The road chose me

I’m all set to leave La Manzanilla when Jason’s mustang blows a head gasket and he needs my help getting it back to town. What the heck, one more night can’t hurt We walk for an hour along the beach at night to an old restaurant where a movie is being filmed and Jason is pretty sure he saw Pierce Brosnan there. The filming this night is a long way back from the beach so we can’t see much, and even though the security guard is friendly I don’t want to push my luck, so we turn around to walk home keeping an eye out for any turtles laying eggs – of which there are none.

I finally hit the road late the next afternoon and am immediately driving through beautiful dense green mountains right by the ocean before a quick stop for a re-supply in Manzanillo. I heard about the surfing hotspot of La Ticla from a few different people, the target of today’s drive. I don’t want to be on the road when the sun goes down and the military guys with fully-automatic weapons at the checkpoint are taken aback when I voluntarily stop to ask for directions. They end up laughing at me and I’m relieved to hear it’s only another 20 minutes down the road.

I pull into the campground just as the sun touches the ocean, casting everything in a beautiful orange light. The beachside campground here has tons of Canadians and Americans who’ve made the trip down for the waves, which look nice, if not a little choppy. I had always intended to buy a board sooner or later on this trip, by lately the urge has been wearing off. For one thing boards here are very expensive because they are all brought down from the US. Secondly, everyone keeps asking me “Did you come down to surf?” and I kind of like answering no to that – I feel like surfing immediately puts a person in a stereotype that I don’t really belong in. The ocean is great, but it’s by no means my focus.
Maybe I’ll get a board later. Maybe.

Waves rolling in

I’ve booked in for a home-stay a long way south near Puerto Escondido and because I stayed in La Manzanilla an extra night, I now have two enormous days of driving ahead of me. I’m on the road at 9am and drive for the first few hours on very windy, steep mountain roads directly next to the ocean. I watch a couple of spiders crawl across the road, and then entertain myself for half an hour thinking about just how big a spider needs to be for me to see it while driving along at 50km/h. Those were some very big spiders.

I roll through Lazaro Cardenas & Zihatanejo without stopping, and begin making my way through an almost endless procession of small towns, with very slow moving trucks and ever-present Topes. A quick 10 minute stop for gas and lunch and I’m back on the road, watching the world roll by. The military presence here is huge, and I’m stopped about every hour for the routine questions of where I am from and where I am going. This is by far the biggest day of driving I have done for the entire trip, and it’s kind of a novelty. I had hoped to make it south of Acapulco before dark, but end up just short of the city. In nine hours of almost non-stop driving I cover 450km – an average of only 50km/h. That’s a pretty good indication of the road conditions, topes, trucks & other obstacles I have dealt with all day.

City by the sea

I pull into a hotel and am confused when the girl explains the price to me – per hour. I’ve never stayed in a per hour establishment and it’s all kind of amusing. I have a tiny room with air conditioning, a bathroom with cold shower and a place to park the Jeep for about $15 USD after some serious bargaining on my behalf.

I said I would leave at 6am and am not surprised to be woken by a knock on my door in the early morning. In my sleepy haze I fully open the door, to be greeted by a grimy mexican man who is obviously drunk and reeks of alcohol. At first I’m not sure what he wants, but it becomes all to clear when he first points at me, then himself, and finally the bed, nodding and grinning a toothless grin the whole time. I don’t know how to say “Go away” in Spanish, so I have to rely on the tone of my voice and my body language to get the message across, which doesn’t work so well. I end up physically shoving him out of the way to close and lock the door and he keeps talking through the door anyway.

Needless to say I don’t get any more sleep after that.

My new friend comes back in an hour and tries to offer me a beer, which I obviously don’t want. By the third time I can see the sky getting light outside and so decide I may as well get up and get moving, because I’m not sleeping any more. I’m horrified to learn my new friend actually works at the hotel – he is carrying the sheet of paper with my checkout time on it. By now he leaves nothing to guesswork and his hand gestures confirm what I had previously guessed.
I throw my stuff in the Jeep and get out as fast as I can.

It’s 7am, and within 10 minutes I am in heavy traffic leading into Acapulco, something I had not bargained for. I creep along in first gear for about 45 minutes before I find myself in the city proper at full-on rush hour. Up until this point I have described driving in Mexico as “make-it-up driving” but this is something altogether different. Cars are moving in every possible direction, cars are forcing their way in at merge points, horns and 4-way flashers are a means of communication and lanes and turn signals are completely irrelevant. On a road that allows for two lanes in each direction a momentary lapse in the opposing traffic means the lanes there sit open. Cars from all around me dart over and immediately convert the road into a four lane, one-way street, until they come head-on with traffic and frantically push their way back over. Most intersections don’t have lights or any form of control, so making a left-hand turn is a matter of just going whenever you can physically fit, the other cars seem to just flow around.

I really have no idea where I am going, and basically follow my nose until I see a sign that I need, which seems to work out pretty well in Mexican cities. In the cities themselves there are very few street signs, but as soon as I get near the outskirts the major highways are well signed. Before long I am on the correct highway, which has heavy construction and has turned into a parking lot in both directions. I move less than 1 km in an hour, a fact that everyone around me wants to tell the world about with their horn. The temperature and humidity are rising and all around me cars and trucks are spewing out thick black smoke, making the air heavy enough to chew. A gap opens up and I use the “When In Rome” philosophy, darting onto the wrong side of the traffic barrier and hurtling towards oncoming traffic. To my amazement they move out of my way, and along with a stream of others, we make great time driving on the wrong side of a divided highway, until such time as I come within centimeters of other vehicles pushing my way back in. I can’t be certain if it’s my gringo appearance, the height of the Jeep, or just how things normally work, but cutting people off seems to be a perfectly valid way of getting where you want to go.
I clear the city at 10.30am – three hours after I entered.

The day rolls on much like yesterday, although the novelty of driving has clearly warm off. I can tell I’m tired and pushing a little too hard when I hit two consecutive topes doing about 40 km/h, having not seen them at all. Again I’m driving through beautiful lush green jungle, winding mountain roads and endless little dusty towns. I make the routine 10 minute gas, bathroom and lunch stop and immediately get back on the highway, trying to beat the fast falling sun.

An unknown bay along the way

For the first time the military guys with big guns at a roadblock ask me to step out of the Jeep to search it, and I happily oblige. The whole experience is very friendly and the guard searching speaks pretty good English so we chat the whole time about where I’m from and why I’m driving alone. He is very thorough in his search and smiles broadly when he announces everything is fine and I can move on. I’ve come to like these military guys – they are always smiling and polite and simply go about their business as nicely as possible, which is perfectly fine as far as I am concerned.

Upon arrival at my final destination just before sunset it’s been a 10.5 hour day of driving for another total of 450km. I’m not in any hurry to do that again.

When I see the place I’ll be staying for the next week, I instantly know it was all worth it

-Dan

Driving the boat back to La Manzanilla gets pretty nerve racking when we have to go out into deep water around all the giant rocks getting slammed by monster waves. We try to figure out what would happen if the engine was to die… would we be pushed onto the rocks and smashed to pieces or pulled out to sea to drift around helplessly?
Either way, breaking down is not an option right now.

It all goes surprisingly smoothly, and we arrive without a single problem. It doesn’t seem to have nearly as much go at full throttle as it should, a problem for another day. Once we have the boat secured to the new anchor we put in, we swim a few hundred meters back to shore after a brief and unnecessary conversation about sharks in deep water. Neither of us is certain if they like water this warm, and decide for our own sanity that they don’t

My plan all along has been to organize couple of “Home-stays” in Mexico and maybe Guatemala. This involves living full time with a local family for a few weeks with the main goal of learning Spanish in a fully immersive environment. I already know quite a few people around town and start asking around for anywhere suitable. It turns out there is a Spanish school that not only has classes every day, they also organize home-stays. The classes are really expensive, as are the home-stays with most families wanting somewhere around $500 USD for a month. I meet the town baker who offers me a work-for-stay arrangement – help out for a few hours a day baking bread and he will teach me Spanish, which is exactly what I’ve been looking for.
Unfortunately he leaves town for a while and it never works out that way.

Kyle still has tons of things to be done, so I continue to stay at his place, working on odd jobs and learning Spanish from his wife and all the locals I meet.

I’ve been wondering when the wildlife will get decidedly exotic, and I think I’ve found it! Crocodiles live right in town natively and the viewing area is one of those really cool places where they are literally on the other side of a flimsy little fence. Of course the fence is only 10 meters long with nothing at all to prevent the crocs from walking around to our side Locals say they are sometimes seen walking from the swampy area to the beach about 100 meters away.
I’m told there are giant ant-eaters, scorpions, dangerous giant centipedes and huge spiders around the place, although I don’t spot any. I do see a massive Iguana walking near the river that is a brilliant bright green and must be almost two meters long.

The locals are pretty friendly

Of course the plant life is equally exotic, with bananas, mangoes, coconuts and a ton of other things I don’t even know the names of growing naturally all over the place. We find a couple of good coconuts on the ground and have a great time hacking them open with a machete, saving the precious water inside for an iced drink later. We collect all the flesh, blend and freeze it with milk and a little sugar to make the most amazing homemade ice cream I’ve ever had.

Proud of my first coconut, note the big machete

My friend Chewy the mechanic tells me of a Hot Spring not far away, and I of course jump at the opportunity to check it out. The river turns out to be a little higher than usual, and I can feel the really warm water as I walk through the river. Chewy explains that with a shovel and some mats to lie on, some really amazing soaking can be had. Of course it’s pushing 40 degrees, so I’m happy walking in the cool river. Nearby we stop at a beautiful little cove on the ocean that I’m told has top-notch snorkeling. I bump into a couple of Canadians who have ridden down on motorbikes and are soaking in the sunshine and contemplating the return journey north. It’s great to meet more travelers who have nothing but positive things to say about their time in Mexico.

The hot water is coming up from the bottom of the river

Speaking of Canadians and ex-pats in general, I should mention just how many of them there are around these parts.
Suffice to say there are lots.
I gather most are retired, or semi-retired and come down here every year to escape the northern winters. Most seem to own property, and spend their days soaking in the sun and enjoying many a cold beer. A significant number have driven down, and again, I hear nothing but good things about their experiences in Mexico. It’s a bit of a shame to see them all hanging out in their “own” bar, watching football on TV, eating burgers and speaking only English. I can’t help thinking they could just as well have stayed home, but they seem really happy.

Beachside paradise found!

Almost everything is done for the opening of the restaurant, and Kyle and has Dad are also working on a really ambitious investment plan. They built a beautiful 2 story house with a palapa on the roof and are working on building a few more for people that are interested in investing in the town of La Manzanilla. You can checkout their website at manzanillamystique.com to get the run down.

I’m throughly enjoying my time here, and am beginning to feel it’s time to move on. Jeep is covered in a thick layer of dirt from inactivity and is just as eager as I am for the road ahead.

-Dan

We make some great friends at the Oasis Hostel is Puerto Vallarta, particularly Andrew and Tyler who drove down in their $800 beat-up Subaru from British Columbia, Canada. Our last night at the hostel happens to be Andrew’s birthday and we party hard in town, arriving home just after 5am. It turns out a couple of Duke’s friends from Lake Tahoe are staying in a condo just south of us, so we move down there and hang out with Mike and Shelly for the afternoon. The view from their balcony is absolutely amazing, as is their basically private beach.

The view from Mike & Shelly's balcony

The policy on turtle eggs on this beach is amazing – they are removed from the beach, raised inside until they hatch, then released on the sand at sunset to the delight of camera wielding tourists. We didn’t stick around to see the turtle parade into the ocean, but did get to see a container full of little ones that had just hatched earlier that day.

Baby turtles eager to hit the sand

On Mike & Shelly’s recommendation we make a stop at the Puerto Vallarta Zoo to contemplate our options. The crazy thing about this zoo is that it’s encouraged for you to feed and pat the animals – all of them, even the bears – through a fence. This leads to some amazing photos of patting a(n) that is bending down to eat a carrot right out of your hand. It’s late in the day and a few of us don’t want to pay 100 pesos for only 1 hour of zoo time, so we move along. As we drive out of the parking lot a local guy tells us the film set for Predator is just a little ways further up the road.
It sounds cool but we pass.

The whole crew

The light fades quickly and I find myself driving in the dark for the first time in Mexico, something I was warned time and time again not to do. Below are a few reasons why I won’t be trying this stunt again in a hurry:

• The road surface is extremely unpredictable and difficult to see at night. At times I can move along nicely at 90 km/h, then I hit a sharp corner where the surface deteriorates to bad gravel in the space of 10 meters.

• The un-signed vicious speed humps (topes) are usually a first gear affair even in the Jeep, and are very tricky to spot in the dark. I’ve already hit one doing about 80 km/h and don’t want a repeat.

• A lot of vehicles have very few lights or none at all, making them virtually impossible to spot in the dark. At one point while I’m doing about 70 km/h a car appears just off the side of the road coming towards me from the side. It is apparently merging onto the highway with no lights of any kind.

• Very slow vehicles are encountered often, and apparently locals are even crazier about overtaking on blind corners at night than they are during the daylight.

Duke has more friends in the little beach side community of La Manzanilla, and we rock in late at night to find we’re crashing in a full-on guest house, and are basically treated like kings

Palm trees a plenty beachside at La Manzanilla

In town we buy a mountain of 8 peso tacos and have a huge feast, full of excitement for the adventures we will have in our new town…

-Dan