We love you Mexico !

After a fantastic stop in Tucson, Arizona, staying with a friend’s parents, Bob and Carole, and visiting the American aircraft ‘boneyard’ with thousands of military planes and helicopters stretching for miles, we have spent the last week in Mexico, and we love it!

Everywhere we go we just can’t seem to leave…! Our first nights in Pemex service stations in the party town of San Carlos left us wondering if Mexicans ever sleep as the music just went on and on all weekend, but our next stop in the understated town of Alamos, a former Silver mining colonial town, off the typical ‘snowbird’ (US and Canadian retirees who spend summer in Mexico) route, had us falling in love!

Nos gustan mucho:

- the quiet town that comes alive at night as the locals do laps of the main plaza - as families for the young and middle aged, in mixed groups of flirtatious adolescents, or on the back of a pick-up with a loud speaker blaring as soon as you have a friend with a car license!

- the food, 50c tacos and chili and lime on everything, we are in heaven!

- the people, the extra, extra friendly people – and that’s not just a cliché, seriously. Our bus driver tonight drove at 5k/hr to find our RV park and drop us off at the door, people give the kids free food, and the friendliest of the friendly, Senor Miguel Barron of Alamos, on seeing our “Canada to Argentina” sticker on the car invited us to stay! He actually thought we were Canadian so was probably disappointed to get a kiwi and a frog, but in any case we ended up spending 3 days at his house, being introduced to Mexican hospitality, Mexican food, brushing up our Spanish and the kids thoroughly enjoying a garden, the company of other kids, and a trampoline!

- the beach at Mazatlan. We somehow managed to find the ultimate RV park at Mar-a-Villas, with direct access to the beach, a gardener who cuts open coconuts for the kids to drink, geckos to be caught, iguanas to be spotted, retired American and Canadian neighbours to be charmed by the kids to get gifts of lollies, or even to “sell” the coconuts to if you are Zoé! What was supposed to be a 24hr stop is now onto it’s 6th day…

Otherwise a couple of details from our first two days in Mexico that will be going on our travelling wall of shame…. J

Underestimating travel times on the Mexican highways (possibly due to not having a map) and doing the one thing we are told not to do - driving at night – to top it off, right in the dark red “Avoid all non-essential travel” zone as classified by the Foreign Ministry’s travel advisory service.
Not having enough pesos to pay at the $5 fee at the motorway toll booth and having to ask the queue of cars behind us to back up to let us out so that we could drive back to the last town and find a bank!
Waking the kids at 2am in the morning so that we could drive to another spot to stay as the carpark we chose ended up to be a nightclub carpark and the music and carpark activities were rather loud!!

Our next steps are down the coast towards Puerto Vallarta, we will be sticking close to the beaches as it’s hot and we need the swims to cool down – even if the water is 28°! J