So Where Were We. . .

. . . Ah yes, Santa Fe. Santa Fe is cold. We arrived in the mountainous city just in time, as we stalled the bus pulling into Beth's neighborhood. We had depleted our filtered veggie oil down too low, due to the difficulty of filtering veggie oil in the cold, and sucked up some air into the veggie oil lines. Lucky for us, the bus also runs on diesel so we switched over for the last half mile and pulled into the driveway weary and cold. Santa Fe is cold.

<--Santa Fe

Beth-->

While in Santa Fe we did many fun and adventurous things, almost all of them indoors, because Santa Fe is cold. We went indoor rockclimbing, watched Beth (remember Beth, she's Betsy's roommate from Scotland, we mentioned her several months ago in the last blog). Anyways we watched her play indoor ultimate frisby, she's very good, she can make frisbies do majical things, and she was nice enough to let us stay in her house, which was warm. Thus, we were able to filter veggie oil, because we put in her house, which was warm, and then in her bathub filled with hot water from our showers, which was very warm. So we were able to filter veggie oil, kind of, because our pump was dying, because it pumped too much veggie oil in the high dessert, which was cold. We also went hiking and it snowed pretty hard while we hiked, because we were in Santa Fe, and Santa Fe is cold. It was the bus's firs experience in the snow, I'm not sure how much it liked it. We also found some more veggie oil in Santa Fe after looking very hard all day and almost giving up and getting very cold, because, well, Santa Fe is cold.

Betsy in the snow & The bus's first snow.

By the way, Santa Fe is in the desert, in the south, in New Mexico. I don't know about you, but when I think desert of New Mexico, cold is not the first thing that comes to mind, neither is snow, which it did alot. In fact, it snowed so much, that we had to stay at Beths for an extra couple of days and her grandmother was late for her own funeral, due to the fact that it was also snowing in Chicago, where her funeral was. In addition to this unfortunate event, Betsy and I could not go to the Grand Canyon, as planned, since the Grand Canyon was officially covered in 3 feet of friggin snow, thus making it cold, and unsuitable for camping in a bus, not to mention a tiny tent.

On the Way to Phoenix (crossing the continental divide).

So we went to Phoenix, which is warm. First though, we had to cross the continental divide, which is cold, and very high, and snowy. So we did that, and the bus protested, because it doesn't like to start when it was -10 the night before, and the filter clogged and we were once again running low on filtered veggie oil, due to the fact that we were in the friggin high desert, which is cold. So we saw some cool canyons, and drove on some treacherous snowy roads and stalled several times, and eventually got to my family's friend, Mary's house, just outside of Phenix, which is warm. And it was very nice to finally be warm.

The Cold Wet Desert

It seems like a long time ago that we arrived back in Texas and made the journey from San Antonio south to Mission to reunite with our bus. Upon our return we finally met Bob and Dorothy, who had previously only been characters in many stories told by Judy and Bert of St. Louis and Kathy and Roy, who we got to know a bit during our previous visit to Mission. Bob and Dorothy took us in like we were their grandchildren. Bob showed us how to change the oil in the bus and gave us some helpful tips about maintenance and Dorothy made sure we were very well fed. One night we went to watch them square dance and found ourselves in a room of at least one hundred retirees who all made the confusing choreography look easy. If Jori and I had tried to participate we would have tangled up the entire square in a matter of moments, but it looked like a lot of fun.

We were a bit sad to leave Dorothy and Bob and the rest of the friendly people we met at Valle del Sol behind, but were excited to hit the road again. Over the next few days we drove North West, following the Rio Grand. As we went we got more and more out into the middle of nothingness. Occasionally, if watching closely you spot a small RV parked out in the middle of the vast openness, sometimes it has a few cars surrounding it. There are usually not electric lines running to it. If you keep driving for another hundred miles you might come to a small town, often many of the houses and buildings are boarded up. Some of them are ghost towns in the making, maybe some will someday make a come back.

After a lot of driving we arrived at Big Bend National Park, where we met a friendly ranger named Jim, who later showed us his solar panels, wind mill, and the house he is building out of paper crete, a material that resembles concrete, but is remarkably light when you pick it up and is supposed to be great at insulating. Around the time we arrived at Big Bend, a cold front hit Texas and the nights became freezing cold. It was down in the teens a few times, but warmed up enough in the day to make for good hiking. While hiking and driving in Big Bend we saw a lot of deer, a black bear climbing the side of a mountain (Jori was the first to point out that the bear went over the mountain), some javelinas (pigs), and several roadrunners, among other birds. As it is winter and most snakes are hanging out in their dens we avoided any encounters with rattle snakes, though they are supposed to be quite common in the summer months.

During the recent weeks we’ve also learned a few things about veggie oil and our particular system. The first is that if you purge (run off diesel while returning the fuel not burned by the engine to the veggie oil tank) too long when your veggie tank is full you wind up with a most unpleasant mixture of diesel and veggie oil spurting out the top of the tank. The second is that veggie oil expands considerably when you heat it up from being cold (obvious, right). We spent several rather chilly nights sleeping with the doors and windows open as diesel is a difficult smell to get rid of. We eventually managed to eradicate it by flushing hot water and simple green under the veggie tank while parked on a slant so that it would all run out the back of the bus. We have driven over 6,000 miles on veggie oil at this point and are thankful that this is the worst thing that has happened to the bus. Sometime we’ll have to write a bit about our adventures dumpster diving for veggie oil and the art of finding unsuspecting grease dumpsters.

Moving on from Big Bend and veggie oil spills, but unfortunately not the cold nights, we drove north and spent a few days staying with Trevor and Emile parked near the dome they are in the process of building. We met Trevor at a restaurant he was playing at when we stopped in to get out of the cold for a few hours. We discovered that while there are no lines for electricity, you can get Netflix in the desert and spent an evening watching the Simpson’s movie in a metal storage container that serves as a place out of the wind until they finish the dome. The comings and goings of the sun tend to be pretty fantastic in the desert.

When we left Trevor and Emile behind we continued to head north, stopping in Alpine to get the tie rods and a few bushings replaced and to do some laundry. We drove through the Guadalupe Mountains and stopped to take a hike through a canyon before driving towards Carlsbad Caverns. At the caverns we walked a mile down a paved path of switch backs that descends 700 feet into the Earth before opening up into the “Big Room.” The whole cave is filled with stalactites, which hang from the ceiling, stalagmites, which rise up from the floor, and columns, formed when the two join together, along with numerous other interesting features. The pictures, like with so many other places, don’t really do it justice. In this case enlarging , however, enlarging the photo should help. Being in the cave was like visiting another world.
Right now we’re in Santa Fe staying with a friend I met in Scotland. It’s been a few years since I’ve seen her and it’s nice to catch up. Hope all is well with all of you.

South of the Border (Way South)

So after our 17 hour refridgerated bus ride, we pulled in to Veracruz, and noticed that this part of Mexico was quite warm, which was nice. However, we also decided that we hadn't been on busses nearly enough recently, so we decided to book another overnight bus down to San Cristobal de las Casas, in Chiapas, for that evening. With about ten hours to kill, we went to wander about the port city of Veracruz. There were street performers, live concert bands, traditional dancing, a long pier, pretty architecture and lots of bright lights. This was very entertaining until Betsy started getting a migraine, and there was no place quiet to go. Eventually we were able to get on our bus to San Cristobal, where we both promptly fell asleep in a reasonably temperatured climate.


The next morning we awoke in San Cristobal and found ourselves over 2000 meters (6000 feet) higher in elevation. We spent just over a week staying with a local family, taking some much needed Spanish classes, and wandering around the town and it's markets. One afternoon we visited Chamula, a small town even further up in the mountians than San Cristobal that is home to a large indigenous population. While in San Cristobal we also got to witness some of the festivities associated with the celebration of the Virgin de Guadalupe which include lots of traditional costume, music and dancing, and setting off of lots of fire crackers at all hours. At the end of the week, with our Spanish speaking abilities much improved, we decided to visit Tonola, a small town near the Pacific coast in southern Mexcio.

A Mexican family we met in Texas (remember them?) had family in Tonola that offered to let us stay for a few days and we figured that there is no better way to practice a language than surrounding yourself with people who speak it and no English...and so off we went. We had a wonderful time and stumbled through many conversations and introductions entirely in Spanish. We went to the beach a few times (and later found out that there are a lot of great white sharks off the coast near Tonola), visited Carlos' ranch for a tour on horseback, and spent an evening meeting some other members of the family.

After a few days in Tonola we headed back up into the moutians to visit the Mayan ruins of Palanque. The excavated ruins span several acres and you can still walk in/up most of them. They are surrounded by jungle and we were lucky enough to see and hear some howler monkeys while we were there. The ruins were one of the most amazing things we've seen in our travels.

From Palanque we headed for the coast of the Yucatan Penisula and spent several nights in a little cabana on the beach in a popular tourist town called Tulum. We went swimming, swung in the hanging beds along the beach, cooked and hung out around campfires at night, and met a bunch of traveling students from all over the place during our time there. We also visited some more Mayan ruins that were a bit less impressive and much more crowded than those of Palanque. They did, however, have a nice beach. From Tulum we traveled to Cancun and spent a couple of nights in a hostel before flying home to NH for the holidays.

The Long Road to Texas

Well, after spending a wonderful week in New Orleans with Faithe, Woody and the dogs we decided to make haste and get to the tip of Texas in time for Thanksgiving, so that we could head into Mexico the next day and have a little more than three full weeks south of the border. Thus, we filled our tanks with po-boy veggie oil and set off, managing to drive almost 800 miles in just under three days along the Gulf Coast of Texas. We spent a night in a state park and a Wal-mart parking lot (no we didn't buy anything from them), before pulling up to El Valle del Sol rv park. Getting veggie oil in Texas proved to be quite difficult, most likely due to the prevalence of bio-diesel production in this area. Good for the environment, bad for hippies trying to save money. Anyways, we spent way too much time looking for decent oil dumpsters and were quite sick of the whole thing by the time we found a couple of good sources. We finally ended up getting about 45 gallons of good looking oil from a chinese buffet. We did however have to pay the restaurant manager $10.00, because the people who regularly emptied his dumpster had begun paying him this amount every time they came to suck it dry. We obliged and snickered at having to pay 20 cents a gallon for fuel, the first time in 4,000 miles we have paid anything for used veggie oil.
Interestingly enough, when we finally arrived at the RV park, it turned out to be a community for "winter texans," mid-western retirees who drive down to southern Texas for the cold months. Erma, the manager, set us up with a nice little place to park our bus at a reasonable rate, and we were even able to make use of the pool and hot tub in the warm Texas sun. The next day we were invited to Thanksgiving dinner with a few hundred of the winter texans. It was like having a holiday with 200 grandparents, which of course, was awesome. It would have been a very lonely Turkey-day in the little blue bus, otherwise. We also ended up having a description of our journey and veggie-bus announced part way through the dinner, so of course there were many interesting questions and conversations after dinner since most of these retirees travelled in huge diesel camper rigs.
As Friday came around, the 90 degree Texas sun decided to hide and allow a chilly 40 degree rain to fall and freeze us, so that we would appreciate the fact that we would be in Mexico for December. During this dreary drizzle we had some unexpected guests drop by the bus. It seems that word had spread around this largely mexican community that there were a couple of kids planning to go down to Chiapas. One local family, made up of Rosie, her husband Jesus, and their son Joshua (don't forget the "J's" are pronounced "H") were so overcome by joy that we were visiting their home that they decided to drop by and let us practice our horrible spanish with them. Before we knew it, Rosie had called her brother in Tonola, Chiapas and gotten the okay from him for us to come down and visit. Also, Josh, who spoke excellent english with absolutely no accent gave us a ride to the bank and then the bus station, where we hopped a crowded shuttle to Reynosa, Mexico, an large industrial city just across the border from Mission, Texas. This family was so nice, we can't wait to see them when we get back to Texas.
Once in Reynosa we had a long wait in a cold bus station for the next bus to Veracruz. We met several nice spanish speaking people, and Betsy practiced her conversation skills, all the while wishing she had a better teacher in college. After 4-5 hours we finally got on our bus, only to find that they had the air conditioning cranked and the bus was even colder than the freezing cold bus station. Thank god we we heading south, because the first several hours of that bus ride sent us into states of hypothermia. Betsy was quite literally curled up in a ball whimpering about how she couldn't feel her feet. After a few hours of this, the outside temperature finally warmed up enough that we were able to stop shivering and fall asleep.

To Chuck and Lynn

Hi Farm Family-
We've been trying to send you emails rather unsuccessfully for the last couple of weeks. We are both very sad to hear about Spike and hope that Gigi has had a quick recovery. What a Hope that the last few weeks have brought you better things. It must be getting rather quiet around the farm as winter approaches. Let us know if you decide to come join us on the road!!

To the flooded jazz land: New Orleans

Betsy and I wandered further down South, via Missouri and Arkansas’ Ozark mountains. It was pretty dry so their magnificent gorge rivers were low, and the waterfalls were mere trickles, but the mountains, caves and river cliffs were all fantastic. A lot of locals were admiring the nice fall “colors” of browns and yellows; it was pretty, but nothing in comparison to our bonfire of colors in NH. After a few very cold nights in the Ozarks we ended up at the First Eden Baptist Church in Arkansas. We got permission to stay the night from a local parishioner and reaffirmed our permission later when the local sheriffs stopped by for a visit. In the morning we went to the worship service and were greeted by the church-folk with open arms, some real southern hospitality, almost everyone in the church came up and introduced him/herself and shook our hands. They were all quite nice. After a sermon about there being no room for common sense and reason in the Gospel, we were heading further south again (with a minor hornet skirmish just before departure).

The next day proved adventurous. We headed through the northwest corner of Mississippi on our way towards the toe of Louisiana’s boot, New Orleans. Along the way we met some nice folks at restaurants and discussed how veggie oil is pretty cool when diesel prices are at $3.30/gallon. We filled up our tank and reserves on veggie oil from a fried chicken place and drove for several hours, settling down for the night in a National Wildlife Reserve in the bayou of Mississippi. Around ten o’clock we met the park manager, and he told us we couldn’t camp there for the night (the first time this has happened all trip), so we headed out to find another temporary abode. There was a campsite about 15-20 miles away on another highway, so we decided to take a cross road to that highway. The road started out nice enough, and then we started going over some rather rickety bridges, soon enough the pavement turned into a two lane dirt road with some washboards. This twisted through the dark Mississippi woods, past some older shack looking buildings with lots of stuff in the overgrown yards. Eventually the two lane road turned into a one lane road with lots of pot holes and the houses started looking more run down and dark. Scenes from Deliverance and other prejudices about the Deep South swamps crept into our minds as the road started getting rutted and rather affected by erosion. Right around the time that Betsy, who was looking at the map, told us we were heading into a swamp we saw an orange sign signifying that the road was closed. We were only two miles from the highway we wanted to go to, but we had to turn the bus around on the narrow swamp road, being careful not to get caught in the mud on both sides. Otherwise we would have been in a position requiring us to hike through the bayou to go ask for help from one of the unknown creatures living in the shacks (probably very nice people, especially during the light of day). So we eventually made our way all the way back down the dirt path to the dirt road, over the rickety bridges and back onto the highway where we drove around for quite a while more (on paved roads) before finding a nice quiet, well-lit downtown to park the bus in for the night. Needless to say, we’re glad that this doesn’t happen every night.

After the night in bayou hell we made it to New Orleans and the comfort of a rustic little house belonging to my friend Faithe and her friend Woody. Since then we’ve done all the touristy stuff, gone to see some good jazz music, wandered around the French Quarter drinking cheap beer from plastic cups while skirting around drunkards, con-men and scantily clad woman. We’ve had some beignets from Café du Monde and strolled along the Mississippi. New Orleans is slowly recovering after Katrina, mostly due to the tourist district and Tulane coming back on line so quickly. Everywhere you look construction is going on, mostly done by hard working illegal immigrants, who are basically the workforce responsible for rebuilding the city. The return of the St. Charles street car has given a sense of normalcy back to the Big Easy, but all is still not well. The street car only runs halfway down the garden district, after that you have to catch a bus. Many families have moved out of the city, in fact the population is half what it was pre-Katrina. Many who have returned are young people who cannot find jobs in the recovering economy; as a result crime is worse than it has been in a while. East New Orleans was completely decimated by the flood, 19 out of 20 houses were simply bulldozed after the storm. Two years later, perhaps 3 of every 20 houses are there, most people have not bothered to return and rebuild. And why should they, the levees and pump systems are back on line but there is no plan to make them stronger or better. Another hurricane could fill New Orleans up for a second time. There are several signs and protesters around the city shouting out “Make levees, not war.” One wonders what would happen to the future of this city should it be wiped out again.

From here we head on to Texas to store the bus, and then to southern Mexico for a few weeks. We won’t be bringing the computer, so we probably won’t be updating the blog a whole lot, but we’ll still check e-mail occasionally, so keep in touch everyone. We’ll be home on Dec. 15th for Christmas, so hope to see some of you then. In the meantime, we love you all, and don’t worry, we’ll be safe.