Overlanding Florida: Anything but The Mouse

From around the world people flock in their millions to Florida, or Orlando to be more precise, to visit The Mouse (or The Duck, or the Frozen girl, or whatever this week’s Disney-fad happens to be). That’s all rather splendid, but we’re here to visit friends… friends we haven’t seen in a loooong time! We love life on the road but if there is one thing we miss, it’s spending time with old friends. Florida is our rare chance to put that right. And as we happen to be in the neighbourhood, we thought it would be remiss of us not to do a teeny bit of Florida overlanding stuff too. So we explored the ‘panhandle’, kayaked the creeks, saw some space stuff, some race stuff, and turned north at America’s bottom.

florida overlanding
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The Deep South USA

For some, the Deep South USA conjures-up images of cotton plantations, white mansions and big dresses (as in… ‘Frankly my dear… I don’t give a damn’). Or maybe some thing jazz and blues marching street-bands. For us, it turned out to be lots of great creole food, some ‘fake-news’ Tabasco sauce and failing miserably with a GPS and fake American accents.     

The deep south USA
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Howdy Texas

Howdy Texas! What an absolutely amazing start to the USA ya’ll have been. When we crossed the border a month ago, we knew Texas overlanding would be a huge change from Mexico, but this Lone Star State has delivered waaay beyond our expectations. We saw cool scenery, wildlife, cities, space rockets, history, politics, long-horns, money-printing and a rock-star. We won an award and we saw (a lot of) stuff fried. But by far the best thing has been the people – Texans are just the best!  

State Fair of Texas
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Adios Amigos: Crossing the Rio Grande

The Wall loomed at the top of Mexico. Crossing the Rio Grande into the USA felt like a mahuuusive milestone in our travels. Not merely the end of Mexico, but Latin America too. Almost exactly four years after we hopped on the ship in Germany to sail to Uruguay, we ended our Latino trail entering the Lone Star State of Texas. Yes, we were absolutely looking forward to greeting Uncle Sam, but our crystal ball predicted change… big change. Some good change, some bad change, but definitely change.

crossing the rio grande
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North East Mexico – The Final Leg

You know what…? Even after a year around Mexico, this place never ceases to amaze us. Not many overlanders tour north east Mexico, they usually dig the western delights of Baja California and Copper Canyon. We did those too, they’re great, but we wanted to start USA in Big Bend National Park. It made sense for us to exit Mexico on the eastern side into Texas. Leaving San Luis Potosi, we steeled ourselves for some long days of tedious driving to the border. But Mexico had a few final tricks up its sleeve. Who knew that north east Mexico had some real little gems???

north-east mexico
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Middle Mexico – Much to do

What with over five years on the road, 46 countries, 180,000km ‘n all that… we think we’ve seen a fair chunk of the world. But rarely have we come across an area so jam-packed with things to see and do as middle Mexico. Around almost every corner is a new chance to marvel, sense, taste, smell, gawp, laugh or smile. I hesitate to offer one of those ‘we went here, then we did this…’ list-type blogs…. but here’s a teeny little insight into our whirlwind of activity…

teotihuacan
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Copper Canyon – Brave or Stupid?

“Those Mexicans are out to hi-jack your car, steal your dollars, poison your tortillas and eat your Hershey’s”. To some, merely popping over the border to order a taco in Chihuahua amounts to ‘Operation Certain Death’. We could not agree less with that particular approach, but we’d be a bit naïve to not recognise some travel risks. To cope, we’ve developed our own finely-tuned BSMS (Brave-or-Stupid Monitoring System). Every overlander has to tune their own personal sense of ‘brave or stupid’ and Copper Canyon posed a small challenge to ours.

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Baja California

Baja California might reasonably be accused of having a slightly mis-leading name. It’s not actually California at all. In fact, it’s not even part of the USA. It’s the 1,500km long, thin sticky-out bit of land dangling down the Pacific side of ‘mainland’ Mexico. We explored its beaches, kayaked the coastline, drove some remote 4×4 trails, ate too many fish tacos and discovered the new nation-state of the USG. And it turned out to be whale-shark season, so we went for a swim with them too!

baja california
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Durango

Durango. It’s a town, it’s a state of Mexico, it’s one big wild-west movie set, it even lent its name to a movie, and there’s a notorious John Wayne connection. There are few places more ‘cowboys and indians’ than Durango. There we were… just moseying-on through, minding our own business when the whole wild west ‘thing’ just grabbed us by surprise and got us to hang-out for a few days. Why, in the name of Duke’s boots, had we never even heard of this place before?

sierra de los organos
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Central Mexico: Fights and Volcanos

Driving in Mexico City is a doddle any time… any time that is, provided it’s a Sunday. After our drive up to central Mexico from Acapulco, we shuffled our schedule to drive in on a Sunday, mooch around the capital and see the legendary Lucha Libre fight-night. Then we went to see where a man tried to plug an erupting volcano – how do we think that worked out, eh? We saw a few ‘Magic Mining Towns’ and… oh yes… we also got lost underground!

Volcan Paricutin
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A Clear View to Acapulco

Okay, sorry… we’ve been slack on the blog-front recently. But in our defence, we’ve been busy doing stuff. And ‘stuff’ includes cruising down to the Pacific Coast for some kayak action and marvelling at the fearless cliff-divers of 1960s hot-spot, Acapulco. But before all that… our doing ‘stuff’ involved having a windscreen fitted!!! Yes, you read that correctly… a windscreen fitted! We now have a clear view all the way to Acapulco!

Acapulco
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Overland Flexibility – A Windscreen in Mexico

The key to successful overlanding… meticulous planning? Or just getting lucky? Maybe a bit of both. The real answer is ‘flexibility’. You never know what’s around the corner. Maybe a happy-thing, maybe a snagette, but you’re onto a loser if you can’t flex to deal with it. One sunny day in Belize, we suffered a badly cracked windscreen. We knew instantly that we had a bit more than a snagette on our hands. Here… is a ‘bad news – good news – bad news’ story of overlanding flexibility.

cracked windscreen
Bugger!
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Cuthbert’s Footwear – Michelin XZL Tyre Review

We recently received a new set of Michelin XZL tyres for Cuthbert which should hopefully see us overlanding all the way through North America (if we ever get up to USA and Canada that is 😊) We’re still chilling-out in Oaxaca, Mexico waiting for a new windscreen. Marcus decided to waste a bit of time doing a video to answer the many questions he gets about the tyres and the pressure settings. If you’re curious about tyre-stuff, grab some pop-corn and enjoy!

Click here for the rest of our tyre info.

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Monarch Migration

Central Mexico, mid-late winter… it’s the baffling Monarch butterflies migration season. No exaggeration… millions of them. These little chaps are a Mexico bucket-list item for us and a prime example of the inexplicable natural world. In any case, we’ve got a bit of time on our hands still waiting for a new windscreen, so we do a 1,500km loop to see them. While we’re at it, we include a short volcano crater hike at over 4,200m asl (breath-taking in more ways than one) and we follow the trail of Mexican revolutionary hero, Emiliano Zapata.  

monarch butterflies
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Heads on Fire – Toro Fiestas in El Tule

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.

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Five Years… and Counting…

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!

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Christmas in Oaxaca: Radishes and Trees

Oaxaca. 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.hierve el agua oaxaca mexico

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Tales of Micro-finance in Mexico: Chickens, Rugs and Emergency Haircuts

“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.micro-finance in mexico Continue reading →

Turtles and Timing: Chiapas to Oaxaca

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….arribada turtle beach Continue reading →