all the same motions, just shoves it in my face all over again.

I worked a month as a cashier at Wal-Mart before the novelty wore off and I couldn’t stop questioning the meaning of life and the pointlessness it all entails. Wal-Mart wants you to smile at every customer and beg them to get a Wal-Mart credit card from you. It’s a mindless existence, in which I often felt like a zombie who’d sold her mind away for a measly $7/hr. Surely prostitution was far more honorable. I imagine it paid more, made more people happy, and at least sex could be fun, and it was just your body you were giving away.

In truth, anytime my day became predictable (as a waitress, as a nanny, as an airman), I couldn’t handle it. If I knew what the next few hours were going to be like, it made me long for a different life or none at all. Grim, really.

I’ve often wished for the secret to being okay with knowing that what your doing is necessary to put food on the table and leaving it at that. I imagine it’s easier to understand if you having kids depending on you. Or if you’re not privileged.

Still. When day after day is the same, where the only thing you have to look forward to is the weekend or the next holiday, what’s the point? Your happiness lasts a grand total of 30% of your life, while the rest of it is spent in misery or dread. Why even bother?

Living vanlife was the first time I felt satisfied and okay. We still know what we’re doing everyday, waking up, eating fruit and chocolate or cereal, brushing teeth, possibly running, drinking tea or coffee, and then heading off to the next location. But somehow this is okay. This existence, though as meaningless as any other – afterall we’re not doing anything, we’re not making anybody else’s lives better, except perhaps our own – is one that I can live with.

I blame Sugarland for leading me to believe there had to be something more. 🤣

Anyway. Enough with the existentialism.

Guanajuato esta muy interesante. It essentially funded the Spanish empire at its zenith via its silver, gold and copper mines, sourcing 2/3 of the world’s supply of plata at its height in the 17th and 18th centuries. Gold nuggets could be picked up off the ground, or so they say. The Valenciana mine is just up the road from our AirBnB, and is still producing some grades of ore; the homes of its owners now comprise the hotels and public buildings downtown.

Besides this, the city’s role in the Mexican revolution is perhaps second only to Pueblo, with the heads of heroes such as Hidalgo and Allende once adorning a building we passed by ahoy.

Our AirBnB is five mins from the famous Teatro Juarez, and the faithful Jesuit templo can be heard most hours of the day, though I estimated that 1/4 of the pews were occupied this afternoon.

Great location, but we are so busy studying that it is wasted on us.

Ahoy, en la dia final de Enero, nuestro classe en espanol es completo.

We feel more confident in our Spanish and appreciate all the work our maestros put into us. They’re really cool peeps and just good people in general.

It’s going to be hard to re-adjust to van-life after such an extended stay in a departemento, but we feel we have to move on, if for no other reason than to feed you, the blog, the beast.

(Jan 30 – Kasandrah’s Birthday)

We mostly lounged around today, before seeing the mummies. They were weird.

These mummies were created through a natural process that occurs in areas like Guanajuato. They were originally buried due to having died of either natural causes or of disease.

At some point, there was an outbreak of illness. So they started taxing people to bury their loved ones. If they couldn’t be paid, they would dig up the bodies. The ones that were still in good condition were kept in a building.

Eventually people wanted to see them, so they started charging a fee. And it grew to be the Mummy Museum! Kinda morbid. But pretty cool too!

January 31

Missing you, Grampa. Wishing you were still alive, so I could send you countless letters about our trip…

We spent a quite night on the hills overlooking GTO, near the so-called “Balancing Rocks.” It was wild and beautiful with horses to boot.

It wasn’t until the way out of town that morning, with the sun shining brightly on us, that we realized just how purple and green these mountains were. Karyssa says that she’s never seen such a purple mountain and remarked on how it reminded her of a trip we took to Mount Rogers in Virginia some 6 years ago while Nick was hiking the AT.

Except, this time, the colors were real and vibrant and not an enhanced version of themselves. Guanajuato easily goes down as her favorite city that we’ve been to (to include within the States? Yo no se).

The next day we drove to Irapuato and Celaya, home of Beatriz’s family, where we walked around its pretty plaza. It was cool walking around a place that was so foreign to us yet familiar to a friend. We wondered what things were new since she’d been here and whether she’d recognize the town.

Then we tried to get to San Miguel de Allende, but they are restricting access to the town for now and we’re not sure if it’s a go. They have a roadblock on the highway into town and require a Federal code issues by a hotel for a reservation, but our reservation was with an Airbnb, who doesn’t have such a code and who wants us to tell some story to the inspection officers. (We have been sitting at the check point for an hour now, but at least we had guac and beer.)

We ended up blowing off San Miguel, who apparently went on lock-down due to excessive partying at rental places and AirBnB’s, if we are understanding the recent press correctly. We hope to return on a later leg.

Nick barely slept, thinking of the moral implications of our trip here. We’re not essential workers and should be at home. On the other hand, the hotels, guesthouses, guides, restaurants and schools which we’ve used, whilst following Covid protocols to a tee, might consider us fairly important. On the other hand, the particular states and municipalities we chose to travel through are currently stretched, so being here on vaycay is irresponsible. On the other, we aren’t just on vaycay. (LOL)

On the same hand, at some point we either have to accept our decisions as they are or turn around and go home. The constant moral tug-of-war goes only so far before it becomes a request for someone’s permission and reassurances that what we’re doing is okay. Or perhaps it is a moral satisfaction that if we feel bad, then that makes it okay. Or maybe it goes even further with the psychological wish for an acknowledgement of our hardships in making tough decisions that effect those less fortunate than us. (Poor, poor privileged white people – يا مسكين (pobrecito))

Whatever the reason, we seem to have made our choice. And it seems any more pondering on it starts to become arbitrary, considering that we’ve already asked this question before and here we stand.

If the need to justify our travels exists within us, then let it be this: We’re living.

February 5th is a huge national holiday celebrating an early version of their constitution, but Mexico gets the 1st (today; a Monday) off work and we hoped to celebrate it in historic San Miguel, but cute little Dolores Hidalgo substituted nicely.

Had a great lunch which included cactus and some of the best restaurant-Alfredo Karyssa attests to having (she’s very picky about alfredo) but we’re on our way to San Luis Potosi and the hills surrounding it in order to get back to nature for a while.

(Feb 2) Now we’re camping next to a soccer field that looks as old as the game itself, nearby some deserted haciendas in one Sierra Alvarez some twenty miles above the city.

The last few miles of the road were hair-raising, but it’s high pine and yucca country with huge silver-grey boulders deciding its course. It was cold last night at this elevation, and we lit a fire for the first time in ages.

A friend from Guanajuato told us of a time he found some peyote north of here in the desert near Real de Catorce, so we may try to follow his lead.

(Still Feb 2) OMG, Real de Catorce is such a blast. While the 24km cobblestone approach road is kinda lame, once you conquer your claustrophobia in the 2.5km one-lane tunnel that brings you into this colonial mining boom-town turned ghost-town turned Pueblo Magico (Magical town), you’re all set!

Although the streets within are so hilly and curvaceous that we are sorta stuck boondocking in front of a school on a quiet street close to downtown until tomorrow, when we’ll have the mental fortitude to tackle the task.

The ruins all over were really remarkable. The guide book describes this town as constantly building itself. That seems to be an accurate way of describing it.

Here we’re a mere seven hours from Texas, but worlds away, says Karyssa-the-poet. Excellente, Karyssa! (Said in Maestro Roman’s voice)

(Feb 3) On a suggestion from a friend in GTO, and an intriguing iOverlander entry, we went to Estacion Wadley and then took a dirt road west for 6km and then and there searched the barren desert for the blue deer, or peyote. We spent hours scouring through bushes and small trees.

No luck, but it was a beautiful spot to spend the night, with a fire and the coyotes. (Two sentences; two uses of Nahautl-derived words!)

A long drive of four (Mexican) hours (which last longer than US hours, we have determined) and which included a remote police checkpoint somewhere near Venegas where we were treated with only the utmost of respect, although he did check our ID, so one of us was waiting for a shakedown of some sort.

We just bought a chicken with all the fixins for $140 pesos, from a kid who spent a year in Tennessee and who only wanted to practice ingles for a propina (a tip). Last night we chatted with three jovenes in Real de Catorce, who shared the same pure motive of practicing English.

We asked about the propria de nosotros visitar de su pueblo (their thoughts on our visiting of their town), and all were synonomous: we need turistas, and nos gustan (or some such…disculpe).

Hey! We just took a “bath” at the falls just north of Tamasopo, having been bummed to find out that Puente De Dios across town is cerrado (closed). Judging by the number of vendor stalls and outfitters surrounding it, it must be worth a visit. Though this spot, at the end of the road at El Trampolin, is a great consolation, and it reminds me (Nick) of Florida’s limestone floor.

Signs along the creek prohibido llavo de carros (prohibit washing of cars), and we wondered why until a family started washing their car next to our spot, where one of us bummed a smoke from a father-son couple who literally dumped a case of empty Tecate Light cans alongside the pristine headwaters of their town

I (Karyssa) saw them emptying their car of their garbage and had the knee-jerk reaction of starting to run my mouth before I reminded myself that we weren’t in our country and as such I felt I had no room to preach my beliefs. (I’m still bitter tho…)

Today (the 5th), we got to hang out at the Cascadas de Tamasopo. They were pretty magnificent. One comment on iOverlander called it an overrated amusement park, due to the vendors and manmade activities offered (a rope to swing from, hammocks to lay in, and obstacle-bridges to play on). Granted, that is always something of a disappointment.

But that’s Mexico. Like literally any popular spot that tourists will visit has been commercialized (possible exaggeration – though not by much). And, really, I see that as a good thing. These areas can’t be polluted by people washing their cars or throwing their trash into it if someone else is taking care of it (not that it does much good if the pollution is upstream).

There’s a lot we love about Mexico, but the amount of pollution and litter is just heart-breaking.

In any case, we headed east to Ciudad Valles (pronounced bay-es – we keep having to be corrected on when to pronounce the v as a v vs when to pronounce the v as a b), and that’s where we are now. The transition from desert to jungle as we pass over the Occidentales is like driving from Arizona to South Florida–IN TRES HORAS!–and we are still in the state of San Luis Potosi.

The transition is mirrored in the devolution of the land use from horse and cattle to sugercane, from bad to worse, and from rich(er) to poor(er), in other words. South of Ciudad Valles we passed a massive sugar plant, with miles of trucks of every size and description lined up to feed it.

My motion sickness causing us to stop early for the day – a positive, really, as we’re in bad need of showers and updating the blog.

Until next time!