The Church Book - Camping Mexico's Baja
The Mike and Terri Church Book. First let me say it must be a tedious and thankless job to slog through all the details that putting together this book takes. Much of it is very good. But because it i...
Forum Discussion
Simply go to Oaxaca, or Chiapas to find leña, ocote, y tortillas de maize hecho por mano.
How did I like "The Good Old Days" when a "salad" meant a tiny grated cabbage, onion and carrot lump on a saucer with a squeeze of lemon?
Or a hundred mile trip meant 3,000 bacis, thirty traylors going 12 mph up a curvy canyon belching cropduster quantities of carbon out the curving "bull's horn" exhaust pipes curling out the rear of the truck bed?
Or traversing a town that had absolutely zero road signs trying to get to the other side?
Water so loaded with minerals it would have made Jamaican Blue Mountain Coffee taste like Maxwell House?
Fighting "bistec" after spending 15 minutes on the grill. Couldn't chew it. Not really. Masticate a cube for 5 minutes, and you couldn't even break it apart with fingers and teeth.
In rural areas, when treasures like lettuce or nice tomatoes did show up, a person had better be there because they sold out in hours. Decent produce and fruits may have meant a three hour trip over corrugated gravel dust. And with tropical temperatures and ice house ice loaded with ammonia, the "adventure" was suffered gladly by young people. One of today's RV's would have come apart at the seams after rattling a few thousand miles over badly pitted roads.
I wouldn't have traded all that for anything when I was a youngster. Now that I am a certified oldfart, I do not know how long I could have tolerated it. You cannot imagine what a propane refill trip actually meant. It was one long, hard day.
I try to keep things in perspective. Like realizing a day of la caseta de larga distancia and la lista de correos and cambio dolares a pesos meant yet another long, trying day.
A reader either hauled 500 paperbacks to read or trade or went stack raving loony after the beach bonfire burned down. Today, ten minutes on the internet downloads newly released books. Scanning a radio dial, there was mariachi, ranchero, Kaliman y Solin, various novelas, news programs with sound effects like War of The Worlds, and occasional winter fade in and outs of KNX and WBBS, usually when there was a commercial. All audio through crackle of distant lightning. The laundromat was a 40-year old woman who hauled stuff down to the river, and soaped and scrubbed and bleached and starched until the clothing surrendered.
I was detained on Mex 190 because highway robbers had their way with an autobus and several passenger cars and the PJF closed the road about 10 miles east of Tepantepéc. Sitting around for 6-hours, then making Tuxtla Gutierrez after nightfall was not for the timid. I wanted out of the hundred plus high humidity.
Yes there was "Dollar Lobsters" but after a few dozen of them, a hundred or two fresh oysters, enough huauchinango to blow up a cat, seafood became less of a prize. Tacos and tamales (and beans) saved the day. Cerveza cost about 13 cents US a bottle, and cola around eight cents. But ask for a *cold* beverage in a restaurant and they'd look at you like you were nuts. It wasn't 60 degree soda and cerveza "al tiempo" it was HUNDRED degree soda and cerveza.
Meals were inexpensive in non-tourist areas. The dollar-lunch came on a plate with 70% of the weight being a stack of tortillas, a chicken leg, a few spoons of rice or beans, and a leaf of salad and a slice of tomato so thin you could almost see through it.
Coffee? No Es Cafe. Powdered not the granulated you find today. Lukewarm water. Cafe de Olla was treasured.
Mexicanos kept smiling and through it all, they wanted, really wanted to be your friend.
The "old" Mexico still abounds. Free beach side camping has gone the way of the passenger pigeon, but really, how many forum readers here could even begin to get their 2015 rig over soft sand to get to a good, free spot?
Old and new. Each have their pluses and minuses as far as RVing is concerned.
I tend to look at the positive aspects of both. The negative side can be appropriately sorted-out.
How did I like "The Good Old Days" when a "salad" meant a tiny grated cabbage, onion and carrot lump on a saucer with a squeeze of lemon?
Or a hundred mile trip meant 3,000 bacis, thirty traylors going 12 mph up a curvy canyon belching cropduster quantities of carbon out the curving "bull's horn" exhaust pipes curling out the rear of the truck bed?
Or traversing a town that had absolutely zero road signs trying to get to the other side?
Water so loaded with minerals it would have made Jamaican Blue Mountain Coffee taste like Maxwell House?
Fighting "bistec" after spending 15 minutes on the grill. Couldn't chew it. Not really. Masticate a cube for 5 minutes, and you couldn't even break it apart with fingers and teeth.
In rural areas, when treasures like lettuce or nice tomatoes did show up, a person had better be there because they sold out in hours. Decent produce and fruits may have meant a three hour trip over corrugated gravel dust. And with tropical temperatures and ice house ice loaded with ammonia, the "adventure" was suffered gladly by young people. One of today's RV's would have come apart at the seams after rattling a few thousand miles over badly pitted roads.
I wouldn't have traded all that for anything when I was a youngster. Now that I am a certified oldfart, I do not know how long I could have tolerated it. You cannot imagine what a propane refill trip actually meant. It was one long, hard day.
I try to keep things in perspective. Like realizing a day of la caseta de larga distancia and la lista de correos and cambio dolares a pesos meant yet another long, trying day.
A reader either hauled 500 paperbacks to read or trade or went stack raving loony after the beach bonfire burned down. Today, ten minutes on the internet downloads newly released books. Scanning a radio dial, there was mariachi, ranchero, Kaliman y Solin, various novelas, news programs with sound effects like War of The Worlds, and occasional winter fade in and outs of KNX and WBBS, usually when there was a commercial. All audio through crackle of distant lightning. The laundromat was a 40-year old woman who hauled stuff down to the river, and soaped and scrubbed and bleached and starched until the clothing surrendered.
I was detained on Mex 190 because highway robbers had their way with an autobus and several passenger cars and the PJF closed the road about 10 miles east of Tepantepéc. Sitting around for 6-hours, then making Tuxtla Gutierrez after nightfall was not for the timid. I wanted out of the hundred plus high humidity.
Yes there was "Dollar Lobsters" but after a few dozen of them, a hundred or two fresh oysters, enough huauchinango to blow up a cat, seafood became less of a prize. Tacos and tamales (and beans) saved the day. Cerveza cost about 13 cents US a bottle, and cola around eight cents. But ask for a *cold* beverage in a restaurant and they'd look at you like you were nuts. It wasn't 60 degree soda and cerveza "al tiempo" it was HUNDRED degree soda and cerveza.
Meals were inexpensive in non-tourist areas. The dollar-lunch came on a plate with 70% of the weight being a stack of tortillas, a chicken leg, a few spoons of rice or beans, and a leaf of salad and a slice of tomato so thin you could almost see through it.
Coffee? No Es Cafe. Powdered not the granulated you find today. Lukewarm water. Cafe de Olla was treasured.
Mexicanos kept smiling and through it all, they wanted, really wanted to be your friend.
The "old" Mexico still abounds. Free beach side camping has gone the way of the passenger pigeon, but really, how many forum readers here could even begin to get their 2015 rig over soft sand to get to a good, free spot?
Old and new. Each have their pluses and minuses as far as RVing is concerned.
I tend to look at the positive aspects of both. The negative side can be appropriately sorted-out.
