10/6/11 Day 5, San Fernando Mexico to just outside Poza Rica, Mexico, 383miles.

The open road

Five days into our trip and there’s at least one thing I have learned for sure: if we stay up late, there is no way we’re leaving early! Last night it was after midnight by the time I got the blog stuff posted and went to bed. My alarm went off at 6am and I just couldn’t do it. After snoozing a few times I got up at 7:30pm. Jonathan woke up soon thereafter then I pestered Kris until he got out of bed too. Aaron didn’t wake up until 20 minutes before we hit the road. I did get some extra pictures of outside our hotel room, but I’d forgotten my camera card in the laptop. The pictures are saved on the camera’s internal memory, but I don’t have a cord to copy the files over. Guess that will have to wait until we get home. We were on the road by 9am and it was already hot and humid.  Considering it was so difficult to find an ATM yesterday we decided to go back to the same one and get some more money for today. On our way out of town we stopped at OXXO, Mexico’s version of an Exxon gas station, and bought a bag of ice for our ice chest. It cost 18 pesos or about $1.33 US dollars.

These tray work well for trains too!

As we headed south on HWY 180 we came across a truck of men who were stopping and washing the signs along the highway, literally washing them with a long handled brush! I guess it is pretty important to be able to read the signs. Not too long after a small road runner dared to cross the road in the path of our Suburban… let’s just say that unlike Wiley Coyote, Kris was successful at destroying the roadrunner (though he did not mean to) .

We passed the tropic of cancer and I never would have known otherwise were it not for a simple sign. Every bridge was labeled with its own name, Puente de ______ (bridge of…), even if the bridge was only 10 feet long.

This is why we can always hear Spanish radio in the states- a huge antenna!

Lunch!

Aaron loved the chips!

We were flagged down by a policia today, he wanted us to know that we were going to have to pull over and wait because there was a big truck coming through. So we decided to stop and have lunch at a little Carnitas stand. It was very clean and was run by a husband and wife. Through our broken Spanish we ordered lunch, there was only one thing on the menu, Carnitas, which is basically pulled pork. We did have to choose the size, a ½ kilo or a full kilo. We decided on the ½ kilo and the husband cooked the meat while the wife cooked some homemade tortillas and chips! We sat at a cement table in plastic chairs in the shade and chatted a little with them. They asked us where we were from, turns out  they have a son in Tennessee; we shared that we had family in TN too (my Aunt and Uncle live in Nashville).. The food was FANTASTIC!!! And there was plenty of it too. All 4 of us ate lunch for 80 pesos or about $5.93, we went ahead and gave them 100 pesos and told them to keep the change, so lunch cost us $7.41. 

part one of big pipe

Oh, while we were eating lunch the big trucks came through. They were the biggest semi trucks we’d ever seen, one on each end, pushing this humongous iron pipe thing. Kris said it was a tank/reservoir of some kind. There were 4 semi trucks in all pulling two 100ft sections of pipe! The boys thought it was really cool.

part 2 of big pipe

We filled up the Suburban with gas for the first time in Mexico. Most gas stations are the Pemex brand. Gas was 9.48 pesos per liter. We ended up paying 890 pesos or around 63 dollars to fill up the remaining half our our tank, so it cost us about $2/gallon- crazy cheap gas!

Tampico

Before long we were in the city if Tampico, it was the biggest city we’d been in since crossing the border. We saw some familiar places: TGI Fridays, IHOP, Pizza Hut, Little Caesar Pizza, and Walmart. It was busy and very confusing. We got turned around and ended up spending the better part of an hour trying to find our way back to the main highway. Finally we saw a huge bridge and made our way to it, it was the right road! Thank you Lord! The bridge had a toll so we paid 29 pesos or $2.15 to get on, but we were so happy to be on our way out of Tampico! 

sign that topes are ahead

Semis passing, a common sight here.

We much prefer driving through the countryside, which was lush and green. Later on we went on another toll road and had to pay 10 pesos or $0.75 to get on. We were headed toward Poza Rica, the roads were a bit rougher… many potholes and many small towns along the way with “topes” or speed bumps so that you had to slow down. These “topes” can be super small or really large (and anywhere in between). You don’t always know they’re coming so it helped us to watch the car in front of us, if they slowed down a lot or caught air, we knew to slow down. We also saw some crazy driving on the highway- semi trucks passing semi trucks, taking up both lanes as cars are coming; cars passing on blind curves, etc… it definitely made my blood pressure jump.

green countryside

lots of construction today

Unfortunately our gps maps of Mexico are from 2005 so they weren’t a huge help today. We kept following the signs for Poza Rica but it wasn’t the route the gps wanted us to take (in fact some of the gps roads didn’t even exist anymore). So we weren’t sure how much farther we’d have to go until we got into Poza Rica. We went through a two different policia checkpoints today. At the first one we were waved through easily. At the second one we were asked to pull over and stop. We were approached by a policia who spoke only Spanish and he talked really fast. The words that jumped out at me were economy, money, and food. So for at least 15 minutes we tried to understand what he wanted. We offered him food out of our ice chest, he didn’t want it… we asked if he was giving us advice on what to expect in Poza Rica (that wasn’t it either.) Finally we determined that he wanted us to give him money so he could go buy himself some food. In essence it was a bribe. Kris told him that we didn’t have much money and offered him 2 pesos. The guy backed off and said maybe later. I breathed a huge sigh of relief as we drove away. No harm done. Kris said he’d heard and read about these things happening and about 2 minutes into the conversation he knew what the guy was after and that we just have to stay calm and polite and keep repeating that we don’t have any money and they should get tired of repeating themselves and let us pass. Honestly it was a bit unnerving, but we thanked God for keeping us safe. 

The Hotel

Playing in the hotel room

Sadly the sun was slipping lower in the sky and we didn’t want to be driving after dark (major no-no) and we still didn’t really know how much longer it would take us to get into Poza Rica. We came upon a really nice looking hotel and Kris suggested we see how much it cost and think about staying there instead of getting into the big city and having to deal with trying to find a hotel in the mess there. We ended up staying at what I can only call “The Hotel” b/c it’s the only name I can find anywhere on the building. Our room with 2 beds and a huge bathroom cost us 450 pesos or $33.33!! It was a blessing to stop when we did because the boys actually got to hang out and play with their toys for a while before taking a shower and getting into bed. I think they were asleep by 9pm, which is the earliest they’ve  been asleep on this whole trip. 

Aaron ready for bed

J tucked in

The first night in Phoenix we decided to put the boys in the same bed. That was a disaster- Jonathan is constantly moving while he sleeps and Aaron sleeps as still as a boulder (the kind that have been buried in the dirt since the Flood). So they weren’t setting down at all. We moved J and made him a bed on the floor. They both fell right asleep. The next day we picked up an air mattress at Walmart for J to use. So Aaron sleeps in the other queen bed with extra pillows acting as a bumper (in case the Rock should move, like he did the last night when he rolled out of the bed onto Jonathan- J slept through the whole thing and Aaron was fine). The boys also have a special bedtime story. My mom bought one of those books from Hallmark and she recorded her voice reading the story. They didn’t know about it and when I got it out the other night for the first time, they were so surprised! “That’s Gramma!!” they said. We had to listen to the book at least 2 times that night and each night afterward. Thanks Mom for such a thoughtful gift! The boys love it! The biggest downside to our hotel was that it didn’t have internet. So this will post one day late and I’m sure my family might be freaking out tonight not knowing where we ended up. Thankfully last night we were able to video chat via skype with my parents. The boys even got to say hello. It was great to see them and talk to them and show them that we are doing well. 

Just before crossing the border we picked up a Spanish/English dictionary and it’s been very helpful. Mostly we find words on signs that we don’t know and I look them up. Kris has been doing all the driving since we got into Mexico, it’s just too crazy for me. Today was a long day for sure. When we mapped out the route last night via google, it should have taken us 7 hrs to get to Poza Rica. We were on the road for 9 ½ hrs when we stopped at our hotel. Sadly we don’t have internet so we won’t get to map out anything tonight but we’re aiming to get on the road early and find somewhere in Poza Rica to get online and a quick “we’re still alive” email to family and check the maps too.

Some other random info, it cost us $22 US each to get a 30 day travel visa for Mexico, even though we’ll only be in the country for about 6 days. And we’ll probably have to buy it again when we leave Belize to come home. We also had to pay $48US to get our car into Mexico and had to put a $200US deposit down to ensure that we bring the car back out with us (they don’t want us selling the car in Mexico so they miss out on their share of the taxes I guess). Once we cross into Belize, the deposit should credit back and then we’ll have to do it all again on our way home.

Aside from the one policia, everyone here has been really nice. They are so patient as we canvas our limited Spanish vocabulary to try and piece together what we need to say. Kris met a guy in a gas station today who went to school in Missouri for a while and he spoke English very well (with a mild Spanish accent). I guess the employees in the store were saying that this guy must be an American because he was so tall, so the guy pointed to Kris and said “What about him, he’s tall.” So then they turned to Kris and asked him if he was an American. Kris said “How can you tell?” (in Spanish), he was certainly the whitest guy in the store- lol…

Mexican gas station

Walmart in Tampico

Good night for now. Hope everything is going well in CA!

Over a bridge

Interesting statue in Alamo

random cow grazing along the highway