Are We There Yet?

Posted on November 4, 2018 by Melissa

Sorry about leaving you hanging with that last post. Would the LCP crew receive their ‘Get Into Mexico for Free’ card? Or would they be seen as the mules of boat parts, paint, and paraphernalia that they actually are and have to pay the dreaded import tax? Turns out, we made it through, even though we got the ‘red’ light. We didn’t have to pay any extra fees. I guess we just didn’t look like the guilty type.

For those who’ve never traveled to Mexico, they have an interesting system for determining who will get searched at the border. They use this system at the airports and also at the border crossings on the road. You approach light that will show either red like a stop light, or green. If you get the red light, you get searched, more or less. If you get the green light it’s like a free pass. It’s supposed to be random but I have some doubts about that.

We entered Mexico through the border crossing for trucks at the Mariposa Road exit just north of Nogales. This would allow us to skip going through the town of Nogales, which sounded just dandy to us. After a last loving stop at Starbucks for an iced coconut latte, my final act as a dedicated American consumer, we filled the fuel tank and took our chances.

And it did, actually, feel like a game of chance. I mean, just following the signs and getting in the correct lane was fraught with opportunity to FSU. (This is my new acronym for what goes on in my head when we do things incorrectly. It translates to Flub Stuff Up. No actually it’s a much coarser version of that but I don’t want to be offensive here with my gutter speak. Use your imagination.) And FSU we did! We wound through the maze of lanes, past what looked to us like a border guard housette, absent the guard. ‘Are we in?’ I asked Mike, confused. I mean, I’d heard that this border crossing was pretty casual but no border guard at all seemed like too much to ask. What the hell. Mike didn’t know either. We kept driving. Probably it would have helped if there had been other cars, but we were alone except for the small grey Toyota truck behind us.

Nothing to see here. Nothing at all. Grey tub of kitchen stuff, lid temptingly askew. Obama/Biden and Unicorn stickers proudly displayed.

We came to a place where we had a choice of which way to go. Ahead of us was a cement barrier on the left, with two lanes, a drop gate, and a guard house to the right of it. (I was too lost to remember to take a photo.) Which way would you have chosen, considering the lack of any signage? Yes, that’s right. You would have stayed to the right of the barrier because CEMENT BARRIER and unlike some other countries, we stay to the right in ‘merica (and also in Mexico)! We pulled up to the guard house behind the drop gate. It looked totally legit. But no one was there. The gate stayed down. The grey Toyota pulled in behind us. We sat, waiting, the Toyota breathing down our tailpipe. Surely someone in uniform would approach us, even if just to tell us we had FSU. Nope. Nada. No one gave us the time of day. We could have eaten our lunch right there at the deserted guard house and no one would have cared.

Finally Mike got out and approached the Toyota. The woman appeared to know more than we did (although my question, then, was why she followed us into the wrong lane, but whatever. Who am I to question the mysteries of border crossings?). She said we had done it wrong and we should go around the closed gate as though we’d gone to the left of the cement barrier. Great. Just exactly what I wanted to do. Drive around a barrier in full view of people who might have machine guns at the Mexican border. Fine. Just fine. I did it. I hightailed it over the yellow speed bumps, circled around the closed gate, and drove across several lanes to what I hoped was the right place.

And that’s when we got the red light. I should have known that would happen because, I mean why WOULDN’T they want to stop the car that had just driven around their barrier? I would do the same in their position. I wonder if the Toyota got the red light, too. Because she darn well should have.

Solar panels? I don’t see no stinking solar panels.

I’d like to say the guard was nice, but actually he was slightly surly. That’s fine, I have dealt with surly border agents many times, mostly coming into my own country. So I smiled and called him ‘amigo’ and ‘señor’, and gave him all the permissions to open the side door to the car and the tailgate. “Oh yes, please, Señor! Open ALL the doors!” He glanced into the interior, he lifted up the lid to the carefully and strategically placed tupperware tub of kitchen crap. He asked where we were going. I said, ‘San Carlos’. He walked away. That was all. Not even a wave or ‘have a bueno day’. I looked at Mike. Are we done? He shrugged. I sat for a few seconds watching the man’s back as he walked off. Then I drove on. We thought at that point we were in, but we couldn’t be sure. Eventually, a few miles down the road, we accepted that this was, in fact, the border crossing.

Our next stop was the immigration office popularly known as KM 21, or maybe it’s KM18. No one really knows because there are no KM signs that are anywhere close to either 21 or 18 from the direction we were driving. We saw KM2 and got excited, expecting the next number to be KM3. It was not. It was KM1, then KM0. After that we just gave up and kept driving, trusting to the fates that we would find the right place. In Mexico there is a lot of trusting-to-the-fates. It keeps life interesting.

Long before we thought it appropriate, we found the place. Maybe I should have marked how far we drove from the border, but considering the border felt like it was several kilometers long, that measure probably wouldn’t have been accurate for others anyhow. Its presence was brought to our attention by all the signs for Mexican liability insurance, which you can buy there. One stop shopping, Gringos! Not certain at first this was the place we missed the turnoff, so, this being Mexico and all, we went in the exit and drove the wrong way through the parking lot, turned around and did it right, and parked the car.

This nondescript group of buildings is the immigration stop. Inside that building on the right is a very efficient man with a stamp.

After that the immigration process went smoothly. We got at the end of the line, which was pretty long considering that a tourist bus had just pulled into the parking lot. The kind and very fast man behind the counter was stamping passports as fast as his stamp would fly. He saw that we had applied for the Temporary Residence Visa and scanned our passports, just as we were told he would. He filled out our FMM form for us, checking ‘other’ as the reason for the visit, just as the lady in Tucson said we should. He wrote 30 days on how long the FMM was good for. Wait. WHAT??? We knew that we actually had only 15 days if we wanted to get the advanced visa. I’m not sure what the 30 days stuff is, but it’s clear from immigration in both Tucson and here that after your passport is scanned at the border, you have 15 days to complete the second part of your paperwork and pay your fee for the Temporary Residency Visa. We take no chances, regardless of these alleged 30 days. I wonder how many people see that 30 days marked on their FMM card and forget all about the 15 day limit and then have to apply and pay their fee all over again?

At that point, we were cleared into the country. A sigh of relief later we were bombing down the road toward San Carlos. Here are few thoughts about that drive:

You will never want to drive at night here and it’s not because you might be robbed. It’s because the roads, even the new ones, are dangerous in their own right. There are no shoulders, and the drop offs are steep. Even if you don’t get hurt if you go off the road, your car surely will get hurt. We saw a car that had run off one part of the new highway and could not get back up.

Photo credit to Lynn Brownlow on S/V Slow Motion. See that edge? Yikes!

In addition, there is chronic road work. Hey, it’s just like home that way! So you will be switching back and forth between the old highway which is two lanes, and the new highway which is 4 lanes. These places where you switch over are hard enough to see in the daylight.

Changing sides. Some of these sneak up on you. Thanks for the additional photo, Lynn Brownlow. This one was pretty easy to see.

The speed limit is just a complete joke. And I’m not talking about the kind of joke we experienced in Arizona where the long, straight highways call for speeds that are close to that of light; where the other drivers breath down your neck when you’re already going 75. This is more like a speed limit sign of 60km/hour (about 37 mph) on a brand new 4 lane highway. That sign then changes to 110km/hour (about 68 mph) for no apparent reason. But wait! Then it goes to 80km/hour (you do the math) and continues to go back and forth between all three just to keep you guessing. No rhyme or reason that we could deduce. Perhaps there’s a system. We failed to recognize it. And naturally, no one pays the slightest bit of attention to these signs. They all just go fast. We finally just went with the flow of traffic, worried our pace would call attention to us or worse.

We found the drive to San Carlos to be a stressful one and were pretty glad when we finally saw the sign to the town and headed down the familiar road to the marina. I imagine it gets easier with familiarity, but if you are crossing the border and driving down, take care and drive during the day. Our first stop, Marina Seca, San Carlos to check on S/V GalapagosI I’m glad to say she fared well and all our preparations were useful. As I write this we are in the work yard and getting her put back together, moving forward on repairs. More on that and our further immigration adventures another time.

Stay away from the edge!

S/V Galapagos, out.

Second Time Around

Posted on September 25, 2018 by Melissa

I’m sitting in my mostly empty house running down the seemingly never-ending list of ‘to do’ items in the coming days. You will never know how many little projects your home needs until you move out of it. In fact, I think all homeowners should have the opportunity to move OUT of their homes every ten or so years just to keep things fresh. In my life I’ve remodeled two houses and bought an old boat and refitted that. I thought I knew what hard work felt like. But I’ve never worked as hard as I have in the past three months, and that’s saying something. We need a vacation. How about a trip to Mexico?

Playa El Burro. You can barely see S/V Galapagos.

Slowly but surely we are getting the hard work done to prepare this house for new renters; renters who are not our children. It was great renting the house to our kid and his friends. The bar was super low in terms of what they expected of the house. Since Andrew grew up here, he was used to the fact that the three way switches in the kitchen and office were wired incorrectly. He didn’t expect there to be a doorbell; people just knocked. The old dated pale yellow wallpaper felt warm and comfortable to him. The grout in the family room and kitchen, well, hasn’t it always been black? The chipped paint on his bedroom door wasn’t an issue, much less the fact that there were two different kinds of doorknobs on the doors off the hallway. The nicked and scratched paint on the cabinets in the kitchen? Part of the patina; evidence of a room well used. All the scratches on the solid fir doors left by various dogs over the years? Ahhhh, we love the memories of those pooches. And are all those growing green things in the landscape actually weeds that set a million seeds? Who knew? These things have flown beneath the family radar for 18 years. We just didn’t care about them. (Except the weeds. I totally cared about and took care of those. All the time.) But now that we are trying to make the home attractive for other people, we do care about those things. As well as thousands of others.

Yes, having Andrew and Friends move into the house worked great while it lasted. The mortgage got paid, the kids had a much nicer place to live than they could have afforded individually, and Mom and Dad got to move onto their spiffy old boat and pretend that they would never have to come back and face the music that is moving out of the home you’ve owned for many years. We downsized our possessions quite a lot, and then we just kind of … left. On some level we knew it was too good to last. And we were right. Kids get married and go off and do the things they are meant to do in life.

When we left last time, all of our furnishings stayed right where they were. This time as we clear the house we are faced with choosing which things to keep and which to let go of. It’s probably not a surprise that I don’t let go of furniture easily. Once it’s gone, I’m fine, but the parting is hard if it’s a piece I like. And I do like furniture. Some of the most ‘historical’ (a word which here means I’ve probably had it for decades) pieces are being given to family and friends, which makes the parting a sweet sorrow tinged with a good bit of happiness. The velvet living room chairs and antique mirror going to a cherished ‘adopted’ daughter, our own daughter’s best friend; the piano of my childhood going to our very close friends who live just across the street; our green four poster bed borrowed by some of Andrew and Jill’s best friends, the ones with the new baby; Andrew and Jill choosing our sofa and a couple of stuffed chairs for their future home. Even my own sister and mom are taking a couple of things. We infuse meaning into these giftings of furnishings with the history of the Boyte-White family woven into their very presence.

And so here we are; sitting in a house with little furniture surrounded by a yard with almost no weeds as summer disappears into the darkness of fall, slowly but surely moving stuff out of all the rooms. It’s a little like gradually disappearing. In the end we are going to wind up exactly how we started in this house: living in one room, sleeping on a mattress on the floor surrounded by the few things we need to live day to day while we finish cleaning and remodeling the rest of the house. We are still on target to ‘leave the dock’ for the second time sometime in October.

Astute readers will be asking the obvious: But where are Andrew and Friends going? The friends had a baby and moved on. But Andrew and his wife, Jill, are preparing for their own traveling adventure. They’ve been planning to do some extensive traveling and their plans are coming to fruition. They are outfitting their Honda Element for camping and about the time we leave for Mexico they will be heading off on a cross country trip and then to Europe. They fly from New York to Paris in December (BRRR) and plan to sell their Honda when they get to North Carolina. After a stint in Europe they hope to get to Ecuador to visit our Claire and her Dan, and then we are crossing all our fingers and toes they will come do some crewing for us aboard Galapagos, wherever we are at that point. You can follow along on their travels if you like, since they’ve started their own blog The Wander Blobs. Why that name? It’s a story, and I’ll let you go to their blog page where they define for you: What is a Blob? We are enormously proud of them both for having a dream that became a plan that is now a happening reality.

And speaking of keeping dreams alive, we had the good fortune to meet up with the crew of S/V Totem up in Seattle. Jamie and Behan Gifford were the special speakers at the recent meeting of the Puget Sound Cruising Club. We last visited in person with them down in the Sea of Cortez where we made darn sure we got a chance to get them on board so we could pick their brains about our pitiful rig and our need for a new sail. They gave a great presentation on some very special places they’ve been and totally lit the fire for us again. Thanks, we needed that! Having our noses to the grindstone as we do, our cruising life feels so very far away, almost like it existed in a different lifetime. It was great to see them, and also to see so many of the cruising club folks we’ve met over the years. Kevin and Cressie on S/V Blue were there, as well as a few other ‘boats’ from the sea of Cortez. It was a little like old home week and makes one realize just how tight and small the cruising community is. It seems like a small world when you see people you knew down in Mexico back here in Seattle.

In the same vein of keeping the dream alive, you’ll notice the photos I’ve posted are not from the house. Why would you want to see photos of me cleaning grout or painting molding? After listening to the Gifford’s talk I began thinking about all the many beautiful places we’ve seen so far that I haven’t written about. This place in these photos stands out.

These photos are of the the rock art you can find close to Playa El Burro, in Bahia Concepcion. Finding this rock art was one of more entertaining hikes we did as the weather began to warm up last May. We anchored at Playa El Burro for this specific reason. What I want other cruisers to know about finding this delicious rock art is that the guide book everyone relies on is wrong. The most popular guide book tells you that the trail head can be seen from the anchorage and this is not correct. There is no trail to the rocks. You can absolutely see a well defined trail going up the mountain, and there is a trailhead close to a small roadside restaurant. But if you take that obvious trail up the hill you will never find the petroglyphs and you will be very disappointed. I’ve taken photos to show you exactly where to go to find these spectacular pieces of ancient art. Go in the morning and you’ll have shade for your hike. And the guidebook is totally right about the bell rocks! You’ll find huge boulders that ring like a bell when struck due to the iron content. I’ll go a long way to see rock art. But this place is really easy to get to.[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_llpgJgl9fU[/embedyt]

Back to my previously scheduled program of hard labor. S/V Galapagos, out.

This is sign by the roadway. You want to find this sign and then walk inland from the road toward the clump of trees. Once you’ve located your first petroglyphs among the trees, just keep going uphill from there, following the tumbled boulders. There are hundreds of pieces of art. It’s fantastic.

Here’s the view from the position of the sign.Turn around and walk inland to find the rocks.

Mission de San Fransisco Javier de Viggé Biaundó

Posted on April 10, 2018 by Melissa

We’re still hanging out in the Puerto Escondido general area enjoying being with friends from S/V Blue and S/V Slow Motion for just a bit longer. Sometimes you meet people who just click with you. They are both hauling out and putting their boats on the hard for the season at the end of the month, so we’re enjoying some last few days with them. We never know what activity we’re going to be doing when we meet up with them, but we know whatever it is, it’s going to be fun.

A game of Goat Spotting, aptly played by Lynn.

Yesterday our friends Curt and Lynn Browlow on S/V Slow Motion rented a car that turned out to be a Jeep Cherokee. This is not the usual rental car offered for 40$/day through the marina. Those are generally the ‘plain vanilla no power anything’ vehicles that are basic transportation. Since they had a comfortable vehicle with air conditioning, they invited us to come with them up into the mountains to the almost ancient Jesuit Mission de San Fransisco Javier de Viggé Biaundó, built in 1744.

We really enjoy a good historical church, and do our best to focus on the love and care that went into the building of such a place. But even so we are not immune to the sorrow we feel as we think about how much pain and suffering the missionaries generally bring to the native populations of places where they feel compelled to go in order to ‘save the souls’ of otherwise happily existing peoples. In this case, the Jesuit’s goal was to christianize the native indians who had lived on this land for centuries, hunting and gathering in their nomadic lifestyle. The missionaries planned to change all of that way of life for the native people and, alas, the population suffered dramatically, as is so often the case, and many died of imported illnesses such as smallpox. Still, the building is fantastic and at this point, it’s all water under the proverbial bridge. We can’t change what is done.

Such a beautiful place.

So, a drive through a mountain pass with air conditioning, ending in a visit to an interesting and beautiful ancient mission? Browsing-goat spotting on the way? Yes, please! We weren’t sure if it was 45 miles, 45 kilometers, or 45 minutes of driving to get to the mission, but whatever, let’s go!

The road to the mission is actually a good road with hardly any holes, a good thing in a winding mountain road. Curt made the driving look easy as he slalomed up the switchbacks and over low areas where mountain springs trickled across the road. I hardly ever had an opportunity to put my foot through the floor on my imaginary backseat brake or white-knuckle the convenient handles installed above the doors. Hardly ever.

The road ends at the small town where the mission is located. Sighting the mission domes through the palm trees we were already enchanted before we parked and approached the door. Mike was met immediately by a local man who gestured for us to follow him and proceeded to give us a small tour of the grounds far behind the church. I don’t think he was a ‘tour guide’ per se, but he was a man who had discovered a way to make some money by giving tourists a view they wouldn’t ordinarily get otherwise. We decided to follow along.

He explained that he lives right next to the mission and that the town has 180 people, a number he drew in the sand to be sure I understood. He represented his town as a peaceful place where people get along and there is no crime. The path he led us on ran right next to his own cornfield.

We put a donation into a small wooden box at the little palapa where a young man sat at a desk with a book for us to sign. We put our names, where we were from, then whether we were men or women. Interesting, that.

Following our guide along the trail, he led us to a magnificent olive tree, planted when the mission was founded. This tree alone was worth the donation fee. If you are sensitive to old trees, you’d appreciate the feeling of this one; a long and slow thrumming just beneath the surface. It still bears olives, although none of us could understand enough Spanish to know if they harvest them.

This olive tree! Have to admire anything with the determination to live this long and this well. Here we are with 2/3 of the ‘gang of 6’: Curt and Lynn Brownlow.

At the top of the rise, he showed us the irrigation methods the Jesuits used. This is an area that has a natural water source and it’s an oasis in an otherwise hostile land. There are fruit trees and fresh water fish are in the cistern. They even grow water-hungry roses by the mission. Water comes in through a channel at the high end and trickles out through a channel in the low end, allowing for irrigation of crops and fruit trees.

The original irrigation cistern has been repaired over the years but is still going strong. It took the Jesuits a number of years to finally locate the mission here, where there was enough water to grow crops.

At the end of our tour our guide stuck out his hand to be paid for the tour. Huh? I thought we paid at the palapa. But this is where traveling in Mexico and not knowing much of the language yet leads to misunderstandings. It’s better to just pay the small amount of extra and move on, not really knowing if we’re paying twice or not. It was still a bargain. We each paid him about 1$ for his 20 minute tour and put about 1$ into the ‘official’ money box.

By the time we were ready to go inside the mission and look around the temperature had risen. With its cool and shady stone interior, the mission offered respite to its congregants from more than their spiritual suffering. I can imagine on a hot Sunday, people might be OK with the minister going on and on from his pulpit.

This lizard lives in one of the Mesquite trees on the property. Photo is courtesy of Curt Brownlow, who does great lizard photographs. I believe this is a Collared Lizard.

We ended our great day by meeting Kevin and Cressie Baerg of S/V Blue back in Loreto for ice cream and a trip to the local grocery store. As cruising days go, it was about as perfect as you can get.

The ‘Blue’s and the ‘Slow Motion’s were supposed to be leaving the dock today and making their way north to Guaymas and San Carlos to haul their boats out for the season and go back home. Alas for them they were delayed a day as they needed to fill up with water from the dock before they left and the water to the dock wasn’t working today. That’s a good example of how plans go awry with this lifestyle. Sorry for them, but glad for us: we got them for an additional evening of convivial fun!

We’ll be hanging out in this general area for awhile as my sister and nephew are coming in the middle of the month to spend a week with us on the boat. We now know enough about schedules and cruising that we are playing it safe, sticking close to Loreto until they get here to be sure we are here when they arrive. We are so excited to have family visiting!

A few more photos from the day: