Me again!! This time we are in the city of Puerto Escondido, in the state of Oaxaca…only 110 km or so from home!! We arrived at 630pm or so and are currently in town having dinner. We are in the same café/restaurant we came to several years ago. Good food and some nice posteres (desserts).
We found a hotel (in Puerto Escondido) on Expedia for $87 Cdn vs the hotels own web site’s listed price of $90 US plus tax of 15%. Score. Kinda. The hotel is ok…no wow and the internet does not work in the room. Bex did manage a Skype from a deserted bar in the hotel, and I am currently typing this on Word and will cut and paste later. We were worried about what time we would pull into Puerto E, so booking ahead just made sense. After eating dinner amongst the surfers, it would have been cool to stay in a small place right on the beach...next time!!
Seeing these so-so hotels just makes us more determined to design, build and execute the best possible villas and experiences for our guests!! Soon amigos!! Keep your eyes peeled for the Casa de Dos Conejos website!!
Our day today…
It started early and there seemed to be no hot water for Bex’s shower. Brrrrr and her first f-bomb of the day. The other 2 were topes related...more on those later.
We knew we had a long day so we left at 745am. It ended up being 610 km and almost 11 hours today.
It was 234 km to Acapulco and this was easy driving, averaging 75 km/hr. Hit only three caseta de cobra (toll booths), the first 130 km out of Ixtapa. I said Miss Bex was on Dramamine...not that she was a drama queen!! She took Dramamine for the motion sickness and this knocked her out. The first part of the morning was me and the road.
About 2 hours out, we drove through Buenos Aires and saw the first “road side” car dealers yet. Just like a Mom and Pop store in Canada. The topes are giving us bad gas mileage. We had to come to a complete stop for probably over 100 topes. 120 km/hr to 0 to 120 km/hr 100 times just for the topes…not to mention the mountains and the traffic jams!!
About 10 km out of Acapulco, there was a flooded road and that meant 20 km/hr. After 3 hours on the road, we had completed 215 km. Acapulco was big and amazing. Definitely some $$ in that town. They need to tax those peeps and get the roads fixed. From entering Acapulco to exiting, was all of 14 km and it took 50 minutes. All the highways go through the towns, not around?
And we had another one of those life changing decisions, go left or right at the fork in the road? We took the “rapido” option and it led to signs stating “aeropuerto” (right path!!) and ta-do…to a Starbucks.
Here is Bex helping a taxi driver (outside Starbucks) with his directions:
Actually she did great. The taxi drivers appreciated the fact that she was using all the Spanish she knew, and could understand what they were saying in Spanish!!
For my casino buds Melon and the Sarge, what do you think about opening a casino here?
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| Viva Las Vigas?? |
Mexico actually now has bingo, race and sports books. I had never seen those before.
During today’s journey, we hit 4 military check points. The soldier at the first one looked at us and our plates and waved us through.
The second checkpoint had us open the back of the truck, asked us where we were from and where we were going, and then let us proceed.
The third check point had an English speaking soldier who asked us the same questions, but also wanted to see our passports which were in the back of the truck. We were caught off guard as we had been told the military didn’t or wasn’t allowed to ask for passports. They are allowed to search vehicles, but no passport requests. Not sure the reasoning. Any way, he was friendly’ish and practiced his English with me by repeating all my English…”your passport is in the back of the truck?” etc.
Fourth checkpoint was all about the questions and then we were told top proceed. By the 4th time, we had our replies down in all Spanish…NO English!!
Trucking along…we see the initiative people have to make money. The roads get washed out and huge pot holes appear. Men arrive with shovels, fill in the holes and ask for donations. I owe them some $$ as I drove by…bad karma…but I did give some pesos to a lady (at least 110 years old) hanging around the Pemex.
Ok….the craziest triple incident today. I am not sure if it was because it was Sunday or what…but at 3 different topes, we come to a stop to go over them, and in between cars going in each direction, is a dog doing his business like no one is around. One poor guy started in the other lane and had to do “the penguin” to get to a safe part of the median and finish up. CRAZY!!!
Here is one of my favorite photo sessions of the day:
These booths are at the sides of the roads, all in the little towns. They seem to be manned by all the members of the families at different times of the day. Very colorful.
We have the plantos. While I was taking these photos, Bex wrangled up some fried bananas with some liquid sugar on top. She loved them!!
These two gals struck up a conversation with me and loved the photos of the stands and bananas. It appeared they had not seen something like the results the Canon produces. I asked their permission to take their photos (con permission?) and then they became all serious. I showed their photos to the lady at the next booth and she was all excited to see her friend’s photo.
In Canada, if a car driving the other way flashes it’s headlights, there is probably a cop up a head. In Mexico, there are probably horses, cows, donkeys or dogs on the road up a head!!
Talking about things on the road, we often see people walking on the road, especially near the topes where we come to a complete stop. Sometimes we even have people talk to us, throw us a look or make comments. On this occasion, as we were slowing down, Bex yelled “you are pigs!!!”. I was prepared for someone being crude to Bex…I was so wrong.
Our last photo break was initiated by seeing these cars parked by the side of the road, and then this group of people sitting around and watching the action below.
We then saw this volleyball game occurring:
We also saw this group of men making their bets for the next game:
What was truly exciting was that every person that saw us, gave us a second look, one that was out of curiosity. I said buneos tardes (good afternoon) to the older men and hola (hello) to the younger people. They were some what surprised to hear me speak Spanish, and one guy actually smiled, laughed and tried to start up a conversation with me. So exciting, fresh and exhilarating!! We will learn this language and become a part of the Mexican community!! Bex already has a great grasp of the language and I being shy and all, have no issue saying hi to people and seeing where it leads.
Well…it was another long day, but we are excited to be so close. We are meeting Rick at the Super Che at 11am and then will go to the condo to conduct our walk around. It will then be about unpacking and settling in!! After that and before Rick leaves on the 2nd, we will work with him on getting the utilities in our names and getting internet and satellite/cable working as well!!
So…not sure where we will be doing our blog update from tomorrow…it might be from a café in town.
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