RE: Currently RVing through Mexico - Let us know if you have questions
I just finished reading this entire thread, all 98 pages. In 2004 we watched RV Today about Kino Bay and I said, "You get us unhooked and I'll bring in the slides." In Kino I borrowed Church's book from a fellow camper and approached my husband with the idea of continuing south. We never looked back. In three months we traveled the coast crossing to the East on Hwy 185 and then back to the States after visiting Palenque. Returning to Mexico was a must, but not in the big coach. Having said that we have now retired to Catemaco, 2 hrs. south of Veracruz on the Gulf. We arrived with two RV's, one 38' and a 21' Class C, both pulling trailers with the Harley and everything we own. We prefer to live in Mexico and visit the States. It has been a dream come true and we credit Stew and RV Today for the inspiration. We met Stew later and thanked him at an RV Rally. We were featured on that show. I PM'd him today to thank him again and invite him to our home in Tepetapan RV park. He remembered Larry and I and expressed his envy at our chosen lifestyle and location. I was so pleased to make his aquaintance again through RV.Net.
You chose a great place in Mexico to drop your anchor, Sunny. We love Catemaco as you could tell from our reports. It is an amazing place - a tropical lake in the mountains just a short distance to the gulf. Enjoy!
RE: Currently RVing through Mexico - Let us know if you have questions
But people tend to look thu rose colored glasses and don't like to report or say anything that could be unfavorable. Fact is not everything in Mexico is enjoyable.
This is an interesting point of view. For as long as I have been aware of the country, I have never read anything favorable about Mexico in the mainstream media. I have never seen a Hollywood movie on Mexico that was not about drugs and crime. If people here choose to say good things about the country it is because it is a great country. People here have discovered that and someone needs to say it. If you want the negative, pick up any newspaper or just hang around this forum long enough and you will read plenty from the nay-sayers. I don't think that pointing out the positive aspects of the country is pollyana. I think it is desperately needed balance.
RE: Currently RVing through Mexico - Let us know if you have questions
Diane and John - It is great to hear from you! Wow, what a change of direction you two have taken. You have always loved Baja and were distressed over reports of violence there a year or so back. Obviously you have worked through that and found your piece of paradise far from the centers of cartel activity. Bahia Asuncion is a sweet little secret on the Pacific side. I'll look forward to your reports!
RE: Currently RVing through Mexico - Let us know if you have questions
Thanks to all for the nice responses to our "teaser". If it's good, the subject matter gets most of the credit.
To "rocmoc", I think "cold" and "crowded" might be a bit misleading. Keep in mind that most of the readers of this forum are sitting north of the border where "cold" means 10 to 20 below. The average winter temps of the central highlands range from the high 60s to the low 70s. The region is referred to as the "land of eternal springtime". My guess is that you like it hot and prefer the southern west coast beaches or the Yucatan or, you just hit a nasty cold spell like the one Florida is now experiencing. (I'm just noticing you're from Arizona - of course you like it hot!).
As to "crowded", you must have spent most of your time in Mexico City and Guadalajara. The other twenty or so colonial cities and towns, with the possible exception of our favorite, Oaxaca, do not feel crowded to us. But these are relative terms. We like a city to have a bustle to it.
It's true that there are not a lot of RV park choices in the central highlands but that is demand driven. We were often the only RV in a park during high season. The only places where we did not find perfectly adequate parks were in Puebla (we paid to park in a hotel parking lot in nearby Cholula) and in Oaxaca where the old trailer park was in awful shape. For Uruapan, we stayed in Patzcuaro at El Pozo RV park. Uruapan is wonderful but Patzcuaro offered more variety for us.
I should add that we did not RV to either Guadalajara or Mexico City. We prefer to just fly in to those cities or to leave the rig in a secure place far away and take a big comfortable ADO bus in. An RV is not an asset for us in either of those places.
TT - the codec is mp4 and is playable on Quicktime or Adobe Media Player. Both are free downloads. It's possible that your download of our piece might be corrupt. That happens.
Hasta luego...
RE: Currently RVing through Mexico - Let us know if you have questions
Steve and Danielle, Rick B, Moisheh, Linda - it's great to read your notes and thank you all for your welcome back.
As to the palapa arrangement here in Paa Mul, we are on an annual land lease basis. You build your own palapa - although only one or two empty spaces are left - and the annual rent is $6000US. Palapas range from the simplest - just something to park your rig under - to the elaborate and everything in-between. Re-sales are now in the $65,000 to $140,000 range. The park is on government-designated green space and is a sea turtle preserve. Nothing but an RV park and a few grandfathered-in houses can occupy the land so we feel secure building here.
You know the saying "when the US sneezes, the rest of the world catches a cold". For Mexico, it might be the flu. The interdependence with the US is certainly the greatest for Mexico and many jobs have been lost in this region. That said, most of the lost jobs have been among migrants - young men from all over Mexico and Guatemala who came here for the booming construction trades. The local Mayans seem mostly unfazed although you can be sure there are exceptions to that. Mayans know how to live simply off the abundant sea food, fruits and the support of their families. They do not have the feelings of entitlement to the good life that you see in other parts of the world. Prosperity in this region is a fairly new phenomenon and they know how to live without it.
As to our volume three, we receive a lot of inquiries about it at our web site and we know we need to do something about it. We've mentioned before that we don't believe it is economically viable due to the very limited RV travel to the magnificent central highlands. Our volumes one and two sell well because most people want the beach environments when they come to Mexico. So, what to do with the great material we have on the colonial cities of the highlands and selected areas of the east coast? Enter the Travel Channel. They have asked us to make a proposal and sample piece for consideration as a series on RV travel that we call "RV Beyond the Horizon". We have sent them this "teaser" - here
This was done at very high resolution for professional level bandwidth so it may not play smoothly on your connection. You can download the piece at the site and watch it without the glitches of streaming.
I think it is a long shot (very) that our Mexico travels will end up on the Travel Channel but we want to give it a try. If that doesn't happen soon, we are going to make the third program available one way or the other. It is the final episode of a trilogy of just about all the places one would want to go in Mexico and we don't feel complete without it.
Hasta luego........
RE: Currently RVing through Mexico - Let us know if you have questions
Blogging On
Jeanne and I have been absent from this forum for some time now and we miss it. Family issues and video projects have kept us busy this past year but now we are where we want to be - in Mexico with most of the "stuff" of life off our table. Now it is fresh sea bass and abadejo from the local fishermen, beaches to die for and a bunch of good friends who love this place as much as we do.
Tourism is depressed in the Yucatan as it is everywhere. I have never seen so many spaces available in Paa Mul this time of year. It looks like business is down about 35%. And, there has never been a better time to be here. There is no sense of crowding and the cost of living in Mexico for norteamericanos is the lowest in some time. Today, it is 14 pesos to the dollar. Last year it was 10.8.
Many businesses that cater exclusively to tourists have raised their prices to compensate for the weaker peso but the places you really want to do business with have not. At the little restaurants a few blocks from the ocean you can still get a great Monterrey steak dinner with mashed potatoes for $9 US or fresh caught whole fish for $5. Construction workers and jack-hammers that used to be all over Playa Del Carmen are mostly gone and the place has more of the feeling we fell in love with 14 years ago.
I've been reading through a number of threads to get a sense of the goings on recently and I see that member interests today are little different than they have been over the last five years that we have been involved. What I like about RV.NET is that it has room for both threads and blogs. The threads are are invaluable resources allowing people to get quick answers to pressing questions from highly informed and experienced members. That is probably the greatest benefit. But blogs are also useful I think in that they chronicle a complete Mexico experience on a day to day basis over time. One of the sad facts about these online diaries is that they are hard for most readers to find and can ultimately be lost forever.
I recently had the opportunity to chat with two major contributors in recent years - "Linda from Canada" and "Harvestmoon". We have all settled in Mexico either full time or half-time and we do not have as much travel to talk about now as we did in recent years. Linda and Paul were here visiting and Linda is considering turning her blog into a book.
Ours is actually the only diary we have of our Mexico travels. The only other records are production notes and they are colorless. Any post from "jdtrotter" is a winner and another blogger with great photos is "Swissmiss". I would encourage those of you who might have missed the travels of these four to search those screen names and check out their experiences. Very little of real importance in Mexico has changed since those blogs.
Well, it's good to be back at RV.NET and it's good to see that the sage wisdom of Moisheh, qtla, and numerous others is still being shared here. This is the next best place to be if you can't be in sweet old Mexico.
