High in the Mountains

We are once again high in mountains of Mexico in the nice town of San Cristobal de las Casas. It has been great here. It has rained everyday, and we are really enjoying the mountain air and cold nights.

It took us two days to get here, but we saw some great things on the way. We stopped at El Tule, where they claim to have the worlds fattest tree, over 100 ft in circumfance. We took a swim in a beautiful waterfall. Gideon even joined in some cliff jumping with his old man (what a brave dog). Plus we even had the privelage of spending the night in a luxurius gas station parking lot. Jeanette is incredible to put up with my crazy ideas!!

We are at the gateway to the Yucatan. From here we will head to Palenque, the favorite site of most people we have talked to. It is deep in a jungle, supposed to be awesome. Plus a couple more waterfalls to see on the way.

Deep In The Heart Of Mexico

It has been some time since our last blog. Don't fret we still miss everyone. Getting simple amenities like power and water are becoming more and more challenging, not to mention internet.
Since leaving our great spot in Zihuatanejo we have traveled several hundred more miles down the coast. Stopping first in Acapulco. That is one crazy place. We of course headed for the world famous cliff diving show (just like our honeymoon). This time we went all out and enjoyed dinner on the cliff side. We saw a man light himself on fire then dive over a hundred feet in the complete darkness. Really cool!
After leaving there we stopped at a couple of small coastal towns. They were mostly surf towns. Really quiet and laid back, but not we had to keep moving down the line. We decided to head inland and visit the city of Oaxaca. Quite a journey to get here over a huge mountain, 8000 ft plus at a mind blowing speed of 15mph. It took us so long we ended up searching for our destination in the dark, highly recommend not trying that. But we made it and we are once again tucked away in a randomly placed trailer park.
The town huge! We braved another attempt at public transportation by venturing out to the famous Monte Alban ruins. What an amazing site. It is a very large area with many "temples" scattered on a platue. The best we can tell, they were all used for sacarificing. Apparently the Zapotec's were quite friendly. This is the first of many archelogical sites we will see as we head towards the Yucatan.
Until next time, adios.

We love it here!

Xitapa/Zihuatanejo are two towns so close together that they share the same street signs but could not be more different from eachother!

We stayed one night in Xitapa, which is pretty small resort town with little to offer otherwise. The RV park was nice with a big, clean pool and washing machiens (we NEEDED to do laundry...such a process!) but was basically a parking lot. We decided to drive the 10 miles or so to check out Zihautanejo for a night. As soon as we got here we new we wanted to stay for more than one night!

El Manglar is a small RV park that backs right up to a beautiful bay. Awesome swimming here! There is a restaurant with a river to the right of it on the proprety and a small bridge that goes over it and directly to the beach. It's crazy, there are crocodiles in the river...literally 10-15 feet from where we are sitting! This place is just amazing!

Our next destination is Alcolpoco. There is a neat sounding RV park there that we are looking forward to checking out! It has small personal pools at each spot! Although it would have to be pretty awesome to beat this!

Guadalajara

It's been a few days since our last post and not too much has happened other than our day spent in Guadalajara!
We stayed in a very nice RV park (which was really more of a small neighborhood community) just outside of the city, for 3 days. We really liked it there. We spent one day in the heart of Guadalajara exploring some very neat buildings! The city has lots of interesting sites to see, including Talaquepaque.
We journeied there via public transportation and got...a little lost! We had to walk a bit to get where we wanted to be. Not so bad. We really enjoyed seeing all of the historical sites but were not so fond of the HUGE city. It has more that 4 million people! I think we will avoiding large cities from now on. The day ended with a 3 hour (no joke) bus rude back to our RV! It was crazy! We made friends with a sweet older couple and relaxed at our spot the rest of the time.
On our way to Xitapa/Zihuatanejo we stopped at 2 beautiful spots to stay the night. We were right on the water both nights but neither spot offered more that a safe place to spent the night. We were thankful to be safe:)

Slow and Steady

Since touching down on the mainland, it feels like we haven't covered much ground. Especially these last couple of days. After leaving San Blas we only traveled about 45 miles to our next stop. It did however still take us two hours.

We decided to stop at Ricon de Guayabitos. We are not sure why, but we are trying to see as much as we can. I am glad we stopped, I have never witnessed anything like it. It was a Mexican resort town, but it was targeted for Mexicans rather than Gringos. In my ignorance the thought never existed. A beautiful beach, banana boat rides, street vendors, fresh fruit stands, and even a booze cruise. To boot, it was are most expensive night of camping. We are defiantely experiencing it all.

Yesterday we headed for Puerto Vallarta, just another 45 miles. This time nearly three hours. You can't imagine slower traffic or worse roads. P.V. was great. We had a great camping spot almost downtown. I think it was our nicest campsite. It had grass, trees, patios and not a single other person in the entire park. Gideon really loved the freedom. The owner said they don't get much traffic other than about twice a year when RV caravans (about 50 rigs) come through and stay for a month or two. A walk to the melachon, a nice meal, a bucket of beers, and still looking young enough for everyone to call to us by yelling, "hey honeymooners". A nice evening.

After back tracking a bit, we made it Guadalajara. A huge city with apparently relentless rain. Hopefully tomorrow it is decent enough for us to see all this historic city has to offer.

Crocodile Hunting in San Blas

We haven't spent this long in one place since Cabo. When you are in place like this, it is hard to motivate yourself to once again travel into the unknown. The beach is unbelievable; 3 miles of soft hard packed sand, 80 degree water, and hardly a sole in sight.

There is a Canadian couple here that has been living in this spot for almost a year now. There rig is covered by a huge palapa which shades them all day. They even paid to have the great power supplied to all the spots. They have proven to be a great help. They are headed to the Yucatan soon, so we think we may cross paths further down the line.

Today our new neighbor was generous enough to drive us into town and drop us at the river tour. Once again we had a private tour since there is no one around. We took about a 15 ft boat up a mysterious crocodile infested river. On the way we saw about a half a dozen species of heron, including blue and tiger. Really cool! We also saw king fisher's, talapia, turtles, iguanas, and of course crocodiles.

Less than half way through the tour a giant 20ft croc jumped up and tried to swallow Jeanette, thankfully I am a quick cat and was able to wrestle him into submission. I decided to let him live upon our guides request.

I am so amazed at Jeanette. After the tour, we had to get back to our IRV. A hard task without our bikes, a taxi, or a car. I was able to convince her we could hitch it back, she is brave for trusting me or maybe crazy. Within 2 minutes a couple of really nice guys pick us up and we were home in no time.

We can't stay stagnate for too long, so we move a little further down the line tomorrow.

Tenemos No Mas Pesos!

What an incredible circumstance when you run out of pesos, run short of gas, and it is a Saturday; banks are closed, you are in a town where a gringo is not expected for 3 more weeks, not to mention electricity is limited. Enter us; enter Teacapan.

Leaving Mazatalan in a whirl wind as to secure enough daylight to reach our next destination. With our new book in hand and confidence restored, we took little time preparing. We chose Teacapan for its reported good campsites and adventures activities, like crocodile hunting. By the time we got there, we were running on about 1/4 tank of gas, just enough since our town had a station. Of the 3 sites we visited, the first two flat turned us away. Very uncommon in Mexico, most times they find anyway possible to take your money. We were convinced we would have to dry camp, but didn't have enough gas to run our generator. Without a generator, no A/C, without A/C the longest night you can imagine. A quick trip into town and problem solved right?, wrong. This little town of 1000 people look at a dollar like you would imagine a person in Kentucky looking at wampum.

As it turns out our third and last stop was also closed, but out of "coincidence", we think not, the owners brother was right behind us. He was the nicest old man you can imagine, between his broken English and my bad Spanish we arrange for one night with no water. We were relieved until 30 minuets into our stay the power trip off. One other space... the same problem. We were prepared to suffer. I decided to run the generator for as long as I could and then literally sweat out the night. It shut off at 12am. When I switched the power back over, our A/C kicked back on and we expected another 30 mins of relief. Just so happens the power worked through the night. Literally a miracle!

After an adventurous walk on the beach we left with now less than a 1/4 tank. We drove to a town about 50KM away hoping to find gas. We arrived there Saturday, no open banks, still no Pesos. We were able to get just enough gas to get us to a big town, but not without a very hefty exchange rate.

We decided to drive into Tepic for supplies; food, pesos, and gas. But without any pesos for the tole road, 190KM took all afternoon with the last 20KM over a beautiful mountain pass taking one hour. Praise the Lord for Walmart! We got gas, food, and pesos all on a Saturday! We headed for the coast, a town called San Blas.

San Blas is beautiful. We are right on the beach, the water is warm, the pool is clean, and we have 30 reliable Amps of electricity. It is about 65 degrees inside our IRV right now!

A Day In Mazatlan

Mazatlan is by far the biggest city we have been in yet. We are camping on the outskirts of town, which seems to be normal for RV'ers. We took a bus into the center of town yesterday to spend some time seeing the sites. We visited the mercado, the famous church, some nice parks, and then went on a wild goose chase to find the Pacifico Brewery.

After searching the whole town (on foot as usual), we came to our destination. First stopping into a dingy bar to change into pants then we started our private tour of the oldest & smallest brewery in Mexico (1900), actually we were the only two that signed up. It was quite impressive. We learned that most "mexican" beers are actually German, we like them even more now! After the tour we headed to the muesum for some fresh and free beers (best Pacifico we ever had!), plus an incredible view of the city.

Having walked enough for one day, we hired a taxi, more like a glorified golf cart, to bring us to the "Golden Zone". We had the best meal we have yet, and extremely cheap. A long but very enjoyable day!

We made it to the Main Land:)

After a week in Cabo it was time to head back to La Paz to catch our ferry. The ferry terminal is actually 10 miles east of La Paz and is called Pichelinge. Only a 5 min. drive from there is an awesome beach called Tecalote where we decided to spend the night before catching the ferry. We wanted to be close to the ferry and one the water, so it was perfect.... well almost. We got the RV stuck in the sand and we quite a process to get out! Finally, we had to find someone with a big enough to pull us out. At least we made the ferry.

Now, the ferry was quite an experience! From the beginning we didn't know what they would have us do with Gideon, so that made us a bit uneasy. Actuall getting on the ferry was easy but no one was able to tell us what would happen to our dog. Turns out the there was a kennel on the ship where he had to spend the night. It was really just a few metal cages and we very sad to leave him there alone. Matt and I slept in a passenger room which was a large room full of seats, like you might find on an airplane. We tried our best to get some sleep but it was no easy taks! Until early in the morning, really bad movies were playing (in spanish, of corse) and the lights were on all night! It was a reliefe when morning came and we could go to Gideon and get off the ship.
Poor Gideon had the hardest night of his life that night! He must have tried get escape his cage because his paws are all cut up now and he has a hard time walking:( He has been asleep for about 24 hours as well. He's a tough Weimariner though! Needless to say, we are all thankful to have made it to Mazatlan safely!