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!
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