As I sit writing this, we find ourselves stranded in the tiny village of La Ticla. With a palapa of our own on the beach, it is a pretty enough place but we have already been here two days longer than planned and we are not optimistic about today. There is no wifi, no cell coverage and only one restaurant. At this point we have no idea when we’ll actually be able to leave, let alone when I’ll be able to upload this post.

I’m getting ahead of myself, though, as there are obviously a few misadventures that brought us to this point. Before leaving our little haven in Mazatlan, we spent one last night with John and Deb. They invited us over to watch a movie with them and, after a couple months on the road, it was quite a novelty to socialize (in complete sentences!) and spend the evening in their air-conditioned RV.

From there, the plan was to head south towards Guadalajara but we broke the trip up by overnighting in San Blas. The town itself was lovely but the campground was so mosquito laden that we were not tempted to stay longer than one night – ok, we barely survived that night. Our key distractions were chatting with a jalapeno eating parrot at the local bar and marvelling at the plethora of goods that can be sold from the back of a truck. We saw a mobile bed and mattress store (actually an overloaded pickup with a loudspeaker) come by while enjoying our afternoon beers!

The next day, it was on to Guadalajara! After some of our prior experiences, we had come to the conclusion that the only way to really visit a city was by staying in a hotel. The potential camping places are simply too far away from the urban area and, with the extreme heat, we can’t leave Chester in the vehicle (or the camper) for any length of time. The next challenge though, was to find a hotel that would accept dogs. It is apparently not typical for Mexicans to travel with pets and, when we ask about bringing Chester into the room, we are generally met with a flat “no”. When I put on the “pet friendly” filter in the Trip Advisor app, the number of hotels in Guadalajara actually dropped from over a thousand to just eleven. Luckily, though, we struck gold at “La Fe”, a great little boutique hotel that not only allowed pets but actually welcomed them! It was no problem to leave Chester loose in our air conditioned room while we checked out the local museums and galleries. The staff were even happy to come in to clean the room and give him a pet while we were away!

The City itself was absolutely enchanting and blessedly cool (finally temperatures back in the 20s!). Our first night there was spent at the lovely Italian restaurant next door where we enjoyed some fabulous thin crust pizza (our first real pizza in a long time!) and listened to live music. The young proprietors were especially keen to please and the food was superb. We couldn’t help but come back here a couple more times for drinks or appies before leaving the City.

For our first day in the City, I had an agenda of sights for us to and, with the cool temperatures, we decided (Dave´s edit: Kristel decided) it would be perfect to find our way on foot. It may have been wise to consult a map before setting out, though, as the route I selected may not have been the most direct (Dave´s edit: we were headed the wrong direction!). We did however come across a great local market that was not listed in any of our guide books. It was a seemingly endless labyrinth of stalls that continued through a myriad of streets and alleyways at random. Finally, we did make it to the historical centre and spent some time in the various plazas people-watching and gawking at street performers.

We strolled through the local museum before taking in the “official” market. Obviously more permanent than the street market we had stumbled upon, it was three stories of stalls upon stalls selling everything from cuts of meat, and sugary sweets to live parrots, jewellery, trinkets and a myriad of leather goods (just to name a few). It was even better than the market in Mazatlan – and we came away with our bellies full and up one lime squeezer and soccer jersey!

Our next stop was the Instituto Cultural de Cabanas. This former hospital now houses a variety of modern art installations and is renowned for its impressive Orozco murals – an incredible place to experience. We capped off our day with a delicious ice cream in the square before walking back to our hotel (Dave´s edit: nearing heat exhaustion).

We were up early the next day and chatted for an hour or so about the World Cup over breakfast with our host and one of the other patrons. There is so much excitement (and hope) about Mexico’s team that it is hard not to get caught up in all of the energy. Afterward, we headed downtown again and had a chance to visit the famous Cathedral before ducking into the Palacio de Justicia to see a famous mural by Guillermo Chavez. This gorgeous building is also very much a place of business with many workers going about their day-to-day activities. While Dave was photographing the mural, a local man stepped forward to introduce himself and ask where we were from. He clearly recognized us for tourists so he used very simple Spanish. He took the time to welcome us to his country and encouraged us to see the murals in the nearby Palacio de Gobierno which he described as even more beautiful than this one. We were absolutely charmed by him and his words were so warm and genuine that it made me wish I more readily approached and welcomed foreign tourists when I see them in Canada. It is certainly something I will make a point of doing in the future. Of course, we took his advice and immediately headed over to see the Orozco mural (incredible!) before enjoying a heaping bowl of birria de chivo (goat) for lunch.

We decided to head out early the following day. The whole City was expected to be at a standstill during the Brazil-Mexico match slated for that afternoon and we wanted to reach the mountain town of Tapalpa (where there was reportedly a good campground) in time to watch the game. Tapalpa itself was lovely (think swiss mountain village meets colonial Mexico) and again blessedly cool. (almost funny how we both have really grown to love and appreciate cool weather). Finding a place to watch the game was no problem. When we asked one of the locals where we could watch it, he looked at us like as if we were nuts and simply responded that “it will be everywhere”. We chose a great little restaurant with a flat screen tv and a courtyard dining space. Chester was with us but this caused no issues. Restaurants everywhere seem to welcome dogs (I think it is inversely proportional to the number of hotels that allow dogs) so it is rarely a problem to bring him with us. Lunch was fabulous and the game was a nail biter. It ended in a tie but there were some close calls and panic almost broke out whenever Brazil nearly scored (apparently “F#@*!” is pretty much universal).

Our search for a campground in Tapalpa, however, was less than successful. Our guidebook clearly described an RV park just out of town but when we followed the directions down the narrow single track road, we were met with a closed gate. Awesome…this meant we had to reverse about 1 ½ kilometers back down the road before we could turn around and head back into town…and when I say “we”, I actually mean Dave…I’m still too intimidated to drive the truck forward. We weren’t too worried, though. Dave had spotted a “campamento” sign a few kilometers back and only 2 ½ kilometers off the main road. The road quickly went from road…to trail…to path, including several water crossings – but we found it! The “campamento” in question was clearly some type of kids camp…complete with little cabins and a rambunctious soccer game!

It wasn’t meant for RVs so we decided to venture on towards Colima. I recalled reading about a volcano nearby and there was a description of a state campground listed in our book. Unfortunately, “nearby” turned out to be an hour off the highway through winding roads, a couple villages and one military checkpoint.

I should probably mention that military checkpoints are located fairly sporadically on many Mexican roads. We have probably been through close to 20 by now, but these were a little intimidating at first. There are generally around 10-30 young men carrying large guns at these checkpoints and 2-3 will approach your vehicle. At this point 1 of 3 things may happen (in about equal doses):

1. We get waved through;
2. We are asked a few questions about where we are going and what we are doing in Mexico  (I have now trained Dave just to state the next City to which we are travelling – the first time he started explain about heading to Panama created way more questions); or
3. Our camper will be searched (usually a pretty cursory glance or walk-through).

This time we got option 3 and the camper was searched before we got to continue on towards the campground. By this time, it was getting late, and we were relieved to find an actual campground that even had an open restaurant (though that later proved not to be such a great windfall). Shortly after we set up camp, some visitors rolled in. The army troop that just searched us came in and set up camp next door. It was a little strange knowing that we would be sleeping next to armed sentinels with M16 guns.

By next morning, though, the soldiers didn’t seem so intimidating. After washing their breakfast dishes, we could see that one soldier in particular was quite enamored with Chester. He wanted to know his name and kept trying to coax him over. Soon we had a group of ten soldiers gathered around with the best English speaker playing interpreter. It was a great visit until a barked command sent them all scurrying into formation – ready for the day’s patrol.

We also made some crucial discoveries that morning:

1. We had a small water leak.
2. That small water leak zeroed in on our toilet paper and Kleenex…turning them to two bags of pulp – something to be addressed very soon. Paper towel would do in a pinch but was not a viable long term solution.
3. A bike tire has gone missing sometime in the last 24 hours. We sincerely hope it fell off on one of the sketchy backroads and not while driving at 120 km/hour on the Autopista but we have no clear idea.

It wasn’t clear where the leak had originated but Dave decided he would add more caulking to any likely places once things dried out.

Before taking off, we took the time to explore our campground – there was a lovely little lake and it turned out we were near the base of two volcanoes, one of which was smoking! It would have been great to spend a few more days but it was not to be. Not only were we both feeling some ill effects from last night’s dinner but we now had no toilet paper. We were also out of groceries and clean underwear. We needed to resupply.

We decided to head to the Michocan Coast and, by late afternoon, we had nearly reached the campground that I had read about that morning. Unfortunately, I am not batting a thousand on choosing campgrounds these days…there may have been a campground there once ten years ago but, if so, it is long gone – with the entrance road completely overgrown with weeds. Racing the sun once more, we got desperate and headed to the village of La Ticla. Although not a campground, our guidebook reported that the palapa restaurants sometimes allowed campers to park. As we pulled in, we first only saw a few ramshackle shelters and locked bathrooms but found another entrance that opened onto a lovely camping area complete with showers, toilets, a restaurant and a nice palapa for us. There was no laundry but the “manager” explained that a lady in town could wash our clothing.

The next morning, we asked Victor for directions to the laundress but he simply directed us to load our bags of laundry onto the back of his flatbed truck. As it had been some time since we’d done laundry, we handed over nearly all of our clothing and bedding – Dave even went so far to put on his swimsuit so all his underwear could get wa           shed. Victor explained that it would be ready the following day (as “Orita” had no dryer) so we went ahead with the plan. We spent the day exploring the small townsite and wandering on the beach but there was very little to do. Although the beach was gorgeous, the waves – though great for surfing – made the water unsafe for swimming. We hoped to move on the next day. The next day came and went…we got new promises but no laundry. We went to bed that night, confident that our clothes would be ready mañana (tomorrow) at ocho (eight). Our laundry did not appear. Victor’s new promise was for 10 o’clock. 10 o’clock came and went. It’s currently 4 in the afternoon and Dave and I think Victor is hiding from us. This is day three for Dave in his swimming trunks and he’s becoming increasingly agitated (not to mention smelly). Earlier today we were (only half jokingly) starting to toss around the theory that we may get our laundry sooner if we start embracing nudism.

All the same, we are being entertained by a menagerie of creatures that have come by to visit. Chester is especially enthralled by the hermit crabs under the palapa.

When bored, we can also marvel at the electrical and plumbing oddities.