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February 16, 2019

Settling into Tlaquepaque

Sorry for the long absence from blogging. We have been in Tlaquepaque for a month, and it’s about time we shared a little bit about our life here! We have been busy attending Guadalajara Language Center five days a week to learn Spanish, plus getting to know this magical village and neighboring Guadalajara and getting into the rhythm of life here.

Let’s start by talking about where we are living!

The cats were extremely relieved when we pulled into the driveway of our orange concrete house in Tlaquepaque, delayed a week and a half by border issues and then the gas shortage, and they were finally able to leave their traveling cages and settle in. There was no hiding upon arrival this time; somehow they knew they were finally home.

Tlaquepaque

Tlaquepaque (pronounced “tlah-kay-PAH-kay”) is a bustling, working-class village on the edge of Guadalajara, the second-largest city in Mexico. It has a population of 600,000 people is known for its ceramics and its artisans. The center is a lovely pedestrian area of shops, restaurants, food vendors, and galleries branching out from a central square, Plaza de Hidalgo. Branching out from the center, homes get smaller and smaller, and roads and sidewalks are narrow and cracked. Most of our neighbors are lower-middle class Mexicans, making their living doing laundry, vending water door to door, operating tiny corner stores, painting sacred statues, fabricating wood-and-leather chairs, or opening pop-up restaurants to sell pozole or tacos dorado.

The Mexican people are friendly and quick to smile. Their culture prides itself on always finding the bright side, despite adversity. Their homes are small but their smiles are big.

Our Mexican Home

Our house on Calle Jalisco is very simple, a two-story orange concrete house in a “coto” (small gated community) with a carport and a small patch of grass out front. We rented it directly from the school, two floors with four bedrooms a half mile the school and downtown Tlaquepaque, for $840 a month. It’s not fancy or luxurious; it’s very basic, and quite Mexican. It didn’t even have an oven, since most Mexicans just the stovetop, so our landlord Wouter allowed us to purchase a toaster oven so we could bake. It has patchy Wifi and a large flat-screen TV with Netflix. It needs a paint job badly, but it’s home.

The Upstairs

The master bedroom has a surprisingly comfortable king-sized bed and a little utility patio that lets light in — plus the sounds of roosters crowing, dogs barking and the nearby cathedral bells chiming every 15 minutes all night. (And for some reason it tolls 21 times each time.) All the noise kept me awake at first, but eventually I stopped hearing it, which reminded me of the 17th floor apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan where Bob and I lived in the mid-1990s — at first we could hear the sounds of car horns and people yelling for a mile around, but eventually we didn’t notice them at all.

I was awakened one night by the sound of chaos in a nearby henhouse. I’m not sure if it was an animal thief or a human, since I heard no sound from the perpetrator. But the sound of raucous, terrified squawks that diminished one by one until he last one croaked its final appeal haunted me for days.

Lexie claimed a sunny bedroom with a queen-sized bed, and there’s a third room upstairs with two single beds that we use to store our home gym equipment. (We call it Aryk’s Room because that’s where they will live when they come home for spring break.) The second-floor landing is a large room of its own, with a zippered-fabric closet (two of the upstairs bedrooms have no closets), a loveseat and a little computer table. It’s a great space for me to do yoga (I get a new yoga session from Container Collective Yoga in my inbox every Monday, so I stay connected to Colorado whenever I practice.)

The Downstairs

Downstairs there is a fourth bedroom with a double bed, which we use as a music room and for bike storage. (We also call it Mal’s Room because it’s where Aryk’s partner Mal will stay when it comes to visit over Spring Break.) The white-tiled main living area has an open floor plan, with a weathered couch, a loveseat and a large chair providing plenty of living room seating. The kitchen is efficient and pretty, though we have yet to figure out how to get hot water out of the spigot, and we take our lives into our hands every time we light the over-enthusiastic gas range. There are three seats at the counter and a little table with four chairs.

All in all, though, it’s a cheap, comfortable base from which to embark on our first adventures in Mexico! It’s more basic that we are used to, but everyone else at the language school is staying in a hostel or with a Mexican family, and we like having our own place. It was large enough to host a Super Bowl Party! We will remain happily ensconced here through the end of April, though we do plan a beach vacation during Aryk’s break.

February 11, 2019

We Made it to Tlaquepaque!

We finally made it to Tlaquepaque!

Our 6-day trip from Pennsylvania to this village just south of Guadalajara where we planned to spend our first four months in Mexico ended up taking 14 days, but we finally arrived on Jen. 19 – exactly four months after we left Colorado.

On the Friday of our week in Leon, Lisa and I decided to bite the bullet and try to get gas so we could continue on to Tlaquepaque. (If you recall, we were only in Leon because we couldn’t get enough gas to get to our final destination, Tlaquepaque.) We were determined to wait all day if necessary. A few days earlier, we had been told that the Leon government website listed stations that would be receiving gasoline that night or the following morning. We looked at it and saw only 20 stations (for a city of 1.5M people) getting gas. Our observations supported this, as we would see lines at only 1 of 10 or 12 gas stations we passed as we Ubered around town. And the lines were long.

And even though we kept hearing the situation was going to get better, it didn’t. So we enjoyed Leon and ignored the gas situation for a few days. Why stress over it?

But on Friday, Lisa read in the Mexico News Daily that a pipeline was opening to Leon on Saturday, and the number of stations pumping was supposed to increase to 35%. Lisa wanted to get to Tlaquepaque, so we decided to give it a shot.

The Early Bird Gets the Gas

So we got up before 6, gathered books, tables, drinks and snacks to entertain us during an anticipated long wait. and drove to the nearest gas station. There wasn’t a line, but that was because they weren’t pumping. We continued down the road and saw a line several blocks long for another station. As we drove by, we saw that they were pumping gas. We tried to make a u-turn to get to that station on a side road, but we were unsuccessful, being forced to take a long way onto a highway and wasting 10 precious miles worth of gas in the process.

When we doubled back we spotted another gas station that was also pumping, with a shorter line, so we got in line. Lisa and I discussed that we really needed at least 600 pesos worth of gas to get to Tlaquepaque, but stations were limiting sales to 500 pesos per car. We agreed that 700 pesos would provide a bit of a margin of error if we got lost. Finally, we discussed what we needed to say to the attendant, in Spanish, to attempt to get that 700 pesos worth of gas.

The early morning line for gas

The line moved quickly and we were soon at the pump. Lisa hopped out and told him that we were trying to get to Tlaquepaque, where our house was, and 500 pesos wouldn’t be enough to make it. Could he help? He told us that all he was allowed to give us was 500 pesos. But nonetheless, he pumped 600 pesos, looking furtively in both directions to make sure no one noticed. Then, in an act of compassion, he reset the pump and pumped us full with another 550 pesos of gas! We were ecstatic! And, of course, we tipped him generously.

Made it to the pump in just 15 minutes

Success — a full tank!

A Full Tank, But Locked Out

In our wildest dreams, we had never even considered that this would be the outcome. We had our Leon Airbnb rented for another day, but on the short drive home, we decided that we would pack and head to Tlaquepaque as soon as we could get packed up. later that day. We did have one small glitch: We only hade one set of keys for the apartment, which were inside with Lexie, and she was sound asleep. It could be hours before she rose. Her phone ringer was off so we could not reach her. outside the complex gate for half an hour or so, Lisa got the idea to contact the woman who rented to us, and our host quickly brought us a second set of keys that allowed us to get in, get Lexie up and start packing. Instead of waiting in a gas line, we ended up waiting an hour and a half to get back into our apartment!

Finally On The Road

We were on the road for our 2½ trip by 11 AM. About 1½ hours into our trip, closer to Guadalajara, I thought that it might be a good idea to fill up again. However, from that point on, almost all gas stations didn’t have gas and the one or two open ones we saw had huge lines. So when we arrived at our rented house in Tlaquepaque, we parked the truck with 5/8 of a tank and decided to use walking, public transportation or Uber until the situation is stabilized here.

But, we’re here and getting settled in. We’ve essentially been traveling for four months since we left Colorado, so it feels so good to be settled for a while!

Our new home!

February 10, 2019

Mecca in Mexico

In mid-January, when we drove to Guadalajara from Leon, we passed mile after mile of people walking along the road. We must have passed eight miles of people walking, many with backpacks or bedrolls, adults and children, before we branched off the road and headed toward Tlaquepaque.

We speculated that this was a caravan of migrants headed toward the US border. Yet, we didn’t see anything in the press about anything the size of what we saw. We did, however, see some tweets and more tweets from the government of the state of Guanajuato about “pilgrims,” with estimates of 70,000 to 100,000 pilgrims. But we saw nothing in the US news.

When I asked about this on an expat forum, I discovered that these were actually religious pilgrims headed to the town of San Juan de los Lagos in the Mexican state of Jalisco to view a revered image of the Virgin Mary called Our Lady of San Juan de los Lagos. This Madonna is said to be responsible for tens of thousands of miracles dating back to 1623. (Read more here, and note some of the powerful comments from people who have visited the image.)

The image itself is made of sugar cane paste and stands about 38 centimeters high. It is believed to have been brought from Michoacán, Mexico, in the early 16th century and refurbished 400 years ago.

Somewhere between 7 and 9 million people yearly visit San Juan de los Lagos to see the image of the Virgin. The most heavily visited time, though, is Candelmas, when approximately 2 million people visit. Candelmas, or the Feast of the Presentation of Our Lord Jesus, falls on Feb. 2, the 40th day of the Christmas Epiphany season. In San Juan de los Lagos, they celebrate with a festival extending from Jan. 25 to Feb. 2 that includes fireworks, music and amusement rides.

This was the destination of the pilgrimage that we saw. Organized groups walk or bike for hundreds of miles. Most come to repay the image for a miracle they have received. There is a popular belief that people who fail to repay the Virgin risk being turned into stone.

So, even though there is another, much smaller, caravan of Central American migrants currently headed to the US (learn about it here and here), the miles of sojourners that we saw were religious pilgrims headed to San Juan los Lagos to keep from getting turned into stone.

Here’s the caravan we saw:

January 27, 2019

Leon Zoo

Entering the Leon Zoo was like walking into a ghost town. I associate zoos with noise and scents and crowds of people, but we seemed to be the only people there as we bought our tickets and headed in.

Our first stop was the safari, and we knew we were in for a spectacular visit. Climbing into a rickety open-air vehicle, we set off on what turned out to be a series of close and personal encounters with the animals. We were driven into crowds of Watusi and zebras, raced with antelopes, the car serving as the only barrier between us.

We walked around the rest of the zoo on foot, and it was the most unique zoo experience that I can remember. Though it was unnerving at first to have so much space to ourselves, the peace and quiet created a kind of intimacy between us and the animals that I’ve never experienced before.

On safari

We could almost touch the Watusi

The monkeys were one of the highlights. They swung around their cages using their hands, feet, and tails, movements so smooth they looked effortless. One hung out the side, arms stretched through the gaps of the fence to pluck leaves from the bushes outside for a midday snack.

He’s reaching out

It was strange to see elk in a zoo, as they’re such a common sight in Colorado, but we nonetheless watched them mull about. A lynx meowed at me, as if to make to for my lack of cuddles from Ellie that morning. Even big cats trot around, lick their paws, and make cute noises.

See her cute little tongue?

It was simply a wonderful trip all-around, and I definitely suggest you pop by if you’re ever in Leon.

January 22, 2019

Discovering Leon, Mexico

Whoever heard of Leon? Hardly anyone outside of Mexico, I’d wager.

But when we were thwarted from reaching our destination, Tlaquepaque, by a government crackdown on fuel thieves that dried up all the gas stations, we decided to detour to the closest city on our route, Leon, and explore for a few days instead of worrying about gas. So we booked a tiny, pet-friendly two-bedroom apartment ($213 for a week) and set about researching Leon.

We knew nothing about this city, but Bob consulted Mr. Google and quickly Bob discovered that Leon is the fourth largest city in Mexico! The hotel we stayed in our first night while we grappled with how to deal with the gas problem, Hotel Soleil Business Class, was in a great location on a major thoroughfare directly across from a park and sports center, and right on the bus line.

I found a great little description at Trip101.com:

León is known as the“shoe capital of the world” and shopping for leather goods is one of the main attractions here. León has a long history as a center of the leather industry, offering shoes, boots, belts, jackets, and other leather accessories not only in Mexico, but around the world. It has first-class services and hotels making it one of the most important cities in Mexico along with León’s entertainment, restaurants, leisure activities, arts, and recreation. It is also considered one of the most environmentally friendly cities in Mexico and has a high number of cyclists, in part because of integrating a network of bike lanes into the public transportation system. In March 2012 it received an award as “City Water Champion,” due to great progress it has made in the areas of sanitation, wastewater reuse, and energy cogeneration from biogas.

While much of León is industrial, it is also a great little authentic Mexican city. There is a nice, large pedestrian area in the center, which comes to life at night with street sellers, music, and Mexican families just enjoying their city. Also, León is a great place to escape if you’re a budget traveler, unless you’re in the market for a lot of leather.

We discovered Leon has several notable cathedrals, an Arch of Triumph, a grand boulevard (think Champs Elysees, only smaller scale), and a charming historic center.

Arch of Triumph

So after settling ourselves and our cats into our new apartment and taking care of food shopping, we got up the second morning and called an Uber to take us to the Arco Triunfal de la Calzada de los Heroes (the Triumphal Arch of the Causeway of Heroes).

The lion on top represents the pride and symbol of the strength of the Leonian people. The leafy grand boulevard runs 500 meters and has bronze statues of eight heroes. We agreed it would be a fabulous place to run.

The Nativity Show

We then walked up the causeway toward the old city and, across the street from the Templo Expiatorio Diocesano del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús (Expiatory Temple of the Sacred Heart of Jesus), we stumbled upon the Muestra Nacimiento, or Nativity Show, a temporary display of Nativity scenes from around the world. Admission was free and it was closing the next day, so we went inside, where we were greeted by a smiling nun. This display was a feast! There were small, large and humongous dioramas from Italy, Spain, Germany, Russia, and all over Mexico. We loved it! Here are a few highlights:

Wooden carved nativity from Oberammergau, germany

Mexican style

The lighted sky bedazzled

Martyr’s Square and the Plaza

After visiting another amazing cathedral next to Pope Benedict Square, and wandering around the old streets in Centro Historico, we enjoyed take-out tacos and agua tamarinda (orange water; OMG, what a discovery, and the entire meal cost $2) in a shady plaza next to Martyr’s Square, the central plaza in the old city. We enjoyed awesome ice cream and wandered on to our next discovery of the day: Mercado Aldama.

Mercado Aldama

I daresay no other gringo has ever wandered into Mercado Aldama, a massive indoor marketplace in a huge industrial building just beyond the old city. And they are missing out! Everything was for sale in this bustling, authentically Mexican, three-story marketplace, from shoes to clothing to sombreros to every kind of food you could imagine (and some you wouldn’t want to imagine), traditional Mexican clothing, arts and crafts, housewares, utensils, fruits, meats (including intestines, hooves and other animal body parts I found quite unappealing but Mexicans apparently love) and much, much more! I’ll let the pictures tell the story.

Mmm, delicious

Please don’t eat me! he says

Baby Jesus come in a variety of sizes,
with long eyelashes as standard equipment

A kids’ booth

Countless super-cheap restaurants featured authentic cuisine

Frida Kahlo shows up on everything

Love Bridge

On the way home, we stopped at the Puente del Amor and secured a lock of love on the bridge. Watch for a future blog about the locks of love we have put in a number of cities and countries!

January 21, 2019

Crossing the Mexican Border

(A look back at the border crossing experience, or Why We Were Stuck in Laredo for Two Days)

I was a little concerned about crossing the Mexican border. I knew there were several things that needed to be done in order to successfully enter Mexico, and I wasn’t exactly sure how, or where, to do them. I was particularly worried that we didn’t have the documentation we would need for our relatively new car. Finally, I was concerned about how long the lines at the border, because we had nearly a 7-hour drive to our first stop, and we had been cautioned not to drive in Mexico after dark.

I had read that most Americans heading to the Guadalajara area from the eastern US used one of the Laredo, Texas, border crossings. Many used the somewhat out-of-the-way Colombia Bridge crossing, which doesn’t have as much traffic as some of the others. It is not a 24-hour crossing, so our plan was to get there when it opened at 8AM.

The First Attempt

We arrived at the border at 8:15 AM, paid $3.50 USD to cross the bridge and we were in Mexico – almost. I had found very little information on the layout of the border crossing, but I knew we needed to visit Immigration and the Banerjcito (the import office) so we could temporarily import our car, which is a requirement if you want to take your car past the “free zone” the first 20 km or so inside Mexico. Therefore, I was ecstatic when I immediately saw the Banerjcito and an empty parking lot.

Empty parking lot

We took our paperwork and went directly to the window inside. I knew they needed the car registration and/or car title. What I was concerned about, though, was that we only had a temporary vehicle registration paper from Vermont.

Getting rejected at the window

Here’s why: Our car was totaled in August and we had to get a new (used) vehicle less than a month before leaving Colorado. Our Colorado paperwork had not yet been processed by the time we left in September. In fact, the processing was so slow that we had to get the car dealership to send it to Lisa’s brother in Virginia, where we parked our car during our European trip, and it took so long that we needed an extension. We needed that paperwork so we could either fly back to Colorado to process it at DMV, or ask someone to perform the unenviable task of going to DMV for us.

Our second option was to register the car in Vermont, where we own a couple of vacation rental properties and where we were staying for a month.

We decided to go the Vermont route for convenience sake, in early December. Unfortunately, only after they took my Colorado title did I find out that it would take them 4-6 weeks to process the paperwork and issue our car registration document. We had over 5 weeks, so I thought we were still in good shape. When it didn’t arrive, I was concerned but was still hopeful that Mexico would accept our temporary registration.

They didn’t!

Rejected at the Border: Now What?

We turned around, crossed the bridge back into the US and cleared US customs. We had been in Mexico, but not really. We left thinking we were at the mercy of the Vermont DMV, something you don’t want to be. We decided to take a chance and call, and learned that our registration had been sent to our Colorado mailing address, but the address they used didn’t include our box number, so it was returned, where it was just sitting in our file. It would have to be resent. Could it be emailed? We don’t do that, said the man in the DMV office. FedExed? We don’t do that, droned the man in the DMV office.

So what could we do for the next week while we waited for the registration to be snail mailed to our Colorado address, processed by our traveling mailbox, and then mailed to us? And where would it be mailed to, anyway? We had checked out of our hotel and our truck doesn’t have a mailbox.

Regrouping at McDonald’s

We went back to Laredo and regrouped at a McDonald’s, sitting in a corner booth with coffee and a computer. connected to the free Wifi. Looking out the window, we noticed a UPS Store across the parking lot. We dashed over, had a chat with the counter worker, and found out we could use their address to accept a Fed Ex. Newly energized, we returned to McD’s. While Lisa went online looking for a pet-friendly place to stay for a couple nights, I pulled out a cellphone and called Vermont DMV again, this time determined to talk with a supervisor.

Working in McD’s on lodging and getting that registration

However, a kind woman named Diane Hedding answered and immediately offered to help us. All we needed to do was to send her a prepaid shipping label and she would personally take our registration to the mail center and Fed-Ex it to us. She gave us her personal email address, and then sent us a note when she dropped off the package. We found a Laredo Airbnb for the next couple nights and waited for our package to arrive.

The Second Attempt

At 10:30 AM on Saturday, Jan. 11, we had our registration in hand!

Registration!

We moved out of the apartment, packed up cats and luggage, and headed to the border. After paying another $3.50 to cross the Colombia Bridge, we confidently walked up to the Banjercito window. Just one person was in front of us, and the woman at the counter remembered us! This time they told us we needed to go to Immigration first, as they needed our immigration form to process the import.

Bob filling out the paperwork

Lisa filling forms

Lexie, too

We went over to Immigration, again no line, filled out the forms, showed them our Mexican Temporary Resident visas in our passports, and were processed. The immigration form was the same one was had always gotten when flying into Mexico, but there were several boxes that needed to be properly checked. This was done and we were now on a 30-day clock to get into Mexico, get to an in-country immigration office and finish up our Temporary Resident visa requirements.

Back to the Banjercito, still no line, they processed our paperwork, took a $400 deposit, (which will be returned when we take the car out of the country), gave us a sticker for our car and allowed us to proceed.

Getting Through Customs

Next up was Customs. We knew, with our luck, we would get selected for a complete car search. And, true to form we were selected. They didn’t want to see the International Health Certificates we had for the cats, but they did question me several times regarding firearms, alcohol and cigarettes. Next, they looked at what we had in the car and decided to X-ray it, which was probably better than taking everything out. This required humans and cats to get out of the car. I drove the car over to the X-ray area, where I was escorted behind a barrier and a movable X-ray device transited the length of our car, scanning it thoroughly.

I drove back to where Lisa, Lexie and the cats were waiting, and in a couple of minutes, they told us we were good to go. After strapping the cats back in and getting our bearings, we crossed the border! Then we were officially off and driving in Mexico toward Tlaquepaque. It had taken us one and a half hours at the border crossing. That process would have taken much, much longer during busy season, so I felt extremely lucky that we were finally on our way!

WELCOME TO MEXICO!

January 16, 2019

Gas Crisis in Mexico

We didn’t make it to Tlaquepaque! We literally ran out of gas.

Well, we didn’t completely run out of gas, but we did get low enough on gas to not have enough make it to Tlaquepaque, and we couldn’t find any more.

Why No Gas?

Mexico has what are called huachicoleros, or gas thieves. The initial image that comes to mind is someone with a 5-gallon container and a hose that siphons gas out of cars. But in Mexico, the issue is far, far bigger, to the tune of $3B USD a year in stolen gas. And it’s not stolen from cars, it’s siphoned right out of the large gas pipelines that distribute the product from refineries to various points in the country.

The gas is stolen by the cartels in a very systematic, almost professional manner. Tapping these lines, with flammable gas running through them, is a dangerous process, and can only be done by extremely skilled people. The government says over 12,000 taps have been put into the gas distribution pipelines.

Sad, empty gas station

A Government Crackdown

This has been going on for years, but Mexico’s new, anti-corruption president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, took office last month and started cracking down. He decided to fight the huachicoleros by stopping the distribution of gas through the pipelines, identifying the taps and then more vigorously guarding those lines. The plan was to replace pipeline distribution with distribution by tanker truck.

Unfortunately, that distribution plan has failed to meet the needs of the population, leaving some areas, mostly central Mexico — where we are — with a gas shortage (actually a distribution shortage).

We knew about this 10 days ago before we left Pennsylvania. Fully aware that we were heading into the area hardest hit by the shortages, we thought that surely the kinks in the distribution system would be worked out by the time we got to Mexico, especially after we were delayed another two days at the border.

Our trip through northern Mexico was uneventful and there was plenty of gas. There was even plenty of gas in Matehuala, six hours in, where we stopped overnight and easily gassed up the next morning. We knew that one tank of gas wouldn’t get us to Tlaquepaque, so we wanted to go far enough before stopping to ensure we had enough in the tank to make it the rest of the way.

Unfortunately, when it came time to stop, first there weren’t any gas stations for miles, and then the next one we found didn’t have any gas. Its gas nozzles were just lying on the pavement, and a long line of cars idled a half mile back along the roadside. We drove 40 miles to the next town where there was a possibility of finding gas, but none of the five gas stations there had gas either.

Choosing a Detour

So we were faced with a decision, and discussed it while looking at a map of Mexico: continue on toward Tlaquepaque and hope we could find gas, or turn left and take a detour toward the closest city, Leon, where we could find pet-friendly lodging and hope to find gas. We chose the Leon option, not wanting to chance being stranded on a roadside with three cats.

We found the Hotel Soleil Business Class, an affordable, pet-friendly three-star hotel, and walked down the street to a gas station that didn’t have any gas. The attendant told us he wasn’t scheduled to get gas for 4 more days.

We knew we had a problem, so we went and booked a two-bedroom Airbnb apartment in Leon for a week iand decided to make lemonade out of lemons.

Making Lemonade

Leon wasn’t on our initial list of places to visit, but it has turned out to be a wonderful discovery! There’s lots to see and do here, the cats like the apartment, and we are really enjoying our stay.

Meanwhile, we’re monitoring the gas situation online. We have seen a few open gas stations with long lines, and have heard about people waiting four or six hours or more for gas, and then coming away with only a few pesos worth (because of 500-peso limits, about $28US), or not getting gas at all. We are not “line” people.

We are not getting in that line

At some point, when the situation improves, we’ll get in what should be shorter lines, only when we can get enough gas to make it all the way to Tlaquepaque. And then we’ll move on to our next adventure.

In the meantime, join us in exploring Leon!

January 15, 2019

Unemployment in Mexico

Lisa and I walked around the center of Leon yesterday and thoroughly enjoyed it. Leon is not an American tourist destination. English signage was non-existent. Almost no one spoke English. But we thoroughly enjoyed the old town of Mexico’s fourth most populous city and got a very authentic Mexican experience.

It’s hard to describe what my expectations were with regard to moving to Mexico, but I was completely surprised by one thing I noticed yesterday – the numerous signs on stores looking for workers. We must have passed at least 5 stores with “Help Wanted” signs. While America currently has low unemployment, I certainly didn’t expect Mexico to have the same. Yet, when I looked up unemployment statistics, I discovered that the Mexican national unemployment rate for the 3rd quarter 2018 was 3.5%.

Help Wanted: Cleaners

Healthy Employment Picture

I’m not going to try and make a direct comparison to the US unemployment rate, as they are most likely measured differently, but it does support my anecdotal evidence that employment is good in Mexico. (Wages are another thing though). Here in Leon, the rate is a bit higher at 4.5%, but it does look like jobs are available.

Even after having been in Mexico numerous times in the past, and not just in tourist spots, I wouldn’t have expected this. This just continues to reinforce to me that there is much I, and Americans in general, don’t really know about Mexico.

Help Wanted

Thriving Economy

I think people in the U.S. have the impression that Mexicans are lazy, that there is high unemployment in the country, and that the economy is poor. We experienced quite the opposite. In addition to the many Help Wanted signs, we were in a thriving business zone with hard-working professional people. Customer service was attentive, and we didn’t see a single empty business space or “For Rent” sign.

January 14, 2019

How to Road-Trip with Cats

We have taken our three cats — Ellie, Equinox and Kaylee — thousands of miles in a 2015 Toyota Tacoma over the past three months.

These are ordinary cats who hate going to the vet. Yet they have road-tripped successfully across the country from Colorado to Pennsylvania, then PA to Vermont, then VT back to PA, then the big one: PA to central Mexico.

The ultimate destination for this marathon road trip is Tlaquepaque, near Guadalajara, which is still 250 kms away from where we are right now. (We are waiting to finish the trip until the gas shortages resolve enough for us to get the gas we need to make the final journey.)

In the meantime, as we all roost at a sweet little AirBnB apartment in Leon, I’d like to share a few tips about traveling with cats.

Tips for Traveling With Cats

Advance preparation is key
Introduce your cats to their cages well in advance so they can form a positive relationship. We put the cat cages out in the family room two weeks before the trip and placed our cats’ food bowls inside at mealtime, to give them a positive association with the cages. When it was time to leave on the trip, they got in happily. (This only works once.)

Expect them to hate it
“Put me in a cage for 8 hours and I will sit and not complain,” said no cat, ever. Expect a lot of yowling and complaining. Expect them to have accidents and to occasionally vomit from the motion of the vehicle.

Visit the vet in advance
The vet gave us ideas for reducing cat anxiety, including kitty valium and anti-nausea drugs. The nausea stuff helped Equinox but the valium made it worse for Ellie. But we also made sure they were up-to-date on their shots and in good general health, and got their claws trimmed.

The cats with their favorite handler, Lexie

Keep your expectations low
Don’t expect your feline companions to travel as long as you can. After all, humans can stop every couple of hours to stretch their legs, have a snack, and use a bathroom. Even dogs can get out of the car to exercise a little and relieve themselves. But cats are stuck in a tiny cage for the duration. No bathroom breaks. No chance to stretch, or even stand up. So don’t expect them to last 12 hours a day just because you can.

We learned this the hard way on the first leg of our journey, Colorado to Pennsylvania. Bob was trying to power-drive across the United States and the cats let him know in no uncertain terms that any more than 10 hours on the road was decidedly NOT OK with them. First, Equinox had diarrhea just an hour and a half into the first leg of the trip, which was a portent of things to come. The next day, poor Ellie, a fastidiously private litter box user, let out a long, throaty, almost otherworldly groan of embarrassment as she peed in her cage after 10 hours on the road. Every day for the first four days, at least one cat vomited in a cage.

Kaylee, the scaredy-cat at home, turned out to be a natural traveler. She never cried, peed or pooped; she was a perfect little angel in the car. She just hid in hotel rooms. (More on that later.)

So we had a family meeting and agreed: 8-hour limit, if possible. That’s nice for humans, too, because perhaps we can get a run in after eight hours on the road, or do some yoga, or move in some way to compensate for all the hours sitting in the truck.

Be prepared on the road
Here’s our advice for some advance moves to make to ensure success on the road with your cats:

Multiple stops present multiple chances to escape, and nothing can ruin an adventure more than losing a precious furry part of your family. So get your cats chipped and register them.
Get them collars with tags that have your email and phone number on them,
Pack a kitty emergency kit that includes cleaning supplies, wipes, washcloths and towels.
Create a bag of basic necessities: wet and dry cat food (with plastic lids for cans and clips for the food bag), a bottle of water, cat litter, a litter box or two, litter box bags (expensive but essential for travel), pooper scooper,food bowls, a plastic Tupperware container for water, plastic spoons for scooping out food, kitty toys and a scratching post.

Kaylee settling into a hotel room in Leon

Help them feel comfortable
Here’s what we did:

Lexie has a quilt the cats love. It went onto her bed first thing in each hotel room and gave them a sense of home.
We also threw out a couple of their favorite toys.
In the car, we made sure the music wasn’t too loud or jarring. They preferred Amazon Music’s soft pop station to rap, rock or even country.
We adjusted their food to minimize vomiting — just a little dry food first thing in the morning, and an anti-anxiety pill, if needed an hour before the trip.
Some cats like thundershirts to ease anxiety. Ellie likes to wear a harness.

Make sure they are secure
We initially had a vision of happy adventure cats wandering around the backseat, sleeping in our laps while tethered by harnesses to a cable Bob was going to run between the two front seats. But we discovered, after a little research, that that was a stupid and dangerous idea. Free-range cats can become like rockets in case of an accident.

So instead we bought two stackable, hard-plastic cat cages for Ellie and Equinox, who rode double-decker, Kaylee beside them in another cage. All were tightly secured by seatbelts to the back seat, and Lexie sat beside them murmuring words of comfort when needed.

Stacked cats

Expect resistance
Once the cats figure out that you will take them out of the car to stay in a hotel every night, and then put them back into the car the next morning to travel for another eight hours, they will try to thwart you. They will go into hiding as soon as you start re-packing your suitcases. In one hotel room, Kaylee found a spot deep inside the box springs of Lexie’s bed, and we had to disassemble the bed to root her out. In another, we came back from breakfast to find NO cats in the hotel room. They were all hiding deep in corners and crevices.

Can you find the two cats hiding in this picture?
(They are inside the trundle bed)
Note their favorite purple quilt, which was gifted to Lexie
from the Piecemakers at Evergreen Lutheran Church.

We finally learned to contain them early in the morning, before they could hide. In this photo, they are contained inside the shower in the Hotel Soleil in Leon.

Cats coralled into the shower at Hotel Soleil Business Class

Give them a break now and then
In the middle of our five-day trip to Mexico, we stopped in New Orleans for a short layover and rented an apartment with two bedrooms and lots of room to run around. They loved it!

Upon arrival, reward them
At each stop, the first priority was getting the cats out of the cages and giving them food and water immediately. Since they hadn’t had their usual half a can of wet food for breakfast, they would receive that right away, and then get the rest of the can at bedtime.

Find pet-friendly lodging
We found a website called Bring Fido that helps you find pet-friendly lodging (including in Mexico) and allows you to book through Booking.com. There are also certain hotel chains that are universally pet-friendly, including Days Inn (which also has laundry facilities), Super 8 (surprisingly nice for a budget chain), and TownPlace Suites by Marriott. For stays of more than one night, we would visit AirBnB or Homeaway and search for “pet-friendly” in the filters. Hotels usually charge an extra fee per day per pet and cap the number allowed at 2. If we were staying more than one night, renting an apartment was more economical and a lot more comfortable for everyone.

It gets easier
The initial three-person struggle to get each resisting, flailing cat into a cage became a two-person efficient system that became a one-person easily-managed task. A cat crying for 10 hours straight became crying half the time became crying just the first hour. Be patient. Traveling long hours in a car isn’t fun for anyone. Expect to be showered with affection in the hotel room, because they are so grateful to be out of the car and with you again.

Ellie still cries when she gets in the cage. But it doesn’t last the whole time anymore. Kaylee now sits like a Buddha watching the world go by out the front windshield, while Equinox, stomach calm from anti-nausea meds, just goes to sleep. We listen to more Ed Sheeran than we would like, and life on the road with cats is good.

The Buddha cat

January 11, 2019

36 Hours in New Orleans

After the first two days on the road headed for Mexico, we decided to give our cats a break from the car — and ourselves a chance to stretch our legs — and booked an apartment for a couple of nights in New Orleans.

We stayed in the lower level of a house we found on HomeAway.com – two large bedrooms and a spacious living/dining/kitchen — not far from Tulane University. It wasn’t cheap, but after two solid days of driving, we needed to spread out. The cats loved it! We did, too.

Traveling is exhausting, so we did not pack every minute in NOLA with activities. We wanted to experience the city, but we also needed some downtime.

The first thing Bob and I did after settling into our temporary home was to go for a run through the neighborhood, which was near Tulane University. It consisted of charming French colonial bungalows, though the roads were very slanted and there were a number of car-eating potholes. We later learned this neighborhood had been flooded by Hurricane Katrina 14 years ago.

Back from our run, posing in front of our rental house

First, the French Quarter

After showering, we made a reservation at a restaurant called Oceana in the French Corner, near the corner of Bourbon Street and Conti. But when we stepped out of the Uber, we were immediately assaulted by a deafening cacophony of sound. To our left on Bourbon, a radio station DJ was blasting loud rock music. To our right, a bunch of kids were playing noisy percussion on Home Depot utility buckets. Lexie almost screamed from the shock. We tried to navigate past them to see what Bourbon Street had to offer, even sliding into a little outdoor terrace where a quartet was playing jazz, but the bombardment was too much for Lexie.

“This is the worst city I have ever been in!” she shouted over the melee, as we covered our ears and shot for the restaurant.

Oceana provided welcome refuge, as Bob and I happily slurped up our first Hurricanes and we enjoyed classic New Orleans cuisine — jambalaya, blackened catfish, jalapeno hush puppies, red beans and rice.

Drinking a Hurricane

Lisa’s dinner at Oceana

Then we retreated to our apartment to recover.

Second Day: A Fascinating Culture to Discover

The second day we spent much of the morning at home because a rock had hit our windshield the night before and we had to wait for the glass repairman to come fix it. That gave Lexie a chance to sleep late, Bob to get another run in and Lisa to do yoga. We enjoyed beignets for breakfast, a NOLA-style donut covered with confectioners sugar.

Windshield repaired, at 11 or so we set out to explore New Orleans by day. We liked it so much more! We started on the waterfront, where we saw the Mississippi Queen paddleboat and walked along the river, taking in the surprisingly industrial view.

Bob and Lexie in front of the Mississippi Queen

We enjoyed lunch on a balcony overlooking the Mississippi River, and then started wandering. We peeked into the St. Louis Cathedral, enjoyed some street jazz, and discovered the most incredible mask store, where a man was meticulously crafting a carnival mask out of leather. I would have loved to buy one to add to my mask collection!

The mask store window enticed us

The custom-made masks were truly incredible works of art

Voodoo in NoLa

We headed toward the New Orleans Historic Voodoo Museum. I have spent a bit of time in Haiti, including attending a voodoo festival, and we displayed a voodoo flag in our dining room back in Colorado, so I was curious to see how it differed in New Orleans.On the way we visited a vodoo store, which was full of fascinating items with interpretive labels, including books, voodoo dolls, herbs and medicines, and altars dedicated to various spirits and gods. I had a nice chat with the owner, the descendants of Haitians from Cap-Haitien, slaves and plantation owners, and I realized anew what a rich melange of races and backgrounds create the unique New Orleans character. Here are pics from the store:

Herbs and medicines

A voodoo flag

Voodoo dolls. (I left this photo large so you could read the labels and check out the dolls’ anatomy)

The Voodoo Museum offers “a casual and curious experience intended to preserve the legacy of New Orlean’s Voodoo history and culture while educating and entertaining visitors.” It’s only $7 to go in, and consists of a hallway and two rooms jam-packed with the mysteries, secrets, history and folklore of rituals, zombies, Voodoo Queens, altars and more.

Here are a few photos with explanations. I also recommend you peruse the museum’s wonderful website to see and learn more.

Marie Laveau, the mother of voodoo in New Orleans

A paiting of Marie Laveau

A voodoo altar

Cute, right?

Voodoo flag

Paying Homage to Louis Armstrong

Since Lexie and Bob both play the saxophone and Lisa adores jazz, we had to make a pilgrimage to Louis Armstrong Park/Congo Square, which celebrates music and is also a major NOLA gathering place for Native American and African music and culture.

Bob joins the jazz band

Satchmo

The Streetcar and Creole Creamery

We ended the day with a streetcar ride to the Eiffel Society so Bob and I could hang a Lock of Love in New Orleans on a fence in front of a restaurant transplanted from the top of the Eiffel Tower to New Orleans and reinvented as an event space.

New Orleans Streetcar

Lexie taking a ride

Our NOLA Lock of Love

Finally, we visited Creole Creamery, the best ice cream in town and the only one in the world that seems to truly understand me. Instead of having to pick one flavor, they offered four- and six-scoop samplers! Heaven. Their tagline is, “Eat ice cream. Be happy.”

The Four-Scoop Sampler

With an early start scheduled the next morning and ears still recovering from the Bourbon Street experience, we played a wicked game of Pinochle and hit the hay early. But we will be back; it was really just a taste! There are so many restaurants to eat in, we need to enjoy more jazz (we did see a street group outside the St. Louis Cathedral), tour the cemetery, visit the WWII Museum, take a riverboat ride, explore the bayous, and do so much more!