day 28 - may 8 - today is in tehuantepec in a ditch

11 pm

well, you guys, we don't even know what to say about today.

today... today was a day that i will tell my grandpuppies about. today is a day neither of us will ever forget. today was not for the faint of heart.

we had a pleasant morning, eating fresh mangoes and oranges for breakfast at our lovely campsite just outside puerto escondito. we drove the familiar, curvy roads along the coast, and, in fact, stopped just outside tehuantapec at an old sugar hacienda where there is camping. the ground was littered in fallen mangoes, there were banana trees. however, it was only 1:30 pm, there were no bathrooms (the security guy's familly lives in one, the other wasn't functioning), and so we decided to push on, to head further down the coast to other, more promising campsites.

we stopped at a walmart on the edge of tehuantapec, it was like being in vernon in the summer - hot, windy, full of big box stores and fancy malls.

just outside tehuantapec there is a stretch of road described in our camping guide. it says that it has the potential to be dangerous, that you should secure the awnings on your camper, as they may flap around, or even fly off. well, we are assuming the wind might be worse because of the tropical storm, because nothing could have prepared us for what was coming.

we were driving down the highway, we hadn't even hit 90 km/h. we didn't feel a thing, no movement, no sounds. we checked the sideview mirrors and, holy crap, there was the top of our pop up camper, on the side of the road. it blew right off. i don't know what made us look back at that time, but we literally could have driven for an hour and not noticed. we pulled over, me yelling "NO NO NO THAT DID NOT JUST HAPPEN". we backed up. we jumped out of the truck to survey the damage. thankfully, almost everything survived - our passports, our money, my precious teddy bear (honey bear).

looking back on it, we're still not sure how this happened. the camper was properly secured. the little latches were in place, everything was as it should have been. we know that campers are not always built to the highest standards, but seriously?

after gathering the stuff that we wanted (and drinking lukewarm hinekens and waving at the federales, who drove by laughing at us by the pickup load), we turned around and headed back into town. we found a hotel. we pulled everything out of the truck. then we went for a swim and drank like 15 beers.

more to come...