8 December, 2002

Back on the road! In Sandy!

We left the comforts of the Broyles home in Carmel for the open road, once again. Steve is now comfortably convinced that while he still loves to ARRIVE new places, he is pretty down on the displeasure of LEAVING people and places that he loves. Once we get away from it all we enjoy ourselves, but the hours or days of good-bye's and see-you-soons wear away at the slippery remains of our sanity like a cheese grater on soap.

Day One on this latest leg of the Sandcruiser Odyssey was wonderful. We left Carmel a little later than we expected (par for the course) both in terms of days and also in time of day. But we drove down scenic Hwy 1 anyway, stopping several times to enjoy the vistas and once to collect some pretty rocks from Jade Cove. The weather was warm (in the high 60's) and sunny and the drive was a pleasure.

Pathway to rocky cove	Typical big sur cove	One of dozens of spectacular vistas	seaweed and rocks

When we rolled into San Luis Obispo shortly after dark we looked up a longtime email acquaintance named Jim Brantley. He and his wife Katherine were kind enough to invite us to dinner and to stay the night. We've tried to meet up with them several times in the past, to no avail. The long wait was worth it- we had a wonderful time talking about everything from Landcruisers (of course!) and overland travel (they've recently been to Alaska) to Guatemalan fabrics and California real estate prices (no, we aren't in the market).

After a breakfast of blueberry pancakes and some more great chatting we loaded up Sandy and headed on down the road to Carlsbad (north of San Diego). LA traffic was appalling. At 2:30pm it was more stop than go... further eroding Jocelyn's position in our long-standing discussion about if it would be better or worse if LA fell into the Pacific. Steve's only real concession so far is that it would really pollute the water. Having gone to UCLA, Jocelyn insists that the place is actually great if you can just overlook a few things.

We finally pulled into Carlsbad around 5 p.m. and after a warm reception at our friend Chris Miller's place we headed out to Pizza Port for some pizza and beer with her and her boyfriend George. MMMMMMM. Pizza Port. The first place Jocelyn ate out upon moving to San Diego, and still Steve's all-time favorite restaurant. The Beatles were wrong: Happiness is a warm slice and a cold pint; at least sometimes.

Saturday brought more beautiful weather, lunch at Steve's second-favorite college eatery Board and Brew in Del Mar (great sandwiches) with our best man, Keith and Margaret. After hangin a little longer in Carlsbad we headed on down the road to meet up with Todd and Chey Anne for a delicious sushi dinner.

All in all, a very nice start.

9 December, 2002

Long day of driving. We loaded up in the pre-dawn at Todd's house, then spent many hours driving eastward through some attractive but fairly monotonous landscape. The lowlight of the drive was getting stuck for half an hour in dead-stopped traffic. From what we could see an RV had either flipped and smashed into the overpass embankment or had actually gotten blown OFF of the overpass onto the freeway. Either way, it was a mess and the RV was obliterated. Very sobering. Drive carefully out there!

Had a long stop in Yuma, AZ for gas and to pick up some last minute hardware store stuff. Also found a Harbor Freight retail store where we both restrained the urge to spend lots of money on cheap tools. Bb was happy to find a minute drill bit and rasp set for $5.

We finally pulled into Tucson as the sun was approaching the horizon and after checking in and finding some yummy Mexican food for dinner we had a pleasant evening of taking a hot bath (the hot tub was broken so we improvised), metalsmithing (Bb) and reading "Don't Stop the Carnival" (Steve). Great book, incidentally, Steve highly recommends it, by Herman Wouk.

Picacho Peak (or something like that) near Tucson, AZ	The Knights Inn. Nice rooms, low price. Hot tub isn't working.	Rest stop east of Yuma, AZ	Stuck in traffic for half an hour

At about midnight Bb dragged Steve out for some fries at Denny's. Mostly just because we can and won't be able to do so again for a quite a while.

At this very moment: we are sleepy, fighting a mosquito and listening to either karioke or live music -- either way, it's really bad. But this, compared to last night, this is paradise!

Steve would probably write all the sordid details including the mostly-drunk lyrics to yet another Bob Dylan song, but since I'm writing, let's sum it up in brief, headline-type synopsis:

Young Couple Sees How Some People Consider Mexico Corrupt, Dangerous and Downright Unpleasant:
a ticket-turned-bribe, a self-inflicted smashed rear-window-and-tailgate combination and a cold, cold night of camping later, Steve and Jocelyn Broyles of California tell their story of a Mexico trip gone wrong…

Alright, so the trip hasn't exactly gone wrong, except for those five-dollar shrimp tacos and Nescafe we had to ingest for "breakfast" this morning …

Dusk in San Carlos, Mexico	One of many toll booths between San Carlos and Mazatlan	Sandy's new back window, design by Steve, hilift and an unseen pole

Steve here, detail guy: the drive to San Carlos took longer than we hoped. A huge part of that was me standing in line in a wind tunnel to get Sandy's paperwork squared away. On the plus side, we did stop for "roadside chicken" and enjoyed an excellent, albeit small, lunch. We got into town at dusk and watched a pretty sunset before setting out to find a hotel. Which means, of course, that we broke rule #1: don't drive at night. Because it was dark, I couldn't really see the faded street signs well and made a bad U-turn. Also because it was dark I didn't see that there was a cop hangin out there to pull me over and tell me about the bad turn. A long chat and $9 later we were on our way again, but by then the long day had definitely caught up with me. While backing up to park at a restaurant I managed to ding a pole with the foot of our hilift jack. Unfortunately, the hilift twisted the tire-carrier which pushed into the tailgate, which broke the rear window. The commotion also brought out 4 or 5 waiters who were relieved that their sign wasn't hurt.

So we finally entered the bar and it was a smoky, seedy looking place that had TV blaring and a bunch of 50+ white guys sitting around talking over beers*. Ahhhhh..... Mexico. Um. Not exactly the Mexico we have been craving.       *no offense intended to 50+ white guys.

After a cold beer and a quesadilla we headed back to the beach to camp. It got amazingly cold overnight and we've only got tropical-weight camping gear. The combined effect was a pretty miserable night- the ironically perfect end to our day.

But at least we got up early (read: couldn't stand to lay there being cold any longer) and got on the road for our long drive to Mazatlan. After an interesting breakfast of instant coffee and shrimp tacos (it was that, or shrimp soup) we finally broke out of our funk by laughing at ourselves and how awful the first 24 hours of Mexican driving had been. We now understand how some people get soured to the experience early on! Not so say we were in exactly good spirits, but at least we were laughing at ourselves.

We spent all day on the toll roads: smooth asphalt with 110 kph speed limits. We usually prefer the free roads as they have more interesting sights, but we wanted to make time. We made a few brief stops and arrived in Mazatlan around 4 p.m. After spending about $45 on toll roads to get here, we decided to just grab the first decent hotel near the water and relax. That worked great: we had a cold beer and watched a lovely sunset on the beach, then some delicious sushi as an appetizer before finding a taco stand with perfect (and authentic) Mexican tacos. We were happy as could be until bedtime when the empty discos all over town started turning up their music, perhaps with the idea that the only reason they were empty is because nobody could hear their music? This went on until about 4 a.m. when we finally got some quite sleep, until 5, when the trucks start rolling through.

When we saw what seemed to be the whole town hiking down the highway (slowing traffic to a crawl for about 45 minutes)....	...we knew there was a shrine nearby. The Virgin of Guadelupe. Of course.	Mazatlan, main strip.	Steve at the yummy taco stand.

13 December, 2002

We woke up in Mazatlan after a lousy night's sleep and were pleasantly surprised that we could just walk into an internet cafe and update the site. Not only did we not have to explain to them that we wanted to connect a laptop, but they actually advertised that they accepted laptop connections. Wow. Progress! One the way out of town were were impressed at how different this egress from Mazatlan is compared to last time: in 2000 we had received a huge storm the night before and everything was flooded. This year things were more reasonable.

It was a long driving day. Bb was a trooper and drove almost all of it. We "only" spent 7 hours or so moving, but it seemed longer because we took few breaks and covered a LOT of ground. We also paid a lot of tolls, nearly $46 in all. But we ended up in Tequila for dinner then nearby in Amatitan for sleeping, which is much farther than we would have gone if we had used the free roads. It is supposed to be quieter here, but we fear it may not be an exactly silent night as we can hear fireworks going off, and there are kids shouting in the room next door- but then it is hard to find silence in Mexico on Friday night unless one is truly out of town.

Steve is feeling a little down today about driving so quickly through Mexico, but also feeling a strong desire to get down to Costa Rica to get started with a job and put down some roots. He's finally starting to feel like we've traveled for long enough and knows that Bb is well beyond her theoretical limit of being somewhat homeless. But we've got a ways left to go before we get there, and so many interesting and tempting side-trips.... hard to just pound down, hard to take time to enjoy the stuff on the way... sort of a rock and a hard place, so to speak.

Bb enjoys some roasted corn while driving	Top image is 2002, bottom is 2000 (flooded)

14 December, 2002

Up early and on the road shortly thereafter. We were in a hurry to get some more kilometers under our belts but stopped to shoot some pictures just outside of tequila anyway. It was just too beautiful not to stop. Unfortunately Bb ran out of film and Steve seems to have tweaked something on his lens mount... so that activity ended up with us both being a little grumpy.

Driving down the road a little later Steve finally got sick enough of the Eagles CD skipping (it has been butchering "Sad Cafe" for months) so he threw it out the window. Not a particularly high point in the annals of self control, granted. Bb cried. Apparently she liked that CD more than Steve thought she did. So if anyone out there can make a copy of the Eagles Greatest Hits and mail it to us, that would be great. Send email and we'll give you a mailing address. Then maybe Steve will stop feeling like a jerk. Maybe.

We spent the whole day doing the kind of driving that Sandy likes least: curvy mountain roads with abrupt changes of elevation. Yuck. She is a big heavy thing (especially with all our junk) so she neither climbs quickly nor corners well on downhills. It makes for exhausting driving.

We were on the toll roads for a while, long enough to add another $25 or so to their annual budget but finally got off in Morelia. Morelia is a big city that is almost beautiful, from what we could tell. Really cool church and supposedly a very nice central plaza, only we couldn't get to the plaza because there were several blocked roads and very frustrating traffic that was creeping through unmarked detours. We gave up on the plaza and headed out of town after a very quick stop at an internet cafe.

Out of Morelia we were back on the "Libre" (free road) and quickly remembered how many topes (speed bumps) there are on the free highways. Ugh. But the incredible views of rugged mountains and pine forests made up for it. This is some extraordinarily beautiful country out here. Just amazing.

We finished up our drive in Avandaro, just outside of Valle de Bravo. Wow!! What an incredible place Valle is!! It is apparently the playground for many of the rich in Mexico City. A lovely lake ringed by volcanic mountains, pine forests, wildflowers and beautiful custom luxury homes. The town itself is an artsy, European influence waterfront town complete with a little harbor and quaint restaurants. We'll get some pics shortly to put up. We couldn't believe that this little gem is out here.

barbed wire and agave fields near Tequila, Mexico	Downtown Valle de Bravo, Mexico

The real reason we headed out was to meet up with Francois and Sandra. These are the folks who did the Balum expedition about a year before we left on our trip. They offered us some great advice before we left and we've kept in touch over the years but never met.

Well, they moved here about a year ago to start up an adventure tour company called Activentura. This area is fantastic for them. One could drive around the mountains for weeks and never see everything. They are right by Mexico City (easy airport) and only an easy 2-day drive from Texas. If you've got an itch to do something a little more exciting than drive around the local 4wd trail, head on down. I'm sure that Francois and Sandra would be more than happy to help you arrange the travel details. Francois also tells me that he is just about to get 10 new KTM motorcycles for rentals.

When we pulled into town they had just finished dinner, but after chatting a bit at their lovely home we headed back to the restaurant so that Steve and Bb could eat too. We ended up chatting there for a few hours and laughing really hard at each others' misadventures and triumphs in our respective journeys through Central America.... ahhh, the memories. Funny how the best travel stories are usually the ones where all sorts of stuff goes wrong, but turns out ok in the end. We would do well to remember that the next time that everything seems to be falling apart (which it seems to have been doing a lot of lately).

It was a long drive to get here today, but we are both feeling awfully glad that we came. There are few things that soothe a travel-weary body more than some good food in great company and a warm, comfortable bed in which to retire.

15 December, 2002

Total driving time today: ZERO!! Total km driven today: ZERO!!

Obviously we were happy to stay out of Sandy for the day. We did spend a few minutes in a 60, however, as Francois and Sandra drove us into Valle de Bravo for breakfast. Breakfast turned into shopping, turned into a full day of touring around Valle de Bravo. What a wonderful town!

fresh veggies at the market	look at all those nuts!	fresh food, traditional dress, very typical market scene	lillies and lichen, small child looks on

Valle has just about everything that one would need: there is a beautiful zocalo (central plaza), a lovely church, an active fresh food market, an artisan marketplace, and several upscale stores for furnishings, jewelry, and clothing. Of course there are obligatory internet cafes, delicious looking restaurants and bakeries and hardware stores among other things. It offers nearly any modern convenience one could want, and for more obscure things Mexico City is only 2 hours away. As it turns out, Valle is also a worldwide destination for para-gliding and is apparently excellent for it. There is also water sports on the lake, offroad adventures to be had in the mountains, and it is just a nice place to sit and watch the world go by. If there were ocean nearby it would be hard to justify leaving this place!

traffic cops actually helping fix a car!	Center of Valle de Bravo	Francois, Bb, Sandra at breakfast	Shopping in one of many Valle boutiques

What is not immediately obvious is that Valle is also small enough to still be a nice, safe place to spend time- none of the crime that is so prevalent in large Central American cities. We even watched a pair of traffic cops help fix somebody's car for them, not something you see very much of anywhere anymore.

Valle de Bravo waterfront	Francois and Steve take a fruit-cup break	sittin on a wall at the lake

If all of the above appears to be an endorsement for visiting Valle de Bravo- IT IS! We'll be back.

Sandra and Francois were superb hosts and we enjoyed being shown around for a change.

We got up just before dawn to get ready and moving at first light. Francois had convinced us the night before to swing by Nevado de Toluca- a 14,000 foot dormant volcano that is on the way (more or less) to Taxco from Valle de Bravo. He was so enthusiastic about the place that he convinced himself to go as well! So we snapped a photo of the two cruisers, then headed out for the mountain- us in Sandy, he on his motorcycle. Poor guy nearly froze to death before we got to the volcano, but seemed to be enjoying the ride.

The volcano itself is terribly impressive. As you drive up to it you are at about 8,000 feet and it towers nearly twice as high in front of you, surrounded by bucolic fields of cut hay.. Wow! Bb's exact words were something to the effect of: "We aren't really going to drive up to the top of that, are we?" Well, we didn't end up driving all the way to the top, but did drive into the crater and down to the edge of the partly-frozen lake that is there. Simply an amazing place. It is hard to imagine anywhere else on earth that could be much more barren. The entire crater is a mosaic of browns and greys with no plants or animal life evidenced save for some lichen (and not much of that). Steve thought it was beautiful, Bb thought it was creepy. At 14,000ft (4,000 meters) we were really feeling the altitude- good thing we had spent the last two nights in Avandaro at 6,200ft (2,000m). Still, after a half hour or so we decided to get a move on towards Taxco.

Sandy climbs here first 14er. Nevado de Toluca, Mexico

A little way down the road we took our leave of Francois as he was going down a different track than the road we had come up. He tried to convince us to take that same track as it really did go in the direction of where we wanted to go, we just didn't know the conditions so we begged off. After a warm good-bye, he zoomed off on his bike and we headed down the road. About three minutes later Steve was pouting silently loud enough that Bb relented and told him we should go down the "offroad" way after all. We figured that it didn't look all that tough and besides, we thought we'd cross paths with Francois again.

We were wrong. It was both very difficult and we didn't cross paths with Francois. Oh, the track started out smoothly enough- a mild double-track with plenty of room to maneuver and not too steep. There wasn't much in the way of navigational aides, and we eventually seemed to have lost the "main" track. Several hundred feet further down we realized that the track we were on petered out to sometimes a single-track, sometimes no track at all but the vague outline of what might have been a mule-trail. We considered turning around a few times, but the mountain was so steep that we weren't sure we could actually turn Sandy around without rolling her... and so we pressed on. It got worse before it got better and at one point we had to winch ourselves through a patch of grassy hillocks. The two-foot tall grass grew in clumps that effectively hid the contours of the terrain and also hid logs, stumps and rocks. It was fun wheelin' but would have been a lot more fun if we weren't so overfilled with junk, didn't have a smashed rear window and hadn't been alone. At least we got some beautiful views and the thrill of being out on a trail that certainly very few people (if any) have driven a 4-wheeled vehicle. The real kicker of the whole drive down (and it had plenty of little kickers along the way!) was that when we finally found a nice, clean trail again it only went about a quarter mile before there was a two-foot deep trench dug across the otherwise relatively easy to drive on trail. We aren't sure if it was a work in progress or if it was some farmer's way of telling people not to drive up that road. Either way, it was pretty effective at making us drive around... which led us to drive over a huge embankment and down the other side. Probably would have been easier to just drive over the stinkin ditch!

We finally got down the mountain and found our way to a major town, then to the freeway. Once there it was a relatively painless drive to Taxco- the silver capital of Mexico (according to Taxco, anyhow). We had been there briefly a few years ago and looked forward to going back to scour the marketplaces for silver trinkets and ideas. We pulled into town at about 4:30 and found a hotel fairly quickly- we are paying more than we usually do (about $40 instead of $20-$30) but the place is very nice and has a breathtaking view from our own private balcony.

Excited to be here, but starving, we headed straight to the zocalo for a cold beer and something to eat. After enjoying dusk and the rising city lights we walked around looking at silvercrafts and munching on some yummy rice paletas (think frozen rice-pudding on a stick) until we finally headed back to the hotel at about 8 p.m. Shortly thereafter Bb's body decided to get rid of absolutely everything that she had eaten today. Everything. It was awful. Things finally settled down around 2 or 3 in the morning, but she wasn't a happy camper and Steve was beat from helping her and cleaning up, and from just having had a long day.

Bb enjoys dinner and a view	Taxco streets at night	1 hr photo finishing, scratches and dust are presumably free	Moon rise behind the church

17 December, 2002
Bb was pretty much a disaster after six hours of circuitous bathroom-crawl-back-to-bed-time, but happier at least to let Steve sleep a little and try and get some shuteye herself. That pretty well sums up the day: Bb drank lots of liquids (that Steve sweetly got up at 6:00 am while it was still dark to get her) and Steve walked around town a little, took some photographs, worked on Sandy a little (the secondary alternator is now working again).

Taxco in the morning	Typical street scene in Taxco	Bb rests in the shade with her new cowboy hat

Around dark, Bb decided that maybe some chicken soup would be good (she was really tired -- we found out later due mostly to dehydration more than just hunger) so she and Steve hobbled up the driveway and down two doors to a cafe that blessedly had just what Bb wanted. Leaving Steve to pay the bill and catch up, she went back to the room and back to bed.

18 December, 2002
It was not lost on either Steve or Bb that the only place Bb had wanted to visit in all of Mexico was the town she was now in -- but too sick to enjoy. So with much assurance of assistance, Steve managed to get her dressed and out of the room. Pancakes went down just fine for Bb and so tired, but mildly happy to be out, she shopped a bit with Steve for a gift we wanted to get for his dad. Sweet Steve bought Bb a gorgeous cowboy hat (she's been wanting one for about a year now) along with some earrings. Would have been a really fun day had Bb not had so little energy. After about an hour -- which seemed like five to her, Steve took her back to the room and went out on his own for a bit. At least he managed to talk her into buying a few pieces to use in her jewelry making. Then it was back to the next-door-restaurant for more chicken soup. Poor Steve, his boredom level is skyrocketing (as he puts it: Shopping for silver in Mexico isn't exactly a cure for boredom).

Mask shop, Taxco	Even the pipes are cool in Taxco