Our Mexican Adventure

The first half of our Mexican journey, we travelled through the North Central regions. The scenery mainly consisted of cacti and occasional mountains, with little greenery. The air was dry and warm during the day, but due to the higher elevations, it would often drop into the low 50´s during the night. Who would have thought it´d be cold in Mexico?

Yesterday, we headed East towards the coastal town of Veracruz. As we drove, the climate began to change from desert-like conditions to a lush, tropical one. The turning point had to be when we drove through a fog covered section of mountains with dangerous curves — can you say, “fahrfegnugen”.

We made it to Veracruz, where we gladly traded in our jeans for shorts. Veracruz is a popular tourist destination for Mexicans. There aren´t many gringos around here, but English is definitely more readily understood than previous towns. Veracruz is on the Gulf of Mexico. There are visible oil refineries on the coast, which is probably what makes it unattractive to many Americans. On the plus side, we were able to find a nice pet-friendly hotel overlooking the ocean for $60.

Last night, we took a walk along the ocean towards the zócalo (main square). We got drinks at a small sidewalk cafe and watched the tourists’ antics around the zócalo.

Today, we were hoping to spend the day laying on a beach, but the numerous palm trees needed some rain. Maybe tomorrow…

Since we were restricted to indoor activities, we decided to get some neccessities at the local Wal-mart. Here, we were able to sample Pan de Muertes, literally Bread of Death. This bread is very popular on the upcoming holiday, Dia del Muertes, the Day of the Dead, on November 2.

We´re not quite sure how long we´ll be here before moving on. Traffic may be negatively impacted due to the holiday festivities — Mexicans take their holidays very seriously! We would much prefer to be stuck in Veracruz, with it’s many beaches, to our next destination, Villehermosa, an oil business town.

Happy Halloween!

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In our last post, we said that we were headed to Puebla. Going to Puebla via the toll roads required us to go through Mexico City, something we really wanted to avoid. We´ve heard a lot of negative things about the horrible traffic and the corrupt police. One source told us that we had a 50-50 chance of getting pulled over by the police there, even if we had done nothing wrong. The hype might be overblown, but we decided to avoid it and try a different kind of adventure — driving the single lane highways.

Taking the single lane highways allowed us to get around Mexico City, but resulted in more mileage and slower driving. Freight trucks on these highways often drive at a mere 30mph. Passing these monsters via the oncoming traffic lane was challenging. A 120 mile trip took us about 3 hours. On the other hand, a 200 mile trip on the toll roads took us about 3 1/2 hours. We weren´t able to make it to Puebla, but decided instead to settle in a smaller town called Pachuca.

Pachuca was a cute little town with a great zócalo (main square). We sat in the zócalo watching the skateboarders and munching on $.60 pasties — just like the U.P. (Upper Peninsula of Michigan) ones. After our snack, we just wandered around.

We spotted a large indoor market and decided to check it out. It was pretty claustrophobic in there, consisting of many small booths selling shoes, Playstation games, car radios, backpacks, and just about anything else you can think of. As we soon found out, the layout was designed to disorient you and keep you inside. It reminded us of a labyrinth. We eventually smelled some fresh air and saw a few rays of sunshine and were able to make our way out. Phew!

In most of our travels through Mexico, we’ve taken advantage of the excellent toll roads. They are quite expensive — at times as much as $1 for 15 kilometers (about 9 miles). The tollways are ideal for quickly travelling between large cities. Few people use them because they are so expensive. And because there are 2 lanes, you don´t have to worry about getting stuck behind slow trucks.

However, the principal highways allow you the opportunity to experience small town Mexico. We´ve only been able to experience it from the windows of our car so far. Travelling with cats does not afford us the flexibility to stop whenever we feel like it. Once we´ve settled in at our final destination, we can leave the cats to their naps at the casa, and spend more time exploring.

Our next stop is Veracruz. Beach, here we come!

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Here is a scenario that we’ve encountered a few times during our short stay in Mexico:

(setting: A bar in San Luis Potosi)
Waiter: ¡Buenas noches!
Libby: ¡Buenas noches! Una Victoria, por favor.
(Waiter nods and looks at John)
John: Negra Modelo, por favor.
(Waiter shakes his head)
Waiter: No Negra Modelo. ¿Corona?
John: Si.
(Waiter turns to look at Libby with a confused look)
Libby: ¿No Victoria?
(Waiter nods)
Libby: Ok, Corona.
(Waiter looks relieved, runs off and returns two Coronas, with no limes)
On the bright side, it was $4 for two beers and some garlic toast.

I guess this is something we will get used to. Obviously, the customer is not always right here.

As you may surmise, we are now in a city called San Luis Potosi (pop, approx. 500,000). We are staying in the historic downtown area. John decided to start showing off his Spanish skills by asking the hotel receptionist if they had any rooms for the night, and if they accepted cats. Wow, he understood! The room was only 416 pesos (about $40). But, you get what you pay for — the room is small, bordering on unclean, and located right above one of the busier streets in the historic section, which unfortunately had heavy traffic (and loud music) throughout the night.

The town is very pleasant. It has many small parks and colonial Spanish architecture. We liked it enough to stay two days here. However, we are anxious to get to our final destination, a town with a beach!

Tomorrow, we’re moving on. Our next destination will be Puebla.

Until then… ¡ciao!

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After 4 days and about 1,400 miles, we have made it to the border of Mexico. We crossed the border into Mexico on Tuesday afternoon, a few miles Northwest of Laredo, Texas. Why did we just not enter through Laredo, like we planned? Well, we saw an advertisement for an alternative route that “saves you time and money” crossing the border, by avoiding the lines in Laredo. This was via an alternative route on a toll road, SH-255. Considering we were the only people trying to cross at 2:30 pm on a Tuesday, I’d say that the alternate route lived up to it’s hype.

After our trip through the border, we drove a little more than 200km (approx 120 miles) to arrive at Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, Mexico. Monterrey is the 3rd largest city in Mexico and is known as the most Americanized city. They have a Sheraton, multiple shushi restaurants and nightclubs that charge admission.

This was where things got interesting. We arrived at the Holiday Inn that claims to be “pet friendly” (as listed on their web site as well as Orbitz) around 6pm, only to discover that they actually were not. The receptionist gave us instructions on how to get to a nearby hotel that allowed pets, although repeated attempts to locate it were unsuccessful. We were now in a foreign country, having spent over 8 hours in our Civic, unable to speak Spanish, and looking for a pet-friendly hotel.

Oh, yeah! Did we forget to mention that all the reading we’d done about Mexico said to avoid driving at night?

We found ourselves driving through Monterrey, at night, using tiny maps from a guide book. The main street we were using to search for hotels suddenly ended due to construction and we ended up driving through some residential streets. John didn’t drive here, but he describes the traffic and congestion in Monterrey like “driving in downtown Chicago, during Friday evening rush hour, except there are twice as many lanes and cars to deal with.” After 20 minutes of zigzagging, avoiding stray dogs, friends helping their intoxicated friends off the ground, people walking down the middle of the road, and various roads that just ended because of construction, we somehow found outselves back on the street we needed to be on. Needless to say, we were a bit frazzled.

We decided we needed to just find a place, sneak the cats in, and prepare a little better for our next parts of the journey. So, we ended up staying at a motel-like Best Western hotel (doors are accessible from the parking lot, not an inside hallway) about 5km outside of downtown Monterrey, in San Nicholas.

It was about 9:20pm and we decided we needed some comfort food to calm our nerves. So, our first meal in Mexico, on this journey, was pizza at a Papa John’s. It hit the spot!

The cats are taking this all very well. They don’t really like being in the car, especially when they are in their carriers. However, they really seem to enjoy exploring the new hotel rooms once they arrive.

We’re spending a 2nd night in Monterrey in order to give the cats and us a needed rest. Tonight, we plan to spend the evening exploring downtown Monterrey, where we’ll get a great meal (in a non-American chain restaurant), have a few drinks and hopefully watch the White Sox win the World Series.

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We are one-third of the way into our journey to Playa del Carmen, and are spending the night in Austin, Texas. Thanks to Jeff P. in Austin for all the advice on travelling through Mexico!

Tomorrow, we make a run for the border. We’re planning on entering Mexico via Laredo, TX to Nuevo Laredo, MX. Wish us luck with the customs agents!

Drug smuggling exists in many border cities, and Nuevo Laredo is no exception. The gangs that have sprung up to support the drug activity have made Nuevo Laredo a less than appealing place to linger in. We plan to drive through quickly and hopefully end up in Monterrey for the night. More about Monterrey when we arrive.

We’ve been getting a lot of questions and concern about Hurricane Wilma. Wilma has definitely affected Playa del Carmen, but the town has not been destroyed. We have heard some reports of the main highway to Cancun being closed. But come hell or high water (hee hee), we are determined to get to Playa. And we are just as excited as we were before Wilma. We had been planning on doing some volunteer work in Playa, and now we hope that we’ll be able to have a part in helping to rebuild.

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