ODO: 314,756
We got packed up, and now it was time to start exploring Mexico! Like all of Mexico, not just the pretty beaches. But first, we rescued a very shiny Tahoe. You know how much we love helping stuck vehicles. This one belonged to a nice family down from Texas to look at beachfront property. After we did our thing, they very sneakily slipped us some cash disguised as swapping business cards. It made us think that one day we might want to become a beach towing company. About forty minutes later (and many miles down the road) our friends from earlier messaged us that they were stuck again! They managed to find rescue just as we found a safe place to turn around, so we didn’t need to back track much.
Back to exploring! While we were unsticking them, we told the family from earlier our plans for the rest of the day, and they told us the area we were heading was very safe with little to no cartel activity, which was great to hear. We were headed up MX 40 aka Espinazo del Diablo (spine of the devil or devil’s backbone), a notoriously windy mountain road. We weren’t sure what to expect, but we were not disappointed. We drove through landscape that looked like eastern Oregon, Wyoming, Montana, and stuff that was all Mexico. We had wide vistas, pine forests, and interesting rock formations along the twisty and very steep road. At one point we were above 9200 feet! This route is a famous motorcycle road and we followed a couple on a bmw motorcycle up to the viewpoint. We watched as the driver had his very tentative passenger attempt to drive up the road so he could follow her with the drone. She made it a couple hundred yards before she dumped the bike. We shuttled the gentleman up the hill to his lady, luckily no one was hurt. After that bit of adventure, we decided to try and find camp early. The quick change from sea level to 9000+ feet had us feeling the elevation. We found a great campground, something that looked like a national park in the US. Unfortunately it was aggressively expensive, so we headed off into the forest to see if we could find something else. We ended up at a very chilly 8800 feet in the pine forest. Thank goodness for our tiny heater.
Still chilly in the morning, we woke up to 34F. It was a rough transition from the perfect mid 80’s we had spent the past week in. Today we were off to Durango, home to some of the most beautiful architecture in northern Mexico. We were not prepared for a town of 1.8 million way up in the mountains. We started with a yummy breakfast, and headed off to find the historic district. Once the police had helped us pay for parking (we flagged them down because the parking app did not work and we didn’t want to deal with getting a ticket), we went for a solid wander. We found a medium sized covered street market that kept us busy for a couple of hours.
After we finished getting all our steps in, we headed out of town down MX 23. Yes, our plan is literally picking roads on the map that look windy and fun. We were heading out of the town of El Troncón when we had our first weird experience. A young guy in a very shiny red car passed us, and then slowed down to a stop in front of us, the whole time with his hand out of the window making a slow down motion. We were not driving fast. We pulled around him and kept driving, checking the rearview mirror every five seconds for a long time. He didn’t follow us, but it left us very confused and a little uneasy. The road continued on it’s windy, scenic and now very potholed path. We decided to stop early again at the only Ioverlander camp spot within a reasonable distance. It turned out to be an amazing spot, tucked up against the canyon wall next to the river. Surprisingly no bugs, maybe because it didn’t cool off past 80F after dark.
We had a slow morning, enjoying the river, when a big water truck started to make it’s way down the approach towards us. The driver was a super friendly road construction worker filling his truck for the day. I think he was confused to find us there. Our road past camp was surprisingly steep, we had been listening to trucks struggle with it, but didn’t realize how steep until it was our turn. The truck worked hard getting us up that hill. Like the previous two days, the road continued to take us through amazing landscapes turning from mountains to extremely hot high dessert (we saw 106F!) to finally, jungle. There were some serious pot holes along this section of road, in some spots our lane completely disappeared off the side of the cliff.
In a new state surrounded by new plants and bugs, we started to look for camp. We thought we had another river spot, but felt uncomfortable with it’s proximity to a town, and the large amount of active farming and fishing around it. We ended up driving long after dark until we came to Santiago Ixcuintla where we found a great dinner and eventually a hotel where we could park the truck. The hardest thing for us is finding places to park the truck, especially at hotels. It needs to be somewhere safe, but due to our size, parking inside or having to drive under something keeps us out of a lot of places. We managed to just squeeze under the door at the Casino Plaza, so they won our business for the night.
In the morning we showered and headed to San Blas, the start of an absolute nightmare. We tried unsuccessfully to find breakfast (this was our fault, it was nearing noon when we arrived), and settled on chips and salsa at one of the many beach front restaurants. Because these places were located on the sand, we became the main course for the sand flies. We tried bug spray, and being tough, but the salsa wasn’t good enough to keep us there. Instead we headed to a bakery where we discovered cocadas! A most delicious coconut dessert thing, that we couldn’t get enough of. Since this town seemed to be full of bugs, we decided to head down the road in search of less buggy beaches. On our way to a spot that looked great on the map, we stopped at the crocodile viewing area. Sure enough, there was a crocodile sitting right there. But only sitting there. We watched it for about ten minutes and all it did was open its mouth a few times and blink slowly. And now we knew there were crocodiles in the area.
We drove to a secluded beach on the outskirts of Las Islitas. It was absolute paradise, so we decided it was worth putting up with the few bugs that were bitting when we arrived. As those few bugs turned into more bugs mid afternoon, we deployed our screens and KoKo went to hide inside the camper. By the time Berne gave up on outside the bugs were a swarm. This was the day we learned our downstairs screens don’t seal well enough to keep no-see-ums out. We slowly went from being comfortable upstairs to being eaten alive. When we turned on the lights, the ceiling was covered. We spent a solid 10 minutes trying to kill every single one. We destroyed our white ceiling. We repeated this a second time before realizing the bugs were coming in from downstairs. We fought through the massive cloud outside to get the windows closed, which let even more of the bitey monsters inside. Two more rounds of bug smashing later, we decided the damage was probably already done, and resigned ourselves to a terrible night of sleep.
The next morning was rough. We woke up very early, and there were already visible swarms outside of the windows (so grateful our upstairs screens are no-see-um mesh!). A quick discussion about how to best, aka most quickly, pack up and we were outside dousing ourselves in a necessary layer of bug spray. Berne started the truck, blasted the AC and left a single window open. This worked really well to empty the truck of bugs. We have never packed so fast. Once we were on our way back to town for breakfast and itch cream we started to relax a little. Well, one of us did, the other is very allergic to bug bites and the welts were making themselves known. We covered Berne in itch cream, gave him Benadryl and decided to leave this buggy nightmare area behind us. Sayulita was our next stop after confirming they don’t have sand flies. Since we had a tent that was still full of bugs, we got a hotel room and left the tent open all afternoon and overnight in the hopes all the bugs would leave. There were a surprising amount of bugs caught between the outside of the tent and the roof, the ledge around the tent was covered in dead bugs when we opened it up. With the tent airing out, we walked into town for some exploring. We did a small food tour, saw a band and ended things with some pizza. Everything closed early, so we headed to bed early, which was perfect after the previous night.
A day out from The Great Swarm, Berne’s bites were really starting to blossom. We kept him on a steady diet of Benadryl and Claritin as well as slathering him in itch cream. Now that it had been several hours, it was time to clean up the bugs so we could go back to living in our house. We moved from our hotel room to one of the few spots in their campground that wasn’t occupied year round. We set up next to two gentlemen sharing a space, one in a van that no longer moves and the other in a small two person tent, and their three dogs.
But first a walk into town for breakfast! Can’t tear apart the camper for a deep clean on food you make yourself. When we got back we pulled out everything. All the cushions came out, the bedding got changed, and all the blankets and sleeping bag were given a good shake before being set in the sun to air out. We swept up bugs from the benches, ledges and upstairs ledges. We vacuumed and mopped and dusted and wiped until our house was spotless. We even vacuumed between the upstairs screens and the window covers (not because we wanted to, but because many many bugs had gotten trapped and died in those spaces). While everything was airing out a bird flew over and pooped across a lot of it, including our sleeping bag. While this was annoying, a friend told us being pooped on was very auspicious and we should expect good fortune (this is what they refer to as foreshadowing). After reassembling our house, we walked back into town for some dinner and planning. We returned to leaf cutter ants hard at work! KoKo had never seen this in real life before and was very excited, so excited she got bit more than once taking this video.
We enjoyed a fantastic night of sleep back in our bug free bed. Feeling rested, we walked into town for breakfast again (what can I say, we love going out for breakfast). Our neighbor had recommended a little place we decided to check out, Naty’s. Supposedly very famous, we found it on the high side of mediocre. It wasn’t anything special, but it was extremely cheap, and they made a killer agua fresca. All packed up, we headed back north to check out Lo de Marco, a town recommend to us by a fellow traveler. We found a nice spot outside town where KoKo got to practice her tire patching skills. We had picked up a weird nail somewhere, so she got to work. Patching tires is hard work, so it became a team effort. Tire patched, we set up camp and got comfy for the night in a spot with no bugs.
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