May 2005 — Here are a couple of other Mexican blogs for your enjoyment, while I’m off in the northlands…

billiemercer.blogspot.com/
Billie contributes comments on my blog here now and then, and has a delightful personal blog herself. I know she also has a bunch of photos up at flickr, a fascinating website where Kelly has a lot of photos up too. That’s how we met online. Her blog has a great list of other good Mexican blogs, in the sidebar.

http://www.vivaveracruz.com/blog/
John and Anita lived near us in Ashland, Oregon, years ago, and have a home just over the mountains from ours in Colorado. Now they are buying a house in Xico, a town outside of of Xalapa, Veracruz. Xico and Bernal were the two towns that stood out for us on our trip two years ago. Parallel lives! Enjoy some of the best mole I’ve ever eaten, John and Anita… it was from a little husband-and-wife shop in Xico, on the right side of the street as you go towards the main (only?) church in Xico. Of course, that may describe a dozen shops. Their peanut mole was heavenly.

Anita got her FM-3 in a few hours in Denver… [jealous moans]. They are in Xico now. I gasped when I read John’s reactions to the cops who hit him up for mordida on their way down. They got through aduana (customs) at the border very easily, which kinda fits in with what we have heard from other Americans who have FM-3s. We are not going to be bringing a gazillion things down when we come back, so we will just spread our stuff around our little motorhome Cando and if we have to pay a little duty, that will be easier than creating a menaje de casa in 5 perfect copies in Spanish listing in detail everything we are bringing in. It would be different if we were going the moving van and tons of furniture route.