Heading home: Puerta Vallarta to the US border

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  Magdalena de Kino, Mexico
Tuesday, November 6, 2007

If you find yourself with 5 hours to kill in Puerta Vallarta, have the internal fortitude to endure an ultra-aggressive sales-pitch, and enough flexibility that you can return to PV on just a few weeks notice, we recommend signing up for the time-share presentation at the Sheraton Bouganvilias Resort. We did on our way south (back in April) and it led to us having one of the nicest - and cheapest - sun "vacations" either of us could remember.

Given that we had spent most of 2007 not working and in hot, exotic locales, it may not make sense at first why we would enjoy a week at the Sheraton so much. But traveling generally (as opposed to vacationing), and living in a VW van in particular, can make for trying times; just about every facet of day-to-day living - from how we prepared our meals, to how we went the bathroom in the middle of the night, to how we stored our clothes - was a lot more challenging than it is in the condo back at home

01. Hotel Deck, Puerto Vallarta

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We knew from walking around the hotel on the way down that it was fairly high end, but as we hurried up the Pacific Coast we tried to keep our expectations in check to avoid being disappointed. It was, after all, a time-share presentation freebie. Or at least close to it, at $265/7 nights.

Thus, when we opened the door to a fully stocked kitchen - the kitchen was an extra deftly negotiated by Ades - a balcony overlooking the pool, and a view of the ocean - we were pretty excited. Throw in the A/C, a comfy bed, and a clean shower that had hot water and lots of pressure, and we felt like we had been given court-side tickets to Game 7 of a LA Lakers playoff series.

Given this luxury, it should come as no surprise that, other than a few brief outings to the nearby Commercial Mexicana grocery store and the internet lab, we didn't leave the hotel for the first 4 days. We were content to lounge by the pool, read the USA Today, take advantage of the fitness facilities and use the blender to prepare frozen boozy tropical drinks.

Towards the end of the week - after Ades recovered from the 24-hour flu and I had finished my phone interview with West Coast Environmental Law - we ventured into town, about a 15 minute walk away, to do some shopping (Ades never really tires of shopping for silver jewelry) and to take in El Dia de los Muertos (The Day of the Dead) festivities

02. Poolside, Sheraton Bouganvillias, PV

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El Dia de los Muertos is a national holiday in Mexico and as we had discovered over the course of our trip, the Mexicans have a different perspective on death than we do. As Mexican Nobel prize winner Octavio Paz states in his famous book The Labyrinth of Solitude: "The Mexican is familiar with death, jokes about it, caresses it, sleeps with it, celebrates it. It is one of his favorite toys and his most steadfast love." (Note: This fatalistic attitude was most evident to us when large semi-trucks would pass us on blind s-curves).

The day itself, which is thought by some to have started with the Aztecs, is a time to remember, celebrate and communicate with loved ones who have died. It is a happy occasion and outside the gates of the cemetery we visited, there was a carnival atmosphere with the the roads blocked off and vendors gathered to sell their Day of Dead wares - including tiny skulls made of sugar. Inside the gates, the cemetery was a beehive of activity, as family members streamed in and covered their loved ones' tombstones with flowers, photos, candles, incense, toys, favourite food and drinks. Families were picnicking and listening to music, the kids laughing and playing tag.

Our week of blissful, easy hotel living ended far too quickly, though, and on November 3 we re-packed the van and started north once again.

We spent the first night in San Blas and the next in Mazatlan, retracing the route we had taken south several months earlier. After seeing most of Mexico, it's clear to us that Mazatlan - full of tacky souvenir stores, boozing college students and 2nd tier hotels - occupies the lowest rung on the Mexican resort town ladder

03. Taco Stand, PV

. However, it is without a doubt the best resort town to camp in given the quality, number and location of the campsites. Add in the perfect climate - hot during the day, but not too hot, cool enough at night to sleep well - and it made it pretty hard to leave.

The 796-kilometre, one-day push from Mazatlan up Highway 15 to San Carlos (on the Sea of Cortez) tested our endurance, not to mention the van's engine. But, given that I started my new job on November 23, and that we still had a lot of ground to cover before then, we were left with little choice but to bite off these big travel days.

As we motored north it became clear that the winter exodus of retirees from Canada and the US had begun: I stopped counting after 20 how many RVs passed us going south - usually traveling in packs of twos and threes, many with BC license plates. It was all somehow comforting to us, as we didn't feel alone on the road anymore as we had for so much of the trip. The RV traffic also provided a useful diversion while driving, as the scenery was less attractive than on the way down, the fields beside the highway now harvested and laying brown and bare.

(Mexico's northern frontier is the Mexico that is often depicted in movies (like Babel) and novels: Low-lying desert hills dotted with scrub grass and cactus

04. Day of the Dead I

. Dry and dusty towns full of Tex-Mex restaurants (in most of Mexico, tacos don't come topped with cheese and sour cream). Streets full of beat-up 1970s American sedans stuffed full of Mexican families. Gringos everywhere - be it bikers, hippies, or college kids - looking to "drop out" for a while. In hindsight, I think this was the Mexico I had envisioned in my mind before the trip, the Mexico I had in fact romanticized. While it too is "authentic" Mexico, it turns out it is only one sliver of the country).

We spent our final night in Mexico, November 6, camped in the parking lot of Motel Kino in the non-descript town of Magdalena de Kino, shivering despite wearing our long-johns and long-sleeved shirts. Given that we had almost froze to death at night during our first few weeks on the Baja, we felt like our 10-month odyssey had come full circle.

See more about our roadtrip, and others' roadtrips, at www.roadtrippin.com

Highlights

-Licuado Stand, Mazatlan: Just like returning to the cake lady in Barra de Navidad had been a mission, so was getting our hands on the oversized-licuados (fruit shakes) at the stand across from our old campsite - La Posta RV Park - on Avenue Rafael Buelna

05. Day of the Dead II

. (La Posta, which closed down the week after we left, was now about 1/3 of the way to being a mega grocery store). We made the licuado stand our first stop on arriving back in Mazatlan and our last stop before leaving.

-La Pilarica rest-stop, Los Mochis: La Pilarica was the only North American style rest-stop we saw in all of Mexico and Central America. With picnic tables, clean washrooms, a food court and a gas station, it could compete with rest stop complexes that we have seen in the Eastern US. In a pinch, it might even be an okay place to camp for the night.

-Inspection stops, Sinaloa/Sonora state border: Just before the Sinaloa/Sonora state line (Sonora borders Arizona; Sinaloa is the state immediately below Sonora), we came upon a row of semis that were parked on the highway and blocking all traffic. Without exaggerating, it probably stretched for 2 kilometers. We quickly decided that if we didn't follow the car in front of us that had cut across the median and was driving the wrong-way down one of the oncoming lanes of traffic, we would be stuck in the line-up for days.

The cause of the hold-up turned out to be a large military checkpoint where it looked like every truck was required to have its trailer searched (presumably for drugs and/or illegal immigrants)

06. Day of the Dead III

. This kind of inspection must be an enormous inefficiency for business, as the transportation of goods literally comes to a stand still.

Later that afternoon, closer to Guaymas, we went through a second similarly congested checkpoint, and one that also marked the spot where the road trip almost came to a premature end. In short, it wasn't as easy to bypass this line of semis at the one; this one involved reversing down the sandy side of a steep gully that served as the highway shoulder. After watching a successful attempt by a pick-up and a minivan, we got up the confidence to reverse our top-heavy van sideways down the shaky slope. It was our only shot at reaching our campsite by dark. Half way down the van wavered and we thought we were going to tip. but luckily gravity was on our side and we got down unscathed. After 4x4ing through the 'Dukes of Hazard' gully crash course for a kilometer or so, we arrived at the military checkpoint and we were waved on.

Lowlights

-Starbucks, Puerta Vallarta: In the five month interval between our two stops, PV acquired its first Starbucks, just off the malecon in Peninsula Plaza. PV has now started down the mono-culture coffee course that we know all too well about in Vancouver.

-Toll Roads: Given the distance between Mazatlan and San Carlos, we opted to take the faster toll roads the entire way. In total, we passed through 9 (!) toll booths and paid out a whopping $55 in tolls.