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While
in McAllen, we had one of those "Small World "
experience that happen every now and then and
always amaze us. We got into the town late in the
afternoon and spent a lot of time trying to find a
camper park. There are a ton of them there, but the
trouble was that almost all of them are geared to
long term residents. It has become a retirement
community and snowbirds from up north leave their
RVs and small house trailers there permanently,
flying down in the winter months to occupy them.
Our AAA guide to camping was worse than useless and
had proved to have misinformation throughout the
trip. Their information on McAllen was no better
and they had all the parks listed as camping
areas.
We
were getting tired of the hunt and had even gone to
a firehouse for directions. By the time we got down
town, the visitor center was closed so the
firehouse was all we had. We ended up on a little
street with about 4 or 5 RV parks, all the wrong
kind and it was starting to get dark. In
desperation, we pulled into one that had an office
out front and went up to the door. The office was
closed so Boyd went to the trailer next to it to
see if we could get some advice. A really friendly
fellow answered the door and asked where we were
from. It turned out that he was the brother of one
of Boyd's former coworkers at KPC, Bonnie Heimbuck!
He helped us find the manager and found us a spot
to camp in for a couple of nights. You just never
know who you are going to run into 5000 miles from
home!
I
want to take a moment to add here that while in
Texas, we got word of the passing of one of our
dearest friends in Alaska. David Forbes had died
of a sudden heart attack. As many of you know he
was a fellow professor at KPC and he and his
family have been close friends of our family for
more than 20 years. Dave was very active in
community theatre and the arts in general, and
we tromped a lot of boards together over the
years. Dave and his wife Lorrene were the last
folks to come by the house before we left. In
fact, they helped us "strike the set" one last
time as we did the final cleaning. David Forbes
was much loved, and he will be greatly missed by
our family and by everyone whose life he
touched.
On
with the Saga!
On
Tuesday, October 8th, we left the USA and passed
into Mexico to the border town of Reysmosa, to
drive along the coastal highways to where the
Yucatan Peninsula begins. Then we would cut across
to Chetamal on the Caribbean, where we would cross
the border into Belize. We had gotten lots of
information about Mexico. We sent away for camping
books, we had an AAA map and in McAllen where we
bought our Mexican car insurance at an outfit
called Sanborn's, we picked up more maps,
guidebooks and information. People all over had
told us that we had to be very careful of bandits
and that even the police were crooked and would
demand money to let us pass. We found this
information to be complete rot! None of it was
true. No one in Mexico, official or not, EVER asked
us for bribe money, and we never once were attacked
by bandits, nor did we ever feel in any danger
whatsoever. All the people were very friendly and
kind, including the "federales".
But
we did have a problem due to lack of information.
All the guidebooks including the books from
Sanborn's who are acclaimed as THE authorities on
Mexico, told us that our credit cards were good
EVERYWHERE! When we got our paperwork done the day
before entering Mexico, they accepted a credit card
for the fee for admitting our vehicle, so we
figured that our plastic would be good at the gas
stations which are all government owned and
operated. Additionally, we had been told so many
horror stories about thieves that we decided not to
carry much cash. We knew there were lots of tolls
to pay, so we got $400 cashed into Pesos and
planned on paying for everything else with plastic.
BIG MISTAKE!
We
found that the Pemex (government) gas stations
would not accept credit cards at all, and gas was
around $3 per gallon. Pulling our camper trailer,
we were getting about 11 miles to the gallon so we
figured it was going to be very close. We had
loaded up with gas in Texas and had only filled up
once in Mexico that first day. That night at
Tampico, with around 900 more miles in to go in
Mexico and two more overnights, we counted our
money and figured we could just make it if we
bought nothing but gas and tolls. We had a stock of
food and so we decided to plunge onward and to keep
our fingers crossed in the hope that we wouldn't
have any car trouble.
At
this point, it would have been nice if we had the
information that we could go to any bank in Mexico
and use their ATM machine with our American ATM
card and get Mexican cash. After our experience
with the gas stations, and toll booths not taking
plastic, we just assumed that the only place it was
good was upscale hotels, none of which were on our
itinerary. If we had only known about the banks, I
am sure our trip through Mexico would have been
much more pleasant and leisurely. As it was, we
were so worried about the gas and the toll money
that we didn't really feel we could take extra
time. We had to get through before we ran out of
food and water stores! We were constantly counting
money and checking the mileage. As a result,
neither one of us ever thought to take one picture
in Mexico! So you will just have to go look in a
travel magazine to see all the picturesque farms
and burros. Suffice to say that we saw plenty of
them.
We
had spent the night in the Tampico Airport parking
lot. One of our guidebooks said it was the only
place in the area to camp other than a camper park
which was now closed. The parking lot was like most
lots in the states where you get a ticket from the
booth on the way in and then pay on your way out. I
asked the attendant in my broken Spanish how much
to camp the night and she said 100 pesos (around 10
dollars). We cringed and said okay, we can maybe
make it, but tomorrow has GOT to be cheaper. When
we left in the morning, we found out what soon
proved to be standard procedure throughout Mexico.
Fees and tolls for vehicles are charged per AXLE.
Since we had a tandem axle trailer,to get out of
the parking lot, we had to pay not 100 pesos, but
200 pesos. That pretty much shot our whole
allotment for camping fees, but there was no
turning back now. We plunged onward.
It
was here in Tampico where we took a wrong turn.
Tampico is the largest city on the gulf coast and a
major metropolitan area. We decided to pay the toll
for the bypass. What we didn't know was that the
bypass was in two sections, going back into the
city for a few blocks and then picking up again.
Our maps were so very poor that we just didn't see
that. Also, the Mexicans have a way of changing the
numbers on their highways right in the middle of a
stretch of road. You can be driving along on Mexico
180 and it can suddenly become Mexico 255 with no
reason whatsoever. Or it can become three different
roads all with the same number. You just have to
know what towns are in the direction you are going
and hope for the best. That was where our Sanborn
maps really let us down. Most town names were not
on them, so we had no way to know where we were
going sometimes. As a result we got off the bypass
too soon and ended up on a minor road going west.
By the time we discovered our error we had gone
about 60 miles on it. We then looked at the map and
found a side road that would connect to the main
highway south, but once again the map was wrong. It
was marked as a major artery but turned out to be a
pot hole ridden, barely paved nightmare. It took us
until mid afternoon at an average speed of only 30
to 35 MPH to get back on the main road again. I
then realized that we would not get into Vera Cruz
(our planned layover) by nightfall. There is no way
either one of us was going to drive in Mexico after
dark.
It
was then that Boyd came up with a brilliant idea
the ended up saving our financial butts. He had
noticed that the Pemex stations all had large
parking lots and that the truckers often parked and
slept there. He suggested that we stop at the first
one we saw after 5pm and ask them if we could stay
the night. That evening we pulled into a very large
Pemex about 75 miles or so from Vera Cruz and I
again exercised some of my highs school Spanish.
The gal pumping gas said of course we could stay!
She pointed to a police guard who showed us just
where we could park. He apparently was the official
parker because he did the same with all the trucks
that came later. The cost? Totally free! What a
boon!
We
have decided that the Pemex stations are the best
places in Mexico to spend the night, with or
without a camper. All of them are connected with a
police station which has an officer on duty all
night long, walking around the trucks and parked
vehicles. The pumps are open 24 hours a day and the
attendants at night doze right in front of them
under the guard's watchful eye. They get up when
someone drives in for gas. Nothing could be more
safe or secure. We slept with only our screen door
closed as it was hot. While there is no plug in or
water and sewer hookups, there is a little 7-11
type store and rest rooms at every one, and the
larger ones all have showers and restaurants. Some
even have sleeping rooms available for a fee.
Sometimes they are a little noisy with traffic in
and out, but things slow down at night on the
highways. Even many truckers don't want to take
their chances with the speed bumps and cows on the
road in the dark.
By
first light we were up, had coffee, and were back
on the road toward Villahermosa, our last planned
layover. I was very careful with the roads after
our experience in Tampico and I would stop right in
the middle of a busy city street if I was unsure of
the road. Boyd was a little skeptical about this
method, but I found that road rage doesn't really
exist in Mexico and other than a few honks, no one
seemed upset. In Vera Cruz, there was no bypass due
to construction we had to go straight through the
city looking for our toll road. At one point I
stopped a traffic cop who was giving a fellow a
ticket and both the cop and the fellow were very
friendly and helpful. They ended up drawing me a
map to the road we needed.
We
were on toll roads all that day. They were very
expensive due to our double charges, but not going
on them would have added an extra day and a lot of
extra gas to our trip. Also, the regular roads have
a lot of tolls too. There is one on almost every
bridge. They aren't as high as the toll road tolls
but still, they add up at double cost, so we bit
the bullet and paid. That night we camped in a very
nice Pemex after passing through Villahermosa. We
were about 375 miles from the border.
Villahermosa
was the prettiest town in Mexico that we saw. I
would say it is a medium sized city and it seems to
be rather well off with an obvious infrastructure
that seemed much more stable than anything we had
seen thus far. Mexico had surprised me in that it
seemed to have so very much poverty. Many areas had
children working in the fields instead of being in
school. It was really sad to see everyone working
so hard yet so poor. I have seen countries in
Africa and the subcontinent of Asia that seemed to
have more. Most of the towns and cities didn't even
have proper sewage and many areas had no
electricity. People were living in mud huts. The
government owned Pemex stations were like islands
of modernity evenly spaced throughout the vast
poverty stricken countryside.
The
next morning we counted up our money and realized
that it was going to be very close indeed. We had a
full tank of gas, but only 300 pesos left and
around $40 in American money. The road seemed to
have an unusually large number of toll bridges. Our
pesos were dwindling away. As we passed through a
police checkpoint leaving the State of Tobasco, I
asked the soldier there (who actually spoke some
English) if we could give American dollars for gas.
He assured us (in error as it turned out) that we
would indeed be able to do that at the next gas
station.
Let's
stop for a moment to discuss the checkpoints.
Mexico is made up of States, much like the US only
they seem to be smaller. At the border of every
one, there is a checkpoint. Sometimes it is open
and sometimes not. If not you can just pass
through, If open, you must stop and show ID and be
subjected to a possible inspection for anything
from fire arms to fresh fruits. There have been so
many horror stories written about these checkpoint
and the people that man them that they have moved
into the realm of legend. Because of that, this was
the aspect of our trip that I had most feared, and
it turned out to be the least of my concerns. Part
of that may be due to the fact that I used the
"Bill Butcher Method" of dealing with Mexican
officialdom. Bill is a dear friend in Belize who
owns the Aguada Hotel in the Cayo and he gone
through Mexico several times without trouble. His
method is simple: Never, under any circumstances,
no matter how much Spanish you may know and no
matter how smug you may be about your linguistic
abilities, NEVER EVER speak even one word of
Spanish to any official. Always be dumb. I repeat,
ALWAYS be dumb.
In Mexico, once you leave the first border town,
almost no one speaks any English at all, unless you
are at some tourist resort frequented by Americans.
So when you come to a check point, they will tell
you in Spanish to pull over or show your papers or
whatever. What you do is immediately ask them if
they speak English. DO NOT say "¿Habla
Englais?" No Spanish, remember? Not even so much as
a "Gracias". Say with a very pleasant smile, "I'm
sorry, I don't speak Spanish. Do you speak
English?" They will say no, even if they do speak a
few words and then they will repeat what they just
said in Spanish to you only louder and faster, in
the hope that your problem with Spanish is merely a
hearing problem. Just act dumb, even if you
understand. Eventually they will pantomime what
they want you to do. Keep smiling and nodding and
trying to understand. They will laugh and tell each
other how stupid you are. By now, you are holding
up traffic and they will either get discussed and
wave you on without inspection, or they will only
make a brief check. We never had anyone ask us for
a bribe or take our stuff. If this really does
happen in Mexico, it didn't happen to us because
they probably figured we wouldn't understand
anyway. One young soldier we thought was trying to
buy a flashlight from us in broken English. We were
all excited, hoping to pick up a little extra cash,
but it turned out that he was just wondering what
it had cost us. Too bad.
So
there we were, our last peso spent and gas was
getting low. We pulled into a Pemex in the hope of
trying to get gas for greenbacks, as we still had
our $40. When I pulled into the station, the young
man at the pump indicated that they had no gas.
Apparently this can happen at any time and any
place in Mexico. The distribution system is such
that sometimes they figure wrong and are late
getting gas out to stations in a region.
I
began to frantically ask the fellow in my broken
Spanish if he would take my $20 and syphon a bit of
gas for me from some vehicle parked there. I was
having a hard time explaining when a truck driver
came over and , in rapid Spanish, explained my
request to the fellow.
"You
speak English," I said to the fellow and he smiled
and said he was Belizean. It turned out he drives
cargo between California and Belize on a regular
basis and knew the road well. He also said that no
one would take our American money hear because they
wouldn't know what to do with it. He had some extra
pesos though, and he sold us 200 pesos. But we
still had no gas!
"Can
you make it 50 miles?" he asked. "If you can, there
is another Pemex there." We weren't sure but we
thought maybe we could. Our new friend said that
the diesel was due into the gas station within the
hour, and that he would watch for us along the way
in case we didn't make it. With that we pressed
onward.
We
made it to the next gas station about 2 miles after
the one gallon light had come on and we were
sighing a breath of relief only to find that this
station too was out of gas. No one would sell us
any from their cars. Not even a taxi driver.
Crestfallen, we saw no option but to keep going.
The border was 20 K away. It's funny how you always
have the urge to drive faster when you are almost
out of gas, in an effort to make it to safety as
fast as you can. I had to force myself to stay at
the maximum gas preserving speed of around 50
MPH.
Somehow
we made it to the boarder. I quickly turned off the
car because I knew checking out of Mexico was going
to be a big paperwork deal, but the fellow at the
gate didn't like that. He wanted me out of the
road, so he took our papers personally to the front
of the line and we waves us through. Once at the
Belize border we were just able to make it to the
impound area before I heard the sputters begin.
Fortunately we had a gas can and were able to find
a guy who went into the free zone area and got it
filled for us. But that cost us the 200 pesos plus
15 of our last 20 bucks. So there we were, in
Belize with only 5 gallons of gas, over 150 miles
to drive, and only 5 dollars in our pockets. Just
the same, I wanted to kiss the ground!
We
drove into the little border town of Corazol, and
found a pay phone. I called some friends in San
Ignacio. (collect) and told them we were broke.
After they got done laughing, they put another
friend on the phone who knew someone in Carazol who
would come meet us and give us enough money to get
home. By now it was well after dark, but we didn't
want to stop. We were so strung up from all the
tension of the day that we wanted to keep driving.
Not knowing the Northern Highway, I had to take it
very slow, as the night was very dark and cloudy.
Belizean speed bumps are even bigger than Mexican
ones. But we ended up pulling in into our friend's
place at around 11:30 pm, totally exhausted but
very glad indeed to have made it to our new
home.
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After
a rest, Boyd and I visit some of our
favorite spots around the Cayo. This
district in the Maya Mountains is one of
the most beautiful areas of Belize,
although there are many other very
beautiful areas, from the moist southern
coast with it's giant Guanacaste trees, to
Island Cayes with the barrier reef.
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FRESH
FRUITS AND VEGGIES ARE NEVER A PROBLEM AT
THE SAN IGNACIO MARKET
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As
I work on this page, a baby gecko comes
out high on the wall in the evening. I
hope he has enough bugs to eat so he will
grow fat and live here a long time. A
gecko in the house is good luck!
Below
are some of Boyd's bugs that he has been
netting and photographing under the
microscope. Also, one night Boyd and I
went out with a flashlight and
photographed some frogs. Do you think any
of these ugly fellows could turn into a
prince? Who is going to kiss them to find
out!
Our
long trek is over, but Boyd says to watch
for future articles about Belize AND
Alaska as well as other areas in
"Observations of a Naturalist".
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