Mexican politics

Every now and then someone has asked me to write in this blog about my opinions of Mexican politics. I haven't done it because I don't feel that I know enough. Also, the Mexican constitution prohibits foreigners from taking part in anything political... and that's in there for the reason that there has been lots of intervention by US citizens in the past. Of course, right now I'm in the US so I can say what I want and even when in Mexico I seriously doubt that a political blog entry in English would get me kicked out of the country.

All that said, I will report a little on some conversations we had with Mexicans while we were there earlier this year. We didn't happen to run into any enthusiastic supporters of leftist Mexico City Mayor Lopez Obrador who is running for president in the 2006 elections, though there are many. A couple of people pointed out that his heart may be in a good place in his intentions to help the poor but that the economics of the country may be hurt if he does. A friend from Mexico City said that the budget there is a catastrophe.

Regarding the current president, Vicente Fox, whose PAN party won the first presidency other than the long-standing PRI in 60 years, I've heard a lot of mixed opinions. It's clear that he hasn't received the support in the Mexican congress that he would have needed to try out more of his ideas. As presidents in Mexico are elected for one six-year term (a sensible practice), he is not a contender for 2006.

There are PRI candidates, and several Mexicans mentioned they thought the PRI was the most likely to win next year. One of our friends said that there are quite a few competent politicians in the upper levels of the PRI. He may have mentioned more than one but the only name I recall is Enrique Jackson.

One Mexican whose job requires that he keeps close tabs on the political scene told me that the 2006 election will be a particularly important one for the directions that the economy of Mexico goes in.

As someone who may be living in Mexico longterm, I do intend to become better informed. A lot of the news is in Spanish, so I will be able to improve my reading comprehension too.

She took face paints to Mexico

Yesterday I met Judy Hopen of St. Louis. We got to talking about Mexico, and she asked if we had ever been to the surreal Las Pozas of Edward James. I said yes. (See my blog entry entry by clicking on the link.) Kelly and I had also walked over to the nearby town of Xilitla, which I also blogged about.

It turned out that Judy had gone down there six or seven years ago with an outsider art tour. They had had dinner one Saturday evening in Xilitla, but she was feeling a little queasy and decided that sitting in the restaurant wasn't for her. She went and sat on a park bench in the zocalo, or central square. Being Saturday night, the place was popping. She pulled out a little kit of face paints and pretty soon she was painting kids' faces. Then some sassy, sexy teenage girls noticed that she had black-light face paints and a little black light, and so she ended up doing a lot of teenage faces. The girls were going dancing later that evening at a club with black light, so they were quite thrilled. Judy said she did their faces in more of a Hindu style than she had used on the little kids, with a lot of dots.

When the rest of her group emerged from the restaurant, they found Judy surrounded by a jovial crowd in the plaza. It's a night that she remembers very fondly.

I immediately thought that I'd like to take some face paints when we go back, but then I gave a moment's thought to my artistic ability and decided to pass on that idea. Judy had another suggestion -- she pulled a little bottle of bubble-making stuff out of the back pocket of her shorts, and explained that she is also a bubble lady, and that this stuff makes bubbles that don't pop immediately but can last for hours and attach to each other. So you can make all sorts of things with them. You can get this at toy stores.

Now that's an idea I might pick up on. She said it doesn't leave any residue.

Judy doesn't speak a lot of Spanish, but it doesn't matter! What cross-cultural fun!

I hadn't heard of outsider art before. I didn't know if it was art to do with the out of doors or art done by people who are outside mainstream society. Judy had mentioned that her group had stopped at a Mexican prison (not your usual tourist stop) and bought art from some of the prisoners there. I poked around the internet a little and found out:

Outsiderart.info had this definition: Outsider Art... Art From Outside The Art World.

Judy recommended the Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art too.

The Multi-country Life

Last night Kelly and I had dinner with a friend of ours here in Colorado. She is here part of the year, at her house in Italy at times, and recently got back from living on the Oregon coast for several months as a house exchange for her house in Italy. During her time in Oregon, she went to Mexico for about a month around Christmas.

I had been looking forward to asking her about this sort of lifestyle. "I love it!" she exclaimed. "I'd get bored if I stayed in one place for as long as a year." She commented that there are drawbacks, such as bad tenants, or being a little scattered sometimes, but overall she was totally enthusiastic about the rhythms of her life. She's done this for years.

Kelly and I have noticed that by having spent half a year in Mexico, it feels like we are getting a lot more living into the same time. We like this.

Our friend commented that the people she has known who have successfully lived outside their own countries for long periods of time have all been people who have absorbing creative work that they take with them, whether it's painting or other art forms, writing, or whatever. We do fit that category, as she does too.

Food for thought in considering our Mexican plans.

Rolly Brook's website on Mexico

I first became aware of Rolly Brook from his many helpful posts on the Mexconnect forum. (I've mentioned Mexconnect before -- it's a paid membership forum that has provided me with a tremendous amount of information. You can read some stuff without joining.)

Rolly lives in Lerdo, Durango. His website, www.rollybrook.com, is a mixture of personal and informational, rather like mine. But he's far more of an expert than I am on many of the practicalities of Mexican life, and he has more patience than I do in explaining them!

Good reading and reference for anyone who's thinking of living in Mexico or retiring in Mexico, as he has done.

December -- We are fine even though the blog isn't

I'm going nuts trying to get the blog to work. One of these days I will succeed! In the meantime, Kelly and I are at Lake Chapala, where we plan to spend the holidays with close friends. I'm been changing this website over from one webhosting company to another, and have had any number of technical problems. I *think* the rest of the site is okay but the blog is bogged down. I'm working on it some every day. We got our clutch fixed, just fine, at the beach. Stayed a while in Mazatlan, and are now happy to be parked in a cute spot. More later. Much more!

Looking at our Mexican life from the US

I find I've been mulling over my life in Mexico a lot in the last few days here in the US. We are still trying to figure out just how we want to lead our lives... I'm surprised at how many people that I chat with in my small town (Crestone) here in Colorado assume that we will be here six months of the year and there six months. If they ask me if that's what we'll do, I just smile and "We're working on it."

It's not quite that cut and dried.

Kelly and I are really delving into what's important to us. What do we want to be doing and how is it is different from what we are doing now? Kelly is beginning to be better known internationally for his knowledge of natural architecture and sustainable building, and he may be doing a lot more traveling worldwide. Where would I want to be if he's off for several weeks? I might want to go on some of the trips but not all.

Sometimes the sense of community in this town where we've lived since 1996 is so rich and sweet that I can hardly even imagine leaving again at all! But I know from experience that when it starts turning really cold again, I'll want to be out of here.

And then I think of the sense of community in Mexico. Even though we were certainly on the fringes of it (which was nice in not understanding the small town politics that must exist there as they do here), we were welcomed so warmly.

I've noticed that when I'm talking with people who have been to Mexico the conversation is more vivid and alive than when I'm talking with people who don't really have that much sense of what it's like.

What DO I want to do? Hmm,I want to love and to learn... Getting more specific, I want to keep writing... I want to do a lot more with photography... I want to keep working part-time at things that provide income... I want to create a situation where whatever animals we have can be with us and easily enough cared for when we go away... I want to have a garden... the list continues. And so do the reflections. Last night I could hardly wait to get back to Bernal. Today I'm reflecting.

A Panorama Photo of Bernal, Mexico

Kelly has been playing around in Photoshop Elements too. There's a panorama feature which Bill Ellzey uses a lot. Kelly found three photos he had taken from the chapel on La Peña and he put them together and tweaked them a little.

Here's the result:



This photo was wider but in Internet Explorer the right menu dropped to the bottom of the page, so I had to make it this size. Ah, the limitations on art!

Playing around with Mexican Photos

A couple of days ago, Kelly and I went to a talk given by a photographer we know. Bill Ellzey has been a professional photographer for over 30 years, and his eye for natural beauty is vivid. One of his photos has even made the cover of National Geographic, something of a pinnacle for photographers.

We both got inspired from the talk. I love playing around with photographs in Photoshop Elements, which is the much cheaper, simpler, and user-friendly version of the venerable program Photoshop. So yesterday I decided to do have some fun. On June 1, I posted a photo of a waterslide at a hot springs in Ciudad Camargo, Chihuahua. Here's what I ended up with after cropping, applying a filter, brightening the picture, and adding a frame:

One thing Bill said was that if you have a strong horizontal line, putting it midway between the top and the bottom of the picture is almost never the best choice. I hadn't thought of that, but I tried different places for the line and could see it for myself.

I have always loved photography, and look forward to doing a lot more of it when we return to Mexico. I'd enjoy doing a short photo-essay book, or maybe a series of them. A place that you can publish short full-color books at reasonable rates is lulu.com, a publishing-on-demand place that I use for my book Mexico with Heart. That book just has black and white photos, as it's too long for color to be affordable. Lulu just added the color book option recently.

Home from Mexico

Yesterday I got home.

It surprised me. We have been back from Mexico for two weeks now, and I didn't know that I wasn't quite here yet. But suddenly, walking across the living room with nothing special on my mind, I thought, "This is home," and I felt it too.

It felt really good. It takes nothing away from my love of Mexico, of Bernal, of our house and cat there. It says little about what choices we will make in the future. It's about now, about being here, about living in the present.

Home.

Two Middle Eastern Travel Blogs

Okay, this isn't about Mexico... but if, like me, you enjoy travel writing of all sorts, here are a couple of good blogs:

I've already mentioned the blog and trip of a couple we know, Bruce and Tass, who are bicycling for about 3 months in the Middle East. Thought I'd mention it again as I am enjoying it a lot.

Thanks to BillieS for sending Kelly and me this Cairo blog by an Australian diplomatic wife, with lots of photos.

Mexican adoptions

One of the delightful surprises we've had recently was discovering that some good friends of ours are looking into adopting a baby from Mexico. They are going through an organization called Adoption Alliance, and here's the link to the page about the Mexican adoption program.

I asked my friends why Mexico, when you hear so much more about China and India. They explained that this program allows for getting the baby very young, which makes fuller bonding easier. They also liked the proximity of Mexico compared with the other places -- and they like "the opportunity to connect with the wonderfully rich, exuberant and child-loving culture of this region of Mexico." (It's around Guadalajara.)

When they asked Adoption Alliance for some references they could contact, one woman turned out to be an old friend of the woman in this couple. She and her husband spent over half a year in Mexico and are now home with their infant son. Part of why it took that long was -- no surprise to readers of this blog -- Mexican bureaucracy. Getting our FM-3 was somewhat less complicated than getting a Mexican passport for the baby, as well as other paperwork.

I'll report on our friends' progress later. They don't know exactly what the time frame will be, but maybe Kelly and I will be making a trip from Bernal to Guadalajara later this year to see our friends while they are there.

Cellphone service for US and Mexico

This morning I called Verizon from the US at 1-800-256-4646 and asked some questions about a cellphone service that we will try when we next go back to Mexico. It's called North America's Choice and for $59.95 a month, you get 450 minutes plus 1000 evening/weekend minutes.

This works in the US and in many parts of Mexico. It works in Canada too, but I don't know if it is all or just part.

I had the guy check my town of Bernal, and hooray, it's on the list. He mentioned that Ezequial Montes, the county seat and a pretty gringo-free town is also on the list. It's evidently done through a Mexican cellphone company that I hadn't heard of down there, called Lusacell.

This means that our family and friends will be able to phone us at a US number and talk to us without roaming charges. And we will be able to call them the same way, and without long distance charges up to our time limits.

Is that cool or what? Having just spent hours on the phone recently catching up with family members, both Kelly and I are very pleased that we'll be in closer touch after this.

The plan does not include a phone but the man who helped me said that you should get a kind of phone called a tri-mode, as there is a lot of analog in Mexico. He said that we'll be able to tell by a little triangular indicator whether we are in fact in a place where no roaming charges apply ("extended") or in a place where we'd have to pay, ugh, 69 cents a minute roaming ("roaming").

I didn't think to ask if there is a time period you sign up for.

If you look into this, the man I spoke with is named Robert and his extension is 8497. I asked if he works on commission and he said yes. He did a good job of informing me, so I can recommend him. Years ago, I worked on commission so I am always careful about this... but I won't be signing up myself for several months. Alas. We have both had our moments of homesickness lately.

Some interesting articles on Mexico

This morning I was going to get right to organizing my files... ugh... but decided I'd warm up by doing my email first.

Uh oh, here's a new issue of Escape from America in my inbox. I'm like a kid in a candy store when this online magazine turns up. It's fascinating reading, with a lot of different authors and the whole world covered.

There were several articles about Mexico in the current issue. Here's one about Michoacan with some passing comments about kinds of expats. At the end of the article there are links to a couple more articles about Mexico.

And here's an article that is written in a style rather like my own, but longer than most of my entries. If you like my blog, do go read about Rene Tihista in a junkyard.

Dreaming of a lower cost of living not far from the US and where they speak English? Here's an article, with lots of prices, about Nova Scotia.

Okay, back to weeding my old files... with a bit more zest. Think I'll throw out everything I can!

Pride, Perfectionism, and Learning Spanish

I have to admit I have my pride. I am not fond of sounding like an idiot -- in any language.

I'm a perfectionist to a fault, too. I do think I've become a bit better about this gradually. Often perfectionism is a game that isn't worth the candle.

But I often fear that in Spanish I am coming across something like this:

"Eet are a well day, ees eet not? And who are you today? Weer is you goink?"

Okay, I exaggerate to make my point. But let me try to tell a story in the past and it comes out along these lines:

"Yesterday we are going to Queretaro. We have ride the bus and we tooken a taxi to the National Office of Immigration. The taxi driver are speaking very fast and with his radio on and neither Kelly nor me are understanding. So I did ask him to turn his radio upside down and to speak more leisurely. Then I am telling him that we likes his city. We did have a well conversation about politics and finances and he tells us that he works twelve daily hours and six days per weekly. He is a very nice man."

I often think that my pride and my perfectionism, call that hatred of sounding stupid, are the biggest barriers to learning better Spanish. I haven't quite figured out yet how to turn them into a motivation to spend more time with grammar drills.

Many people know grammar but are shy to speak another language... we met many Mexicans like that. But conversations are my strong point... after all, you did understand my little story, didn't you? And Mexicans do get my drift a good percentage of the time.

So what will it take for studying a little Spanish daily to become an ingrained habit?

Hmm, I think that's a key: make it a little Spanish every day, and it's a much easier habit to really follow through on.

I'll report later. I do like blogging about this, as some unknown number of people are knowing that I was thinking of what doing practice improvement making me language!

Wonderful website for photos of Mexico!

I just stumbled upon the online photography of Mark Callanan and I immediately had to blog about it.

Here's his main page for 800+ stunning photos of Mexico.

And he has over twice as many photos on the Puerto Vallarta area.

That's how I came across his art... I'm working on some more webpages for my site about Vallarta. I'll blog when they are up. One of the sites I went to had his work on it, with a link to his site.

One of my greatest pleasures in life is the beauty of our world. Looking through his photos filled my heart!

Learning Spanish at home

Now that we are back from our half-year in Mexico, we are already looking forward to when we can return. How soon will it be? Probably several months.

It's a great time to keep the Mexican momentum going by brushing up on Spanish grammar, vocabulary, and so on... I was speaking so much (bad) Spanish while we were there that I didn't make much time to actually study it. That's fine, my comprehension and ability to express myself improved a lot. Now I want to get to where I can speak a better Spanish. Kelly's Spanish pronunciation is better than mine, but his fluency and vocabulary are less. We both have a good ways to go.

While we were there, I researched different Spanish-language audio programs and came to the conclusion that Platiquemos Espanol is one of the very best, probably the best. The link takes you to my review of it. I downloaded some of the files, printed out the accompnaying booklet, and really got into it during our drive home.

I find I'm kind of addicted to blogging, so probably a lot of what I'll be writing about this summer will be how we are getting along with Platiquemos. Our current thinking would get us back to Bernal in the autumn or early winter. We are talking about spending next winter in the Yucatan.

So please don't go away!

The Trouble with a Blog

We had dinner last night with friends. We were invited by Roni who spent last month in India, and she also invited Bill and Chinle, very good friends of ours. Roni had lots of great tales, but just about every time I started to tell a story, I realized that I had already blogged it and they had read it.

Future bloggers, beware of this pitfall! Not that it will stop me from blogging.

Conversations about Mexico

Yesterday I phoned to get our trash service restored. "We've been in Mexico for six months," I explained. The guy on the phone immediately said, "Next time take me with you!"

Around noon, I went to the post office, a five-minute drive away. That little errand took me over an hour, as I chatted -- mostly about Mexico -- with various friends and acquaintances. It's a small town here, and most of us don't have mail delivery, so the post office is a major social center.

In the evening, Kelly and I went to a potluck dinner. Again, we mostly talked about Mexico.

People are particularly interested in our $108/month (1200 peso) house rental and the cost of living. I made a small photo album that fits in my purse, and the house photos were popular.

Many of them have been to Mexico or other Spanish-speaking countries. Some of them speak Spanish well, others know about ten words. I loved talking with two different women in their 20s who have traveled in Latin America and speak very good Spanish. We swapped storied happily.

More than once, a husband or wife has been wanting to spend time in Mexico but their spouse has been reluctant. We assuaged some fears.

Several people told me I looked great, always nice to hear, and my reply was that living in a more joyous culture for half a year was the main reason.

Kelly and I are receiving so many invitations to eat out and tell our tales that we've decided to use a local hall and give a talk and slide show on living in Mexico!

Is This Home?

Kelly and I have been back at our home in Colorado for a day and a half now. We're caught up in unpacking, sorting through things, putting our three well-fed pets on a diet, and so on.

Despite all the chores, it feels great to be back and to begin catching up with our lives here.

But is this home? What has Mexico done to us?

On our way north, we stopped in Albuquerque at a huge shopping mall where we had a great time looking at some of the new camcorders and buying some books in English. In the midst of it all, Kelly said, "I'm homesick for Mexico." I immediately knew why he said that just then. Where was the liveliness?

My father traveled world-wide a great deal all his life, and he would say sometimes that at any given moment he could be homesick for two or three other places.

I know the feeling!

Back to the USA

Our last day in Mexico was spent driving north through the state of Chihuahua. The roads were good and we continued our conversation about the various places we'd lived. We had sold our llama ranch after some years, and we chortled to remember how annoyed some of our friends and acquaintances had been. We had been living their dream and they couldn't see why we would give up such a perfect life. But the impulse for something new, including travel, was at work in us. We moved into the city of Ashland for several years and then we moved again, north to Olympia, Washington. We think of those four years as our experiment in city life, and while Olympia is a very livable city, we really do prefer smaller places.

Our last year in Olympia, we had a Grey Line Hawaii tour bus parked in our back yard. We turned it into a charming motorhome, with lots of closet space, nooks for our two dogs, and a desk for each of us. Leaving order fulfillment for our business in the hands of some friends, we took off in June 1996 to explore the West. One of our favorite discoveries was the small town of Crestone, Colorado, and we bought some land there. We also liked southern New Mexico, and ended up buying four acres outside of Deming for a song. Later we built the ecological house that is our current home in Crestone. All this rambling conversation was helpful in thinking about the choices we'll be making when we get back there soon.

We kept an eye on the gas gauge this time as we talked, and we came upon the city of Chihuahua. We had taken a periferico bypass around it two years earlier but this time we missed one turn and ended up following signs to Ciudad Juarez via something called the Ruta Paisano. It was well marked and took us through an area of shopping malls, Sears, Office Depot, Wal-Mart, and upscale neighborhoods, in fairly heavy traffic. Kelly enjoyed every minute of it. I didn't, but had to admit it was interesting to get more of a sense of this prosperous city.

Our northward route took us off the main highway and along good two-lane roads via a small city called Nuevo Casas Grandes. We had stayed overnight there two years earlier but it was hot and still only midafternoon when we arrived there, so we went on to the border even though we weren't sure we were quite ready to leave Mexico.

The Palomas, Chihuahua -- Columbus, New Mexico crossing was one we knew well, as we had spent some time in Columbus and had gone over to Palomas for lunches, eyeglasses, and other things a number of times. When we got there around six, we were pleased to see that the main street of Palomas was finally paved.

Crossing the border turned out to be a piece of cake. We parked by the Mexican border offices. First we went to the Migracion office, where we presented our brand new FM-3s to be stamped. But the official smilingly gave them back to us and told us that they didn't need to be stamped and that with these visas we could come and go as much as we wanted to without even stopping by their office. That astonished me, and I intend to check it out further. But as I've said before, every Migracion office can do what it wants. Next we went to the office where vehicle stickers are issued. Someone came out, removed the sticker from our windshield, and issued us a receipt indicating we were removing the vehicle from Mexico. This is a very important step which isn't at all obvious that you should do, but if you later try to go to Mexico, you can get stopped if there is no proof that you did it.

How long would it take us on the American side? I checked my watch as we pulled into a line of half a dozen cars. Twelve minutes later we were through. The official hadn't even asked us where we were born, though in having conversation about the foods we couldn't bring in, he certainly heard our American accents. We had to give up our raw eggs and some fruit.

So we were back. Were we ready for this? We drove half an hour to our land outside Deming and camped there. The desert was like what we had been driving through much of the day, and nature knows no boundaries. We took a long walk until dusk, changed our clocks from Central time which most of Mexico is on, to the local Mountain time, and enjoyed the deep quiet of the desert. While there were more houses cropping up all around Deming, there were no new ones right near our land, we were pleased to see.

The view from our Deming land

Yesterday, our first full day back in the US, was very interesting. A neighbor we know drove by, as did a couple of others we hadn't met. Veterans all, one of them had received resounding applause the day before when he had given a Memorial Day speech and had said that there were already too many American soldiers in the cemeteries. We saw the front page article in the local paper. We had a good visit with these colorful characters as we were setting up our internet satellite.

Later we went into Deming for lunch, errands, and to see what the town was like after two years. It appeared a bit more prosperous, and as ever, full of retirees. Kelly dropped me off at a grocery store while he went to get gas. I was keeping an eye out for him to join me, and I saw his white head from some distance away. Or was it? No, it was a stouter man. After six months of easily spotting my husband because his was the only white hair around, now I was seeing white heads everywhere. Later, we ended up in line behind the other fellow, and I told him I had mistaken him for my husband. It turned out he had lived and worked in Mexico for some time and we swapped stories.

Another white-haired man was humming with a small smile as he moved down an aisle in the grocery store in his wheelchair. I had been watching for smiles, ubiquitous in Mexico, and this was the first one I'd seen in a couple of hours in Deming. I told the man that we were just back from six months in Mexico, and about how I was already missing the smiles. He said he had nothing to do but be happy, so why not? A great attitude.

Deming has a new library and I had a lovely chat with the head librarian. It was great fun to be speaking English again with people besides Kelly, and I talked with practically everyone I had a chance to. I bought several books and magazines in English. Being back in the USA has its compensations! Now it's time to leave our land and continue heading north to the place we've called home for eight years.

Day Two of Travel Ends at a Hot Springs

We left Zacatecas early. The map showed a long stretch of two-lane road but when we got to it, we were pleased to discover it was actually a two-lane road with shoulders a bit more than half a lane on either side. These are used in a way that astonished me the first time I saw it in southern Texas but is pretty common in Mexico: slower vehicles in either direction drive half on the shoulder and half into their lane, effectively making the highway a three-lane road. Traffic was pretty light, and with this system there were no hair-raising passes to terrify me.

I pulled out a notebook and wrote down most of the signs along the highway for the blog, leaving out signs to towns and repetitions of the same signs. I may have misspelled a few, but here they are, in the order we saw them. There were also signs that were mostly graphics. As you'll see, many of them are driving lessons in brief.

Utilice el centuron de seguridad.
Use the seat belt.

No maltrate las senales.
Don't mistreat the signs.

Guarde su distancia.
Keep your distance.

Maneje con precaucion. Tu familia te espera.
Drive with precaution. Your family awaits you.

Si vas manejando, no tomas.
If you are going along driving, don't drink.

Una carretera limpia es una carretera segura.
A clean highway is a safe highway.

Este camino no es de alta velocidad.
This highway is not high speed.

Disminuje su velocidad. Tus hijos te esperan.
Diminish your velocity. Your children are waiting for you.

Carrill izquierdo solo para rebasar.
Left lane only for passing.

Obedezcas las senales.
Obey the signs.

No deje piedras sobre el pavamiento.
Don't leave rocks on the pavement. This exhortation is one of the most common ones and makes no sense at first to a foreigner. There is a common Mexican habit of putting rocks on the pavement if your vehicle breaks down in a traffic lane. These rocks are often put a good distance back from the vehicle, and so once the vehicle is running again, the temptation is to just drive on again. The presence of rocks on the highways, while in our experience greatly diminished from past decades, is a good reason for not driving at night!

Prohibido tirar basura.
It's prohibited to throw garbage.

Conceda cambio de luces.
Conceed the change of lights. When seen before a one-lane bridge, this means that whoever flashes their headlights first has right of way, though do be sure the other driver is honoring your lights! We saw this quite often on four-lane highways and puzzled over it. We finally decided that in this context it means that if you are in the left lane and someone driving behind you flashes theire lights, you should get over into the slower lane.

Quite a common one that I didn't happen to note in this batch is Respect the signs. Don't destroy them.

Noting the signs, and continuing our review of places we had lived, made the morning enjoyable. We reminisced about Ashland, Oregon, where we had a llama ranch in the 1980s and began a llama-related publishing company which still exists with a broader range of topics. Conversation was so lively that Kelly failed to notice how low on gasoline were until we had just gotten onto a toll freeway to Torreon and a useful sign said that the next gasolinera was 90 kilometers down the road. We pulled over and put in the extra two gallons we always carry. With that, Kelly was sure we had enough. As it turned out, we were probably running on fumes the last little bit into Torreon, but we did make it.

Torreon, Lerdo, and a third city the name of which escapes me at the moment form a huge complex. After the previous day's emotional storms, I didn't want to risk another meltdown so I took a tranquilizer about an hour and a half before we got to the urban area. When we stopped for gas, the man there told us how to get back on the freeway. The map showed a left turn I was concerned about. Lo and behold, when we got back on the freeway it turned out that we had just done that left turn and we were already beyond the big urban glop. Wonderful!

A comment about my popping tranquilizers: I don't think I'd ever had one in my life till about a year ago, but I got a prescription to try them and I do find they help a lot with the stress that rapid heavy traffic and air travel tend to evoke in me. I have spent a lot of years being afraid, being horribly embarrassed that I was afraid, and either not doing things because they were too scary or doing them in white-knuckle style. I'm mentioning this here to encourage others who may have similar issues. I'm very glad I didn't stay home in Colorado because of these fears.

The rest of the day went smoothly, as it was four-lane highways and no more big cities. We continued our reminiscing. By late afternoon we got to Ciudad Camargo, a small city where we had been the only campers two years ago at a rather run-down RV park. As we went by it slowly, we saw it was still there and open but we had a loftier goal. I'd found mention in a couple of old guidebooks of a hot spring a few kilometers off the highway. Hotel Ojo Caliente is north of Cuidad Camargo just a little ways, just north of a river you cross -- there was a billboard which would be much more visible if you were coming from the north. We found that and then went 4 or 5 miles west on a reasonably good gravel road. There were some significant bumps in the road, where it went down into arroyos, and we scraped on them but not badly. Still, larger RVs could have trouble.

Anyway, once we got there, we discovered a tranquil spot with indoor and outdoor pools and just a few Mexicans, as it was a Monday evening. I'm sure at times the place is totally mobbed. We paid 45 pesos each (about $4) to use the pools, and we got to park overnight for free in the reasonably level parking lot.

We were assured that it was very secure and that Jesus lived in room 1 of the hotel. We met Jesus -- he spoke excellent English and has traveled a lot in the United States. So we took the waters -- the cooler ones first, as it was quite a hot day -- and had a long chat with a Mexican man who works (legally) as a construction crew chief in New Mexico. His family lives in the US with him and the kids are bilingual. His son of about 10 years of age had no accent to his English. He also was a bit scornful of how little English his dad spoke. A common dynamic.

Here's one of the outdoor pools, with the water slides reflected in it:



Next to it was a metal deck over an irrigation ditch. It was fun to sit there with our light supper and gaze directly down at the water:



Once the motorhome cooled off enough to go to bed, it was very tranquil there. The pools had closed about nine. About an hour later, a car came down by the waterslides... and a pickup, and another car. We fell asleep to the happy sounds of local teenagers swimming, joking, and laughing... having a great time. I thought I'd hear the vehicles leaving, but neither of us was still awake by then.

Bernal to New Mexico in Three Days: Day One

Saturday we got the motor home all packed and went around Bernal saying a few goodbyes and doing a little last-minute shopping. When we told one young man we know that we had received our FM-3 visas the day before, he said warmly, "Now you are from here." It was a nice note to leave on.

We slept in the motorhome that night, the better to get an early start on Sunday morning. I went down to the house about 6:30 AM and said a loving goodbye to Misty, who was full of purrs. Capullo wasn't around. My vision was a little blurred with tears as I gazed up at La Pena from our patio for the last time. For now.

We pulled out around sunrise and enjoyed light traffic at first. A familiar drive to the freeway, then less than a kilometer on the freeway before taking the cuota (toll) road northwards towards San Luis Potosi. Mexican highway signs often provide challenges, but we got gas on the edge of San Luis Potosi and got good directions around the city. We got onto the periferico all right, taking the southern route around this metropolis of more than half a million. From our maps, we had thought we would take the northern route, but it was clear we were on the right road.

Was it ever ugly. I've written a lot about the charms of Mexico but this was as bad as any American industrial blight. I found it even harder to take as there were more shanties than I'd seen in ages, grim reminders of the level of living of the poorest in Mexico. We also passed a number of suburbs of tiny newish houses. They would be much more decent places to live at least.

Between weaving through traffic, not being sure about some turns we took that weren't signed (though they turned out okay), being depressed by the ugliness and poverty, and already being homesick for Bernal, I had a rough spell for a while. I've mentioned before that city traffic has a tendency to overwhelm me (it's partly a central nervous system condition I have) and this sure happened. I hadn't taken a tranquilizer, thinking I might be okay without it, but as we left San Luis Potosi, I did. Kelly does the motorhome driving and he was doing okay.

From San Luis Potosi to Zacatecas was the only major stretch of two-lane road on the trip, and there were plenty of slow trucks and Sunday drivers. Once I screamed at Kelly when he started to pass a truck in a situation where I wouldn't have tried it. He pulled back into our lane instead of passing anyway, which I greatly appreciated.

At least, we were going through lovely scenery at times. We got to Zacatecas and again did okay in finding the periferico. This was a more interesting drive at least, as it wound above the city which has a long shape, set in a valley. Our guide to RV campgrounds listed one that was beyond the city some kilometers, good for getting past Monday morning. It was basically a field next to a Pemex station, with water, sewer, and electric hookups. We didn't need electricity as our solar panels provided all we needed, but it was good to take long showers and to dump the tanks.

We got there around 3:30PM and could have driven further, but one of the challenges of driving an RV in Mexico is finding secure, level places to camp. We were both tired and frazzled so we just stopped and relaxed. We talked about maybe coming back to Mexico in a different vehicle. Not our Subaru station wagon as Subaru seems to be virtually unknown in Mexico, but an ideal vehicle: good passing ability, good visibility, good miles per gallon, long enough for us to sleep in it at times, and so on. Kelly wondered about one of the newer hybrid gas and electric SUVs. Economical was also on our list, though, so we'll see!

We had the campground to ourselves. Over dinner we were pronouncing the alphabet in Spanish and couldn't remember how to say g. So when I went over to the nearby OXO store (like a 7-11), I asked the teenage fellow who was running it, and he recited the alphabet slowly with me following him. G is pronounced like our English word hay.

Kelly and I have long had the habit of asking each other at bedtime what was best in that day. It was easier to think of what was worst on this day, but we try not to go there! What was best had been a couple of long conversations we'd had about our lives together. We'd talked about the three years we lived right on the California coast at Jenner, north a ways from San Francisco. Kelly was living there when we met, a long-haired hippie in a school bus he had permanantly parked and converted to a practical, well-organized home, complete with upright piano. I recalled how impressed I had been with his practical abilities and he said I'd seemed so sophisticated with the world travel I'd done and my Stanford education.

Next we talked about the seven years we lived in an old summer camp near the Russian River. We bought Sunshine Camp with two of Kelly's sisters and their husbands, using the money from the sale of a sailboat belonging to Molly and George as the down payment. Those had been rich, full, and often oftenwhelming times. I was working much of the time as a librarian and then coming home to the complexities of community living. It was during that era that we had made our first long trip to Mexico, in 1979, when we had gone all over and also spent a month in Guatemala. We rarely talk much about our past but it's a favorite topic for long trips.

We slept well, even though we were just off the intersection of two major highways. The next morning, we got an early start. I was determined to have a better day.