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Jimbo
& Karen's 303-952-0232 US ** (011 52) 998-183-99-71 Mexican Cell * JimbodeIsla@aol.com |
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Jimbo
& Karen's 303-952-0232 US ** (011 52) 998-183-99-71 Mexican Cell * JimbodeIsla@aol.com |
Notes from a road trip: Golden, Colorado to Isla Mujeres, part 2 June 4 – June 8, 2010 "time to get busy living, or get busy dying..." Red, from The Shawshank Redemption for the last 2 years, my wife and i had tried to keep two homes going, one in Golden, Colorado and one here on Isla Mujeres… i spend 90% of my time here, while Karen spent 40% or so here, but not much since the first of the year... economically and emotionally, it became too much for both of us…but with a boatload of kids, it seemed like the right thing to do... but it was very difficult to be apart from the woman i love so much...and so we decided to buy the house we have rented for the last 2 years on la isla, we set a date for the drive, packed up as much as we could fit into our pick up and drive for the 2nd time Golden, Colorado to Isla Mujeres, Mexico... although i said I would never do this again, we did. Taken from my notes of our last trip: “After everything is all said and done, am i glad i did it. Would i do it again? Not on your life. Would i recommend it for anyone else? Only for my sadomasochistic friends…you know who you are…” so never say never, cause ya never know… we spent a lot of time researching our route and what we needed to prepare so we would have the fewest problems…most especially while crossing the border…then decided to cross right smack dab in the middle of all the border problems in Juarez… originally, we planned on Saint Theresa, NM 20 miles west, but we stayed in El Paso on a Friday night and we were so close to the border crossing we drove down there on Saturday morning and found there was no one waiting to cross…probably not the smartest thing we have ever done… so we approached the US side and we were stopped by the border patrol officials and were promptly and strongly discouraged from crossing…”are you sure you want to do this? don’t you know about the war?” i guess i need to read the slanted newspapers and online hype a bit more… we just looked at each other and said “what the hell, ya only live once…here goes nuttin” and headed across the Rio Grande… a quick vehicle check on the Mexican side … when asked what were doing with a truck load of crap, we just smiled and said: “vacation”….and apparently that is no problem… sure is a lot different than playing the silly “red light/green light” game at the Cancun airport where you now scan each piece of luggage when you ARRIVE…(not quite sure what they are looking for in those scans)…geez we sure had a TON of stuff in that truck…packed to the gills and every nook and cranny was filled…yet hardly a look under the tarp from the Mexican border control… and next thing ya know, we were on our way… there must be a new road around the edge of Juarez, or one that we missed 2 years ago, but it was a good road that goes around the east of the city…very cool…just get me OUTTA there… we boogied on down the road as fast as possible…we even talked about what we would do in case of a car-jacking…Karen seemed very nervous…I was too, but I tried not to let it show…we really didn’t talk much as our eyes were moving as fast as they could trying to see anything that looked dangerous…I just wanted to get as far away from the border as soon as I could… about 30 minutes in, another stop to register the truck, all papers in order, a lot of triple stamping of documents…moving from one window to the next then back again to the first one…took abut 45 minutes and was mostly painless…another quick check by guys with automatic weapons…a quick wish of “buena suerte” and into the heart of Mexico we went… the speeding ticket in Chihuahua only cost 1000 pesos…it was bound to happen i guess as i was in a hurry to keep moving…it was gonna be 2000 and with zero negotiating on my part he went to 1000…a bargain at twice the price, just lemme go officer…he seemed very pleased with the transaction… we wanted to get all the way to Leon before it got dark, but only made it to Zacatecas…man I hate driving thru that place…I hated it last time and even more so this time…the most aggressive drivers in the world…one guy actually passed me on the off ramp to a street…holy cow they are all in a big, fat hurry…worse city to drive in EVER…not one street was straight or symmetrical or flat…impossible to see any signs except all the crap plastered all over the place for the upcoming election…same poster of the same guy 127 times…spend some of that money on the people dude…must be pretty lucrative to be elected in Mexico, ‘cause they sure try hard… we finally found a crummy place to stay…and an SUV from Colorado we had been seeing along the way was there too…I bet they hated the city too…everyone should…get me outta there…we were just glad to know we weren’t the only stupid gringos driving thru Mexico and that there were others as stupid as we were… the next day was the big “we gotta get thru Ciudad de Mexico alive” day…last time thru the big city Jimbo was driving and we got so lost I am still unsure where we were…so it was Karen’s turn to at least get us to a very critical turnoff just north of the city…which, of course, we proceeded to miss with Jimbo navigating…no big deal…got another good turn off ahead and we can still get around one of the most congested, dirtiest cities on the planet…which, of course, we proceeded to miss again…nice job Jimbo…so I asked Karen to pull over and I would drive…well, easier said than done by that time…it was like a Nintendo game but for real…lanes that vanish into thin air, trucks almost hitting us, little old lady’s trying to walk across the 4 lane road…i kept trying to feel for my eject button by my seat without taking my eyes off the road…no way you can make that drive with only one set of eyes… turns out our map of Mexico City was worthless for the most part…but we happened to see a sign “a Puebla” and made the turn and ended up on the right road…it took nearly 2 hours to get thru the city…it is massive and goes on forever… we drove right smack dab thru the middle of one of the largest cities on the planet…and Karen did all the driving thru the city…what makes me so proud of her is that she grew up in a town so small it didn’t have a traffic signal until she moved away …and I think Golden, Colorado has only two signals…Ciudad de Mexico on a Sunday is a LOT different than rush hour traffic in Golden after work, that’s for sure…she was amazing and I wanted to hive-five on the way out of town, but if we did we would both die from the next obstacle we would have missed, so we did that later at dinner in Puebla… the next morning we found ourselves in the mountains east of Mexico City and Puebla…very scenic and much less traffic, but still filled with obstacles from come from out of nowhere… one time we went to get on an off-ramp and saw a mom trying to cross the highway with her little girl – 2 or 3 years old…they were crazy to be on that road and for good measure…a sedan passed us going around 90 mph and just missed the two of them and didn’t even bother to slow down…no brake lights…nothing…death was averted by inches once again… ya know those emergency runaway truck ramps? We have them in Colorado in the mountain highways that stretch for about a ½ mile of deep gravel and posts to slow the truck down gradually…well, Mexican runaway truck ramps are a little bit different…the first one was about 40 yards of gravel, then a solid rock wall about 100 ft high…hmmm…guess that will stop ya…the next one was about 40 yards of gravel, then a cliff going over the side of the mountain…no guard rail…nothing…hmmm…some farmer 800 feet below is gonna get a big surprise someday…things like that should not be funny…but I couldn’t stop giggling about it…someone just didn’t think that one thru and it made me laugh out loud for miles… by the way, i pretty much sprained my face trying to pronounce some of the city names around Mexico City, and all throughout Mexico… Tepotzotlan…Cuautitlan…Tlahuapan…Tequixquiac…seriously…I am not making those up…and my favorite: Ixtapaluca. I sure am glad I never took a Mayan history class when I was school. I thought I was holding the map upside down and had a hard time figuring out which way was right side up again…don’t they have any towns like Golden, Denver or Boulder? Apparently they were not Mayan gods, so no… after feverishly looking and finally finding a nice place to stay in Merida after day 4, we headed into Cancun from the west on day 5 and it’s as crummy there as it is coming up from the airport…we finally made it to Punta Sam and our beloved rusty car ferry… it was almost as if they were waiting especially for us, our wait was only 10 minutes and we parked it right in the front row and our eyes glazed over, my head tilted slighted to the side and i started to drool as we saw our isla de mujeres in the distance… it was a triumphant feeling…one of true accomplishment to make it all that way…both literally and figuratively…we were emotionally exhausted and energized at the same time… along the way, we crossed thru some barren deserts and some tropical jungles, drove over tall mountains and along side the Gulf of Mexico, thru one of the biggest cities in the world and the smallest villages I have seen… we didn’t see any decapitated gringos from Colorado along the side of the road and the drug cartels left us alone…i think it was our Italian Greyhound we had riding with us as a watch dog keeping us safe…good job Leo… as we rode the car ferry that day, i teared up a bit…although I had spent almost all of my time on la isla for the last 2 years, we always had a home in Golden. Now, Isla Mujeres is our home. No longer just a dream, but now a reality. We were headed home. for the last several months I had felt like Andy Defresne from Shawshank Redemption “I guess it comes down to a simple choice…get busy living or get busy dying”… for a long time i could hear Red saying a hundred times in my head as i waited for my beautiful wife to come to join me in paradise…(see movie clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YInN9mc9vXA ); “I find I’m so excited I can barely sit still or hold a thought in my head. A start of a long journey who’s conclusion is uncertain. I hope I can make it across the border. I hope to see my friend and shake his hand. I hope…” I really only crave 2 things in my life: my wife who is truly the love of my life …and this beautiful, tropical, Mexican, Caribbean island that treats my body and soul so very, very well… time to get busy living… disfruta la vida… Jimbo
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