RVing IN SUNNY MEXICO
Chapter 1
Don’t ever do this, trust
me. I’m not quite sure what we were
thinking when we planned and started this trip, but we were lucky we did not
have any more serious problems than we did.
There are certain parts of Mexico you can drive to – mostly Baja and
resorts near the border. However,
driving through the heart of Mexico in a Recreational Vehicle is, well, asking
for trouble. Most of the locals we met
just shook their heads – those Gringos, always trying to get killed.
On the other hand, you can’t
have experiences without taking some risks.
And this trip was a memorable one – and an educational one as well. I learned a lot about Mexico – a country
that most Americans know little about.
We have little or no idea what the politics are like. We know even less about Mexico’s
history. I had forgotten (or slept
through class that day) that we invaded Mexico in 1848. Not just some of it – all of it. We occupied the capital, ran their
government, and at the point of a gun, dictated the terms of the treaty of
Guatalupe – forcing Mexico to cede to us California, Arizona, New Mexico, and
parts of Nevada. Of course by then, we
already had taken Texas when the Mexican government foolishly invited Americans
to settle there – Americans who later declared independence and then petitioned
the US to become a State. Of course,
that’s all in the past, now, but what is past is prologue, and understanding
this history helped me figure out why some Mexicans still resent Americans (for
among other reasons) just as there are still some Southerners who resent
“Yankees”.
It was a sunny day when we
left 8033 Washington Road on July 13, 2001.
As you can see, there are four of us, and our camper is towing a rather
large Wells Cargo utility trailer. This
deserves some explanation. This trip
was started at the instigation of our cleaning lady, Gloria Ortiz Morales. Gloria has been working for us for over 10
years now, and is sort of part of the family.
Not only do we pay her well, but we also provide her with health
insurance, and even provided her with a condominium to rent when her landlord
refused to repair the fallen ceiling in her apartment. We like Gloria. She mentioned several times that we should visit her home in
Cuernavaca, Mexico in our RV. It
sounded like fun, until you look at a map and realize that Cuernavaca is below
Mexico City, and is quite a haul from Alexandria, Virginia.
Gloria sort of had a hidden
agenda as well. She had been collecting
castoffs and items from her various employers and other sources until her
apartment was chinked full of boxes and boxes of “stuff” – most of it used
clothing (ropas usada). For the
life of us, we could not figure out why she was saving this stuff, but we would
figure out later than what we consider junk in some cases is gold in
Mexico. She wanted us to put these
boxes in our camper and drive them to Cuernavaca. Sure. No Problem. Simple.
Well, to begin with, there was no way all those boxes would fit in the
camper. A trailer seemed like the
simple solution, but trailer rental places would not rent to anyone driving to
Mexico, and for the time involved, the rentals costs would be exorbitant. We expected to be away for at least two
months. So we bought a 2001 Wells Cargo
12 foot Utility Trailer. Capacity, 2000
lbs, in theory, anyway. In practice, it
was loaded with 3500 lbs. of her “stuff”.
You can’t just haul a bunch of
junk into Mexico, I found out. It turns
out the Mexican government is fairly protectionist. The North American Free Trade Agreement was a pretty bitter pill
for them to swallow. While Americans
worried that cheap Mexican imports will flood the US, the Mexican government
was equally concerned that cheap American agricultural products would
destabilize their almost feudal agricultural system. Under NAFTA, you can supposedly import anything made in the US or
Canada into Mexico and pay a flat 18% duty.
Supposedly. How things are
supposed to work, and how they actually work in Mexico are two different
things. For an American, used to
demanding satisfaction from the government, the Mexican system can be baffling
and frustrating. We discovered two
things. NAFTA notwithstanding, it is
illegal to import drugs, guns or used clothing into Mexico. I kid you not. Ropas Usada are
classified right up there with drugs and guns.
There
is an exception , of course, at least in theory. Mexican citizens are allowed to bring their household possessions
back to their home in Mexico with a document called a Manaje de Casa or literally “house pass”, available
from the Mexican Embassy. So Mark,
Gloria, and I trouped off to the Mexican embassy to get this paper. A word about Gloria. She is paranoid of authority figures. In Mexico, this is not abnormal, it is a
survival skill. People there are scared
to death of their own government and their own police. It is no way to live. Going to the Mexican embassy took all the
courage she could muster. After about a
two hour wait, we were told that she needed proof of residence in the US in the
form of a lease. Of course, I
specifically asked the lady on the phone if we would need that and she said
“no”. So we had to leave and come back
another day. Gloria took us to a great real
Mexican restaurant in Adams Morgan called “Mixtec” which serves Oxacan cuisine. It was wonderful – washed down with a couple
of rounds of Modelo Negro, with a plate of those little tiny limes, sliced just
so.
We returned to the embassy
the next day, and after another hour wait, we obtained our sealed and certified
Manaje de Casa. We explained to the lady at the desk what we
were trying to do and received the first of what would be endless mystified
looks. You’re going to drive where? Towing what? Why? And why on earth would you do anyone a favor? They were sure we were smuggling drugs, or
something. People don’t just do things
to be nice, I guess. They also stated
point blank that despite the seals of the Mexican consulate and the Mexican
government, there would be “trouble” at the border. We would have to pay money and wait there as well. This was not going to be like going to
Canada. It was only 9:00 in the morning
when we left the embassy with our documents.
We went to Mixtec again, this time for breakfast. This time Gloria ordered the beers – for
breakfast! – with our Huevos Campesinos. Gloria explained in her broken Spanglish
(she refuses to learn more than 3 words of English) that drinking beer for
breakfast in Mexico is not an unusual thing.
I was beginning to think that this trip was going to be a 2 month
drinking binge – and I would not be far off.
The four of us in the picture
above are, from left to right, Susan, Gary, Mark, and myself (Bob). Gary and Susan are friends of ours who had
just returned from travelling the world over the period of a year, on a
shoestring budget, staying in hostels, and generally living it up and enjoying
life. When they heard about this trip,
they wanted to come along. Sure- why
not? The more the merrier. Four people living for two weeks in a 21
foot motorhome. Unfortunately, since
Susan and Gary had “real” jobs, they could only accompany us on the first
portion of the journey. Gary, who used
to work receiving at Linens ‘n Things, was our Loadmaster –a master and stuffing boxes into
trailers. It took us the better part of
an afternoon to clean out Gloria’s apartment of boxes and load the trailer. We were on our way.
The motorhome we had purchased the year before, and it
only had 20,000 miles on it when we bought it.
(It now has 56,000 miles). Even
so, it needed some work. The crappy
“Generac” (Generate a Racket) generator, little more than a lawnmower engine,
had crapped out. I wanted a reliable,
bulletproof and quiet generator if we were going to spend a month in
Mexico, in the summer, no less. Onan
generators made a nice “microlight” 2800 watt model, but that seemed a little
thin for our needs. I finally located a
Honda RV generator at Shaum Electric in Elkhart
Indiana. Honda had gotten out of the RV
generator business (but still makes regular stand-alone generators). This brand-new-in-the-box 1999 model, 4000
watts, could be truck freighted to me for $2200. What a piece of equipment.
Liquid cooled, two cylinder – Engineered. And, with a huge muffler, which unfortunately hung down a
bit. But it arrived in a week, fit with
1/4'” to spare, and ran like a champ. I
would later be thankful I made this purchase.
The only other piece of work,
which I would also be thankful for, was remodeling the bathroom. The camper originally had green shag
carpeting in the bathroom, which was bad enough, but when the toilet broke, it
became soggy green shag carpeting.
Also, in a quirk of RV design, the toilet had been wedged between the
bathtub and a very wide vanity. It was
so narrow, that only those of us with the most petit of derrières could
fit. I cut the vanity to make it 2”
narrower, and installed a new toilet with a 4” spacer pedestal, all this on new
linoleum. You may have heard of this
thing called “Montezuma’s Revenge” and it is no lie. And Mexican bathrooms leave much to be desired. The only advantage to hauling the RV all
through Mexico was to have a nice clean, American-style bathroom everywhere we
went. You might not think about it, but
it is important, at least twice a day or so.
First
stop: Granceland, Memphis, Tennessee.
Well not our first stop, technically.
Our goal was to reach Mexico as quickly as possible, to drive “straight
though” so to speak. As RVers
of some 10 years, Mark and I were quite used to 12-14 hour days of
driving. We also had recently acquired
the habit when transiting like that to drive until we were exhausted and then
“crashing” for the night at the local “Flying-J” truck stop. Old people do it all the time, so we figured
it would be no problem. No worries,
right? Well, like almost everything on
this trip, it gang aft agley.
Graceland was Graceland, and if you don’t mind forking over some dough to the Church of Scientology to see it, it is an interesting experience.
Mark
and I had been to Graceland before, of course.
Actually twice. And The Grand
Old Orpey and Branson Missouri. We
likes that sort of stuff. Lots of
fun. After a day and a half cooped up
the camper, Susan wanted out, and Graceland seemed like the perfect halfway
stop. Susan’s travel instincts were
usually dead-on throughout this trip.
That night, we pulled
into a truck stop to crash. It would be
a short stop. Susan decided to take a
walk around and see what was going on.
“Danger Prone Daphne” as we later teased her, saw a drunk breaking into
a waitresses’ car and summoned the Police.
Those meddling kids! It then
dawned upon Susan that our group resembled the Scooby-Doo team – Daphne, Velma,
Shaggy, Scooby, and Fred. We decided
that this particular truck stop was skank and moved on. As truck stop connoisseurs, we prefer the
Flying-J or Williams.
Did
I mention that we brought our dog
along?