Dec 4 – 9, 2007
In retirement, as in life, we all travel different paths. Some stay in their hometowns all year taking a few vacations and some travel full-time. Some travel to the same place every year or go to different places but stay in one place for long periods. Some have fifth wheels, large motorhomes, trailers, vans or VW campers. Some backpack and stay in hostels, while others only stay in hotels. Some travel alone while others like the security of traveling with others. We all make choices. The more I travel, the happier I am with the choices I have made. With only twenty years to see the world, I would ideally like to travel full-time as there is so much to see. I want to be always going to someplace different and only want to go to that place once, so try to explore wherever I go intensively.
A truck and camper is ideal for my style of travel because of its great mobility. Campers are much safer especially on these narrow roads. My camper has everything in it I could desire and I can take bicycles and kayaks with me. Getting my diving ticket would allow me to explore every environment. I would not get an RV with slides because of the weight and I don’t need the extra floor space to dance. I can drop the camper and explore 4WD roads. A well designed solar system is ideal and allows me to dry camp and avoid campgrounds. Sirius satellite radio (hard-wired in both the truck and camper) is my lifeline to home and the world and my major source of entertainment. CBC (with its many world-class announcers), NPR (National Public Radio in the US), and BBC are my mainstays. I don’t watch TV at home so don’t miss it on the road. I would never travel with any other vehicles as what you do would be dictated by someone else. Your main social interaction would be with them instead of the whole variety of other travelers and the local population. Forcing yourself to interact is one of the keys to a complete traveling experience. The only negative is having nowhere to share some of the experiences and eating alone is well, lonely.
Skype is the only reasonable way to communicate by phone (phone cards are expensive to call home at 50 cents a minute to Canada and cell phones and credit card calling are prohibitive). A laptop and email are essential to communicate and to conduct your business. Forget your credit cards in Mexico as I have not seen them used except in tourist centers. American dollars are also not used. Debit cards are the mainstay for withdrawing money. ATMs are everywhere and this is a cash economy using Mexican pesos (~11/Canadian dollar). Gas stations take only cash and it is astounding the wads of cash the gas jockeys carry in their pockets. Contrary to popular belief, I think Mexico is safer than home. The many murders are drug dealers killing drug dealers and you would have to be in the wrong place at the wrong time to have a problem. As a result needing to travel with others for security reasons doesn’t hold water. Speaking Spanish would greatly improve my experience. I eat where you see the most Mexicans eating and ignore the warnings that street food is dangerous except I drink bottled water. If you have an RV, you end up contaminating your water system but that water is only used for showering and operating the toilet. I believe that the best truck is a GM made diesel (the Cummings diesel is a good engine but unfortunately is in a Dodge truck) and that the best camper is a Bigfoot.
San Carlos was a stark contrast to everything I had seen in Mexico so far. I saw my first recreational vehicle, there were few Mexicans and many gringos, all older. Along with big hotels, the houses were very nice, often built on the edges of cliffs or the water. It was not obvious where the Mexicans lived. All the shoreline was built on and inaccessible except for the public beach that was rocky and somewhat disappointing. The skyline was dominated by a jagged twin peak. There were several big marinas full of really large boats. The main activities are fishing, snorkeling and diving but I couldn’t go snorkeling out to Seal Island as there were not enough interested people midweek.
Guaymas, 20 kms from San Carlos, is Sonora’s biggest port. The Plaza of the Three Presidents was totally torn up and the cathedral was surprisingly locked. There is a great fisherman statue. I have seen more monuments, obelisks and statues, usually of politicians, so far in my journey through Mexico than exist in all of Canada. They name their streets after them and the dates of their revolutions. After 30 minutes in town, I drove to Alamos 220kms south. At a military checkpoint, stopping northbound traffic (ie traffic headed to the US), there were 153 semi-trailer trucks backed up waiting to be inspected. There only interest seems to be drugs. The soldiers are always pleasant and unthreatening.
Alamos, originally a very rich town based on silver mines, has been declared a national historic monument because of its many colonial buildings and narrow cobbled streets. It is 50kms east off the main highway. Almost abandoned at one time, the large community of Americans have revived the town and restored the many mansions. The evening I arrived, the plaza was filled with a Mexican carnival with hokey rides and vendors. The street food was very good and I try to eat it as often as possible. As the hygiene isn’t great, it’s best to not watch them prepare it. The entire week was a festival with nightly performances. This was the night of the school Christmas concert held next to the cathedral. All the kids were in elaborate costumes and each class danced to or sang one song. They were very sweet and very well-behaved. I saw 6 other gringos. I’m starting to think that whenever they hear that I am coming to town, they put on a parade or have a festival. The next morning, I climbed to the top of the viewpoint, walked all over town, and went to the cathedral. The many huge mansions with high walls, gardens and enclosed courtyards were imposing. I went on a tour of the Hacienda de los Santos, a hotel that originally had six rooms but has since purchased four surrounding properties to now be seven acres in size. Voted the best small luxury hotel in the world, it has five swimming pools, a theatre, a spa, a very high-end gift shop, two bars and two restaurants and is luxurious to the nth. Rates are $250-395/night. Google it.
I drove 170kms south to Los Mochis (the end of the Copper Canyon Railway) and then east 90kms to El Fuerte (where I should have ended my previous railway trip). The main road was several miles from the Sea of Cortez and initially went through flat uninspiring desert. It changed to irrigated farmland that extended all around Los Mochis to El Fuerte. This town is laid out like all Mexican towns seem to be – a plaza with the cathedral on one side and a local government building with murals depicting the local history. Every plaza has large trees, a big gazebo, ornate metal benches, shoe shiners, many old men sitting around and pigeons. I climbed up to the viewpoint where they had constructed a replica of the original fort and now housed the museum. The river is quite large. The local variety of taco was thin grilled steak chopped and fried onions served on small tortillas with condiments of fresh salsa, guacamole, raw onion and cucumbers – mmmm. I got lost trying to find the petroglyphs in a maze of cattle trails in the bush. Happening on a poor little house, I enlisted a 9-year-old boy to be my guide for 50 pesos. Andre had a severe crossed eye that by now was amblyopic (cerebral blindness) and would be irreversible by his age (this would not happen in Canada). This sweet little kid was very diligent at finding the three sets of glyphs scattered over the boulders.
Construction is everywhere and labor intensive. I watched a crew of 15 apply cement to a rooftop. Cement trucks don’t exist and with a cement mixer, wheelbarrows and buckets to carry the cement to the roof top, the job was completed. The grass along the highways is cut by machete and the shoulders when present are swept by hand. The minimum wage here is $5/day but usually wages are higher. Workmanship seems to be of high quality.
Public bathrooms are noticeable by their absence. Where do Mexicans go to the john? They do seem to have tremendous bladder control. For the 5 hour drive from Creel to Batopilas in the Copper Canyon, there were no bladder stops and nobody (even the women) seemed to have a problem. The only reliable places are Pemex gas stations and the municipal government buildings. Always bring toilet paper with you.
The drive to Mazatlan was a long hard day. The initial 200kms looked like the breadbasket of the world with flat irrigated fields stretching for miles everywhere. No wonder we have fresh vegetables on our table year around – hardly the 100 mile rule. Other than the backpacker type in the Copper Canyon and the rich gringos around San Carlos, I again only see Mexicans and no RVs. The wonderful four lane divided highway with shoulders (tolls 117 pesos) deteriorated in the last 200kms to the thin line as it passed through rough, hilly, heavily treed and sparsely populated country. Mexican drivers can be crazy, driving too fast and passing on double solid lines, or even on the right shoulder. The most dangerous thing about this country is not crime but the drivers and the roads.
Mazatlan, 13 km south of the Tropic of Cancer, is the largest port on the Mexican Pacific coast. I took a risk by driving into Old Town and immediately found a great parking spot one block from the cathedral so that’s where I camped for 2 nights. Old Town is full of great colonial architecture and narrow treed streets. Plaza Machado is surrounded by galleries and restaurants that move tables onto the street at 4 PM getting ready for the onslaught of Americans. Full of gringos, there was lots of live music – jazz, blues, and intimate groups. The cathedral was the most magnificent church I’ve seen yet with its high yellow towers and a remarkable interior with many carved statues and stone relief oak leaves around every window. The twelve scenes of Christ’s journey to his crucifixion present in all Catholic churches were also carved. Up at dawn I biked south on the malecon to El Faro, at 157m, the second highest lighthouse in the world after Gibraltar. I walked to the top for great views of Mazatlan. I took the panga ferry to Isla de la Piedra where I biked the long beach and through the town to the ferry on the other side. The only ships were fishing boats, the Baja Ferry from La Paz and the Mexican navy. If this is the largest port on the Pacific coast of Mexico, I question their economy. I then biked north along the malecon to Zona Dorada where most tourists stay with all their trappings – hotels, restaurants, bars and jewelry stores, a place to be avoided. There was a wonderful collection of nude statues along the malecon (the females have perfect breasts and the males are not circumcised). The beaches extend for 16 kms north from Old Town and the malecon disappeared at Zona Dorado with large hotels ringing the shores. Highrise construction used thin crooked logs, lots of them, to support the next floor under construction. Back in Old Town, I toured all the tourist stops – Teatro Angela Peralta built-in 1860, totally in ruins by 1940 (a fig tree growing in the ruins of the theatre was described as having delusions of grandeur) and lovingly restored in 1992; Museum of the Machado house, the Museum of Art and the Museum of Archeology. The English translations were very stilted. Generally these tourist sites were all forgettable. There are many vacant store spaces and the tourist economy seems to exist only in small enclaves.
After 36 hours in Mazatlan and having seen it all (to my mind anyway), and with 18 days to get to Puerto Vallarta, I took a detour inland east to explore the north central highlands. On the 300 km drive to Durango, I stopped at the small colonial town of Concordia in the foothills. As it was Sunday morning, the wonderful cathedral with its baroque façade and many carved statues had standing room only. Over at the municipal building the 20 policemen were loading their automatic weapons with fresh bullets. They mustn’t have many tourists visit as I can’t remember being stared at so much. The next 100kms must be the most tortuous highway in the world as it climbs over the unbelievably rugged Sierra Madre. Taking 4½ hrs to drive that distance, the road was so narrow, there was no room for the white line and the drop offs were dizzying. There were a surprisingly large number of semi trailers, attesting to what good drivers these guys are. They are forced to be in your lane constantly and it gets hair-raising. Often I had to stop or even back up to let them negotiate a corner. I was almost hit twice and I wondered what happens when semis meet each other. Every flat piece of land has a house or restaurant on it and there weren’t many buildings. At one viewpoint the views off both sides of the road were spectacular with deep canyons on both sides. The Sierra Madre which runs down the spine of Mexico must be an obstacle to the growth of this economy. This piece of road is called the Devils Backbone (Espina del Diablo) and climbed to the top of the mountains before leveling out for the last 100 km into Durango at 1912 meters elevation.
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