By David Eidell (12/04)
This morning as I walked out of camp I left a note on the doorstep of my neighbor's 5th wheel. The message was simply "Jenna, and Jean Piere (They are residents of Toronto Canada) I am making my secret potato salad and I invite both of you to share it with me this afternoon".For the last several weeks, my new friends and I have been tempting each other with favorite family recipes --- and I being a victim of my own success in the kitchen, have enough rich recipes at hand to spoil the best of dieting intentions.
But I have gotten ahead of myself.
Some forty years ago (when I was a skinny lad), I attended a driver's meeting at an important waypoint on the "Baja Trail". Far beyond the end of pavement on Mex 1, the "Transpeninsular Highway", even the graded gravel road abruptly gave way to a set of tire tracks. A mere set of ruts leading off into chaparral, cactus and unimagined adventures. The waypoint was "Espinosa's Cafe" and Mama Espinosa gladly traded information about the condition of the "road" about supplies of precious gasoline, food and beer and calmed the fears of the anxious regarding the issue of safety way off the beaten path.
"The bad road brings good people" she stated.
While I cannot in all honesty say that roads in Mexico (at least not the main highways) are "Bad", I can say with a great deal of confidence that "Mexico" is still regarded as somewhat of an "exotic" RVers destination. As such folks that are here have passed something of a mental "hurdle" regarding issues such as language, culture and safety. The process of dealing with these issues acts like a coarse filter and what passes through the filter are folks who at the very least can be labelled "adventerous". Further south, the aggregated miles and daily adventures tend to further refine the character. The ambiance of that early meeting in Espinosa's Cafe can be found whenever eager travelers gather to share information about the road before them, exotic campsites and destinations. Wide shining eyes of first-timers glaze over when a fellow RVer relates stories of utterly transparent bathtub warm Caribbean waters, the roar of howler monkeys in the jungle ruins of Palenque, a procession of a family of ant eaters crossing a jungle shaded byway, or an offshore reef teeming with fat sea bass and lobster.
Nearby RV destinations such as Mazatlan and "Rocky Point" tend to have fewer "true explorers" than say Oaxaca, or San Cristobal de Las Casas. But "fewer" is a long way from "none" and by chatting with folks even at these easy-to-get-to Mexico destinations you'll eventually find travelers who are using the facility mainly as a stepping stone. There's nothing quite like facing up to an adventerous family with several young children who are returning from a long adventure in the jungle to quell your fears about Pancho Villa's ghost.
Just about every beach that you will visit you will see "BC" license plates from British Columbia, interspersed with "Quebec" plates. Some "Quebecois" speak halting English while others are fluent (many to their credit speak outstanding Spanish). All are RVérs and that common denominator leads the way as far as a cultural ice-breaker is concerned.
And then there are the truly "exotic" travelers. When I first drove into the campground I espied a very large boxy military looking vehicle esconced in one of the parking slots. It turned out to be a machine called a "Unimog". Further revelations uncovered the fact that the custom built "house" on the back was living quarters --- the diesel behemoth had tractor size tires, cost a cool quarter of a million dollars and it and it's owners originate from Belgium. The German machine and it's owners have been on the road contunously for eleven years, and their trail includes Europe, Africa, Asia, South America, and presently North America. I believe that if I were to retrace their wanderingsI too would need an all-wheel-drive four wheel steering, caterpillar geared diesel, with ten foot tall air intake and exhaust for crossing crocodile infested rivers.
Perhaps the greatest "hazard" incurred with enjoying the constant flow of colorful and mostly wonderful fellow rvérs down here, is knowing that sometime, somewhere you are going to have to endure "ordinary" RVers again after you recross the border!
I guess that it's going to be another Christmas with lights and tinsel atop a coconut palm swaying in the tradewinds!
Post Script: Mike & Terri Church, authors of the hit "Rvers Guide to RVing and Camping In Mexico" book are currently on the West Coast of Mexico researching and revising their book. If the Aztec Gods, collude with Saint Francis and the rio doesn't rise, it could indeed be a Christmas dominated by maps, henscratched notes, the waving of arms and other signs of intense travel shareware beneath some palm thatch palapa. Without benefit of the internet and email, we would have had scant chance of co-inciding our paths to merge down here.