Schauf Blog

Today we plan on making about 656 km to Guadalahara. We have been averaging less than 50 MPH. Not the best but we are driving a tank in traffic and up mountains. We hit about 7,800 in elevation going through the mountains yesterday.

It was 50 degrees in the morning…. cold for 30 year old Diesel engines and tall bald white gringos. Had to warm up the GWagon and park it in a handicap spot which means nothing here.

Dear Apple – please stop crashing my iPhone while taking photos. It’s annoying.

We have developed a list of possible problems and are developing solutions in advance. The biggest of these problems is that there are NO Monster White’s in all of freaking Central America.

In the States it’s “Protect and Serve” but more like “Pester and Swindle” in Mexico.

Oops… didn’t mean to go through Guadalajara Centro… but got a cool reflection picture!!

So it looks like we actually drove around 885 kilometers today. We went past Guadalajara and on to Tepic.

Tomorrow – Mazatlan and the ferry to La Paz and Baja California.

Goal is 592km today. We have to try to push hard the next couple of days to make the ferry in Mazatlan.

We met the guys who maintain the many wind turbines in the area at breakfast. They said it usually a one year project but has taken six because the workers here are not educated.

Luis was holding court with them:

While driving I also learned what “Mineralizda” means in Spanish. It was emblazoned on the side of my nice new 2 liter bottle of cold water. It means “I will explode in your face when you open me”. Not fun when driving.

We stayed in Puebla City at a nice hotel with showers!

Today the plan is to cross into Mexico and get to Oaxaca. This may be quite a process.

We all have to get Visas and then get the newly registered GWagon pass the border and fumigated. Hope they fumigate Luis too!

It was a “drive thru” fumigation process, in a straight line. We hope there was some wax or Rainx in it at least…

Now we wait for bank to open to pay more fees.

Right after I snapped that picture of Jim waiting at the bank everyone commenced to yelling at the Bald Gringo, or “Pellon” which is my newly acquired nick name. Not supposed to take pictures of banks eh? Who knew….

But wait. We need ANOTHER copy. So we crossed the border into Mexico, made a copy and walked BACK into Guatemala.

I won’t put another picture of the bank here… oh but we can’t use the copies just on the other side of the glass inside the bank… cause that would be to easy.

Next is the security inspection. Things are known to sprout legs and disappear. Can’t wait.

update: made it through the security inspections and drove about 92 kilometers and then at a checkpoint we got to get the entire GWagon x-rayed! We drove up on a platforms and a very large X-ray machine scanned the car. Now we are waiting for the results. Hope it doesn’t have cancer!

Drove for a bit and stopped for A Luis bucket list item!

Then we made some new friends who wanted a close look at the GWagon. Sheesh.

Staying in Santo Domingo Tehuantepec tonight.

And 9:46pm local time we had an earthquake! Slight tremor but shook the building good.

Here is the USGS page for the quake we felt. Ah, cool there is a fault line nearby!

https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/us1000h5sq/map

Woke up early and had a nice “drip”. Won’t say it was a shower because for me that implies some semblance of pressure and even heat. It did end up warming in the end so I suppose I know what a shower would be like in a jungle.

We checked out of the hotel and got a call from Luis that he was able to take care of his last bit of business and so we though we were good to leave.

Silly us.

Apparently the Guatemalan bank declined to accept the last payment to the owner of the GWagon. Not good. Can’t leave the country without complete payment – even though Jim paid for half of the vehicle sight unseen. Fortunately the credit to his account had shown up in Jim’s bank so we at least knew where his money was.

The short version of the story is that we pooped some extra cash together and paid the balance and we were on our way.

We are currently averaging 32 MPH. Yeah. Not a typo.

At this rate we are estimating a 7 day drive assuming no issues.