Heading south for Mexico tomorrow

We'e had a great time in Crestone, seeing old friends and enjoying the natural beauty and energies here. First thing tomorrow we'll head out with one of our two Crestone cats, leaving the other with people who already know and love her.

The one coming with us, Moonlight, is part Siamese and looks and sounds it, so we expect conversations with him in the thousands of miles ahead. He needs a health certificate and a rabies shot to cross the border, so we will get those from our vet near here before driving south. That should guarantee that nobody asks for his papers! It can be easier for dogs and cats to cross the border than people... in either direction.

We'll spend some time with family in New Mexico and likely cross the border on Monday. Sunday is election day in Mexico, for the president and other positions. We don't drive long hours or fast, so it could be a week or even more before I'm ready to resume blogging regularly, once we're settled back in at home. After over a month away, it will be nice to be in our own place again. I'm quite curious to see how Mexico will feel to us after this time in the US.

Crestone and Lake Chapala

It's great to be in Crestone again, seeing old friends who feed us royally and take us into their lives. But would we want to live here again part of the year? It's a question that's never far from the back of my mind. Sometimes I feel like I don't want to leave next week, other times I can hardly wait to be back to Lake Chapala. Kelly and I have gone out to the land we own here a couple of times, just to feel being there. It feels good to me, but the multi-home lifestyle feels full of complications.

There are some palpable differences in climate, and lakeside wins those comparisons! It's dry and windy here, hot some days, and smoke is in the air (and my eyes) from forest fires burning far enough away that those fires are not a threat here, but the risk of fire here is something that everyone talks of. This region is in a serious drought.

The internet is being a bit erratic here today so I had better try to catch up with some emails. Just wanted to post a quick note. There are so many wonderful people here, and after ten years living here we can't even go to other towns in this valley without enjoying the rich texture that a sense of community brings.

Giving a talk on life in Mexico

On Wednesday June 28, Kelly and I will be giving a talk on life in Mexico. It will be in Crestone, CO, at 7 pm, at Jillian's studio which is behind the NVRI real estate office just as you drive into Crestone, right after the speed limit drops to 15 mph. There is no charge.

We are pulling this together just now so please tell any Crestone or San Luis Valley friends who might be interested. Will make some flyers to post too.

Traveling in the U.S.: tales and feelings

We wrapped up our family time in Idaho and bought a car which we will drive back to our home in the Lake Chapala area. We had thought of getting a VW diesel, since they get excellent miles per gallon, but decided against it because even though there are many VWs in Mexico, there are very few diesel cars, so parts could be a problem. Also, I read on a forum that one guy with a diesel car had had problems getting diesel into his tank because the diesel nozzles at the Pemex stations were huge. But we did happen to get a VW anyway. We were looking for a good used car. One day we test-drove a nice Ford Focus station wagon, a charming PT Cruiser, a sedan so generic I don't remember what it was, and a 2003 VW Jetta. We bought it and are happy with how smoothly it handles on the road. Our first tank of gas, we got 34 mpg.

As we drove from Idaho to Colorado, we've been enjoying the scenery, of course, and I've been enjoying how very little trash there is along the roadside. At one point, I was driving when we heard a very loud sound. I pulled over and we discovered that we had a flat tire. I was amazed that neither of us had felt any jerkiness. Some local guys stopped and helped us with changing the tire and told us there was a Les Schwab store a couple of miles away. So we went there, and while Kelly took care of business, I chatted with a Mexican-American couple who were also waiting. The man is from Mexico and his wife is of Mexican descent but was born and raised in the U.S. They were speaking Spanish with their kids, and the woman said (in English -- most of the conversation was in English) that that was how she was raised too: Spanish at home, English at school. By the time we had chatted for quite a while, I asked her if they had experienced discrimination. She said she had as a child, when they lived in a small mountain town where there were few Mexicans, but that her kids had not... they now live in a city. Her husband had experienced discrimination once at work, she said. He grimaced at the memory. We all left the store about the same time with friendly goodbyes.

Later, in a buffet restaurant, a black man sat with some gray in his hair sat down at a table next to us. I couldn't resist the chance to chat with him, and after talking about living in Mexico and traveling in RVs and suchlike, I said we wondered how he felt about the direction the country was going. He felt that the elderly and the poor were been badly treated.

That night, we stopped in the middle of Utah at a motel. I woke around 3 in the morning to sounds I couldn't place. It kind of sounded like a car was being bashed in and there were angry-sounding male voices, too faint to make out. I got up and peered out the window but saw nothing. After listening for a while, I felt very uneasy and I woke Kelly. He listened too and decided it was a movie from the room next door, adding that the repetitive sound was machine gun fire. I wasn't convinced it was a movie, as the same sounds went on and on, for maybe 20 minutes. I knew the odds of it being something dangerous in the neighborhood were miniscule but I was still not a happy camper. "Maybe it's a video game," Kelly murmured, and that seemed possible. "I'd rather listen to brass bands in the night," he added. That's a sound we often hear at our home in San Juan Cosala.

Eventually we went back to sleep. In the morning we noticed that the pickup parked outside the room the sound had come from said Halliburton on it.

Everywhere we've been on this trip, we've noticed that there are so many cars and so few people out and about. After over half a year living in Mexico, it kinda seems unnatural to us.

Now we've just arrived in our town of Crestone, Colorado, where we'll be for almost 2 weeks before driving south. Will we be bringing one or even both of our Colorado cats with us into Mexico? That's still a big question. There's also the matter of how much stuff from our storage unit we will squeeze into one smallish car. For now, though, it's time to see friends and have fun.

Song of a Mexican Cicada

(Here's a post I wrote while we were at home in Mexico but hadn't gotten around to putting up.)

A few weeks ago Kelly and our friend John went hiking in the steep mountains behind our house and they reported on a strange electronic sort of sound they heard up there. John captured a little of it on a video in his camera but they couldn't see the source.

Later, we started hearing the sound around our yard and we learned it was a cicada. It song is said to presage the rainy season. I've read that it's the cry of a male for a mate.

One afternoon recently I captured some of this eerie sound on tape. The sound of a truck in the background is not part of the cicada's song, but comes from the highway less than half a kilometer away. If you click on the link, the mp3 file should automatically play on your computer, assuming you have the right software.

Here's one that Kelly managed to get a picture of, with a leaf for scale:

Leaving Mexico via the Guadalajara airport

Saturday morning, Kelly and I got picked up by a taxi at our house in San Juan Cosala at six. We used an Ajijic cab driver who was recommended by friends who had used him for early-morning airport runs. Since getting another cab at that hour wouldn't necessarily have been possible, the referral was desirable.

Our driver was from Ajijic, though he had worked for seven years in the US. He likes it better in Mexico, and has a positive attitude about life here. He does think all politicians are corrupt, though, and was quite surprised when I said that in the US, if a policeman stops you for a traffic offense, you do not typically slip him any money when you hand him your driver's license.

It was still pitch black as we climbed up through the hills near Lake Chapala. We could make out the outlines of the lake according to where there were no electric lights. Soon all that was behind us, and we drove to the airport in a light rain. The rainy season does seem to be getting a good start, and since we left, friends have emailed us that things are getting greener.

Kelly and I had been to the Guadalajara airport once before, when we met a friend arriving from Mexico City one afternoon. But it was a much busier place now, in the early morning light. Numerous flights leave for the US and different parts of Mexico in the 8am-9am time frame especially. For international flights, you are supposed to be there two hours early.

We each had a suitcase with clothing, a computer case, and a third thing -- my big purse, his camera bag. There were porters racing around everywhere at curbside, and we engaged one. There was no set fee. We were flying on Mexicana but our tickets were booked through Aeromexico, so he took us to their check-in. As we had gotten e-tickets from Orbitz (which worked just like in the US), all we had with us to prove we were ticketed was a computer printout, clutched in my hand. The porter took it and gave it to a young woman in an airline-style uniform. She walked briskly away, and Kelly, porter, and I lost track of her for a disquieting minute or so. We found her and she pleasantly gave me the paper, explaining that we needed to check in at Mexicana. So we went over there. Their security people had a conversation with Kelly and me about whether we needed to check any bags, and decided they could let us through but the people upstairs might not. We got boarding passes and were told to take the elevator upstairs.

Before we did that, we had a form to fill out for leaving the country. Nobody ever stamped our FM3s but almost accidentally someone did collect these forms, leaving us with copies. I left Kelly with most of our luggage and went to check out the newsstand. For reading in English, it had a small selection of magazines and books. Then I went to the ladies' room. The toilets were all automatic flush and not a one of the had any paper.

We went through security and took an escalator. Once upstairs in the passengers-only area, things were more spread out. There were quite a few restaurants, newsstands, duty-free shops, and so on. I got a snack at Starbucks, and Kelly at another place.

We found the waiting area for our flight. Our destination was southern Idaho, and we were flying to Las Vegas and there changing planes to Salt Lake City, where we would catch a ride with a nephew and his family. I was interested that the bulk of the travelers on this first leg were Mexicans or Mexican-Americans. I chatted with two different Mexican women. One was going to see her son who lives in Nevada. I asked if she had had any problems getting a visa to the US and she said it had been difficult. The other woman was a Mexican who lives near Las Vegas. She would rather be in Mexico but her teenage son wants to become a doctor, and she felt the opportunities were better if they lived in the US. I agreed that he'd have better English most likely.

It was okay for us to take all our luggage with us, despite signs saying it was strictly forbidden. As we walked out of the terminal to take a bus to the airplane out on the tarmac, I was picked for a random security check. All of my bags were completely examined, I was patted down, the whole bit, all done in a very friendly manner.

Our flight was smooth and easy, 3 hours and 15 minutes to Las Vegas. Once there, we cleared customs with no problems except for it taking a while. We stepped out into over-100 heat and no signs for how to get to the terminal we needed. We tried to catch inter-terminal buses but they wouldn't stop where we were, and there were no taxis right there either. So we walked, luckily with a luggage cart we had picked up. When we checked in, there was no way we could take all our bags on the plane with us, so we checked our suitcases. They told us we had to rush to make our flight, so we dashed through the vast halls till reaching security. This time Kelly got the full check. We made our flight with just enough time to buy an ice cream en route.

It was interesting to be back in the US. Our mad dash almost seemed like a metaphor for life here. People were helpful here too, though with less of the warmth we are used to from Mexico. Twelve hours after we'd left our home in Mexico, we arrived at our destination, the family home in Idaho. There is still something magical to me about going from one place to another in a matter or hours!

Heading North

This morning Kelly and I got a phone call that his wonderful 86-year-old mother died in her sleep. We'll be flying out of Guadalajara .to go back the US and be with family, and we aren't sure how long we will be gone, as we plan to also go to Colorado for a quick trip while we're up there. So there will be fewer entries for a while.