At one time, my wife Carole and I were going to retire in another country. We figured that our limited retirement income would go much further in some place like Costa Rica, Panama, Belize, Mexico or some other exotic locale. We decided on Mexico. Not necessarily because it was our favorite place, even though we loved to vacation there, but primarily because of the easy access to the US. Our family lived in Salt Lake City and it was a two-day drive to the border, which was not bad.
We decided that we should live a period of time there before we took the plunge. After some research we decided on a place called San Carlos. San Carlos is about a five-hour drive south of the border town of Nogales, Arizona which is about an hour drive south of Tucson. The drive is on a four lane often divided highway. The speed limit if you want to go that fast is about 65 MPH. However, there are often pot holes in the road. Holes that you think could swallow a Mack Truck. Then, of course, there are the topes, or speed bumps. These speed bumps are place strategically in the most unsuspected locations on the highway. If you don’t see the warning signs for these topes while you are going the speed limit they can take out the entire undercarriage of your car. It does wake you up though. Even though this is a four lane highway, there are no shoulders to the road. There is however, a drop off of a foot or more in most areas. Don’t stray off the road or you will be in a major mess and would soon need to test the coverage of your newly purchased Mexican Auto Insurance.
Cerro del Tetakawi
San Carlos is a small town. It is sort of a distant suburb of Guaymas. It is on the mainland of Mexico on the Sea of Cortes (Gulf of California). Most of the residents are retirees from the US or Canada. It is in the Sonoran Desert. It is very arid and not far enough south to be tropical. As a result, winters are much warmer than Salt Lake City but not hot, usually between 60 – 75 degrees. The town’s major geographical landmark is Cerro del Tetakawi, which means “goat tits” in English. A small mountain that is in the shape of you guessed it.
One of the marinas in San Carlos
There are a couple of Marinas there and many restaurants and bars. You can walk to most places. There a couple of small grocery stores and pharmacies, but to get most of your supplies you need to go into Guaymas or if you want to get to a Costco or something like that, you have to travel about an hour north to Hermosillo.
Los Arbolitos
Today, I am going to talk about one our trips to Guaymas. We were going into Guaymas with our friends from Michigan who were sharing the house we had rented for part of the winter. It was our second winter there and their first. We were going grocery shopping. I had been into Guaymas many times but only to one of the two major grocery stores. I didn’t know my way around the rest of the town. It is a town of several hundred thousand people. We stopped at the local bank to make some currency exchanges but is was closed for some holiday we were not aware of, but we decided to go into Guaymas anyway. Most every one took credit cards anyway. We shouldn’t have any problems. We were going to stop for lunch at the Los Arbolitos for one of their fantastic seafood items. However, it was packed so we decided to go to Los Barcos. We had never been there before, but it had a great reputation and was down by the harbor. There was supposed to be a good liquor store near there as well. Better prices and selections than what we had in San Carlos.
The year before when we were in San Carlos, we were told that the harbor area was not the place you wanted to visit. Indeed some folks even advised us not to go into Guaymas at all. But now we had heard that they were cleaning up the harbor area in anticipation of cruise ships making a stop there. They were scheduled to start cruise stops the following winter.
So armed with a map that was as detailed as a blank sheet of paper we headed for the harbor. We found the main street which had most of the businesses on it and followed it toward the harbor. I soon found out that it was not wise to stay at the speed limit as the buses nearly ran us over several times. The bus drivers seemed to relish in tailgating and blowing their horns at us gringos. We got as far south as 20th street or “calle”. There the road was blocked. There were gates up and we could not go further south. The police were directing us to go right or left from there. We chose right hoping we could go south again in a block or two. We needed to go further south to get to the restaurant and the liquor store.
The road we were on was a nice wide road with few businesses on it. As we drove, we found each street blocked with no way to go south. Then the street began running next to the water of the harbor. It appeared as though they were doing an excellent job of cleaning the harbor. We decided to turn around and see if we went the other way we could go south. As we slowly went back, (and it was slowly because there were no buses trying to run us off the road, in fact there were very few vehicles of any type on the road) we came upon a road that was only blocked by a few orange cones and the cones were wide enough for us to squeeze through.
Los Barcos in distance. Police station on right
We could see that Los Barcos was at the other end of the block. We thought we had it made. Then we realized that we were driving through the police station parking lot. There were police cars parked all over and a few officers as well. No one gave us any signs that we were unwelcome so we continued to go. We exited the lot on the far end and found a place to park. There was no traffic and the next street south seemed to be filled with carnival rides.
We entered the restaurant and found that it was practically empty. It was a very large restaurant. There were two large public rooms on the ground floor with a balcony circling the round main room. We all ordered the special of the day except for Barry. He is not into seafood. He had steak. The special was Dorado smothered with a shrimp sauce. It was delicious. By the time we were done eating the main dining room was full. Large groups seemed to be arriving by bus loads. It was late for lunch and early for dinner. They were going to do a great business that day.
We asked where the liquor store was and it turned out that it was only a short block away. We decided to walk since we did not know what the parking was going to be like.
liquor Store at end of block from Los Barcos
Carole and Donna had gone ahead of Barry and me, as we waited to pay the bill. They were about a half a block ahead when I heard a noise behind me. I turned to find Barry on his back on the sidewalk. You know how level the sidewalks in Mexico can be. He had tripped on what amounted to a curb in the middle of the sidewalk. He went down pretty hard on his knee and arm. I rushed back to help him up. In doing so, I helped him bang his head into the protruding air conditioner.
After a few minutes of the nurses triaging Barry they pronounced he was good to go. No major injuries seemed to be evident. The Liquor store turned out to be a disappointment. There was a larger selection than the grocery store but the prices were not as good. The grocery story store seemed to have the brands we wanted anyway.
When we got back to the car the nurses took the ice from the beer chest and iced Barry’s knee.
So it was off to Sorrianas grocery store if we could figure out how to get out of where we were.
We soon decided to go back though the police parking lot because that seemed to be the only way. This we did and we wanted to turn right and go back the way we had come, but there seemed to be street events and dancing that way so we turned left back towards the harbor again. It soon became apparent that we were the only car on the road. In fact, people were walking aimlessly all over the road, and thousands of others had taken positions along the curb. We soon realized that there was going to be a parade and we were going to be in its path. We decided to take the next street to the north even if we did not know where it went. We came to the next street only to find it blocked by cars and trucks that had been positioned to provide good vantage points for the parade. The next street was the same and the next street. We knew that the road we were on was going to curve back to the north in the general direction we wanted to go. Hopefully the parade was coming from behind us and not from in front of us.
Hopes and dreams shattered. As we rounded the corner, we saw flashing lights and motorcycles.
We stopped to consider our options. We could not turn around because the road had narrowed and the people on both sides of the road had crowded forward. I was about to back on down the road until it widened again, but that turned out to be not an option. The kids were running wild all over the road all excited about the coming parade. It would be too dangerous.
Just then I saw a policeman coming our way. It did not appear that he saw any humor in our situation.
Do we lead the parade? Do we spend some time in a Mexican jail? Do we escape?
The policeman came over and motioned for me to roll down the window. I, of course, complied. He asked me something; at least I thought he asked me something. It was all in Spanish. I did not understand a word he was saying. We had managed to find a policeman in Guaymas that did not understand one word of English. And what was worse, he did not pretend to understand “my near perfect Spanish”. Sign language also did not seem to work.
What next? I will finish this true story in a day or two. By the way, we have no pictures of the Parade because we did not have our camera with us. Most of these pictures were taken a few days later. In the meantime, you may be interested in reading my novel, The Day The Republic Died. There is information about it on my blog and at http://www.gordonacker.com. There is also info about the book at http://www.facebook.com/gordonjacker.author.
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