My first Trip to Mexico
By Dorothy Bell
A VW van, turtles, pot and a falling in love with Mexico
A wise man in my life told me that all good stories are inevitably a travel story. I agree with him. From Beowulf and Canterbury Tales to my simple family stories, it appears that travel evokes the best in us and perhaps the worst.
This is about my first trip to Mexico; Falling in love with the charm of Mexico.
Bill and I were traveling around the Southwest of the US in our new Westphalia camper van in the summer of 1992 with our babies Adam (4) and Dylan (2) Adam sat proudly – strapped onto the back seat, our daughter Dylan was still in a car seat.
We loved road trips – an opportunity to talk about all kinds of things and be with our young family. Lots of music. Lots of laughter. Lots of dreams.
Then we saw a sign. “Want to go to Mexico” said Bill?
“Sure” I said – just as quickly. We crossed the border with no immigration offices or government post. We crossed at Nogales
The roads immediately seemed poorer. Potholes, rough pavement. And we continued down the road with various signs with various strange names. Guaymas was close so we headed there. We only had a country map of Mexico that was a one page effort at the back of our Rand-McNally map book of the US.
It was hot and dusty and what little we saw of civilization looked poor and peasant-like. We drove on.
Through the outskirts of a city named Hermosillo, we drove by a prison. “My uncle was here for five years” Bill said. “Hermosillo prison. He was a WW11 veteran who wanted to make some quick cash, so he loaded a plane full of pot and took off for LA. The Pilot in the plane was DEA. My family bribed his way out.”
We drove on for a few more hours finally reaching Guaymas and we settled in a little hotel by the highway. It was old, clean and empty. I can barely remember it except that we made a makeshift bed for Adam using pillows and Dylan slept in a drawer that we pulled out of a dresser and placed on the floor. I was not so sure about Mexico travel. It was dusty, poor, and hot.
The next day we got up early for our adventure and drove before the kids were totally awake. The morning weather quickly went from warm and brisk to muggy and hot. We kept looking for the next restaurant for lunch, but none appeared. Finally, we agreed we needed some coast – a place to swim, a place to eat and a place for the kids to get out of the back seat. We took the next decent sized road to the right. We were without a local map and without all the trappings of today’s travel such as GPS, cell service, google maps. We were winging it.
We drove and drove and finally saw the west coast of the sea of Cortez. We took the coastal road and drove until we saw a palapa restaurant with at least 50 people eating and having fun. “That’s for us!” I said and Bill quickly and without any more encouragement, turned into the parking lot. We were the only non- Mexicans there.
We took the kids to a table closest to the water and soon enough a waiter appeared and took our order. The kids were in their glory, playing in the sand and having fun. Mexican families joined us and tried to converse. We had a wonderful afternoon.
Later that afternoon we agreed to have little siesta with the kids in the Westphalia. We’d had a number of beers and needed to sleep it off.
*******************
We awoke to a bright morning sun and the sounds of the sea slowly lapping; wave after wave on the sandy beach. There were no Mexican families and the palapa restaurant was empty. A single old man was sweeping the sand and tidying the tables. “It’s Monday. All the Mexicans have gone to work.”
And then we noticed it. Our van had slowly sunk in the sand – we would have to dig our way out. We grabbed what we could to make some improvised shovels, a piece of wood. A pail. We used anything to put behind the tires and tried in vain to get traction. We kept getting deeper and deeper into the sand.
As Bill and I struggled to free the van, the tide kept coming towards us. We didn’t have much time. Bill went over to the caretaker and he pointed down the road. Bill left to get some help.
The kids were running all over the beach – Adam in his underwear and Dylan in her diaper– gleeful souls. They were very excited to show me their new friends. Hatching turtles everywhere.
Little mounds of sand moved ever so slightly, and a tiny flipper would move the sand. A few seconds later a small turtle emerged from the sand and started immediately finding its way to the ocean. More turtles and more turtle. The kids were in heaven.
Bill returned to the van with a half a dozen workers. They rode in an old flat bed truck. They tied the Westies with a chain at the front and slowly – with every capable hand pushing from the back of the Westie, moved the van to solid dry sand.
Bill and the men returned to the Palapa and everyone seemed to wave at us with a beer. “I gave them enough money so they don’t have to work today” said Bill.
We were relieved to miss the oncoming tide and that our Westie had escaped drowning in the Sea of Cortex. We drove and drove, and the heat increased. We were again hungry and had not anything for breakfast.
We spotted a town in the distance and turned right towards the small cement brick buildings on the horizon. Workers were burning the fields as we drove towards town.
“Smells like pot” I said.
“They are burning the fields after the harvest” Bill explained. “It fertilizes the soil.”
We drove to the town The big metal doors, similar to garage doors back home, were steadily dropped and secured. “Must be noon” said Bill. “They are closing for a siesta.”
We didn’t find a store or restaurant open and the end of town was just a dead end with an empty field. So we u-turned and headed back to where we came. The townspeople now appeared rushed. They increasingly hurried down the street and opened and quickly shut the doors behind them. Rushing
A moment later we were at the edge of town and clearly saw the impetus for their flight. Through the burning fields, a line of soldiers emerged. Rifles in hand, sweeping the fields. For Pot
And there we were. A couple of Gringos in a Hippie Westphalia magic bus on a road with burning fields of pot all around us.
Six of the soldiers intercepted us as we drove along the road. Get out of the van they motioned to Bill. He did. Another officer unlatched the back passenger door and slid it open.
And there was Adam. Standing there with his tiny hand saluting the officer.
Well that broke the soldiers down…Mexicans and kids. They saw we were no threat and let us pass. Another family road story.
I wasn’t that thrilled with Mexico so far. I liked the beach. The food thus far was mediocre. And the soldiers and getting stuck in the sand were adventures but not exactly a vacation I wanted.
And then we made it to Mazatlán. Bill pulled up to a hotel that he had stayed at before “Las Flores” on the beach. It had a front desk, doorman, pool, restaurant. Everything that spelled luxury compared to our meager rooms thus far.
The stay was wonderfully sweet. Our babies played in the pool and then in the sand. We discovered a lovely restaurant for breakfast that we went to for years later. Jungle Juice. When we entered our kids were whisked off by various waiters or the owner; to see some cats, or to say hi to the cook. We established a friendship that lasted for many years.
At the end of the week, we piled in our Westie and headed to the dock where we boarded an overnight ferry to La Paz on the Baja Peninsula. It was not a luxury cruise liner. The majority of the passengers appeared to be truckers or various sales people going to the “Frontier States” of Baja Sur and the Baja to sell goods from the Mexican mainland.
In the morning we awoke to clear skies as the large commercial ferry docked. We drove out of the ferry’s belly on that early Sunday morning and reached La Paz in 15 minutes. Quiet. Clean. Tropical. La Paz. Peace.
“I want to retire here” I told Bill. We had breakfast and decided to spend a few days at the historical La Perla Hotel which would also become another family favourite.
I had fallen in love by then. My husband, my babies and I were in heaven. Mexico was ours to explore.
Note:
We were
Young and not so bright.
We didn’t have passports.
We didn’t get a tourist visa.
We didn’t have Mexican auto Insurance.
We didn’t have health insurance.
Perhaps that’s why we have a lot of patience on our blogs for people who fail to get their proper paperwork when they cross the border.