The Car Wash Guy

No matter where you park your car in Mexico there will be a guy with a few rags and a couple of buckets of water standing nearby. They are the Mexican version of the Automatic Car Wash. They will give you a very good car wash using only one bucket of rinse water that they get from local businesses. The charge is $20 Pesos for a basic wash. This is the least I have paid and the most is $40 Pesos in a large city after the “Gringo Tax” was added. $2 to $4 dollars is a very cheap wash job. Sometimes they will offer a hand waxing to go with it for a reasonable additional charge.

They are usually young men trying to make a living. Like all Mexican workers they are honest and hard working. We left the car in a grocery store parking lot today while we went sightseeing and I gave the young man $20 Pesos and pointed out the car before we walked away. We returned to a shining clean Honda.

He could have done a shoddy job or he could have just walked away with my money. He was never going to see me again anyway. He didn’t walk away. He was conscientious and gave me just as good a wash as he would have if I had stood there watching him. Maybe better. I love Mexico. It restores your faith in humanity.

Toluca

As I covered in a previous post, we cannot drive through Mexico City. Our bypass route took us through the town of Toluca. The Church’s guide to Mexican Camping warns about the Police in that town and with us being fresh from our experience in Morelia, we planned out our route around town carefully. The Church’s tell us to be very sure to take the “Laterals”, bumpy, slow roads that parallel the highway, as driving a dual wheeled vehicle on the highway through town will get you a ticket. We carefully watched for the lateral and as soon as we saw one, turned onto it. No problem. It was much slower but it followed right alongside the highway, separated by a curb.

After several blocks, however, the lateral turned right while the highway turned left! Soon we found ourselves on narrow, busy city streets with no idea where we were. I did not want to temp a cop again so we pulled over and, with the help of a friendly shopkeeper, flagged down a taxi.  We showed him where we wanted to go and I emphasized, “No Polica!”. He laughed and indicated he could handle it. Norma climbed in with him and I followed, both of us with our emergency flashers going. It turned out that we were a long way out of our way (read “lost”) and it took him almost an hour of slow driving through heavy traffic, making sure I was still following, to get us on our way. We paid the bill and tipped him way too much but it was worth it.

We continued South but ran out of daylight before we found a good place to park for the night. We are in the tiny village of El Magote beside a tiny lake in front of a school that is closed tomorrow. We walked across the street to a tiny Taco Stand where I ordered a whole deep fried fish and Norma some chicken. We fired up the generator for coffee and are now being entertained by loud music and fireworks from across the small lake from people celebrating the Mexican Holiday, “The Virgin of Guadeloupe” Day. The Lady has great significance in Mexican history as she was the Saint taken by the rebel forces who ousted the Spanish Occupiers from Mexico. My hat is off to her. It was a necessary job well done.

*ON EDIT* The Lady evidently likes to party! After the procession from the Church there was a very loud, DJ lead party going on until 3:00 AM on the other side of the lake. The music just got louder and louder until it finally quit. It made for a very poor sleep. Thankfully we do not have far to go today.

Morelia Mordida

We were very careful leaving Morelia. We asked the taxi driver how to get onto the ring road as big rigs are not allowed in town and we had the directions down pat. The ring road has three lanes but because we did not know how the exit to our highway worked (some left turns are made from the left lane and some from the right lane) we were driving in the centre lane. A motorcycle cop ("Trafico") pulled up on our right and told us we should be in the far right lane. We thanked him for telling us and moved over in front of him. He immediately passed us and pulled us over. He told us we were driving in the wrong lane. He drew a picture of the three lanes and put an “X” over the left and centre lanes and a “tick” over the right lane. We explained we were turning left so we had to be in the left lane and I did not know how far we were from our turn. He emphatically shook his head and drew a line from the right lane turning left. Again (by now I knew what he was up to) we thanked him and I went to shake his hand. He said we had a “fine” of $50 USA dollars for driving in the wrong lane.

I said “No,no. We did not know”, and he said there were signs. Well, if there were, I did not see them. He said we had to go to the “office” to pay the fine. I pretended I did not understand and then told him that I could not drive the rig in town. I kept saying we did not know the rule. I was prepared to wait him out but Norma handed him $200 Pesos ($20) which he quickly pocketed at which time his English improved remarkably. He told us how to get out of town and on our way.

I know Moisheh and Chris will be angry at me for paying and I agree it only makes it harder on the next person but he did not seem to be backing down at all so for us, at the time, it was the lesser of two evils. If he had not backed down I would have had to leave the motorhome at the side of a very busy road and taken a cab downtown and back. That would have used up most of the $200 Pesos, Plus there may have actually been a fine. As I say, I would have played dumb for a lot longer to see what he was going to do but Norma decided to take the easy way out. Sorry.

I must add that I do not consider this a bad experience. I probably was doing something wrong and if the same thing happened in Canada or in the USA it would have ended up costing me much more. The cop was quite pleasant and I know they do not make all that much money. This is the very first time anything like this has happened to me in Mexico and it was acrually kind of fun. I never felt threatened or intimidated at any time and I just hope I made his Christmas a little better. I can afford the $200 Pesos.

Morelia

Our next stop was about an hour down the road in Morelia. There are no RV Parks near the city so we settled down in a WalMart parking lot. We were both suffering, me from the remnants of two or three days of the “runs” and Norma of just starting the “runs”. We did not want to pass up seeing the Historico Centro of this old Colonial city however so we put on our best game face and took a cab downtown. The centre of attention is the Cathedral which took over a century to complete. It covers a couple of blocks and is very impressive. The rest of the Centro consists of buildings from the Hispanic days. Progressive building codes prevent modern buildings in the area so businesses (banks and such) have taken over the old buildings and repaired them. They look exactly as they did back in the days of the Spanish occupation. The city is known for it’s pink stone construction and it is on display everywhere.

Young People (Compared to Us) Visit

For our last night in Patzcuaro we shared our RV Park with two young couples. One couple, Tom and Laurel and their two charming kids were from Bellingham, WA. They have been living in Guanajuato, MX for the past few months. They took a leave of absence from their teaching jobs to learn Spanish. The other couple, Brit and (old timers disease here – I forgot her name!) were from Asheville, NC and were passing through Patzcuaro heading for the beach on a surfing honeymoon. We shared a couple of beers and snacks with them. They were all very nice people, and the kids were two of the nicest I have met. Sorry Jayde and Sierrah, excluding my granddaughters!.

We then went to bed tucked under our multiple blankets. It got very cold that night but not as bad as the next night when my friend Michael reported on his Blob that his birdbath had frozen into a block of ice! Very unusual for this far South. I am happy to be leaving this weather.

Bypassing Mexico City

We will be leaving Patzcuaro tomorrow morning. We will stop outside of Merida, about an hour East of Patzcuaro. We will leave the motorhome in a WalMart parking lot and take a cab into the Centro to have a look around. We have enjoyed Patzcuaro with it’s thin air and cool nights, a by-product of it’s 7,100 foot altitude, but it is time to move on. Almost a third of our time down here has expired and there is much more yet to be seen!

Mexico City is a traffic nightmare. Driving a fifty foot long motorhome / Honda combination through the city is not an option. For some years now Mexico City had had a complicated system of certain vehicles being banned from driving on certain days, this system being based on licence numbers of vehicles. Now this same system is still in effect but now not only includes the whole Federal District State (DF) but also includes all licence plates, not just DF plates as in the past. In other words, it includes us. I have also been advised that all vehicles driven in the city must have a smog test sticker on them.

We have been searching for a simple route towards the South of Mexico which avoids the DF. They have a saying down here that “All roads lead to Mexico City”, and that is becoming glaringly apparent. I asked Forum members on RV.Net and received an excellent suggestion. This however took us to the North of Mexico City into territory we had explored last winter. We wanted something new so we started looking again. We think we have found a route to the South of the DF that will eventually get us to the city of Puebla. We think it will take us two or three days from here to there and it is unlikely we will find Internet along the way. Be patient with me and I will post again when I can.

One bonus is this route takes us through the territory controlled by Emiliano Zapata from 1911 until his ambush and murder by Government troops in 1919. Zapata, along with his contemporary, Pancho Villa, fought for the return of Hacienda land to the peasants with the cry of “Tierra y Libertad!” (Land and Freedom). The building to which he was lured and ambushed is still standing and the walls still display the bullet holes of the ambush as well as a small museum featuring the bullet riddled and blood stained clothing he was wearing at the time.

Mexico is a Noisy Country

Mexico is a noisy Country! Everything is done at full blast. Trucks parade around the streets with huge sound systems and speakers blaring about their products, be it chickens, tortillas, restaurants or health products. Taxis constantly beep their horns to remind you to keep moving and not hold them up. They do this even when they are in gridlock traffic and there is no purpose whatever to be gained for doing it. They just do it. When you are stopped at a light and it turns green, the person behind beeps his horn no matter how quick you are onto the accelerator. Busses either play an annoying little tune to advise you of their presence or else they too beep their horn as they go down the street, just in case you are waiting for a ride and failed to see them.

Kids drive their cars around with the sound systems cranked up as loud as they will go. In narrow streets sometimes it feels as if the whole street is “thudding” to the beat of the latest Latino Rap or Hip Hop sensation (as if there is a difference), the lyrics making, I suspect, no more sense in Spanish than they do in English. In the Centros, especially on Market Day, the crowds are heavy and parking spaces few. You cannot get around without bumping against parked cars, setting off car alarms which without exception are totally ignored, both by their owners and by the crowds milling about setting them off.

Trains go by RV Parks and hotels in the middle of the night sounding their whistles way more than necessary and trucks use their engine brakes everywhere and at all hours in blatant violation of signs warning against their use. Roosters are everywhere and have no clocks or sympathy. Mexico is a noisy Country.

In contrast, if you ask a Mexican what they like about their home they will tell you “tranquility”.  It is a paradox.

Santa Clara del Cobre

Santa Clara del Cobre was an old copper mining centre from 1553 onward. Although the mines are now closed, the town has become a centre for copperware where the leftover copper ore from the closed mines is used to create unbelievable treasures.

Edit: I have just been told by my friend Michael that most of the copper now comes from scrap wire.

The streets are lined with stalls of craftsmen selling their wares. I wish we had some way to bring “stuff” back home. We have not been in a town yet where we did not say, “if only we had the room…”. We did buy some pounded copper address numbers for the house. The benches around the Centro Plaza as well as the garbage cans on the street are solid copper. Here is a Santa Clara feast for the eyes:

The “Bull Dance”

When we got back to the RV Park today there was a large family gathering going on in the property next door. The music was loud (so what else is new here in Mexico?) and I went over and peeked through the hedge.

Ten or fifteen couples were dancing around in a large circle. The women were carrying “parcels” in the form of folded blankets or something similar either in their arms or on their heads while the men were carrying bright cloths. In the centre of  the circle was a man wearing a paper mache bulls’ head. The men were all waving their cloths around to attract the “bull’s” attention. Every once in a while the “bull” would charge one of the couples and the man would jump in front to “fight” the “bull” with his cloth “cape”, protecting the woman. There was much laughter accompanying each charge.

I know many of my female Canadian friends are cringing at the overt sexism of this dance but it was very “Mexican” and everyone was having a lot of fun.

SOB/NOB

NOB (North Of the Border) there is a widespread belief that Mexico is full of people whose only desire is to get into the USA.  This could not be further from the truth. Mexicans are very proud of their country and are very content here.

In the past two years I have had the opportunity to talk to many Mexican people. There are many Mexicans who speak English and they want to practice on me. I run into them in restaurants, on the street and in businesses.

I was waiting for Norma as she was shopping one time and sat on a bench in a Centro. A young man in his 30’s sat beside me and started to chat. His English was very good so I asked him where he learned it. He said he works in an auto body shop in Los Angeles. He said he went there a couple of years ago for the high wages but does not like it. He says the wages are good compared to Mexico but he misses his wife and kids so he ends up taking time off and coming home to visit many times a year. He finds it very difficult to keep a room in L.A. as well as support his family here in Mexico on what he earns. He said, “The wages are good but it costs a lot to live there”. He would like to find a job at home where he can be with his family. He does not like Los Angeles and does not feel welcome there.

I was having a muffler replaced on the Honda in Villa Corona last year and the repairman went next door to get his friend to translate for him. I talked to the translator while the muffler work was being done. He had worked in Texas for some time but did not like it. “They don’t like Mexicans up there” he said. He came back home and opened up a car wash and waxing business which is having a hard time getting going. He is afraid he might have to go back to the USA if he can not make a “go” of his business. When the muffler was done I had him wash and hand wax the Honda. He did a very good job.

Yesterday we met a young Mexican man in a cafe in Quiroga who spoke perfect English although with a distinct Southern accent. He translated for the waitress who was trying to explain something to us. We spoke to him later and he lives and works in Carolina where he is a laboratory technician in a paint manufacturing company. He has a Chemistry Degree but had to go to the USA to get a job using his education. He was back in town for the weddings of two relatives but was anxious to get back to work. He will work in the USA for a “few years” and then come home to Mexico to retire. He is not married and is saving his money.

Salvador, an older gentleman we met in Leon last year earned his Mechanical Engineering degree in Mexico and then got a job in the auto industry in Michigan where he worked for thirty some years until he was “downsized” and returned to live in Mexico. He had been gone most of his life but was very happy to be home. “I was never really happy up there”, he said and is very “content” to be back in Mexico where he can live very well on his pension. He now entertains himself playing saxophone in a Jazz band with some of his old school friends.

These are just a few stories out of hundreds of thousands but they do give a general idea of what people here think of having to work NOB. I did not inquire as to the legality of these people’s status in the USA but I suspect that most, if not all were legal. Without exception they would rather be in Mexico and their time in the USA was only a means to that end.