Thursday a.m. - very, very foggy again
Ramon is coming to finish the brake job today. The back brakes are done now he is working on the front ones.
Tuesday we headed back up the hill to Tepic. This time we took the road back towards San Blas and up the highway we came in on. It is not quite as far or as twisty as the road to Tepic. Crossing over this bridge we talked about the first time we came down this road in 1978.
At that time there were women washing their clothes in this river. Click here for
link to web page about that trip
A flagger slowed us down as just around the corner were road workers fixing the holes in the road. That means when we leave Sunday the road will be pretty nice – no potholes left.
Check out the flowers entirely covering the roof of this little house.
These trees have just started blooming – they are bright, bright yellow with big puffy flowers.
After about twenty miles we were back on the Autopista climbing up to 3000 feet. Just after passing the toll booth and paying out our 47 pesos toll (about US$4) we came across this guy just meandering down the highway. Wonder what they charged him for a toll?
And do the cane trucks have to pay more because of their height and the fact they keep dropping cane on the road.
This is the way we’ll go in Jennie when we leave for Guadalajara so we continued to the intersection of Highway 15 and Highway 200 – just checking out the directions and traffic. Then we got on the street into the central part of town. For the last couple of years it has been under construction and hard to traverse. It is completely done now and all the effort well worth it.
Whole new meaning of Street Sweepers – At this corner there were 20 to 30 people, a lot of them women, sweeping the street. Even sweeping between the cannonball topes.
They were doing an excellent job and there wasn’t a stray piece of paper or twig anywhere to be seen.
I’m always amazed at how small so many of the stores are. Some can’t be any bigger than 10 x 10. And there is very little lighting inside them. Electricity here is very expensive.
After parking we walked around the main plaza for awhile. These are cocadas, a coconut candy that one vendor was selling. His cart was parked in the street next to the sidewalk.
This man was selling some kind of cooked meat by weight – when he wasn’t taking a siesta that is.
And I saw this darling little dress – Couldn’t resist – it is about a toddlers size 2. So cute.
On another corner we could buy decorations for the house. Large flowers and feathers and branches. It must get heavy to carry after a while.
Walking further if we were hungry we could have purchased tortillas and beans from this vendor. The griddle was almost too hot to walk by.
And if we wanted music – a lot of it was available just walking by us.
The Huichol Indians have a big presence here in Tepic. Just a couple of the men with their beautiful embroidered outfits. We asked last year and were told it takes up to a year and a half to complete the embroidery on one outfit – shirt, pants, belt and shoulder bag.
The women’s skirts and blouses aren’t quite as elaborate but they’re made of a silky material with lots of different colored rows of lace on them.
Discovered something new this time in downtown Tepic that I hadn't noticed before. This yellow building is one of the original buildings here. In 1761 it was the house of the town’s priests. Then from 1792 to 1811 it was the home of a doctor. Now it houses a 3 Hermanos shoe store.
We stopped for lunch at a very fancy hotel with a nice restaurant.
Just across the street from the big pink and white government building. On the menu they had
te helado – ice tea - so I ordered some. I should have wondered when two more waiters came over to verify “
Te Helado?” “Yes.” Imagine my surprise when I got an old fashioned soda fountain glass full of cool water, a couple cubes of ice and two tea bags in it. One black - the other lemongrass. Eventually they let up enough flavor to make a good tasting tea – but by then the ice had melted. So I kind of got almost cold almost tea.
I love the traffic in the big cities, never know what you’ll almost run into or find. There is “No Parking” in this area – no one seems to pay attention to the signs – in fact some people double park here. And this guy was standing in the middle of the street reading his newspaper as cars flew past him.
On another corner was an old fashioned organ grinder wearing a bugs bunny suit just cranking away!
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| no monkey though |
And at a very busy intersection was this man performing in the middle of the street for the cars stopped for the red lights.
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| He is waiting for the light to change |
His wife and child were standing on the center divider waiting for him.
We took the twisty turny road back to the campground. Most of the traffic was going up the hill so we just took our time going down. Again through miles and miles of mango orchards, banana plantations and cane fields. You know I don’t even know what a mango looks like, I know I’ve seen them but couldn’t describe one if I had to.
Coming through Aticama The Driver decided to take the short cut through the beach instead of the road going way around a couple of hills. Then we just continued on up the beach. Jennie patiently waiting for our return.
We almost got to San Blas before we couldn’t go any further. Once back on the road we stopped to buy banana bread then on home.
Come dinner time decided I didn’t want to cook so we headed for The Social Club in San Blas again. Another delicious dinner – salad, veal scaloppini and home made cheese ravioli. Phil is an excellent chef – wish we could take him home with us.
