After our tequila tasting adventure, we spent a couple of nights near Lake Chapala. On Saturday we stopped in Aijic (Ah-hee-heek) for breakfast. It’s a quaint little town on the lake and home to a large population of gringo retirees.

One thing about traveling with your own vehicle is that big cities are tough. You don’t really want to drive a big camper around in them, there’s no place to park, and if you want to stay more than one day you have to pay to park and pay for a hotel, since there are no campgrounds anywhere near the attractions in the city center. The other choice is to camp outside the city, then take an expensive taxi or a long bus ride in.

This time we decided to brave the big city and drive into Guadalajara for lunch. With the aid of Pocket Earth (on her iPad) Jen did a great job of navigating us around the city, and we were able to find a place to park the van that was walking distance to the city’s central plaza. We walked the plaza enjoying the people, the music, the fountains, and the architecture. We had lunch and by 2pm were headed out of town.

Crazy chair sculptures in Guadalajara

The city’s main cathedral

What a great business. Rent out little battery operated cars. Q loved it so much we did it twice.

More street scenes from the city…

The route out made us appreciate the difficulty and value of effective highway planning. We were on the ring road around Guadalajara (a major highway with 3 lanes in each direction). We needed to exit onto another major highway leading away from the city. Signs directed us to an exit that emptied onto a two-lane residential road. The road wound for a few kilometers, then entered a tiny village and became narrow and rough. A sign pointed toward Guadalajara and the highway we needed, but we wanted to go in the opposite direction, away from the city. We continued on, but the road dead-ended at a fenced yard full of chickens. We turned around and followed the sign for Guadalajara. The dirt road turned into an entrance ramp, and we were back on the tollway headed for the city. Soon there was a “retorno” that took us up an exit ramp, over the highway, and back in the opposite direction. The entire structure had no other purpose than to enable U-turns on the highway.

The highway toward Guanajuato was smooth and fast, at least until we hit the peregrinos. Not penguins, but pilgrims. One lane of a four lane highway was blocked off to allow people to make an annual pilgrimage on foot to the church in the town of Lagos. Traffic slowed to a crawl, and it was after dark when we finally pulled into the campground outside Guanajuato.

Peregrinos on the highway

Since we were having such a great time hanging out in Sayulita with our new friends, we decided to stay on a few days longer. On Sunday Witt and Quinn took a bus to the water park in Puerto Vallarta and spent the day sliding on water slides and playing in the pools. We even got to get in the pool with some dolphins and play with them!

We charged the kids 2 pesos each for entry into the “youtube theater”

The next day, Monday, we decided to splurge on a day trip to the nearby Marietas Islands. It was on a sailing catamaran with probably 20 guests on board, including our Canadian friends the Rempels and their 3 kids. The 1.5 hour trip out to the islands was the most amazing whale watching trip Jen and I have ever been on. We saw pods of 6-8 humpback whales, whales slapping their tails in the water, whales mating, and two breaches (where they leap all 50 tons of themselves almost completely out of the water).

Quinn on board the Ally Cat

The kids quickly took their posts on the trampoline at the bow

I used to think tail shots were rare.

Here’s a short movie of some of the whale antics.

At the islands we went snorkeling and kayaking, then headed back to the boat for lunch and the trip home. The whole trip was open bar and the crew kept walking around the boat taking drink orders. It’s a wonder we didn’t get completely wasted, but we were glad that the company provided a taxi back to Sayulita from the marina.

Q didn’t want to snorkel, but we paddled around for a bit

Enjoying (one of many) fine beverages on the way back to port

On Tuesday we reluctantly packed away our camp and said goodbye to our friends, who will be heading back to cold Manitoba in a couple of short weeks. We headed inland toward Guanajuato where our next Spanish class is due to begin in a week. Along the way, we stopped for the night at a small crater lake and drove 16km up a cobblestone road to the top of a volcano for a short hike.

Laguna de Maria del Oro

The very bumpy road up the volcano

One can’t drive through Tequila, Mexico, without stopping. On a whim we picked the La Cofradia distillery which neither of us had ever even heard of. But it just seemed wrong to go to Jose Cuervo! The distillery was amazing and provided an excellent English-speaking tour guide. We learned a lot about how tequila is made (not too much of a stretch when you start from zero) and some of the history of the drink and the region it comes from. We got to taste 8 different types of tequila and they made us an amazing margarita in their underground restaurant.

The blue plants that look like Yucca are blue agave.

A mural depicting the making of tequila. Notice that the Virgin Mary oversees the process, presumably to ensure quality.

It takes the agave 6-8 years to mature, at which time the leaves are hacked off, leaving the “piña” which is baked to extract the raw agave nectar. The nectar is fermented and distilled to make tequila.

The aging cellar and tasting room

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.