Today we took everything off the walls and bookshelves and got all the odd nails removed and patched. I've been painting swatches of different colors in various spots around the place. I finally narrowed it down to 3 colors. We had a heavy rainstorm today and the sat internet went out so we took off to Playa and bought 30 gallons of paint. Hopefully work starts tomorrow, but that's mañana and this is México. Ni modo.

They are rebuilding the palapas on the beach below us. Interesting to watch the guy sitting on top finishing it off while 3 other guys stand around and watch.

We're really enjoying living here, not ready to give up life in the RV yet but it is nice to spread out a bit and actually have different rooms to hang out in. Unlimited electricity and hot water are a luxury too! I'm so used to watching how much water I use that it is difficult to leave the water on while washing my hands for instance. Showers.... as long as you want and as often as you want, that's living large.

Thanksgiving was wonderful, all the usual home foods and lots of good company.

The animals are starting to return after the hurricane. We had heard there was a toucan in the area and that our friend Kay was feeding it. It's got to be hard for the birds with most of the trees down. Anyway, Mimi saw it this morning! She got to watch it for awhile before it flew off. Unfortunately, no pictures.


We have moved back upstairs to the condo. Some of our resident geckos seem to have had babies. We've spotted 2 really tiny ones and Mimi caught one of them and we got pictures. That's our friend Rodrigo's hand it is on. If you have lots of geckos you don't have spiders or mosquitoes, love those geckos.

There is also a crocodile in the cenote across the street. I haven't seen it yet but hear it is not too big but big enough to catch a small dog. We keep ours away from there! We've seen a racoon family and a possum as well. The grackles that used to hang out in the palm in front of our deck are not around since the palm is gone. I'm putting oatmeal out again and one of them came by to eat yesterday, I'm sure the word will spread.

We've spent the last 5 days staying in our RV. It's a beautiful spot, beach front and private, surrounded by palms and sand. In a way it is nicer than being up in the condo, closer to the water and everything we need right here. We've set the sat dish up in both places and it is easier to anchor it down here than on the tile of the deck. We're snorkling every day, simpler when you just have to walk a few feet rather than down 3 flights of stairs. Ah well, the guests have gone and we will be moving back upstairs tonight. We'll be up there until the middle of Dec sometime.



(Chico and Hombre laying in the sand)

One of the things we thought a lot about while we were gone was whether our dogs would remember their brother when we came back. The 3 of them were inseparable, Chica was a little more aloof as befits 'she who must be obeyed'. Chico and Hombre played, slept and ate together and Chica joined in when she felt like it. It's been a year and a half since we drove away, a long time in dog years.

(Chico and Hombre in front with Chica and her coconut behind)

We took ours over to see Chico when we got here, they were a little unsure and there were some growls and lots of butt sniffing. The next day, Chico found us and came in the RV as he used to. It took a little while but they are almost as close as they were when we left. I think seeing each other in the same location helped jog the dog brains. We could see it happening, Chico and Hombre started playing and pretty soon they were acting as if they had never been separated. Chica is still a little aloof from Chico but she is mellowing, she still doesn't like him laying on her or eating her food.



Our dogs seem really happy to be back home, they lay in the sand, chew on coconuts and want to take off into the jungle after the raccoons that come around at night.





We're pretty happy too. We'll be going to the late seating at the Turtle Bay Cafe tonight, it's the "locals" seating. Hope you are all having a wonderful Thanksgiving.

We are now in Akumal. These are views from our deck, the edges of tropical storm Gamma are blowing by giving us some rain and a beautiful sunset. We spent a couple of days parked out in front of town at a bus parking lot. The road is in the process of being repaired but it is wide enough so we brought our RV in and parked it on the vacant lot next door to our condo. The owner of the lot has told us we can clear the debris and park there. It's very nice and right on the beach, we're getting a good breeze and can walk out our front door and snorkle.

We moved up into our condo though for 5 days, we'll move back to the RV tomorrow as we had renters coming in for a week. After that, we'll move back in for a month and then take off on a trip.

Our friend's Gary and Kay have put up a live web cam at the beach bar in Akumal, if you want to see it, click here


We arrived in time for Diego's first birthday party, he is the son of our friends Teri and Joel. This is a picture of him with Mimi and his uncle Scott. It was a lot of fun and it was great watching the kids try to hit the piñata.

Here's a pic of the brace that was added in Chetumal for our tow bar. It is supposed to keep the pressure from pulling the bar down and around. I don't explain this well.

This is a pic from the top. It's difficult to see what was added as the bumper has been put back on over it and it was all painted.

We had a good time here with Kathe and Colleen, their land is really beautiful. The jeep is fixed again, hopefully for good. We need to get going to Akumal. We took a walk through the property with Colleen today, she has cut paths throughout - a huge amount of work.

We spent the morning cleaning, and cleaning and cleaning! All the dust from the dry states we traveled through had settled in our home. We vacuumed and washed rugs and wiped floors. It was exhausting mainly because we are not yet used to the humidity and it was very hot and humid. Finished about 2pm after filling the water tanks and dumping the waste tanks. Went into Chetumal with Kathe and Colleen and found a welder. Actually, we found his shop but he wasn't there. Tomorrow at 9:30 we will go back and see about having something built for the tow bar. Later we moved the rig out to Kathe and Colleen's land a few miles away. It's beautiful but thick jungle, lots of mosquitoes and other beasties including twinkling fireflies. Colleen has been clearing it with a machete and she's done a lot of work. Personally, I'd hire a bulldozer and get rid of it all but I'm not one to live around a lot of trees and bushes, I like to see the horizon. It's gorgeous land though and right on Chetumal Bay. They have some great plans for developing it, it will be good to watch it take shape.

This morning we had breakfast at the restaurant and I bought the hammock I had been looking at last night. It's beautiful, blue and green in opposite directions and the weave is so tight it looks like a solid piece of fabric. I also showed Demetria's daughter the small hammock we have for fruit and other stuff in the kitchen. It has to have a tight weave or things will fall through it and we had ours made a few years ago in Akumal. I made a deal for her to make 10 of them in various colors and we will pick them up in a month. I watched her weaving a hammock last night while we were eating dinner, she does great work and the weave is very tight with a lot of threads.

We started off again about noon, our usual 'crack of noon' departure. We got to Chetumal and found the small town of Calderitas where our friend's land is located. We checked in to a beautiful place on the bay, huge lawns and small palapas right on the water. It's expensive, 220 pesos a night which is approximately $22 US dollars. It's very nice though and we are enjoying the breeze off the bay and the gorgeous view. We found Kathe and Colleen's land on our second try. The first time we just drove up the road and looked for their RV. No luck. Then we asked the girl here and she gave us the name of a restaurant up the road and said they would know. We went there and they did know. She told us to look for 3 pieces of wood in the gate just south of them and ... we found them!

By this time it was dark so we couldn't see much but we are moving up there tomorrow. The four of us went to dinner in Chetumal, at an Arabic restaurant. The food was really good, we both had Shawama chicken. I have no idea what that is except that there was also Shawama beef and the waiter said it was a way of cooking the meat. Afterwards we came back here and Mimi and I sat out under our palapa in the cool breeze that came in with some rain. Beautiful!

Didn't get started until after 10am although we were up by 8. We had to buy more ice and pack the cooler again as there is a state inspection between Tabasco and Campeche states and they will take any meat. The road is not good along here either, lots of work being done on it but it is full of washouts and potholes. The rivers are really high, the remains of flooding can be seen and there are a lot of projects going on along the river banks. This area is very low and has many huge rivers and lots of wetlands anyway, now much of the land is under water or has just dried out leaving red mud behind.

Around 3pm we stopped and noticed that the tow bar had broken again. It broke right behind where it was welded in Guadalajara. Back to driving separately... there is a trade off on which vehicle you drive. If you drive the jeep, you can smoke (we don't smoke in the RV) but there is no air conditioning. Probably the only good thing about our smoking is that we stop every hour or so and while we are outside smoking we walk around the rig. That's how we've found the breaks in the tow bar before the jeep disconnected.


The road across the bottom of the Yucatan peninsula is 2 lane with little shoulder and big trees lining the road. The lanes are narrow and if there are a lot of trucks it can be harrowing. We were lucky today, there was little traffic and we didn't stop until about 7pm. We made it as far as La Selva restaurant where we have stayed before. It was good to see Demetria again and we had a good dinner and spent the night parked in front. Tomorrow we will go on to Chetumal, find our friends land nearby and see about getting the tow bar welded or reconstructed. Chetumal is only 4 hours from Akumal so we are almost there.

We took the free road for several hours, we had to find a bank and there are no towns on the toll road. After we found a town large enough to have a bank, Tierra Blanca, it was a long ways before we could cut back across to the toll road. It's beautiful driving though, very green and lush but there is a lot more standing water than we've seen before. Remnants of this hard hurricane season. This part of Veracruz received a ton of water from Stan and probably got a lot more from Emily and Wilma. All that water did not have a good effect on the roads, really rough and full of potholes. We finally got over to the toll road but it was not a lot better. It was under repair in a lot of areas so we had too many detours. Got to the WalMart in Villahermosa around 7pm, went shopping and crashed.

We go through all these round about routes because we don't like driving across Mexico City. I say that first because today we really meandered through Estado de Mexico, Morelos and Puebla to avoid the really big city. We had to navigate through 3 pretty damn big cities to do it. Crossing Toluca is a hassle, no ring road from our direction so we went right through the middle. Next we had to find the small mountain road that cuts across to the next highway. In this area, all highways lead to Mexico City which meant they are all going east/west. We had to find our way between two east/west highways so we could continue west and catch another highway back east but with a branch to Puebla which is south of the big enchilada. Confusing, no? We were high in some beautiful pine forests, most of the day we were over 9000' and we topped out at 10,340' on our little mountain road. After that, we had to cross Cuernavaca, get on the road to Puebla and then navigate through that huge city.

Who knows if all this is worth it or not. We have driven across the DF (Mexico City is the Districto Federal much like Washington is the District of Columbia) but we planned our time and route pretty carefully. While the big circle we took today definitely takes longer, it is less stressful so probably worth it. You wouldn't believe that if you'd seen us when we couldn't figure out what street we were on in Puebla. Again we were coming from a direction that didn't have a ring road so we ended up driving through the centro of this huge city. We found the road out though and made it through. The GPS saves us in these situations because even if I can't find the street on the map, I can tell if we are heading the right way and we can eventually find the highway.

Right now we are stopped for dinner about 30 km south of Puebla, we are still over 7000' but within a few miles the road will start to drop and in a very short distance it will hit sea level. We're trying to decide if we want to spend one more night in the cool mountain air with our feather comforter or if we want to go on down the mountain to the warmth and humidity of the lowlands. We're parked at a nice, level Pemex but it looks like we are blocking some school buses that will probably want to leave at dark-thirty in the morning so we'll move on at least a little ways after dinner.

We moved on and just kept on moving, down the mountain from 8000' to about 2000'. This is one scary road on a good day and why we decided to keep going at night is beyond me. The actual road is in good condition, divided and with multiple lanes each way. It's what is just over that small guard rail that really spooks me. It's a loooong drop down and the road is steep for about 30 km. In fact, it drops around 5000' in that distance! Sometimes we do some stupid stuff and this is one of those times. Just after the last chance to back out of this downhill slalom, it got foggy. Then it got really, really foggy! As in the big semi truck in front of us disappeared when it got one car length ahead. I'm a bit of a fog expert, grew up on the Calif coast and drove through a lot of coastal fog and tule fog in my lifetime... this was as bad as I've ever been in. There were no places to stop and we wouldn't have stopped anyway, that is the most dangerous thing you can do in fog. If I hadn't been on this road in good weather I wouldn't have known about the many thousand foot drop just outside my window, perhaps ignorance would have been bliss. It was a white knuckle ride until about 4000' when the fog lifted and all I had to worry about were the brakes and the tiny lights twinkling so far below. It ended well and we promised each other we wouldn't do this kind of thing ever again. We stopped for the night about 30km from Veracruz at 2000' in elevation.

It's warm! and it's humid! The warmth is nice but the humidity will take awhile to get used to. It's been so dry for the last few months, from Alb to Denver to Guadalajara it's been high altitude and dry. We pulled off the down comforter and got out the fan.

We left GDL around noon, our usual 'crack of noon' departure. We hit the toll roads and spent the rest of the day driving. The jeep is holding on pretty well, one of the bolts was a little loose but that's all so far.

Around 8:30pm we started looking for a place to stop. We were outside of Toluca (a big city in its own right and it is only 30km from the really big city - Mexico City) at around 8500' elevation. We found a great Pemex with lots of room and it even had guards carrying automatics. Well, on second thought perhaps that is NOT a good sign. Anyway, we got gas and pulled in back for the night. I was making hamburgers when the guard came and knocked on our door and said that it was not safe here, that the Pemex closed at 10pm. I swear he said something about "se mata" which sounds like "killed" to me. I don't know but we decided to move on. He told us there is another Pemex 30 minutes down the road that is open 24 hours with armed guards. OK, we'll eat dinner and keep on going. It wasn't 30 minutes down the road as the next 4 Pemex were full of trucks, but we did find a spot right before Toluca and pulled in for the night. Really high altitude in this part of Mexico, we were at 8571' for the night.

We did some housekeeping yesterday, dumped and filled the tanks, checked the tire pressure, batteries and repacked some bins. Most of that Mimi did, I took a nap! Went to Cristina's house and delivered the 3 cases of cat food we brought down for her cat Chepo, had tacos at the stand on her corner, came home and hit the sack. We're on our way south today, hoping to get across Mexico City without problems either tonight or tomorrow. The dogs had a last run in the huge field next to us, they miss the freedom to run and play when we are on the road.

It looks like the jeep tow bar is fixed. Jesus welded and added the new bolts and it seems strong and well attached. It's going to make us nervous for awhile though.

We had a great dinner with friends tonight at an Argentine restaurant, really excellent steaks and great company. Then we all went to the Lila Downs concert. She was fantastic with a wonderful band and playing to a full theater of enthusiastic fans. We first heard her music coming from a record store in Oaxaca next door to a cafe we were eating in 4 years ago, we went inside, asked who it was and bought both cd's they had. We bought another cd a year or so later. She looks a lot younger and happier and smaller in person than on her cd's. The voice is the same though, incredible!

We slept in today, then took a walk around to see if there was anyone here that we knew from last year. Nope, it's too early in the winter for the regulars to have arrived. We talked to Jesus, one of the maintenance men, and he thinks he can fix it. He says he is a welder, we'll see. Mimi and Jesus spent the rest of the afternoon taking it apart and deciding what they would do. Jesus has to buy the solder and has his regular job to do so they will start again tomorrow. Mimi and I went to a shop that sells bolts and got new ones that will extend farther. We also stopped at the tamale shop and had several types of tamales for dinner.

Later Mimi discovered she had lost the pieces that Jesus intended to weld back onto the bar. She spent a fruitless evening searching for them, she's really bummed and thinks it won't work now.

We stopped in Fresnillo to shop and hit the ATM. Our first real stop at a store since we crossed the border. Found a huge Soriana grocery store/mall. I always think it is interesting the first things I buy when I cross the border in either direction. We didn't really need any food so it was all impulse stuff - lots of coconut yogurt, boxed milk, packaged flan, a new dispensor pump for water bottles and yet another griddle for pancakes. Also more money for tolls and gas.


We did the long pull around Zacatecas, climbing steadily to over 8000' with lots of turns. A little later we stopped at a toll booth to take a break and Mimi noticed that the tow shield on the front of the jeep was leaning out at a weird angle. Bad news! The tow bar that is attached to the jeep had broken through the solid metal of the jeep frame and was about a 1/4 inch from freedom. If that had happened, the jeep would have been disconnected from the RV and hopefully the break away brake would have worked and it would have stopped in the middle of the road, the other option is even worse to think about.

There are 2 holes in the cross frame of the jeep that the bumper and the tow plate mount through. Both of them are ripped open, it's pretty thick steel and hard to believe. We disconnected and stowed the pieces and I drove the jeep the rest of the way into Guadalajara. We decided it would be easier to deal with in GDL than to stop in Aguascalientes which is a large capitol city that we are unfamiliar with.

I don't see well at night anymore and the 225 mile drive was not easy. There were a couple of places the road was under construction and the detours meant 2 lanes in opposite directions with a lot of big truck lights coming at me. It took us 7 hours including navigating around Guadalajara and onto the right freeway heading south. We pulled into San Jose del Tajo, a lovely RV park on the outskirts of GDL about 11pm.

We drove a total of 286 miles today and spent $65 US on tolls. It was a long day in spite of the short distance.

Drove 418 miles today, spent about $120 US on tolls but we aren't in the mode to tarry. It's a lot like driving across west Texas, in fact you could be almost anywhere in the southwestern US. In the valleys it is rich farming land with miles of orchards and fields, in between it is vast empty desert with stunning buttes and jutting ridges. We stopped in the city of Camargo, unhooked the jeep near a park, and I went in to the centro to use an ATM. It was difficult to park anywhere near the bank as the streets were full of vendors selling huge chrysanthemums in brilliant yellow and orange for Day of the Dead. All of the parking places were full of flower vendors and booths full of crosses made from flowers. All day we passed trucks with the whole family in back along with lots of flowers and floral crosses. Probably they were off to the cemetary where their family is buried to clean and decorate the grave. I have no cultural feelings about chrysanthemums so bought a bunch of yellow ones to decorate the rig. We spent the night at another Pemex outside of the city of Fresnillo.