Feb. 10 Day 20
Today is a nice sunny day, about 70 degrees as we pull out of the campground at about 7:30 am. We are now officially on our way home…heading back north. We left Robbie and Linda, one of the couples on the tour, back at the RV park as they are joining another Adventure Caravan tour to the Baja. Visiting Mexico has been a great adventure from the beautiful scenery to the Mexican people and their culture. We have learned a few words, very few but we have learned the difference in the Spanish vowel sounds. I sounds like E and E sounds like A. A sounds ah and LL sounds like YAH. It is confusing but we are catching on. It will help some while we are in areas where there are lots of Spanish speaking people. Most of Mexico is open range so we often see animals grazing on the sides of the road and in the median and have seen quite a few animal carcasses lying in the ditches. The 4 lane highways have a shoulder but the 2 lane have no shoulder and usually a drop-off. There are about a million buses (well guess that is an exaggeration) on the highways and the drivers go as fast as they can. Vehicles are allowed to stop on the shoulder. So defensive driving is very important. We are stopped at a Pemex station and there are RV’s and trucks on both sides of the highway. It just seems so dangerous at times driving here in Mexico. But Gene is a very careful and attentive driver. We have seen some beautiful flowering trees and shrubs and even some sunflowers. Mexican like bright colors and it shows in the clothes they wear, their homes and businesses and even in their landscaping. There are many toll roads in Mexico, especially the 4-lanes. Today we have gone 125 miles and already paid $41.80. We expect to pay close to $300 for the entire trip. We are now in the Culiacan area and the predominant crop here is sweet corn. It has tassels on it and it look very good. Nearly every crop in Mexico is irrigated. We have just passed a very large grove on oranges with ripe one on the trees and passed some vendors selling 25 pound bags of them. A couple of very large farm trucks parked along side the road were filled Roma tomatoes. A crop duster plane just passed over us spraying corn and now we see a field of squash with many workers out picking. We were stopped at a fruit inspection station and the Federalis took our oranges and would have taken apples but we didn’t have any. We think it is because we are traveling into another state. Aren’t we glad we didn’t have a chance to buy those oranges we saw for sale back just a ways. Our stop for tonight is somewhat unusual. We are staying in a fenced in parking area behind a Pemex station. We will be dry camping, meaning we have no electricity or water hookups. That is not a problem but some of the people are not happy. We arrived about 1 pm and there were no planned activities so we read some and fixed a nice dinner and read some more. We are not allowed by the American government to take any beef or pork, cooked or raw across the border. We can take chicken and eggs if they are cooked. So we are working towards eating what we have in our freezer.