Can We Get Back to Basics?

A babbling brook flows lazily past us as we lounge in the humid August heat of rural Pennsylvania. 

The sycamore trees are incredibly tall and chunks of their bark are dropping all around making rustling sounds in the forest. The sprawling top limbs of the trees look all smooth and whitish, while the trunks remain gray and covered in bark. The first signs of autumn are showing as the occasional yellowed leaf flutters to the ground in the breeze.

We are spending another two weeks of fun and learning with my nephew. He's approaching 11 years old and would happily spend all day, every day in nature. He repeatedly requests to hang out at "a body of water". He brings his little net and hunts fish, frogs, crayfish and anything else that crawls or swims. (Like a carbon copy of myself when I was a wee kiddo.)

The last time I was here at this stream with Tanner, about 3 weeks ago, a woman appeared with her dog and she was wearing a black tank top with bold, white lettering that said "GO FOR IT". We said hello and told her we really liked her shirt. She said thanks, and said that she normally doesn't venture into the forest and to the stream alone, but today she decided to break out of her normal routine and go out adventuring solo with her pup. She said that shirt gave her the push to just do it. 

In our culture, most of us are taught to play it safe. Stick to what we know. Follow the formula that is already tried and true. Think inside the box. Don't venture outside what is comfortable and familiar. Fear the unknown. Blend in with the herd. Etc. Etc. 

Well, that's not how we have been living for the last 4 years (probably longer, really?) and we needed a reminder on that day to keep on keeping on being  ourselves. Her shirt was just perfect!

Interesting state motto. It was worth stopping for.

We had been feeling a bit frustrated about the lack of forward momentum in our realities and felt a bit confused about what our next step might be. 

We inquired about residency at the yoga ashram and never received a response. We both also applied for work there and no follow through came from that either. We found that all to be fairly bizarre and not to mention, quite unprofessional, so we finally decided that it was not our destination and it felt like an energy drain for us both to keep pushing. We aren't meant  to be a part of that organization right now and that is A-OK. When one door closes, we have to be awake enough to recognize the other doors when they open. 

I will speak for myself in saying that my trust and patience in the universe were really stretched to the supa-dupa max over the last month. I found myself wondering what the heck we were doing in this part of the world and where we could be headed, if not for there to continue studying yoga? New ideas and scenarios presented themselves, but each new trail of breadcrumbs kept leading us into a wall. Hmmmmm...

We have had a handful of mini-redirects from the adjustment bureau of the universe. One week, Tanner had a high fever and headache for several days, which was fairly limiting for him. Time for resting and resetting. In addition, our car has been acting funny on occasion, sending messages and warning lights that make no sense to us. Mechanics can't even seem to figure out that issue. At least she drives fine, inspite of that. 

My thoughtful younger sister gifted us birthday tickets to see Nahko and Medicine for the People on the waterfront in Boston a few weeks ago. That was quite an adventure. Apparently, marijuana is legal in Massachusetts now. I have never been in such a huge cloud of pot smoke in my life. MFTP were an opening act and there was also a reggae band from the Caribbean and they were encouraging the crowd to light up their weed, eh Mon. The music was great, as always, but the east coast crowd just didn't have the buzz and enthusiasm that the west coast crowd has for Nahko's messages. Hopefully soon their inspiring message spreads eastward. Optimism and unity are needed here (and everywhere) as far as I can tell. 

 We headed northwest to Vermont to visit our long-time pals in their new abode. We stayed for about 10 days. Tanner helped out with installing some new flooring and I mostly helped with cooking,  tidying and prepping some details for their upcoming wedding. 

Part of the intention of our mobile lifestyle has been about having the flexibility to support various family and friends in many locations and all stages of life. We are now approaching a point where we are just about ready to move on to a place where we can spend some time nurturing ourselves. What an idea! Constant travel and immersion into other people's worlds can take a toll on mind, diet, exercise and routines. Everyone needs a time out here and there to reset and rejuvenate.

Through our travels it has become more and more clear how our current societal model strives to train, direct and then trap each generation into striving for the "American / Canadian Dream".  (It's pretty much the same formula in both countries.) In general, it seems that most people that we know are less than happy and less than healthy. This is no accident. It's appears that it's all part of a master plan to create a society of cheap labor and mindless slavery to keep the wheels of growth and progress turning smoothly. Because after all, that's what really matters, right? Or does it? Someone is laughing behind the scenes of the grandest puppet show. Buy stuff, borrow money, work a lot, pay a lot, consume more, climb the success ladder, repeat. 

Who's idea was this anyway?! Why aren't we finding an alternative to the collective madness? Does anyone else feel like this is simply crazy?

Stress is so prevalent everywhere that it seems as though it's draping thickly over this part of the planet like a blanket of stupefying smog. Many folks are hardly keeping it together and barely making ends meet. When you aren't in it, it's very apparent. It's always easier to see from the outside looking in. You must step off of the wheel, even briefly, to see what I am seeing. It's not pretty.

Perhaps, I'm reflecting, just maybe, it's time to stop and question a few things? Such as: Why are we all here on earth in this amazing time of unmatched technology (and constant information influx) and how can we use it to our advantage? What do we actually need to live fulfilling and joyful lives? How can we begin to make that a reality? 

Best answer: We've gotta just get back to basics. It's time for a reality reset. It's the only thing that makes any sense right now. 

There seems to be too much fogginess, fluff and distraction for most of us to think and operate with any amount of consistent clarity. It's like a zombie nation everywhere we look. Smart phones and television. Alarmist news headlines and scare tactics. I feel like we are the weird ones most of the time because we are among the minority who are actually aware of the traps that most of our society has accepted. I feel so aware that it can be extremely lonely, frustrating and often deeply disturbing to try to communicate or make any progress with the rest of our brothers and sisters. 

Let's help each other to bust out of this insane pattern. It just doesn't have to be this way. It's not necessarily simple to make the changes, but with persistence, and baby steps, life can be better. We can choose to put time and effort into a joyful existence or we can put the same time and effort into maintaining a chaotic and exhausting existence. We each have choices.

The two of us have done some deep, deeeeep digging and we have concluded that it's time for us to share some of what we know in a retreat setting- away from familiar distractions and societal standards. We have thrown the idea around in the background for a couple of years and we are finally ready to GO FOR IT...

***Early 2018 in Mexico. Stay tuned for more details this fall. Mexico is calling. Can you hear it? It's sounds like coconuts and crashing waves. Mmmmmm.

Welcome to Loveland

Lucy the Coon Hound.

The sun finally just broke through the clouds after a chilly morning in the wild, green foothills near Salt Lake City, Utah. We were invited by some new friends to join them and all of their dogs at their rustic getaway cabin for the weekend. It's finally allowed me to take some time to catch up on my writing. Another beautiful place on our earth! More beautiful people to connect with!

Our final days in Mexico were really special. The great people we encountered made it difficult to cross the border and trek back into the "real world" of the USA. The kindness and generosity of the Mexican culture is something we can all take a lesson from. They give and give almost to a fault. We felt like we were treated as family everywhere we went.  On our last night south of the border, in Los Mochis, we Couchsurfed with a wonderful man with whom we shared our final Mexican sunset and a bounty of beautiful conversation. We were sad to part ways, as this has been a common theme for us for many years in many places. It's hard to sever the ties that we create with each special spirit that we cross paths with...though those invisible ties seem to remain forever intertwined within our soul memories.

We crossed into the USA in Nogales, Arizona. We hoped that our huge cacao stash wouldn't cause any issues as we passed on through. We were thoroughly searched and had to surrender our mangos and a half-rotten cacao pod. The guards questioned our boxes of cacao. They informed us that it's necessary to have all food items labeled with contents and point of origin. They then proceeded to shout "CA-CAO! CACAO!" As they made finger guns and pretended to shoot each other. Hilarious. And so very American. We always keep a decorated glass Mason jar with us, for the last couple of years at least. Of course, we brought it on this trip. It contains our positive intentions, affirmations and loving requests to the universe. It really works. As a border officer dug through the trunk of the car, he asked what the jar was. We simply said "it's our good vibes jar." He laughed and said "Cool. That makes sense." I said "I put some good vibes into that jar that would help us get through this border crossing smoothly. Let's see if it works...." Just then, his partner came back from consulting with her supervisor and gave us a packet of papers. She smiled and said we were just getting a warning. Next time, we should follow the rules.

We headed for Tucson, Arizona arriving at nightfall and found a quaint and very affordable motel room. The man behind the desk was not so friendly. Somehow it came up that we just crossed back into the USA after 5 months in Mexico and Central America. I was feeling like I just stepped out of a spaceship onto another planet being back in America. I said "I am glad we found this sweet motel. I feel..." And he interjected with "a lot safer?"  I paused and looked at him with a bewildered stare. I shook my head no. I felt like a fish out of water. On a unicycle.

So this is culture shock.

For the record: Mexico and Guatemala are both beautiful, welcoming countries full of regular people just like you and I. For many decades, North American media has portrayed these places, and much of our planet, as dangerous, violent and "out to get you".  It's simply not true! There was never, ever a single moment in the last 5 months that we felt we were in a hint of danger. The scariest thing is the USA border crossings! The worst thing that happened during our trip was that some of our favorite bumper stickers got peeled off of our car in Guatemala. (So we are replacing them slowly.) 

A bumper sticker from our 2013 USA trip 

We got used to all of the Mexican police and military check stops after passing dozens of them. We often got waved through with a smile. When we did get stopped, we felt like they just wanted to chat for fun. It was fun. We realized quickly that these people are just like us. Only it's their job to look intimidating and ask a lot of questions. It is definitely true that there is some corruption, crime and poverty in every place on the globe. The USA and Canada are no different. The biggest difference that I noticed in the Mexican and Guatemalan people is that they have an inner determination and self-sufficient attitude that many (certainly not all) Americans and Canadians just don't have. They aren't waiting around to be taken care of. Especially in the state of Chiapas, Mexico. I whole-heartedly support the stance that the indigenous (and other) people of that place continue to take. Independence. Freedom. Equality. Respect. Peace. Love. That's all any of us desire. Let's make it happen. Our future can be in our own hands. Grab it by the reins!

Truth Warriors are Us

I'm finally taking a sweaty moment here to start this new blog post while we are pulled over in the baking mid-day sun at a state border stop between Nayarit and Sinaloa. The guards informed us that we can't take any fruits into this state. We have been existing on a 80% fresh fruits diet for quite a few months, so to us this was very unwelcome news. So when they tried to open up our car and take it all to the trash can, we sat here instead, for at least a half hour eating mangos and bananas. We also splurged and purchased our first jumbo jackfruit this morning. I didn't even get to take a photo of it. We dug out a knife and cut it open just to try a taste before handing it over to the fruit police. They explained that there are too many pests and fungus that can be spread to all of the fruits in Sinaloa. Fair enough. I think that most people conform and hand over everything and just drive away. Not these two vegan fruit fiends! In the last week alone we have tried three new fruits: Starfruit, jackfruit, and guanabana (which I have seen all of in Asian markets in Canada but never tried). Not to mention fresh cacao fruit and seeds. Yum. The sheer acreage of plantations and the heaps of fruit on the Pacific coast has been completely mind blowing.

Thousands of forests of coconut palms. Miles of mango trees. Fields of piñas, papayas and lime trees. They are trying to feed a very hungry planet here!

So now that I wrote that all down, let me back up and recap some really beautiful and intense experiences. Some of the more intense days of this entire 5 month road trip, actually. 

Our next stop on the South Pacific coast of Mexico was Puerto Escondido. We had some cacao ceremonies booked at a healing and wellness retreat center there. We were also asked by the owner to see how his new team of volunteers was doing running the place. The long and short of it was that the team was having a tough start. This place requires a lot of time and dedication. It also requires, like everything that we do everyday, clear communication with others. 

There was a second round of intense waves slamming the whole pacific shoreline those first few days that we arrived in Puerto. It felt a bit reflective of the energy in the wellness center. People getting tossed to and fro in the waves of miscommunication.

We recognized that possibly a cacao ceremony for the team and the three guests might be a useful tool to create more openness and unity. So the eight of us convened on the beautiful rooftop palapa one afternoon and for several hours we created a sacred space of connection and communication. It was like magic. People arrived all flustered and exhausted. They left uplifted and full of gratitude. Mid-ceremony, a funny little seed blew onto the floor in front of me. It was like a disc of clear rice paper with a small heart-shaped seed in the center. It was a tiny confirmation for me from the universe that these cacao ceremonies are planting seeds of love across the planet. We are all planting seeds each moment. With every interaction. More love seeds, please. 

We really enjoyed the team at the healing center. They were from Mexico and Canada. Such awesome young people full of passion and hope. We enjoyed sunrise meditations and early morning yoga each day that week. We shared buckets of mangos from the street outside the house. We shared vegan recipes and then ate more mangos. At the Saturday market we were able to purchase our first fresh whole cacao pods! So pretty, and tasty too.

I really appreciated the conscious manner that team meetings were held at this wellness center. One person spoke at a time without interruptions. We all encouraged each other to speak the truth and to express our truest feelings. It was very tough for some of the group to share openly and to receive what others had to say. There was some major intensity but also major growth for all involved. Including us. So after a week of these morning meetings, we were dubbed the Truth Warriors by the staff. I accept that title, as one of many, and plan to continue assisting others to bring out the truth for the betterment of all of humanity. 

After a week in Puerto, we drove to Acapulco. It was a pretty neat place with lots of VW beetles and a huge mercado in the early morning as we departed after our quick one night stay. They had so many flowers at this particular mercado. Beautiful. 

We then headed to Zihuatenajo. It's a beautiful city. We googled a vegan cafe where we planned to stop and rest while we got an oil change for our Truth Mobile. It was not a cafe at all but an amazing woman in her lovely home who was a raw foods warrior. Patti invited us in and made us raw vegan pizzas made with local and organic fruits and veggies. So amazing. We got that oil change and so much more. We were invited to stay at Patti's home after we saw the sprouted cacao beans on her counter. The cacao chat began and the rest was history. She took us to see our very first cacao tree just down the block from her casa.  We held a cacao ceremony at her home and shared many special moments there. We departed early the second morning and Patti was up making us vegan raw burritos to go for our road lunch. Wow were they amazing!!! I thought mine were amazing but hers were out of this world. It continues to amaze me at how dazzling we all become when we are living our true calling! When life calls you, answer! Don't take a message or screen your calls. Don't say you'll call back when it's more convenient. Just take the call and enjoy it!

We were stopped at checkpoints several times in Michoacan.  This is the state with some of the highest level of unrest because of drug cartels. We decided to trek through despite all of the negativity that we found online. We have heard so many negative opinions of Mexico and Central America since we began announcing that we were taking this journey last fall. We have not encountered a single situation that I would call dangerous or scary for over 5 months. Michoacan was heavily militarized and there were many checkpoints where we had to get out of the car for inspection and questioning. Which usually resulted in laughter.

The best part of these stops was that the soldiers would dig through our car asking what things were and we got to give them some free healthy living lessons! It was awesome. This state was also one of the most wild, uninhabited and beautiful that we have seen. High cliffs overlooking a blue wild ocean. Thick lush jungles covering winding roads for hours shaded us from the sun. We saw dozens of giant white butterflies flapping huge floppy, white wings and giving us the feeling that they were our tiny guardian angels. Two more days to go in magical Mexico. Magical.

"The destiny of the world is in your hands."

Home is Where the Heart Is

We have made so many wonderful connections in Mexico in our first two months. The time has flown by and it already feels like one of our many homes. Especially the lovely hostel. We knew we wouldn't stay forever and as the universe began to send us subtle (and then some not-so-subtle) signs, we knew we would be departing soon. Where, we didn't yet know. However, the yoga instructor training begins on March 21, so we have that much figured out. A deadline to meet...for a change.

One man that we enjoyed getting to know at the hostel asked how things seem to flow so smoothly for us. I said that we simply do what feels right and when something feels difficult or unpleasant or forced, we step back to reevaluate and change direction. It's a fairly simple system. Intuition guides us when we listen.

While at the hostel, we enjoyed reading Discovering Your Soul Signature: a 33-day path to purpose, passion and joy by Panache Desai. It's a brilliantly written spiritual instruction manual to guide us through our thoughts and beliefs about ourselves and to peel away the layers of old dense energy to become our true selves. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to heal old patterns and beliefs and to move upward and onward in their spiritual journey. We have just started to read it a second time to dig a bit deeper.

We ended up hosting four Saturday night Cacao Ceremonies for peace and healing. They were so wonderful and the connection and heart opening that comes through the cacao plant medicine was profound for many of us. This has lead us to feel inspired to go meet the cacao shaman who inspired our cacao teacher. He resides in the mountains of Guatemala in San Marcos la Laguna on Lake Atitlan. It is a remote, two day trek from Progreso. We should have about 10 days at the lake. Then we will make a two to three day trek back up through Chiapas and Oaxaca to the Om Shanti Comunidad in Mazunte, Oaxaca, Mexico. We set our intentions and made arrangements to journey onward.

We said our goodbyes to all of our new friends at each of the mercados where we sold our vegan energy balls. What an outstanding bunch of people. We said adios to the vendors that we got to know at the local mercados where we shopped for fruits and veggies. A local couple made me a beautiful ring with a stone that was given to me back in September on the day of my Canadian citizenship ceremony. What a lovely creation with lots of beautiful memories inside!

It was bittersweet to say goodbye to our new family and yet exciting to welcome new adventures. After almost six weeks at the beach in Progreso, Yucatan, we packed up our little blue car, with a new Canadian friend in tow, and headed south for Guatemala.  A dear friend has been there for a month, and awaited our arrival.  Tonight another sweet amiga will be meeting us here, arriving via bus, shuttle van and then boat.

We made it to the lake! It was the most amazing two days that I have ever spent in a car. I will write about those two days in my next post. I'm feeling like it will be very difficult to express that experience in words and photos. I will do my best. 

PS. This little neighborhood perrita is playfully tugging on my towel as I lay in the yard enjoying the sunshine, breeze and birdsong at San Marcos. Hasta luego amigos.

La Dulce Vida. The Sweet Life.

A few days at a beach hostel for post-dental work "recovery" has turned into a three-week stay...so far, with another month of work exchange planned. We have been adopted by a colorful crew of fabulous world travelers and have loved waking up each day to lots of sunshine and surprises. 

So far, on this trip, we have met folks from Canada, USA, Spain, Chile, Mexico, Holland, Denmark, UK, France, Germany, Poland, Italy, and probably other places I am forgetting. It's wonderful to hear different languages and see different customs and smell the aromas of mixed-culture cuisine in the hostel kitchen. (Coffee is universal.) We had the pleasure of being on the breakfast cook team for a few days this week. It was great to help put smiles on faces with a tasty breakfast and a hot cuppa java. 

The regular use of a kitchen at our fingertips has allowed us to start up a small raw snacks business to offset some traveling expenses and to share the deliciousness of raw vegan foods. We made two different kinds of snacks and shared samples with the hostel staff and guests. They have been a huge hit. So we then approached several local artisan mercados in the area and had our first market day last week. We have two more coming up this week! We have been learning more and more Spanish through our varied adventures. There are many people here eager to help us learn it. It's a lot of fun!

This mural is in the town we are staying in. The port here has been a major cacao trade route to Europe, known as the Chocolate Pier. This quote says that cacao is a food of the Gods.

In addition to raw snacks, we have been offering cacao ceremonies each Saturday evening for the last 3 weeks and have met many wonderful seekers through these gatherings. We have learned ad experienced that cacao is a powerful healer and teacher and helps us to open our hearts to knowing ourselves and to connect with others on a deep and honest level. We have also attended several  temescals, a traditional Mesoamerican sweat lodge ceremony with prayers, songs and meditations for deep cleansing and personal and global healing.

We have been helping the crew here to beautify, clean and promote the hostel as part of our work exchange. I have had a lot of fun with some small sign painting projects. 

I have also began leading small groups through classes of yoga and meditation twice each week in exchange for a small donation. We purchased the hostel a handful of yoga mats and they have been fully occupied almost every single class. Speaking of yoga, we have reserved our places in a one-month 200 hour yoga teaching certification program in Oaxaca beginning mid-March. Yippee! We are so excited to further expand our spiritual knowledge and to deepen our personal yogic practices. 

We feel so grateful for the magical people and experiences that are finding us every day. The challenges of communal living are abundant and are also wonderful opportunities to move into clear and heart-centered communication. 

Gracias por La Dulce Vida!

Mexican Adventure: Numero Uno

Dried chiles at the mercado. 

We have only been in Mexico for three days and I already have so much to write! What an amazing culture! We are "stranded" for a few days without our car in Puebla, a large city in central Mexico, about an hour and a half southeast of Mexico City. Let me tell you about how we got here...and why we are stranded.

On Christmas Eve, we slept at a charming old hotel in Laredo, Texas that was right on the river that divides Texas and Mexico. It was literally right next to the two border crossing bridges. There were loud fireworks all night long. A little preview of the loud and celebratory Mexican culture to come...

We awoke early and headed to the border bridge around 7:30 am. We had lots of paperwork and passports and photocopied documents. We approached the booths in our car and no one was manning them. It was vacant. We had a green light so we just drove through. "Is that it?" We said to each other.  We were in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico and it was desolate. On Christmas morning everything was closed up tight. We knew we needed visitor visas, but where to get them? We drove around for a while looking for signs that said anything about visas. We gave some change to a woman in a wheelchair who was missing a leg. We finally stopped back at another border crossing bridge and asked for help. In broken English a man pointed us in the right direction. 

We arrived in a huge parking lot that was jammed full of cars. We parked and walked inside a large building to find many hundreds of people in a giant, winding line waiting to get vehicle import permits (which we ordered online ahead of time, THANK GOODNESS). We had planned out our day and had a couchsurfing host, kind enough to host us on Christmas, awaiting our arrival that evening, 8 hours south. The lineup would have taken hours! I made some comment when the line moved a little and a man in front of us said something in English to us. We were pleasantly surprised because we were certainly the only gringos in the whole place. He said that a police officer was just there and had taken a group to the second border crossing office just to get visitor visas, which is what we needed. So we got in our car and found the tiny office just down the street. We had our visas in 20 minutes. Back on the road.

We had read that there was a second border check-stop about 25 km into Mexico on the toll road. So we had all of our paperwork in order and as we approached this second check stop plaza, the only other human at the whole place was a man selling bread at a table. There was just some tumbleweed blowing around. So we slowly drove through in amazement at how little border control there was. Was it just because it was Christmas? 

By the third time we stopped to use a washroom that morning, I realized that toilet paper is a valuable commodity in any public place. At the first visa office, where there were hundreds of people, I went to use the washroom and there was a communal roll of TP and it was empty. None of the stalls even had a paper holder. None of the toilets had seats either. Very different. So I learned quickly to keep a roll in our car. At many of the gas stations and rest stops, there are locals selling squares of paper for a few pesos.

The quality of the toll highways in Mexico is surprisingly better than most highways in the USA and Canada... Except for a few things: Sudden intermittent giant potholes. Herds of goats. Overly-brave pedestrians. Stray dogs. Horses and donkeys grazing in the median.  Many police and military vehicles with men standing up in the back holding large guns. 

At the toll booths there are soldiers with guns. The speed limit can say anything, but people still go insanely fast no matter what. 120km/hr seems to be the minimum speed of highway driving, with plenty of people zooming past at much, much faster speeds.

Every kilometer or so, there is a little booth on the side of the road selling grilled meats. There are also men with lots of car tires and car parts everywhere down the highway. The rainbow colors of the mostly abandoned buildings and small homes are so beautiful against the brownish landscape in the northern part of Mexico. Many casas had black plastic tanks on the roof for solar hot water.

We drove about 8 hours south on Christmas to a city called San Luis Potosí. We attempted to contact our Couchsurfing host, but my Canadian phone couldn't call her phone. So I bought a prepaid Mexican calling card for use in special pay phones only. That didn't get through to her either. We wanted to arrive at her place before dark so we bought a real map. We found her home around 5pm, and knocked. No answer. We left a nice note in the door with our phone number and drove to find a restaurant and had supper. Still no call. We were advised by many to not travel around after dark. So we sat in a Starbucks at a fancy hotel and waited. Finally at 9pm Alejandra called us. She was the best CS host we have had yet. Her whole family was so kind and they all spoke great English which was very welcoming.

She cooked us some Mexican snacks that night and we had a great chat. In the morning, I awoke to the window next to my bed rattling from the 6am fireworks and mucho celebrating. We had an excellent Mexican breakfast together.  They have invited us to come back and stay for a few days on our return trip. They know of a brujo, or a witch doctor that is supposed to be an amazing healer and they want to go find him with us. Sounds pretty exciting!

On day two, we got a late start. We enjoyed talking with Alejandra and her mama so much that we lost track of time. We drove to a city called Queretaro and somehow missed a sign and ended up downtown in traffic for a while. It was beautiful. Amazing colors. 

We found our way out and then approaching Mexico City, we missed another turn that would have taken us way outside of the perimeter of the city limits. Instead we drove along the outskirts. We have never seen anything like it. Millions of shanties that looked barely livable. The smell in the air was of sewage. Just driving past for a half hour, I had a sore throat and nose from the poor air quality. There are upwards of 20 million people there. Wow. 

We continued of drive and as we exited the Mexico City area, the traffic got very congested and while we sat waiting to pay a toll, we spotted a cloud of ash puffing out of the top of one of the massive volcanoes, Popocatépetl. I have photos on my camera. I will have to post one later. 

We raced up the mountain passes and watched as dozens of cars were pulled over with their hoods up, engines smoking. I thought of how lucky we were that our little old Jetta was running so well after 5,000km of driving over the last 10 days. We approached the city of Puebla, which is home to North America's largest auto plant, Volkswagen, which is where our Jetta was built over a decade ago.  There is even a Volkswagen bank! All of the taxis and police cars are VW's in this city.

We sat in a creeping traffic jam for an hour just outside of the city limits. Darkness set in and as we finally drove into the city to find a hotel, our car overheated and the red temperature light came on and beeped. We had no idea where we were and it was getting late. We pulled over on the side of a city street where a police car was flashing and the officer was standing watch over the traffic and pedestrians. We asked him to lead us to a safe hotel. He smirked and said "YO???" (Me???). And shook his head no. I asked why not??? Then he asked us to open the hood of the car. A couple of minutes later, a friend of his happened to walk up and started fiddling with stuff under the hood. He was a mechanic and worked at a shop a few blocks away.  He told us to bring our car there in the morning. The police officer ended up leading us to a hotel where we hunkered down. It is a funky retro place right across from a huge bus terminal and mercado. Very loud people most of the night but it is safe and cozy. 

Morning. We take the Jetta to the mechanic. One man speaks a decent amount of English, which was helpful. Before we left Texas, we purchased a Spanish-English dictionary. Best purchase ever. They replaced the thermostat and the temperature sensor. It took several hours, and it was still overheating when they finished. They closed at 2pm today and won't be back for working until Monday morning.  They will put a new water pump in next and see if that solves the issue. So much for heading to our next destination. In the meantime, I knew I needed a Mexican phone. I went across the parking lot from the mechanic and noticed the we could now see the same huge volcano from the opposite side. It was letting out tiny puffs of ash from its snow-capped flat top in the hot sun. The ash coming off of that peak might explain why come people here are wearing surgical type masks. Breathing that in constantly could be hard on lungs. 

The young man, Oscar, working in the convenience store said he didn't sell a SIM card to fit my iPhone, but offered to walk us to the phone shop about 10 minutes away. He didn't speak English so it was a fun challenge. The phone shop was in the middle of a large mercado where there were people and stuff everywhere. So many smells, colors and loud noises! We would have never found it without his help. Just crossing the street was a huge challenge. The national slogan of Mexico could easily be "Welcome to Mexico. Anything goes!"

My favorite part of the mercado was the boxes of tiny puppies! We are resting in our hotel room after a very long day. Planning which sites to see over the next two days, since the universe has decided that this is where we are to remain for a while. 

Oh, also, we were the only gringos all day and the locals seem so amazed when they see us. We feel like celebrities. It's very strange! A few people stopped us and asked where we were from. Many people are staring and pointing and especially small kids are mesmerized when they see us. It's adorable. They wave at us from car windows and they especially love the huge blonde beard on my travel partner. I have nicknamed him Barba Grande. (Big Beard). 

Stay tuned for part two...adios for now.