Little boys and grown men with their heads on fire, running around the town square to cheers and to loud traditional Mexican fiesta music (obviously!). Fiestas in Latin American towns are always fun, bright and quirky affairs reflecting local colour and tradition. We’ve seen much of such quirkiness in our travels, but in El Tule, Oaxaca, they out-quirk the quirkiest of traditions.
Tah-dahhh!!! Today, 6th February 2019 marks our fifth anniversary on the road, living full-time in Cuthbert. Happy Anniversary to Us 😊. After taking delivery of Cuthbert from Bocklet and giving up our jobs in December 2013, we spent January 2014 fitting him out with our stuff and preparing for our new life on the road. Finally, on the morning of Thursday 6th February 2014, we left UK on the Eurotunnel for a shake-down trip around Europe.
Five years, 167,000 km, 46 countries on four continents later… here we are in Oaxaca, Mexico… watching from afar as our homeland implodes in the midst of Brexit muppetry and mayhem. Here’s a short video of Cuthbert’s highlights over the last five years. Grab some popcorn and enjoy!
Continue readingOaxaca. What kind of a name is that? And how do you even say it?? Well… it’s both a city and a state in south/central Mexico. For the uninitiated, the name’s of Aztec-Nahuatl origins and pronounced Wa-ha-ka. It’s a pretty colonial city, with nice architecture, history and most importantly, some good coffee shops. There’s lots to do for Christmas in Oaxaca and the icing on the proverbial cake, is at around 1,500m asl it has one of those perfectly sunny-but-not-too-hot climates. Nice. It’s a top place to park-up for the festive season, check out some radishes (yes… you’ll see) and to deal with a grumpy glow-plug. It might even be an opportune spot to take delivery of a new windscreen for Cuthbert. We live in hope.
Woah!! Another year over! 2018 was our fifth year on the road and we tootled just over 20,000km between Colombia and Mexico. We thought we’d end 2018 with a few random/geeky/curious statistics from the year…. Continue reading
“So then I thought, if I can shout about my own chickens, why not shout about other businesses? Now I make money from that too” Maria is an entrepreneurial lady with a micro-finance loan from En Via to set up her chicken business. But soon she was branching out into the ‘shout-out’ business. I was fascinated to meet her and other women entrepreneurs, to learn the stories behind their enterprises: rug weavers, caterers and an ‘emergency hairdresser‘. Learning about micro-finance in Mexico is one of the most worthwhile days I have spent in almost five years of full-time overland travelling.
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As the crow flies, it’s only 420km through the central highlands from San Cristóbal in Chiapas, to Oaxaca City, but the only feasible routes detour way-down to the coast. Pacific or Caribbean – either way it’s around 800km. A potentially jam-packed arribada turtle beach on the Pacific side lures us in that general direction, but we’re torn with our timing… torn between lingering in places of beauty, or rushing in the optimistic expectation of resolving our on-going windscreen saga. Such are our daily overlanding dilemmas. In the end, we find some (non-Mayan) rubble and a lotta, lotta baby turtles….
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Route planning can be carried out in meticulous detail, or extremely vaguely, or anything in between. Generally, we favour the ‘extremely vaguely’ option, but travelling Chiapas State in south Mexico is an exception to this randomness – a bit of route-planning caution is required. With Mayan ruins planning on the other hand, we’ve developed a reckless tendency to live life on the edge, running a real risk of ‘overload’ and becoming ‘Mayan’d Out’.
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Just over five weeks ago we cruised into Mexico from Belize and started our quest to replace Cuthbert’s cracked windscreen. We hunted across the Yucatan peninsula… Chetumal, Cancún, Mérida, wherever… and whilst waiting for replies, we had plenty of time for exploring Yucatan. The Yucatan peninsula is dismissed by many as “too touristy” and “full of cruise-ship visitors”. Well… it’s true, we cannot tell a lie… it does have its ‘mega-hotspots’ to which many thousands of tourists fly or cruise in every week. But that’s not to say there aren’t great places to explore away from the mass tourism. And we have a rather freaky sequel to our Day of the Dead experience too!!!
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Mexico’s Day of the Dead is gaining in global notoriety in recent years. Mexican and international media is ‘bigging-it-up’ to the world. It’s been on our radar over the last couple of years as we’ve travelled up through South and Central America. This year, we’ve reached Mérida, Yucatan at just the right time. Day of the Dead Mérida is marketing itself as a tourist destination city for the event. We’re excited to be here, but it actually turns out to be not entirely what we expect. First, we learn how that James Bond chap has a lot to answer for. And secondly, we find it something of an Emperor’s New Clothes experience.
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“Ándale, ándale!” says Speedy Gonzales with gusto. “Arriba, arriba!”. So far, we’ve found that Mexicans are lovely people but aren’t all quite as ‘speedy’ as the iconic mouse might imply. After three years in Latin America we’re used to the mañana approach. But even by the standards of the region, things are slooow here. We’re in Yucatan, in limbo. How so? Read on…
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