Rescuing 2 Mexicans

The expression “alternative tourism” does not really apply to us. Where ever we go, where ever we “camp”, where ever we eat, we rarely see any tourists. Every morning we take the road, not knowing where we will sleep at the end of the day. Every day offers us new adventures, new sceneries, new food and new encounters with Mexicans of all ages and all social groups.

For 3 weeks, we have been traveling in North-Central Mexico; a mountainous region with scenic roads, many of them not paved. The weather always great, we haven’t seen the rain, however, we have experienced many cold days and nights. We have seen colonial pueblos, mineral, hot or warm springs, breath taking canyons, rivers coming out of mountains, giant tufas, rain forests, deserts, mist, waterfalls in all shapes, ruins, caves, deep valleys, etc.

Lots of people seem happy to chat with us, despite our limited knowledge of Spanish. Sometimes, they tell us about their best “spots”, they invite us to their modest houses. Once, we accepted a lady’s offer to sleep in her living room. Before we left her small village in the mountains, we bought her a flash light and fixed her shower.

Our VW camper takes the gravel steep roads very well despite the horrible speed bums. In average, on the roads we travel, there are more than one speed bump per kilometer, and some of them can greatly contribute to ruin a suspension. As a result, I had to learn to slow down. Sometimes, in a single day, we drive from 100 meter altitude to 2700 meter and down again; no need to say that the scenery is in proportion to these extremes.

We rarely stop to access the Internet, we no longer read newspapers or watch TV. Yesterday, I learned that Benazir Bhutto was assassinated last week.

We are heading to the Chiapas, it is probably a 9 hour drive from here, but it will take us more than one week to get there. We have already taken over 1,000 pictures. Thomas is putting some on http://www.flickr.com/ you can see some of them at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/1moment/

We occasionally rock climb, last time; we rescued 2 Mexican climbers attending a 4 pitch route leading to a 3,000 meter peak in the El Chico National Park. To reward us from saving them, they invited us in a restaurant in Real Del Monte. The best food we had so far (see picture). That was our last meal of 2007, it was a memorable December 31 day.