Today we spent the whole day with los abuelos. Abuelita Cata showed me how to make gorditas! First for lunch we made them with just beans, refried beans that she prepared with epazote. Then again for dinner we made some more this time at Josue’s request, we added cheese into them as well. They came out very good! Gorditas for all you who don’t know, are corn tortillas, made a little thicker, hence the name “gordita” and before you cook up the tortilla, you add in the filling of choice. Today it was beans & cheese, but other common fillings are avas (lima beans), carnitas, or chicharron. Then once you have the filling in you fold over the sides & pinch the ends together so it sort of makes a football shaped “hot pocket” sort of thing. Then you throw them on the comal to cook up the tortilla part, the filling is always already cooked and it just warms up as the outside tortilla is getting cooked.
We went for a walk in the afternoon with Abuela, she needed to figure out what the water schedule was like and when it’s their turn to receive water from the canals. This is another difference over here, there are canals, throughout the neighborhoods, and there is a schedule as to when you can pull water from them. On the way back from the walk we encountered some little ones on their way home from kindergarten. And met a lady that was walking with her son, who Abuela introduced us to. In a very distant way, she is Josue’s cousin. She invited us to her house to see their flowers and how they grow their crops, and she offered to give us some flowers. We said thank you and maybe we’d stop by later.
So after a while back at the house, Abuelita, wanted to gather some “misperos” to take to the lady we just met. Misperos are a fruit that grow on trees down here. They are hard to describe - I’ll have to take pictures of them later. They are small & have a pretty large seed inside that is bright brown & smooth. You can eat the peel, but we usually end up pulling if off. The meat sort of resembles that of a grape or a plum. Anyhow, they’re very tasty. We picked a bunch from the trees and filled up a bag to take, then we were on our way to take her up on her offer.
When we got there, she began to show us around their property. Flowers is their business, and the first green house we went in to was for the roses, and she was showing us a new color they grow. Then on to other green houses, and across the street in to a whole other lot. This was a little hike down a private road, where we then encountered on a hillside another set of greenhouses filled with what looked like some type of lillies. Here she plucked one single yellow one for us to take with us. She explained different processes to Josue about how they take care of them. All this is right up his ally, being the plant lover that he is.
When we got back to her house, she showed us the freezer that they store all the freshly picked flowers in, before they go off to sell them. Here she gave us a gift of fresh roses, packed in a bunch of 15, and they were one of the new color varieties that they grow. A pretty blend of bright yellows, oranges and hot pink/reddish tones. Josue was asking lots of questions on how they get the different colors to grow, and since he’s showing interest, she took us to see another process. It was the beginning stage of how the graft the plants. It was where all the stems that had been cut, were now in little bags to grow roots. This is a process Josue would like a chance to work at.
We thanked our host and left back towards Abuelita’s house.
What a relaxing day. We ate, we relaxed, snacked on fruit, went for a walk, snacked on fruit, went for another walk, ate again.
A nice time spent with the grandparents in Buena Vista.
Some more things that I’ve been taking in…
An evening/nightly tradition is to drink some tea or coffee, warm drinks to soothe, I guess. My dad predicted that in my lifetime, I will become a coffee drinker… well not yet!! Although this nightly tradition is growing on me, especially since often times it’s accompanied with pan dulces, I still tend to lean more towards the teas!! Which even that is a big difference for me, because I was never much of a tea drinker either. But I like the teas a lot here!!
We’ve noticed that the side of the road clean up, when they’re needing to clean the hedges or overgrown weeds, is done by hand with machetes!
Also, those fires I’ve mentioned before, that’s also a common way people will kill weeds in their yards as well.
Today as we were walking, I see big cow pies in my path, but because I have my head down watching my path, I didn’t realize, that the cow who left them there was standing right next to me!! She was just hanging out, eating some grass!
Thursday, November 25, 2010
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
About this Blog
Just a quick note, we're new to this whole "Blog" thing, but from what we get - it's just online journal to share with people.
So, we decided to start one of our own for anybody interested. For those of you who know us & what we're doing, starting this, is a way for us to fill in the gap between now, the very start of our trip until when our website will be fully up & running.
Perhaps, even when it is up & running we'll still use this, just because updating this is something we can do ourselves. Hope you enjoy.
love, the bugamundos!
So, we decided to start one of our own for anybody interested. For those of you who know us & what we're doing, starting this, is a way for us to fill in the gap between now, the very start of our trip until when our website will be fully up & running.
Perhaps, even when it is up & running we'll still use this, just because updating this is something we can do ourselves. Hope you enjoy.
love, the bugamundos!
Wednesday. 11.24.10
Today we went to hang out at Abuelita Cata’s house again. We had lunch there of tortillas and beans and some chicken leftover from last night’s dinner that we had there.
Got to wash dishes again, in the sunlight. Then we just kind of roamed around the property. Her place is just so peaceful and relaxing to be at. All though later in the afternoon, the noise picked up, as the neighbors had a back-hoe there digging a new well for water for their crops.
Once it got to be evening again, Abuelita started preparing dinner, and I asked to help. She quickly handed the cheese over for me to shred (I think it was queso Oaxaca, which resembles string cheese, you just pull it apart to shred it). Then as she’s warming the tortillas on her clequil (a clay comal in the corner of her kitchen that is heated by a wood burning fire below - an all purpose griddle), she starts to prepare a salsa in her molcajete (or as Josue calls it, an Aztec blender). After I’m done with the cheese I take over on the molcajete to finish up the salsa. I express an interest to her that I’d like to learn to cook like she does, and she offers to teach me how to make tortillas tomorrow morning - I can’t wait!!
So, dinner tonight was a fresh pot of beans, quesadillas and a fresh salsa! Once again, very delicious! Oh with agua de limon to wash it down with!
Buenas noches for now! We’ll try to keep updating this as much as possible, hope you enjoy so far - the Bugamundos!
Got to wash dishes again, in the sunlight. Then we just kind of roamed around the property. Her place is just so peaceful and relaxing to be at. All though later in the afternoon, the noise picked up, as the neighbors had a back-hoe there digging a new well for water for their crops.
Once it got to be evening again, Abuelita started preparing dinner, and I asked to help. She quickly handed the cheese over for me to shred (I think it was queso Oaxaca, which resembles string cheese, you just pull it apart to shred it). Then as she’s warming the tortillas on her clequil (a clay comal in the corner of her kitchen that is heated by a wood burning fire below - an all purpose griddle), she starts to prepare a salsa in her molcajete (or as Josue calls it, an Aztec blender). After I’m done with the cheese I take over on the molcajete to finish up the salsa. I express an interest to her that I’d like to learn to cook like she does, and she offers to teach me how to make tortillas tomorrow morning - I can’t wait!!
So, dinner tonight was a fresh pot of beans, quesadillas and a fresh salsa! Once again, very delicious! Oh with agua de limon to wash it down with!
Buenas noches for now! We’ll try to keep updating this as much as possible, hope you enjoy so far - the Bugamundos!
Tuesday. 11.23.10
So, today’s a quiet day so far. The kids haven’t stopped by yet. Tia’s off at work, and the suegros are at Abuelita Cata’s house. Josue’s still not feeling well, so I’m trying to get him to rest, and I’m using this as a catch up day. Right now I’m doing laundry, journaling and uploading pictures.
Since it’s quiet, it’s giving me a chance to sort out my thoughts and actually try to get out into words all that I’ve been taking in so far.
I just wanted to list some note worthy differences I’ve been noticing:
Like I’m washing clothes today - which I must say I was a little disappointed, because I wanted to give the “pileta” a try, hand washing our clothes, but there is washing machine, so why not save time. However, when washing clothes, first you gotta figure out which water source you’re going to use. The water from the hose by the street only runs at certain times throughout the day, then there’s the water from the tank on the roof, which I think is usually conserved for the times when the running water isn’t coming in. Anyhow, you put the hose into the washing machine and fill it up for both the wash cycle and then listen for the sound that lets you know you need to fill it up again for the rinse cycle. Washing clothes like washing dishes is all usually done in cold water.
The hot water is saved for bathing. Here at one house, the boiler is heated by burning wood below it, so you have to remember to put wood in before your shower and give it a chance to heat up. At the other house you connect up to a gas tank., but you need to restart the pilot everyday, because due to a leak you need to turn it off every night.
Back to laundry, to dry your clothes, you use the dryer from good ol’ nature- the sun! Turn your clothes inside out and hang them on the line. Which is another reason you want to start your laundry early in the day, because as we found out the first time we did laundry here, if you hang them too late in the afternoon, sun goes down, temperature drops and your clothes stay wet until the next day. Which means they don’t dry as fresh!
Same thing with your shower towels, hang them on the line when your done!
Throughout the day different delivery trucks make their way through the neighborhoods selling their goods, such as: a fruit truck, a bread truck (which by the way is the one that smells the best - the back camper full of freshly made sweet breads, teleras y bolillos…mmmm), a gas truck - the kind of gas you need to hook up to your water heater or stove, and of course the ice-cream truck, well, not all things are different.
Dogs roam about through the neighborhoods freely around here, for that matter, so do the kids. Some go to school, but a good number of them do not, so they just come and go as they please. And since we’ve showed them a couple card games, that’s one of the main requests as they come by - “vamos a jugar las cartas?”
I like washing dishes at Abuela Cata’s house, it’s off the kitchen in a little room that sort of feels like you’re outside, the sun shines in on you. You fill up a little pail with dish detergent and water and you wash the dishes, when you’re ready to rinse you dip the clean rinse bowl into the water barrel to your right and fill up a smaller bin so you can rinse the dishes. If any of the pans need deeper scrubbing, she has a little bowl full of a special powder that scrubs (sort of like Bon-Ami, but pink, not sure what it’s called) and a special little rock that is smooth, but scrubs the burnt food right off! Then you place all the rinsed dishes into the laundry basket to your left to air dry. And just a note - the sink is a long shallow rectangle made out of concrete.
(Soon I’ll add pictures, because I just can’t describe it, everything at Abuela Cata’s house is just so, and has such a neat feel to it… there’ll be more on that later)
It’s common to see people with fires burning in their yards, I mentioned “fogatas” earlier, well those are bonfires, but most of the fires are probably just people burning their trash.
When you go to the store, you don’t always have to buy the whole container of whatever it is you are after. Say you need a can of jalapeños, but you either don’t have enough money for a whole can or don’t need a whole can, you can just ask for a few jalapeños, and they’ll bag them up for you and price it accordingly. We went to the pharmacy for some oil for my skin, and he poured me a small amount into another container for 10 pesos.
Forever, mocosa, I needed to blow my nose one day and there wasn’t any Kleenex, so I grabbed some toilet paper instead. I found that the toilet paper over here smells pretty. I guess it has some kind of fragrance/perfume. Nery says it’s because you’re not supposed to flush the toilet paper here, because of plumbing issues, I guess. So it’s an attempt to make the trash cans smell a little better. I don’t know, but I found it pleasant as I was blowing my nose constantly!!
When you go to bed you might want to say a prayer that there won’t be any earthquakes, since the ceilings here are all made out of poured cement, not like drywall nailed to the rafters over there.
Speaking of “over there” that’s another big thing I’ve noticed, how even the little little ones are aware of “el otro lado”. That’s a global awareness that most kids under 8 over there probably don’t share. Josue’s little niece the other day when I first met her, who’s eight years old asked me, “eres del otro lado?” And another nephew asked me “tu lenguaje es ingles, no?” It’s kind of neat that they realize so young that the world is bigger than just what they see around them.
Since it’s quiet, it’s giving me a chance to sort out my thoughts and actually try to get out into words all that I’ve been taking in so far.
I just wanted to list some note worthy differences I’ve been noticing:
Like I’m washing clothes today - which I must say I was a little disappointed, because I wanted to give the “pileta” a try, hand washing our clothes, but there is washing machine, so why not save time. However, when washing clothes, first you gotta figure out which water source you’re going to use. The water from the hose by the street only runs at certain times throughout the day, then there’s the water from the tank on the roof, which I think is usually conserved for the times when the running water isn’t coming in. Anyhow, you put the hose into the washing machine and fill it up for both the wash cycle and then listen for the sound that lets you know you need to fill it up again for the rinse cycle. Washing clothes like washing dishes is all usually done in cold water.
The hot water is saved for bathing. Here at one house, the boiler is heated by burning wood below it, so you have to remember to put wood in before your shower and give it a chance to heat up. At the other house you connect up to a gas tank., but you need to restart the pilot everyday, because due to a leak you need to turn it off every night.
Back to laundry, to dry your clothes, you use the dryer from good ol’ nature- the sun! Turn your clothes inside out and hang them on the line. Which is another reason you want to start your laundry early in the day, because as we found out the first time we did laundry here, if you hang them too late in the afternoon, sun goes down, temperature drops and your clothes stay wet until the next day. Which means they don’t dry as fresh!
Same thing with your shower towels, hang them on the line when your done!
Throughout the day different delivery trucks make their way through the neighborhoods selling their goods, such as: a fruit truck, a bread truck (which by the way is the one that smells the best - the back camper full of freshly made sweet breads, teleras y bolillos…mmmm), a gas truck - the kind of gas you need to hook up to your water heater or stove, and of course the ice-cream truck, well, not all things are different.
Dogs roam about through the neighborhoods freely around here, for that matter, so do the kids. Some go to school, but a good number of them do not, so they just come and go as they please. And since we’ve showed them a couple card games, that’s one of the main requests as they come by - “vamos a jugar las cartas?”
I like washing dishes at Abuela Cata’s house, it’s off the kitchen in a little room that sort of feels like you’re outside, the sun shines in on you. You fill up a little pail with dish detergent and water and you wash the dishes, when you’re ready to rinse you dip the clean rinse bowl into the water barrel to your right and fill up a smaller bin so you can rinse the dishes. If any of the pans need deeper scrubbing, she has a little bowl full of a special powder that scrubs (sort of like Bon-Ami, but pink, not sure what it’s called) and a special little rock that is smooth, but scrubs the burnt food right off! Then you place all the rinsed dishes into the laundry basket to your left to air dry. And just a note - the sink is a long shallow rectangle made out of concrete.
(Soon I’ll add pictures, because I just can’t describe it, everything at Abuela Cata’s house is just so, and has such a neat feel to it… there’ll be more on that later)
It’s common to see people with fires burning in their yards, I mentioned “fogatas” earlier, well those are bonfires, but most of the fires are probably just people burning their trash.
When you go to the store, you don’t always have to buy the whole container of whatever it is you are after. Say you need a can of jalapeños, but you either don’t have enough money for a whole can or don’t need a whole can, you can just ask for a few jalapeños, and they’ll bag them up for you and price it accordingly. We went to the pharmacy for some oil for my skin, and he poured me a small amount into another container for 10 pesos.
Forever, mocosa, I needed to blow my nose one day and there wasn’t any Kleenex, so I grabbed some toilet paper instead. I found that the toilet paper over here smells pretty. I guess it has some kind of fragrance/perfume. Nery says it’s because you’re not supposed to flush the toilet paper here, because of plumbing issues, I guess. So it’s an attempt to make the trash cans smell a little better. I don’t know, but I found it pleasant as I was blowing my nose constantly!!
When you go to bed you might want to say a prayer that there won’t be any earthquakes, since the ceilings here are all made out of poured cement, not like drywall nailed to the rafters over there.
Speaking of “over there” that’s another big thing I’ve noticed, how even the little little ones are aware of “el otro lado”. That’s a global awareness that most kids under 8 over there probably don’t share. Josue’s little niece the other day when I first met her, who’s eight years old asked me, “eres del otro lado?” And another nephew asked me “tu lenguaje es ingles, no?” It’s kind of neat that they realize so young that the world is bigger than just what they see around them.
Monday. 11.22.10
This past weekend was the big day for Josue’s brother Nery and his new bride Tania. They put on a great wedding on Saturday, a wedding designed for the ranch. Nery was sporting full Charro gear, and looking very handsome. After the ceremony the novios road away on horseback through town to the reception hall. Josue and I played photographers/guide through town. Josue driving Charlena, took a different route to cut off the horseback caravan and I jumped on the roof rack to take pictures of them as they road to their reception. Once at the hall, they had an evening full of surprises for each other and the guests planned and even a brincolin para los niños. A night of good food, good drinks, music & dancing. Felicidades a los novios Tania y Nery!
On Sunday was another after party gathering at Tia Vero’s house. I got to try Pepeto for the first time. It’s a pork & vegetable soup, you serve it up with lime & chiles manzanos and pan telera! It was very tasty. This day was a lot more relaxed and we got to spend time with cousins and nephews more. Last week we got the kids hooked on playing a card game called “golf”, this day Josue taught them how to play Uno. Josue’s cousin Gil, who is a fan of VW’s and currently owns a Combi, got under the hood with us and gave us some tips and showed us parts of the engine that typically have issues and what to check for and quick maintenance we can do to keep it running longer. It was really helpful. Just what we need more of. Later that evening the novios left to the city with a cousin, to fly out for their honeymoon (luna de miel).
And the rest of the night was spent just relaxing with the kids, Josue got us all going to collect firewood for a fogata (bonfire) and that’s how we all relaxed before bed.
Today, was a lay low kind of day. Josue is starting to get sick, he thinks it’s from a change of weather, but everybody else is telling him it’s from all the smoke from last night’s bonfire.
Later in the evening when we walked down the street to the church here in San Francisco, we found celebrations happening. It was for Dia de los Musicos y Santa Cecilia and after mass they had a banda group outside the church playing music. Jenna- this made us think of you because they had a tuba player and two trombones and two playing instruments that looked like yours but are smaller, not sure what it’s called. We took a few pictures then headed back up to the house. Had some tea with dinner and back outside to another fogata.
On Sunday was another after party gathering at Tia Vero’s house. I got to try Pepeto for the first time. It’s a pork & vegetable soup, you serve it up with lime & chiles manzanos and pan telera! It was very tasty. This day was a lot more relaxed and we got to spend time with cousins and nephews more. Last week we got the kids hooked on playing a card game called “golf”, this day Josue taught them how to play Uno. Josue’s cousin Gil, who is a fan of VW’s and currently owns a Combi, got under the hood with us and gave us some tips and showed us parts of the engine that typically have issues and what to check for and quick maintenance we can do to keep it running longer. It was really helpful. Just what we need more of. Later that evening the novios left to the city with a cousin, to fly out for their honeymoon (luna de miel).
And the rest of the night was spent just relaxing with the kids, Josue got us all going to collect firewood for a fogata (bonfire) and that’s how we all relaxed before bed.
Today, was a lay low kind of day. Josue is starting to get sick, he thinks it’s from a change of weather, but everybody else is telling him it’s from all the smoke from last night’s bonfire.
Later in the evening when we walked down the street to the church here in San Francisco, we found celebrations happening. It was for Dia de los Musicos y Santa Cecilia and after mass they had a banda group outside the church playing music. Jenna- this made us think of you because they had a tuba player and two trombones and two playing instruments that looked like yours but are smaller, not sure what it’s called. We took a few pictures then headed back up to the house. Had some tea with dinner and back outside to another fogata.
Thursday. 11.18.10
So we’ve been here a week now. The Bugamundos’ trip officially began a week ago, when we crossed over into Mexico. After a nice stay in Phoenix with Sarah’s family we set out on our journey, this first leg of our trip began last Thursday in a caravan with Josue’s family. Josue’s brother is getting married this Saturday and we of course wanted to make it down to Villa in time for the wedding, so because of this we stuck to the toll roads and made a straight dash down. The first & only pit stop to sleep and rest was just outside of Culiacan, Sinaloa just after one of the toll stations, where we all slept for a few hours. After that we just took turns driving then trying to get rest while performing all the duties of a copilot.
Before arriving in Tepic, the other vehicle we were traveling with had a tire blowout. So, during the repair, we had our first encounter with the federales, who stopped to check on us. While they were there Josue asked to take pictures of their car and we gave them our cards, sharing with them what we’re doing. Once we got the spare in place, we were back on our way.
Our next stop was in Tepic, Narayit to eat and stretch out for a bit. It was from here that Sarah, who is still trying to get down the art of driving standard, took over driving again all the way to Maravatio, Michoacan. This stretch included some hectic stop & go through Guadalajara’s rush hour.
Hours later we stopped again to eat in Maravatio, which was our last pit stop to eat before making it home.
We then arrived in Villa Guerrero at 1am, Saturday morning, 11.13.10.
So, here we are now, it’s been a week since we left home, and after making it to our destination in about 44 hours straight, you could say we were “bug-lagged” for the first couple days after. The bug, or “Charlena” as we call her, did great though. She handled fine. We took a lot of notes on gas/mileage, we’re still trying to figure out just how she’s running and now on top of that we’re now making the conversion to kilometers & liters for gas. But anyhow after we recovered from the drive, which by the way- was super cozy, but quite comfortable, and since there was a wedding to attend, we decided to venture out on our own to maybe see if we could find something a little more presentable to wear for that day.
So our first stop to try to find something was in Tenancingo at the marketplace, it’s kind of like swap meat style vendors, who on this day were mostly selling clothes. However, we had no luck, since Sarah is not a size 3, which most of the clothes seemed to be. We ate lunch here at one of the stands (puestos) and had sopes and quesadillas con flor de calabasa… mmm.
On to the next town, Toluca, or so we thought - where we actually stopped to shop was at a little strip mall off the main road in Metepec, we hadn’t quite reached Toluca. But here we found a blouse, but decided to move on to Toluca to see if there were any better deals. But while here we stopped in at the Walmart of Metepec. Which still looks like a Walmart, with only minor differences. It was here that we purchased our “Gran Atlas de Carreteras - Mexico”, it’s the large book format of the same atlas of the U.S. that you can get at Target or Walmart up there. It has a map of the whole country, then a two page spread of each of the 31 states and the Distrito Federal. This should be helpful as we make make our way through these southern states.
This being our first excursion out on our own since we’ve got here, Josue was a little hesitant, but with a little push from me, we were on our way and everything was going fine, until… we found ourselves a little lost, seems we missed Toluca centro, street signs down here can be confusing at times. So we turned of to try to head back in the direction the downtown should’ve been, but we found ourselves in a neighborhood, and all of a sudden, Charlena just stopped running. So Josue pulled off to the side, and we got out to check her out. What we found was gas boiling over and leaking out of the carberator. We tightened up some bolts and gave her a little time to cool down. We were a little stumped because we keep hearing that VW’s don’t overheat. Meanwhile we see a guy just up the street with his bug also with the rear decklid open, so we figure lets go talk to him and see if he could give us any tips. Se llama Ivan, and he ended up helping us take off the whole carberator, so we could take it apart and make better seals with what we had (super glue), and tighten things up. A temporary fix, but it got our bug running fine and got us on our way again. By the time we wrapped things up, the sun was almost down, we took pictures with our new friend and his car, and he offered to lead us to downtown Toluca. When we got there, night had fallen already and the town was hopping. There was no place to find parking, it seemed pretty hectic, and neither of us being shoppers, we didn’t feel like shopping anymore, so we decided just to head back to Metepec, for that first blouse. This was another challenge, because once again, we ended up getting lost in the neighborhoods and we weren’t finding the street that would lead us back out as our friendly guide had told us. Luckily, so far anyway, Josue and I both seem to have an internal compass that’s on track, so we just kept driving in the direction we thought would get us on our way and about on hour later we were back on the highway we came in on!
Back to Metepec for a quick stop and on to Villa for a late dinner of tacos al pastor, with salsa de aguacate… delicious! Or as they might say here… estan ricos!
It was an eventful day for us, but we were happy that even with hiccups along the path, we still found our way. Turns out the atlas we got, is still too broad for navigating through the towns, nimodo!
Before arriving in Tepic, the other vehicle we were traveling with had a tire blowout. So, during the repair, we had our first encounter with the federales, who stopped to check on us. While they were there Josue asked to take pictures of their car and we gave them our cards, sharing with them what we’re doing. Once we got the spare in place, we were back on our way.
Our next stop was in Tepic, Narayit to eat and stretch out for a bit. It was from here that Sarah, who is still trying to get down the art of driving standard, took over driving again all the way to Maravatio, Michoacan. This stretch included some hectic stop & go through Guadalajara’s rush hour.
Hours later we stopped again to eat in Maravatio, which was our last pit stop to eat before making it home.
We then arrived in Villa Guerrero at 1am, Saturday morning, 11.13.10.
So, here we are now, it’s been a week since we left home, and after making it to our destination in about 44 hours straight, you could say we were “bug-lagged” for the first couple days after. The bug, or “Charlena” as we call her, did great though. She handled fine. We took a lot of notes on gas/mileage, we’re still trying to figure out just how she’s running and now on top of that we’re now making the conversion to kilometers & liters for gas. But anyhow after we recovered from the drive, which by the way- was super cozy, but quite comfortable, and since there was a wedding to attend, we decided to venture out on our own to maybe see if we could find something a little more presentable to wear for that day.
So our first stop to try to find something was in Tenancingo at the marketplace, it’s kind of like swap meat style vendors, who on this day were mostly selling clothes. However, we had no luck, since Sarah is not a size 3, which most of the clothes seemed to be. We ate lunch here at one of the stands (puestos) and had sopes and quesadillas con flor de calabasa… mmm.
On to the next town, Toluca, or so we thought - where we actually stopped to shop was at a little strip mall off the main road in Metepec, we hadn’t quite reached Toluca. But here we found a blouse, but decided to move on to Toluca to see if there were any better deals. But while here we stopped in at the Walmart of Metepec. Which still looks like a Walmart, with only minor differences. It was here that we purchased our “Gran Atlas de Carreteras - Mexico”, it’s the large book format of the same atlas of the U.S. that you can get at Target or Walmart up there. It has a map of the whole country, then a two page spread of each of the 31 states and the Distrito Federal. This should be helpful as we make make our way through these southern states.
This being our first excursion out on our own since we’ve got here, Josue was a little hesitant, but with a little push from me, we were on our way and everything was going fine, until… we found ourselves a little lost, seems we missed Toluca centro, street signs down here can be confusing at times. So we turned of to try to head back in the direction the downtown should’ve been, but we found ourselves in a neighborhood, and all of a sudden, Charlena just stopped running. So Josue pulled off to the side, and we got out to check her out. What we found was gas boiling over and leaking out of the carberator. We tightened up some bolts and gave her a little time to cool down. We were a little stumped because we keep hearing that VW’s don’t overheat. Meanwhile we see a guy just up the street with his bug also with the rear decklid open, so we figure lets go talk to him and see if he could give us any tips. Se llama Ivan, and he ended up helping us take off the whole carberator, so we could take it apart and make better seals with what we had (super glue), and tighten things up. A temporary fix, but it got our bug running fine and got us on our way again. By the time we wrapped things up, the sun was almost down, we took pictures with our new friend and his car, and he offered to lead us to downtown Toluca. When we got there, night had fallen already and the town was hopping. There was no place to find parking, it seemed pretty hectic, and neither of us being shoppers, we didn’t feel like shopping anymore, so we decided just to head back to Metepec, for that first blouse. This was another challenge, because once again, we ended up getting lost in the neighborhoods and we weren’t finding the street that would lead us back out as our friendly guide had told us. Luckily, so far anyway, Josue and I both seem to have an internal compass that’s on track, so we just kept driving in the direction we thought would get us on our way and about on hour later we were back on the highway we came in on!
Back to Metepec for a quick stop and on to Villa for a late dinner of tacos al pastor, with salsa de aguacate… delicious! Or as they might say here… estan ricos!
It was an eventful day for us, but we were happy that even with hiccups along the path, we still found our way. Turns out the atlas we got, is still too broad for navigating through the towns, nimodo!
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