BacalarBlog

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That’s a really long drive !!

After I let Frank and Rita in Palenaque I started the long ride home. It rained on and off all day but I still made good time , I stopped at a Pemex at the N end of 145 and settled down for the night. I made a couple of chicken sandwiches and all was good in the world until about 11:30 . I woke up in a cold sweat and shaking like crazy. BAD CHICKEN ………… thank god for a porta potti ……..back to sleep until 3:30 am when someone knocked on the door asking for money to watch the van. I opened the door and puked on his shoes. He wasn’t very happy, it cost me a few pesos to get him to calm down.

On the road the next day feeling really weak and shaky but I kept driving and managed to get right in the center of every town I tried to bypass. Dogs do not give great directions they just want you to follow all the good looking dogs. After numerous meetings with the local police I managed to find my way out. I figured out that you have to know the name of the nearest small town in the direction your going because that’s what all the signs point toward. I kept looking for signs to the next major city.  Once I figured this out things were a little easier. I was still lost in the downtown of all the cities but it made getting directions easier.

To the border….. I decided to use Veterans bridge east of Brownsville the directions in the Churches book seemed pretty straightforward . I ended up in the middle of Metemoroso instead of the east side. I finally found a bridge and started looking for a place to turn the paperwork in. There was no easy way the soldiers at the check point just started laughing as I went though for the third or forth time. At long last I was through the border and at USA customs, 10 minutes at the most and on my way.

Three nights at Motel6 for me and the dogs and we were at The Canadian Customs where they sent me to be searched. Talk about type casting a old bearded hippie looking fellow in a VW van with surfboards inside……………They had to stop me !! no problems even with the search I was only a half an hour total. Into Windsor and then to Peterborough. I only ran into some snow one morning the rest of the time was clear dry roads.

After 14000 K in two months I’m home

I’ll post pictures in the next few days as I sort them out

Safe Travels

Jerry

I made it home to Peterborough todayI got here at 3:30 pm I’ll tell all about the trip in the next few days. Enjoy the heat in MX

Hello all,

Just got a call from Jerry, he is Brownsville Texas now! Safe and sound.  It has been raining for 3 straight days, so he is heading for a Motel6 tonight.  He said that he was ill till 4am two nights ago, so, the van, him, two wet dogs.. he needs a night in a hotel!

He said it took him over 2 hrs to find the little booth to return the car permit, it wasn’t easy to find, the local Mexican military kept stopping him, then they just laughed at him.. all was fine.

I am spending a wonderful weekend here in Ottawa with Paul & Linda, -20 degree weather, but, wonderful friends!

Jerry thinks he’ll be home by Tuesday(ish).

Hugs

Sof

Love

Sof

HI! I can’t figure out how to upload pictures to the Blog nor on Jerry’s albums! So, I created this album on facebook, I hope it works!

http://www.facebook.com/p.php?i=685556462&k=62FX5VVY33XM5BLHYF62VR

My facebook ID is sofie@ylm.ca if you can’t see this link, I’ll add you as a friend!
Click on this link for my Mexico Facebook album!

Steps to Follow if you lose your passport & visitors permit:

1) Go to the closest police station and make out a report. It’s really ease, you need the police report incase they pull you over at a military check point so they know you’ve lost your stuff. Also, the Canadian Embassy will NOT give you a temporary Passport without a police report first.

2) Call the Canadian Embassy Emergency Number (It’s routed to Ottawa) and they’ll cancel your passport and send a fax to the local Embassy, it helps move things along.

3) Make sure you have 5 references’ from back home, who are NOT relatives and who know your hair colour, eye colour, where you where born, where you went to school, where you work and your marital status.

4) You need to get a passport photo done, they are usually not too far from the Embassy, they seem to do a number of these a day.  That costs around $4.

5) For about $90 the Canadian Embassy will have you fill out 6 different forms and then start the process of checking you out.  About 3 to 4 days later they will have a temporary passport ready for you.

6) Your temporary passport is good until you reach Canada, then it expires. You have to apply for a real one once home.

7) Finally, you go to the Airport Immigration (if you lost your travelers permit) and show them your Passport (or temporary Passport) and they reissue you a new travelers permit (they didn’t charge me, however it’s said that they do sometimes charge.).

That’s it! Happy travels!

Sof

I dropped Kaily and her friend Couchie off at the airport at 5:00 am this morning and then drove to Tony´s in Bacalar , it was an easy drive but I´m glad I won´t be going that way again for awhile. Frank and Rita are already here so I´ll probably spend a day resting and we´ll make plans of what to do next. Both dogs jumped in the lagoon as soon as the van door was opened. Back to the van smelling of wet dog. I´ll keep you all informed as I get Internet access along the way.

Jerry

Hi Guys,

I’m in Detroit at my sister’s now.  Got my passport three hours before my flight this morning! HEHE! Everyone was very understanding, got through US customs ok. I’ll lose it again as soon as I enter Canada tomorrow, it’s only good for two days, enough time to get home!
Kaily is flying out Saturday morning at 7ish am. So, she’ll actually be there before me by the time I see family, get through immigration in Windsor and drive the 6 hours to Peterborough.

Jerry’s going to be driving with no humans, just two dogs!  I’m trying to encourage him to take his time and do some more Ruin visits, we loved seeing the ruins. I wish I could have stayed with him.  We had good experiences in Playa De Carmen and Bacalar.  Playa De Carmen is “the Funkiest” place in the Mayan Coast.  Lots of shops and restaurants.  We found this one place with BIG local food, called Guacamayan, on 1st and 30th, it was wonderful, first time Jerry and I couldn’t finish our food.  Lots of good places to shop too.  We stayed 20mins up the road from Playa De Carmen, in the last 8 room Mexican run hotel on the beach.. surrounded by monster resorts which look like they could be anywhere.  At night we were the ONLY ones on the beach. Kaily and her good friend Couchie camped on the beach, we stayed in the little hotel, the bed in the Westy was more comfortable then the bed in that hotel! But, we were on the beach. They had a little restaurant, they fished every day, so you could have, as we did, fresh BIG fish every day.  Frank, I think you could have caught a fish there too!  Nice thing was that there were not biting bugs or biting ants or biting flys!  The beach was rocking infront of our hotel, but just 100ft away was a good sandy beach.

Bacalar’s Lagoon is heaven, we loved camping there, loved being with good friends and I loved that the dogs got to be so free!  Thank you to Tony and Elaine for welcoming us and introducing us to all their good friens like Terrisa, Vito, Miguel, Hosey, Yolanda and Jack.  We also enjoyed meeting Frank and Rita’s friends from Toronto!   Every night we would all meet for dinner! I’m NOT looking forward to seeing how much I weigh when I get home tomorrow!

We loved the Ruins more then anything, I strongly suggest visiting those just south west of Bacalar, we were truly the ONLY people there, it was amazing with the Howling Monkeys.. Nothing came close to that experience. On top of one of the Ruins, then hearing those monkeys in the jungle all around you.. magical.

The Cenotes were also a highlight!  We loved swimming in them around Bacalar and snorkeling through the caves around Coba.

That’s it for now.. I’ll post some pictures when I get home.. on Sunday.

Love

Sof

Sofie and I are at the Canadian Consulate in Cancun waiting for the consulto sign Sofie’s passport so she can catch her flighjt at 2:00 !

Cootchie is leaving tomorrow morning and Kaily is trying to get a flight out as well. It looks like I’ll be driving back alone with the dogs. Maybe I’l stay a litle longer.

Sofie had a nice long post all ready to publish and the connection dissapeared. I won’t be posting once Sofie leaves because of my broken computer. I’ll try and relay some information through Sofie

Jerry & Sofie

New Years and the trip to Los Pinos
On new Years Eve we went to the cenote so Sofie and Kaily could jump in two last times, I went swimming and the water is really different it almost feels thicker than regular water. We enjoyed lunch at the restaurant next to the cenote, wonderful last day of the year. It’s something you have to experience for yourself. We dropped our laundry off and went to see the fort which turned out to be close until Fri, we’ll check it out on our way out. Back to camp to clean up and get ready for New Years Eve.

We pick up Bob and Eleanor and met Vito for dinner on the Bacalar square before going to the first party. The party was at the same place as the Christmas eve party , Carolina’s, and Kaily won the 50-50 draw. W e stayed there until around 11:30 then moved up the road to a costume party at the Arab house. It seems strange to see an Arabic house in Mexico and stranger still there is a Chinese style right beside it. There were all sorts of interesting characters there, it was by invitation only, Elene, Tony’s wife, got us into the party.  It was a great part and a beautiful house, Jack, the owner, was a story too. He had a very interesting past.  It was a colourful party; the theme was the Dark Night.  Everyone was very mysterious.  Elene is trying to get us all to come next year again, in costume.

New years day. We headed to Theresa’s for a birthday brunch for Tony, many good friends where there, and afterwards we stopped at Miguel’s house in the jungle, he had many treats for his “neighbours”. We’ve made a lot of friends here and it will be hard to leave. We spent the rest of the day de-camping and getting ready to leave on the 2nd. We went for a last group dinner and as usual a great time was had by all.

Jan 2 , we finished the packing and headed out around 9:00 we stopped for breakfast and went on a quick tour of the fort. On the road to Cancun, about an hour out of Bacalar Sofie realizes she can’t find her purse, which has her passport and visitor papers as well as her credit and credit cards and drivers license in it. After a quick search of the van on the side of the road it was back to Bacalar to try and find it. Two hours later we were on the road again sans purse, we searched everywhere we could think of but no luck. we’ll take care of things in Cancun we hoped. We were told we’ll have to go to Mirinda to the Canadian Embassy there. After a 4 hour drive that turned into an 8 hour drive, we got to the hotel just as everyone was heading home. We got settled and had dinner at Coco’s Cabanas for dinner and looked at one of her rooms. They are 75$ a night and are just beautiful. But their place is not on the beach. Our hotel is right on the beach but pretty run down. He’s probably just waiting for the right price to sell-out to one of the big hotel chains. The hotel on our right charges 350$ US a night per person and the one on our left charges 275$ a night per person. We’re paying $50 a night for the room and $5 a night for Kaily to camp. I like it here.

Jan 3 up at 7:00 to get to the airport to pick up Kaily’s friend Couchie, as well as to start Sofie’s journey to figuring out how painful replacing her passport and visitors permit is going to be. Sofie is pretty stressed out over this, Kaily and I are trying to calm her down.  We head to terminal one, then realize that is only for private plans, then we head to terminal 2, walk all over it to find arrivals, it’s right at the beginning of that terminal, we missed it a few times.  Anyhow, Kaily stayed there to wait for her friend. Sofie and I headed to Information and to Immigration. Information said that the Canadian Embassy is actually in Cancun, NOT Mirinda, so, we were very happy! She pointed us toward Immigration. Immigration said we needed to go to the Embassy first, to get a new passport or travel permit, then he’d be able to give me a new visitors permit.  So, we called the Canadian Embassy emergency line and ended up speaking with someone in Ottawa! He cancelled the passport and said that on Monday we need to go to the embassy and they’d issue a travellers document.  He said it’s going to be more complicated then normal, as Sofie’s flight is to Detroit, as that’s where her car is, and so, she’ll have to get something that allows her to get through Mexico and the US and Canada.  We then called TD bank and cancelled all the credit cards and have a debit card being sent to Windsor for Sofie for when she gets there next weekend.  Sofie feels a lot better now, everything is in order and seems it shouldn’t be a problem. We headed back to arrivals, picked up Kaily and her friend and then headed to our new home on the Beach outside of Playa De Carmen.  We spent the day on the beach on the 3rd and had dinner right on the beach, under a Palapa in the restaurant attached to our little 8 room hotel. It was a magical feeling, as we were the only ones eating on the beach that night.

Jan 4th, Sofie woke up early and went for her first long run in a few days. She went to Playa De Carmen and back, found it too hard to run in running shoes on the beach, so, she and duke walked and swam she said.  She found a really nice beach about 45mins away, she’s trying to talk me into going there tomorrow. The girls had a bit of a rough night, as Couchie has a cold.  They’ve just taken Meeka for a walk. The four of us are going to hang out on the beach for a while, then go to Playa De Carmen for the afternoon to post this blog and to visit the shops.

more photos here

http://picasaweb.google.com/jlbaldwin52/NewYearsAndLosPinos

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