With our Spanish language classes due to start the next day, we packed up, said goodbye to our new Canadian friends (the Rempels) once again, and made the short drive south to Sayulita.

Us with the Rempels and their camper

Our campsite in Sayulita

We had a guest sub-letting our campsite

Sayulita is much different from La Peñita. It’s a surf spot so it’s a much younger crowd including young backpackers, surf bums, hippies, and retirees all sharing a very touristy but still nice and laid back beach. We heard from the Rempels after we arrived in Sayulita on Sunday afternoon; they had decided to join us the next day.

The rest of the week was spent attending Spanish classes from 9 till 1. After class the afternoon was ours to spend on the beach or just relaxing. Witt took a surf lesson one afternoon, and Quinn spent lots of time playing on the beach and in the campground with the other kids staying there. One family is here for 5 months and has enrolled their daughter in the local school.

Project time at the RV park

Sunset on the beach in front of the campground

The Spanish school was excellent both because of the quality instruction and because Quinn adored Jasmine, who looked after him while we were in class. They played games and did projects together, including making a cardboard train and beautiful piñata.

Quinn and Jasmine at the school

Jasmine and our La Maestra Lucia bid us farewell on Friday

One highlight of the week was helping to release baby turtles. Because they’re endangered, there are many projects along the coasts to excavate the turtles’ eggs (which are laid on the beach at night), allow them to hatch, then release them into the sea. This helps more of them reach maturity, since the baby turtles are easy prey for birds when they leave the nest in the wild.

What’s this little squirmy thing?

Go baby turtles, go!

Quinn shared the piñata he made in school with the kids in the campground.

We left El Fuerte and headed back to the coast continuing south. Our guidebook strongly recommended a place called Las Glorias. It’s an hour off the toll road, but we decided to go anyway thinking we’d stay a couple of nights. This is all farming country. Fields of corn, tomatoes and other veggies line the roads for as far as the eye can see.

The campground in Las Glorias has been hard hit by the dropoff in American tourists driving south. When we arrived there seemed to be no one around. There was one giant RV there with some Canadians sitting under the awning watching the waves come in. They said we were the first people they’d seen all day. We picked a spot and set up camp, thinking that someone would show up sooner or later to collect our money.

You could tell the place used to be really nice, with a pool and a restaurant. Without enough customers to support the restaurant it had closed, and the pool hadn’t been cleaned in awhile. But the beach was still nice, and we spent the afternoon playing in the sand.

Beachfront property for sale.

We departed the next morning and drove further south to Celestino Gasco. There we met a family from Winnipeg traveling in an older RV. They had three kids along, including two boys a little older than Quinn. We spent two nights there and had a great time playing in the swimming pool and on the beach.

Walking to dinner

Heading out for an evening of fishing

We had been promising Quinn a stop at a water park we had read about in Mazatlán. Unfortunately when we arrived there on Thursday morning we discovered that it was only open on weekends. We were all pretty bummed, and instead of a day at the park we decided to push south to La Peñita de Jaltemba (just up the coast from Sayulita). It was a long day in the car and we didn’t arrive until nearly 5pm. Happily, though, the family we had met farther north arrived shortly after we did and pulled into the adjacent campsite. During those 300km we passed from the last of the desert into the tropics. Vendors appeared on the side of the road selling watermelon, pineapple, papaya, bananas, and other tropical fruit.

Suddenly there are people – lots of people! This park is populated mostly by snowbirds from the north staying here for the winter. According to one story we heard, not too long ago it was mostly Americans here. But when the drug violence hit the news a few years ago everyone stopped coming. The park is full again, but now it’s mostly Canadians.

The view from the campground

Sunset in the tropics

The kids enjoy a movie on our friends’ camper

There are enough people here that every day vendors from the nearby town set up a market in the park. On one day alcohol and pantry staples are for sale, the next day fruit and vegetables are on offer, as well as some fresh bread. There are lots of fun activities from which to choose (pool volleyball, yoga, sightseeing trips and many social events), and periodically someone drives through in a pickup truck selling fresh fish. We’ve had lots of swimming pool and beach time, and we attended a lively happy hour in the afternoon.

Before we left on our trip, some of our friends and family were concerned for our safety while travelling in Mexico. “Are you bringing a gun?” was one of the more common questions we were asked about our trip. The country hasn’t exactly received the best press over the past few years, with stories of drug cartels and related violence. The effect is noticeable. RV parks for which our guidebook (from 2009) recommends reservations are virtually deserted. Local businesses are struggling as a result.

I can understand the concern. We’re concerned. We’re driving around in a foreign country where we don’t really speak the language, which happens to be a major conduit for drugs to the USA, and has been in the news recently because of drug-related violence. The “bible” of camping in Mexico, written by the Church couple and seemingly carried by every foreigner traveling in their own car, has a website that provides updates to their most recent print version. There’s a section on safety, which openly describes several armed holdups that have occurred on highways and even in RV parks over the course of the last few years. And we’re bringing our son here? He’s not old enough to have a say in the matter. Is that fair to him?

But look at CNN: Another school shooting in the nice, safe, USA. And we’re supposed to send him to school? He’s not old enough to have a say in the matter. Is that fair to him?

According to crime statistics, an American in Mexico is actually less likely to be the victim of a crime than an American in the USA. But what if, against the odds, something was to happen, something that frightened our son a lot? I’d beat myself up for a long time, thinking, why did we have to take him there? If we had just stayed home this never would have happened.

What if we did just stay home and something horrible happened, say, at his school? I’d still feel horrible, but my conscience would have a free pass because I did what was expected of me. I conformed, and something still happened. It’s just one of those things. Not my fault.

So perhaps part of what I’m afraid of is not so much the danger itself, but the culpability. The idea that if something happens while we’re “away” it’s my fault but if it happens at home it’s not. That doesn’t sound like a healthy way to think about things.

Do bad things happen in Mexico, and in other scary foreign countries? Sure, of course they do. Could they happen to us? Yes, they can. Is that a reason to stay at home? We don’t believe so. No matter where we go or don’t go, what we do or don’t do, there is risk involved. Something bad might happen. We think that the rewards of travel outweigh the risks. Like any parent we will do everything we can to keep our son safe. But we also have a responsibility to help him grow into a good person. We believe that travel is one very good way to do that.

No one could really tell us what time the train was supposed to arrive. We heard everything from 7am to 9am. Some said first and second classes were different trains arriving at different times; others said that they were different cars on the same train. So we arrived at the station at about 730 hoping we would be in time to meet the train.

We were; the first class train arrived at about 820. We were originally thinking we’d save some money and take second class, but that train was due to arrive an hour later and we didn’t want to wait any longer.

Train!! Not a steam train, but diesel will do.

Quinn was thrilled with the train ride. It was 8 hours, and he pretty much enjoyed the whole thing.

The rail route from Los Mochis (passing through El Fuerte) runs all the way to Chihuahua, covering 656km of track. It has 37 bridges, 86 tunnels, and took 60 years to complete, opening in 1961. It starts at sea level and ends up at over 2400 meters in elevation.

The scenery during the train ride was truly awesome, as were some of the engineering feats required to traverse the rugged terrain. We arrived in the town of Creel at about 330pm and checked into a hotel.

The tracks climb to the top of the waterfall in this photo by looping back on themselves three times, including a 180 degree loop inside a tunnel.

The church in Creel

The next day Witt rented a mountain bike to explore the surrounding area. A four-hour bike rental was only $10 for a well-maintained hard-tail 29er (plus helmet, tool kit and spare tubes). The area didn’t offer exceptional singletrack, but it was a fun way to get some exercise and explore the local sights. We made plans to all meet up at a nearby lake. Jen and Quinn took a taxi and a picnic lunch out to the lake and Witt was there too, but we never saw each other. We figure that we were on either sides of a hill but didn’t know that there was another side to explore. Fortunately we all had a great time.

The area is home to the Tarahumara, the local indigenous population. This was the first time that we have encountered extreme poverty on this trip, with small children employed selling trinkets to tourists. As it turns out, most of the tourists in the area are Mexican, and it was somewhat of a relief to know that us gringos weren’t the only visitors to sell stuff to. Jen bought a little wooden train from them for Quinn that turned out to be a big hit.

Although the Copper canyon is “bigger” than the Grand Canyon in some respects, it’s not as spectacular to look down on as its cousin in Arizona. On the return trip, the train stopped briefly in the town of Divisadero, where it is possible to look out across a portion of the network of canyons. While there we sampled some excellent gorditas on offer from the local vendors.

Vendors in Divisadero

Mmmm Gorditas!

As we experienced in Africa and other places, there’s always the thought of “What did we do to deserve the life we have while these people live this difficult and austere existence?” This was truly brought home as we saw a young boy about Quinn’s age, his neck draped with the textiles he was selling, watching Quinn playing on the ground with his new toy train. The contrast between the outlook for Quinn’s future and that of this small boy was both sharp and painful to contemplate.

I know I left off last time promising that the next update would be for Copper Canyon. Well, we’ve been there and done that, as they say, but that’s a story for next time, lest the stories get too long and boring!

I’ve been thinking about a few interesting numbers lately:

Days on the road: 190
Miles traveled: 16500
Countries visited: 3
States visited (including Mexican states and Canadian provinces): 20
Days since last van breakdown: 12
Number of tacos consumed: innumerable

Since Monday was spent trying in vain to reproduce the power issues in the van, we decided to spend Tuesday in the condo we had rented, knowing that it would take us a long time to re-pack the van after having moved most of our stuff inside. We enjoyed one last evening of beer and margaritas and conveniently, someone stopped by selling scallops for which we fried up in some garlic and tequila.

Playing in the waves with the donut Quinn got for his birthday

A labor of love

Our last Kino sunset

Even though we tried to get most of our stuff packed the day before, it still took us until nearly noon before we rolled out of town on New Years day. We made the short drive to San Carlos since El Fuerte, where we were to pick up the Copper Canyon train, was still a long distance away.

San Carlos was very nice. Much more developed than Kino with more amenities, people, and higher prices. We thought the beach was nicer in Kino, but we didn’t get to explore all of the beaches around San Carlos.

We had a good dinner of seafood at a restaurant where we watched the sun set over the Gulf of California. Even though we had celebrated Quinn’s birthday a few days earlier, we took advantage of the opportunity to ask the mariachi players in the restaurant to sing happy birthday to him in Spanish and English.

The next day was a long drive to El Fuerte. We arrived just in time to buy a few snacks for the train before turning in for the night.

The beach in San Carlos

Looks like the second and third stories never quite made it…

Seagulls swarming outside the restaurant

Happy birthday to Quinn!