25 Jan 2013
Bob and Yvonne met us in the Walmart parking lot this
morning bright and early and right on schedule.
It was so good to see familiar faces in such an unfamiliar place. We are in high desert country and Kaleb was a
little reticent to crawl into bed last night for fear that scorpions or
tarantulas had found their way into our RV.
Ryan Starr told Kory about finding three tarantulas in his office when
he moved a file cabinet, so that got Kaleb to worrying. Not only that, when we went into Walmart in
Nogales to ask where the anti-spider spray was so we can use it when we are
parked for 10 days in the desert, none of the employees could speak a word of
English! And we aren’t even in Mexico
yet, so that was a little surprise. Even
all the overhead announcements in the store were in Spanish, so I guess we
should have brushed up on our Spanish a bit more than we did.
Kory went with Bob to run errands in town before crossing
over the Mexican border. Kaleb got busy
with schoolwork and I worked on writing more articles both for my “Nuggets From
Norway” column and my new “Life on the Ridge” column which premiers next week
in the LaConner paper. My editor said I
could write about anything, so I guess now I have a vehicle for offloading some
of my stories. I hope it doesn’t stress
me out, and I so wish I were funnier.
The errands they had to run took all morning as they make
use of their trips across the border to get mail, do banking, buying
supplies. When they were done, Yvonne
and Bob joined us for lunch in our RV before we headed south. Bob gave us the whole skinny on which lanes
to be in where, and it’s a good thing we just followed him because there were a
lot of lanes in a lot of different locations and all the signs were in
Spanish. I wouldn’t have known when to
do what.
Nogales has the safest border crossing in all the US, so
there weren’t any worries there. But
there were several “check points” we had to go through and Yvonne reminded me
to pray that we’d get a green light and not be stopped. I guess it’s just a numbers game as they do
random searches of vehicles and both times we both made it through on the green
lights so we were just waved on through.
If we were staying just a week, we could have entered even
without a passport as no one checks a thing or even asks us where we are going,
but because we are staying 10 days we had to stop and get visas. We got our passports stamped and had to pay
$71.68 for all three of us, plus another $49.95 for a permit for our RV that’s
good for ten years. This stop took
nearly an hour to do the paperwork and there wasn’t a single person in line in
front of us, which again, was a miracle.
They had the lines set up like Disneyland rides where it’s easy to see,
at times, a person could spend all day in line to get this paperwork done, so
God was with us for sure to have zero wait.
Hallelujah.
Rancho Betania is 90 minutes south of the border and the
speed limit most of the way is 60 kilometers per hour (about 43 mph), but we
were following Bob and he was going over 60 MILES an hour the whole way. I guess if you are in your 80s you should be
in a hurry since you have less time left than someone in their 50s! He was hauling, and I was worried about
getting a speeding ticket but everyone else was passing us, so I guess that’s
not really an issue here. Kaleb took
full advantage of the no seatbelt law and was dancing in the aisle, literally,
as well as riding up top in the bed, looking out the small windows up
there. Otherwise, he’s very good at
obeying the laws of the land and always wears a seatbelt.
The whole drive down it was clear we were in another country
as we passed foreign sights that looked a lot like one would expect Mexico to
look like – dilapidated shelters people call homes, many dead dogs in the road
or next to it, people riding horses bareback as their means of transportation, lots
of cactus, roadside vendors selling everything from copper pots to strings of
chili peppers. We also passed women
washing clothes in a tub outside their house, acres and acres of greenhouses
growing tomatoes and peppers and road construction workers all lying in a row on
the side of the road taking their afternoon siesta. I wish I could have taken a picture of that. Small prayer stations dotted the roadsides
along with white crosses marking those who have died.
At several locations there were huge speed bumps in the road
just to slow people down, which actually required us to nearly stop, they were
so huge. Entrepreneurial Mexicans
hovered around those speed bumps trying to sell things to passing cars –
parakeets in cages, popcorn balls, fresh cut melons, sacks of oranges. There
were also guys with “Red Cross” vests on, standing with a can sticking out of
their hands for donations. Like we’ll believe
that one. And in other places there were
huge signs in English announcing this stretch of road was a “Hassle Free Zone
for American Cars.” I thought that was
funny.
We made it to our destination around 2:30 and got the RV all
leveled out and water, sewer and electricity hooked up. I got out my trusty spider spray and coated
the tires and all other points of contact.
I also wrapped all the tires in Bounce dryer sheets since they repel
mice and the desert has plenty of those we don’t want to share living quarters
with. I bought those sonic insect/pest
repellants at Walmart too and we have all four of them in our RV, hoping to
ward off as many creepy crawly things as possible. Yvonne said there isn’t much trouble with
them this time of year because it’s so cold at night, but we aren’t taking any
chances.
Yvonne invited us over for tea soon after we got settled
in. She also introduced us to some other
Washingtonians, one of whom brought us a welcome plate of peanut butter rice
krispie treats that went well with the tea.
We sat in Bob and Yvonne’s very plush Class A motorhome for a few hours
sharing God Thing stories until dinnertime.
The RV portion of this retreat center is pretty nice. All the cactus are well groomed and it looks
like we are living in a desert botanical garden. The greatest gift is the wi-fi hot spot on
top of the trailer next to us. We have
to use it sparingly, but at least it is available.
Tomorrow we start work.
There are about five other couples here and some single retired guys –
two of them with Hard Hats for Christ – an organization Kory has volunteered
with before. In fact, the founder of
that organization was the recipient of our last motorhome as we donated it to
him when we finished our honeymoon trip in 1993. He used it for years afterwards.
Kaleb already has his sights on owning one of the big
coaches with double slide-outs, but those cost just a wee bit more (like 120k
more) than what we spent on our RV, so that won’t be happening anytime soon.
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