day 36, 37 - may 16, 17, 2014

i didn't post before because i didn't have internet access for a couple of days (which sent me friends and family into a frenzy of worry. sorry y'all.), but we made it back to toronto safe and sound at about 4 am sunday. we stayed in memphis, tennesee on friday night, and decided saturday to make it a long day and get home. this meant coffee stops, sleeping in the passenger seat of the truck, and eating fruit and bread and hummus for hours on end. it was a long day, but we made it. 

i'll post some updates soon, re: truck storage thoughts, add pictures to posts, etc. for now, i\m still catching up on sleep! 

day 35 - may 15, 2014

5:30 pm

well, today we have accomplished much! we got up at 7 and left the hotel at 7:30 this morning (lookit us, getting up all early like some kinda grown ups!) we made great time through northern mexico!

in matamoros, we had one final, hilarious mexican moment. there are basically mexican squeegee kids at all stoplights in big cities, and this guy, well, he wouldn't take no for an answer. he skipped up with his bottle of soapy water, and despite our protests, squirted the driver's side of the windshield and went to town. he didn't ask for any money, since we obviously would have preferred he NOT squeegee our fairly clean windshield. however, he left it in a worse state than he found it, all smeary and gross. as such, mike activated the fantastic technology we possess called "windshield washer and wipers". the kid had broken the driver's side windshield wiper! so now aside from being smeary, there was washer fluid all over the windshield, and no functioning wiper to sweep it away. oh, mexico. at this point, we're just hoping it doesn't rain any time soon :/

we reached the border at about 1:30 pm, and went for it. the aduana (mexican customs) office was in a bit of a weird spot (although it was NOTHING compared to nuevo laredo - we'd 100% recommend the matamoros/brownsville border crossing over the laredo/nuevo laredo crossing. people even spoke a bit of english, which was fabulous), but we found it with the help of a friendly... guy? he had a uniform on, but i've got no idea what his job was. "tourist herder", maybe?? anyway, you may recall we were a bit worried about leaving mexico, due to the questionable legality of the defiant. however, there was nothing to worry about. the guy at the immigration desk came out and looked the defiant over, took a picture of the VIN, forced mike to get a copy of his passport made for $3 pesos (i made plenty of copies before we left, however apparently they are anti-environment - they wouldn't accept my copy because it was not full page sized :| ), stamped some stuff, made mike sign a reciept, and gave us the $300 deposit back. bam. done. while this was happening i walked to the other side of the room and had a guy take our tourist visas and stamp our passports out - he didn't even make mike come over. (note: at first he said something about paying to leave, but then when he realized we flew into mexico - this time - he said nevermind. i'm not sure what that was about, but yay, free!)

after finishing our mexico paperwork (this took about 45 minutes, most of which was us failing at finding the office and the nice man helping us), we paid our last mexican toll $67 pesos ($5 CAD) to get across the bridge into the states. there was a lineup of cars on the american side, and i'd say we waited about half an hour. the american customs guy didn't give us any trouble, really, although when i mentioned we had an orange he said we had to pull aside for inspection. we did, and two guys made us relinquish our orange and a stowaway grapefruit (something about diseases - apparently they incinerate them!!), and poked around for a few minutes, but didn't give us trouble. next, we were instructed to go to a "liquor control" booth, because we had about a half 26er of tequila and the bottom of a bottle of rum. again, no real hassle, we just had to pay about $7 USD in duty. i'd guess the american side, after the wait, took half an hour. not bad.

we clearly headed for the nearest starbucks, and drank our frappuccinos in about 3 minutes flat.

about 100 km north of the border, we were stopped at a border patrol checkpoint, there were two guys and a german shepherd there. one guy asked us if we were US citizens, i replied no, we're canadian. then he asked if we were born in canada (??), we said yes, and were waved through. weird.

we are currently heading for houston. when we realized we were on the american side of the border and it was not even 3 pm, we figured we might as well give'r to houston (about 550 km) to stay with leaha and greg, as opposed to getting a hotel room somewhere. we're expecting to arrive around 8 or 8:30.

it's crazy to be back in the states already.

day 34 - may 14, 2014

9 pm

today was almost boring, which is crazy to say, considering.

we drove through a very mountainous area today. it rained most of the day, and at times the mist was so think that we could barely see 10 meters in front of the truck. every time the mist lifted, we were treated to gorgeous views of moist mountain farms, and rich, dense forest. it reminded me a lot of the south coast of BC, or washington. there were a lot of familiar looking trees mixed in with the cacti and banana trees, which is a bizarre thing to see.

later in the day, to road opened onto an almost desert-like area. it reminded me of the okanagan, with lots of low mountains covered in huge cacti (much bigger than you'd see in BC though) and dry grasses.

we've stopped at a little place called the "contry express" (their misspelling, not mine - unless that means something in spanish that's not in my dictionary), just north of tampico. this one also is a hotel that is in the mexican camping book, and looked nice. it's lovely, quite fancy by mexican non-touristy standards. there is no toilet seat, but that's pretty par for the course here.

we had an actually really lovely mexican dinner at the truck-stop-ish restaurant here. we were both stressed/tired after a long day of driving, and went over there just to have a beer, but the lady brought menus and we flipped through them and found some things that actually looked great, so we figured we'd eat there. our two dinners and 6 beers cost a whopping $215 pesos (about $18 CAD), and was just fabulous.

we're hoping to make it to the vicinity of the border tomorrow. likely we won't make it across, we've got over 500 km to drive (which today took us 9 hours), but we're hoping to make it to matamoros tomorrow night, then on to houston friday - we figure it might be better to do the border crossing freshly rested, as opposed to exhausted after a long day on the road.

day 33 - may 13, 2014

8:30 pm

we're all settled in for the night!

we left the OO at about 8 am today, after saying goodbye to calvin and leanne and the other folks there visiting. we headed for pachuca - about 500 km, which is a long day in mexico, however there are good toll roads (which cost us about $75 CAD) between here and there, so we thought it was a reasonable goal.

the first part of the day was pretty standard, lots of driving, beautiful mountain views, etc. we reached pachuca around 2 pm and decided to find a place to get sushi! this was the first really americanized town we'd been in lately, so we figured how hard could it be? it ended up being harder than we'd expected, of course... gina took us to one place, which turned out to be closed, but joy of joys, there was a starbucks across the street!! i figured if sushi wasn't on the table, a nice frappuccino certainly should be. however, they didn't have soymilk :( we've been to a few starbucks in mexico, and this has never been a problem before, but it was today (my life is so hard, eh?). anyway, gina told us there was another sushi place, so we decided to try for it. it was only 2 km away, but we know by now that in a mexican city, that can be quite a distance. on the way, we happened upon a fistfight. i guess two guys had had a fender bender, and they figured that was the best way to deal with it. they went at it for a good few minutes before a bunch of other guys got out of their cars and split them up. they were all over the street and punching each other on the hood of one car and everything. crazy. this is the first actual violence we've seen in mexico, and really it was the kind of thing you could see anywhere.

we finally made it to the sushi place, where, of course, they had nothing vegetarian. i asked the guy to just make us some avocado maki, and he seemed SO confused? sin carne? sin queso? why would we want that? he came back a couple of times just to be sure - he even made me write it down... i was so hungry at that point that i was getting a little annoyed with him, but eventually we got our maki, which then cost a whopping $130 pesos (about $11 CAD for 2 avocado rolls! blasphemy!). anyway, at least we had eaten!

we headed out of town. we read in the church's camping book about a hotel that allows overlanders to camp in the parking lot, and we figure even if we're not in the camper anymore, it's nice to support businesses who support our community! so we drove about 20 km on a super twisty mountain highway to find the place, only to find it closed :( it's sad, it would have been beautiful. it looked like this giant old colonial compound, with big rock walls and beautiful grounds.

we'd seen a sign for cabanas a ways back on the highway, so we figured we'd investigate that possibility. we found the road, and even the place, but nobody was around - it seemed like you needed reservations in advance. the little dirt road that led to it went on past, so we thought we'd do some exploring. it was this crazy little dirt road that wound up into the mountains, and it was exceptionally beautiful. we drove the defiant up up up into the hills, past all sorts of little farms and homesteads, it was really breathtaking. we also found what would have been a totally sweet camping spot if we still had a camper. it was on a bit of a lookout up this dirt road, and it would only be big enough for one truck, but it had an amazing view. anyway, i got the GPS coordinates which i'll include in the camping places post.

we drove back down the mountain, it was starting to get dark... there was a little town right near where we were, so we figured we'd try to find a hotel there. we drove the cobbled main street, but there were no hotels. right near the end, though, there was a sign that advertised a hotel/spa, 2 km! yay! we thought it was a bit weird that it was 2 km down a dirt road, but hey, MEXICO! so off we went. the road wound along a little stream, with old stonework bridges every few hundred meters. the road got worse and worse - washouts, scree, etc. however, at one point, i spotted a cave entrance, so we stopped the truck to explore. it was really neat, though we didn't go very far (the truck was blocking the single lane road, and i thought that if i was a bandito it would totally have been my lair). it went straight back as far as our lights could penetrate - just about doorway sized, back into the mountain! anyway, we got back on the road, and followed and followed it. when we were finally fetting ready to give up and find a place to turn around, the road emptied out onto pavement, and BAM, we were back in town. still no hotel, though!

we decided maybe it would be best to head back to pachuca to find a hotel, as, according to our map, there wasn't much in the opposite direction. just a few kilometers outside town, we came upon an adorable place. it was $850 pesos ($75 CAD) for the night, which is on the expensive side, however it's just DARLING. it looks like it might once have been a little mountain town, that was all bought as a hotel. the rooms are basically half log cabins  - top and bottom, and each one is adorable and unique. there is beautiful landscaping, and a cobbled road with driveways for each place. amazing. weird, though, is that it's FULL of federales. there have got to be 8 federale pickup trucks here, and we've seen maybe 20 cops. they all just seem to be hanging around, but we're assuming they're just resting up for a midnight raid on the bandito cave.

we just had a nice dinner, and mike is trying to light the fireplace in our room. they give you no kindling, but a water bottle full of diesel to start the fire. MEXICO!!

tomorrow, we're headed for tampico, about another 500 km... however i don't see any toll roads on the map, which means it may be a longer, slower day. we shall see.

day 32 - may 12, 2014

1:30 pm

i forgot to blog more last night... haha.

yesterday was a really good day. we both had siestas in the afternoon, and rode bikes into town to buy wine. we then drank a bottle and a half of wine, and had a dance party, ate dinner outside and hung around chatting for hours.

this morning, mike and calvin went and took the camper to the dump (for free! because calvin and leanne live here and apparently oaxaca has awesome garbage services - they even take compost here - which i know they do in toronto, but in calgary we didn't even have recycling pickup until about 3 years ago!)

mike got the back of the truck washed out, but it sounds like we might not have much luck finding a tailgate. i'm not sure what we're going to do if we can't find a tailgate and topper for the truck (because the plan was to sleep in the back...), but i'm sure everything will come together. i guess we can always get a tent if we need to!

today i walked to the zocalo here in santa maria del tule. i sat for a long time under el tule, the huge tree there. it's got the largest truck circumference of any tree in the world, and it's absoloutly stunning. it totally dwarfs the big cathedral next to it, and it's canopy covers a huge area. last night when we rode bikes to get wine we went past it, and i know it sounds like weird hippy crap, but i was totally shocked by the energy of the tree. i had heard about it and knew it was in tule, but i didn't expect to just ride a bike right past it. honestly i almost fell off.

i also wandered around the little crafty market. they had some nice stuff, and i bought my dad a present. i also had a creepy shopkeeper leer at me. it was weird, i went in to look at some shirts, and he came over. i told him thanks, i'm just browsing, i'll let you know if i have any questions. he proceeded to stand less than 2 feet from me, blocking my access to some of the things i was trying to see, and leering at me while sweating profusely. :\ i told him that i'd appreciate if he'd back off a little, and that, again, i'd let him know if i needed help. he took a step backwards, so now he was all of 4 feet away, and continued to leer. that's when i left. i know that people can be pushy sometimes here, but it wasn't that. he wasn't saying anything, or trying to help me, just LEERING. *shudder*

anyway, i made it home safe and sound with my present for dad and some veggies.

3:30 pm

so, i have some news. we are leaving tomorrow. we haven't been able to find a tailgate/truck topper for a reasonable price (and considering that mike doesn't really need one on the defiant when we get back, we don't want to spend much on one)... so we're just going to hotel it back north. it's kinda too bad, however the other option would be buying a tent (and i have a couple at home already) and camping, but it seems like the rainy season is hitting early this year, so that might be a huge pain in the butt.

day 31 - may 11, 2014

noon

well, this has been a productive day so far! mike and calvin spent the morning tearing apart the camper, and setting aside anything that calvin thinks will be useful to other people. the dump isn't open today, so we're taking the afternoon off, and we'll go dump it and look into a tailgate/topper tomorrow.

there is another traveler here right now too, he's from the states, and has been travelling for 2 years! we chatted in the sun this morning, and i gave him copies of all the travel guide files we have, and he's borrowing the church's camping book to take down any information he wants.

day 30 - may 10, 2014

7:30 pm

yeah that's right, there's no day 29. "why?" you ask? because i was too tired and frustrated and demoralized to even want to blog.

however, today i feel much better.

we spent the day yesterday trying to find a scrapyard in selina cruz, with zero luck. we couldn't even find a dump to ditch the camper at. we were trying to find a topper for the pickup, and a tailgate, so that we can make a little indoor bed and storage area.

however, last night, after much wine and commiseration, we decided to head for oaxaca, to the overlander oasis. if you recall, this is the place we stayed in oaxaca previously, run by a spectacular canadian couple, calvin and leanne. calvin used to build baja racers, and does lots of fix-jobs on people's rigs that pass through. so we ended up bringing the camper here - he's going to help us find a tailgate and a box for the truck, and he's also going to cannibalize the camper before we dump it. there are lots of usable parts to it, and the fridge, stove, etc. he will pull out what he wants, and what he thinks will help other people, then we'll take what's left to the dump. i feel really good about our little tragedy having the capacity to help other people who need it. when you live in a truck, finding somebody like calvin who has not only the knowledge and resources, but also the spare parts just laying around to fix your problem, it's a HUGE load off your mind! 

even last night, when we made the decision to come to oaxaca, we felt much better right away. it feels like home here (and when we arrived, leanne hugged us and said "welcome home"! what could be better than feeling safe and cozy when half of your home has just flown off on the highway?), and with calvin and leanne's help, i'm sure we'll have a brand new defiant in no time.

that being said, our plans have changed a little... we are going to head back north. we're not giving up on this trip, but we were planning to park the truck in belize and fly home for the summer, and we've just decided to drive it home instead, since there is obviously some regrouping that needs to be done. in fact, we're excited about the prospect of driving back to canada. when we left in january the weather was so bad that we didn't spend much time in northern mexico, so we can take a bit of time to explore it on our way back! we've also learned SO much from this experience, that we have some great ideas for the future.