Odds and ends

 -- A camouflage painted VW van with half a dozen surf boards strapped to the top just pulled into our cabanas. I think the expression “Surf the Revolution” is incredibly cool.

-- The automated announcement service at the Matehuala bus station sounded shockingly like a Spanish-speaking version of the insane computer in Portal. I kept imagining what it must have been saying: “The 11:45 bus to San Luis Potosi is now departing from gate 8. There will be cake aboard the bus. And we will not try to murder you at all. Instead we’ll simply try to drive you insane by making you watch a horrible D&D movie, dubbed into Spanish. For three hours.”

-- Horchata Tang -> surprisingly satisfying substitute for the real thing. Allen, take note in case you see it in some specialty section. Just don’t make it full strength.

-- Btw, I’ll mention again: getting a 20 liter water jug saves you a bunch of money over buying a bunch of pre-cooled 1.5 liter bottles. Petra says I’ve mentioned this before, but it’s worth repeating. We can get a 20 liter jug for between 13 and 25 pesos plus bottle deposit, whereas a 1.5 liter water bottle costs usually 11 pesos each. If you buy a packet of Tang in one of about 20 flavors (about 4 pesos average per pack) you can easily flavor 6-8 liters. Now for the effort of carrying around a 45lb (20 kilo) jug a bit you can save lots of money over buying small bottles of water or soda. If you’re traveling mid- to long-term, take heed.

-- In Poza Rica, the oil-field city we couchsurfed in for a week, there was a café that served café petrolero – oilman’s coffee. And it was seriously dark, although Petra (the resident coffee expert) declared it not very strong. But the place had free refills and was open 24 hours. Still would blow the socks off, say, your average cup of coffee in Ohio.

-- In Puerto Escondido, we have iguanas. About six to ten of them would sun themselves in the morning on the edge of a wall under the kitchen, and one or two could usually be found roaming around during the afternoon. Also, multiple smaller lizards to be found in the toilet bowls. Friends from law school might remember why I find that a highly stressful situation.

-- A few weeks after we arrived in Mexico, I was interested to see that Mexico City (which is also what we in the US would call a state) legalized gay marriage. I don’t understand all the ins-and-outs of Mexican politics, but my first blush reaction is that when a country as traditionally Catholic starts to legalize gay marriage, even if only in parts of the country, that is a real sign of the times.

-- One of the other long-term residents of our cabanas asked to use our computer to check her internet, then offered us some bracelets in thanks (she and her boyfriend make jewelry to sell on the beaches). I asked Petra to pick out mine, and she chose one of knotted waxed thread in purple, black and ochre. Not my first choice, but I kind of liked it. Then I noticed it matched the floppy hat I got in Bangkok, a hat that Petra also picked out for me. I take it my fashion consultant has a preferred color-scheme in mind for me.

Final Thoughts on Matehuala

The Rubber Band Technique
Right now I am craving for a hot fresh soy milk, from a market in Thailand – delicious, especially if you ask for less sugar. Today is the first time we bought a fluid in a plastic bag here, but they seem to use a different rubber band technique to keep the bag closed than in Thailand (both ways seal the bag, nothing escapes). It was freshly pressed orange juice, lots of vitamins but a bit sour. I tried several times to learn the Thai rubber band technique – it is so handy; if I only could remember…

Smells
Walking: All of a sudden there is an overwhelming flowery sweet smell in the air, it must come from behind that wall – maybe a great courtyard? A lot of times we follow the smells: good food, gardens or forests, the ocean (I loved the days where I could smell the sea in London; sea breezes are just special) - of course we try to avoid the stinkies.

How To Start The Day
The guy cleaning the rooms has chosen the breakfast music of the day: classical – sounds familiar? When I started helping out at the Mut Mee Guesthouse in Nongkhai, Thailand, there was an unwritten rule: start the day with some culture, classical music waving through the garden while the sun still tries to warm up the air, rising it to a the scorching heat (with all the concrete in town to help it along). It was amazing how I could feel the air getting cooler every single step approaching the garden from the Soi leading to the Mekong River. What a difference a few plants can make.

Pretty Frames Are The Decoration Of The Day

In our room in Matehuala I liked particularly “the mirror that has seen better times before” without the glass it is just a pretty frame. I could still make out that it must have been a mirror – just about. And the room actually had a window to the little courtyard and a door that you could just leave open as a big window. I could just not appreciate enough the fact that natural light was getting into our room. When I looked out the window I saw the top of the tree that is dominating the courtyard - like the hotel has been built around the tree. I always liked a pretty view and green is one of my favorites. I could hear the wind in the leaves, birds and a distant chatter of people.
Some of the roads there curve just to avoid taking down a tree in the middle of the city and a little cement-fence is built around it to protect it getting hit by cars.

Mata to Mate

We crossed into Matamoros and stayed for about a week. 250 pesos the first night, 190 at a different hotel right on the small pedestrian walk, both with tv and bath. I found it surprisingly difficult to communicate the first few days, but quickly got down the difference between taco, gordita, tortas, and churros. Also found a fruit stand with bananas for 10 pesos a kilo, and we’ve been eating a lot of them sense: cheap, nutritious, and strong enough to travel for a day.

We needed to rest up after a bit of an ordeal at the border. We took a bus from Houston that was supposed to take us into Matamoros. The bus did not stop at the US side of the border, though; it just rolled on through to Mexican customs, so apparently you usually don’t need to get stamped out of the US. But Petra did need an actual stamp since she was from Germany and was only allowed to stay in the US for 90 days. So the computer needed to record her as leaving (as we were, on her 90th day exactly) or else it would be a hassle for her to ever return. So we were a bit confused when we rolled straight into Mexican customs. We had to leap out of the bus, grab our bags out on the border bridge, and ultimately hike the mile back to the US border just so Petra could hand her passport to the completely disinterested border guard. Then hike the mile back to the Mexican border, still with our backpacks; crossing the Rio Grande several times this way - was smaller than expected. (We’re really not set up for long distanced travel. We try to travel as light as we can, but after taking all the things we really need and/or want, we’re still weighed down enough that long distances are no fun.)

Then the Mexican border guard was especially unhelpful, and at first was only going to give us a 30 transit visa. Petra argued with him for at least an hour, until we finally got a 180 day tourist visa. We have to pay a tourist fee when we leave (about 220 pesos), and supposedly when we cross into Guatemala there may also be a 550 or so peso fee for making a transit through Mexico. I don’t think this is right, though (or that we can talk our way around it), and so after a lot of weighing the pros and cons were really happy we took the 180 visa. Anyhow, needless hassle at the border and an expensive taxi ride into town that should rather have already been on the bus.

Matamoros was nice and quiet enough, but we expected it would be cheaper further into Mexico. So we headed down to Ciudad Victoria…and were disappointed. The cheapest room we could find was at the Hotel de Escandon for 270 pesos -- a big disappointment. But the room was huge! Tv, bath, and three beds that would sleep five people. We kept asking for something smaller, but they wouldn’t show us anything else.

We did ultimately find a cheaper room at the Hotel Mexico around the corner. Small and not nice, no tv and an unpleasant smelling bath for 100 pesos a night, and we might have been able to bargain her down if we stayed a couple of days. But instead we poured over our map looking at possible travel routes, and decided to leave.

Matehuala looks like a short distance from Victoria on the map, but the road heads north and then dips back, which means changing buses. So we went up to Linares and then transferred for Matehuala, making for a longer travel day than we had thought. It was already dark when we arrived, and for the first time we got hassled by what I figure were touts at the bus station. We had a cheap hotel we had written down and asked to go there, and the taxi driver said no, no – it was a bad neighborhood of town known for prostitutes and drug violence. He wanted to take us to the Casa Blanca instead, which he assured us would be nice but for about as much as we were paying in Victoria. For a moment we were nearly swayed, but eventually and with much difficulty convinced him we wanted to go to our place instead – a hotel from a guidebook we saw online, and so which should not generally be too dangerous.

Our instincts were right – Casa de Huespedes “El Jacalito” was a lovely place with a vibrant orange courtyard shaded by two large trees. Not exactly a Mut Mee garden, but it was nice enough to sit in and the people who ran it were friendly. Bargained for a few nights stay and got a double (no tv, shared bathroom) for 90 pesos a night. So we stayed about a week. Matehuala is not a terribly exciting city, but we found some hippie kids twirling batons and poi for tips, there were a couple of cheap taco places, and a surprisingly good pizza place we had to try out. Nice to save up a bit of money (relatively) and really get back into our traveling habits.

A Stroll With Obstacles (Matehuala, Mexico)

Narrow spaces! Let me tell you about narrow spaces: you got to pay attention or you turn the next corner in the street and run into the next lamp post or other weird obstacle - like in a cartoon.

And high borders between the sidewalk and the road: if you hit that with your car (even an SUV), it’s not just meaning a flat tire, the whole front gets crushed. Climbing that down and up, every time you cross the street: it’s a full workout ;). In the US people actually did ask us repeatedly how we keep in shape...

We usually walk everywhere, unless we go for a special target or - for whatever reason - get too tired or lost; especially if we get distracted and just follow the music, but usually we are at least pretty good at retracing our steps.