My lovely niece is visiting from Austin, Texas. Amidst the ungodly heat, rolling blackouts and flickering electricity we have done our best to not be cranky.
However you measure it. It’s toasty!
There’s no better way to cool off in Bacalar than to get out on the Laguna.
Blake and Aunt Alex
Thanks to our friend Steve with his sweet ride we pulled together a motley crew of friends to enjoy a day of cold drinks and wind in our hair.
Lisa and her mom.Arco the swimming dog loves the boat.Nothing better than staying cool with friends.
Wishing everyone a happy Mother’s Day no matter however and wherever you celebrate. It’s good to be grateful for something every day.
We had our bags pilfered on the bus ride home from our recent vacation. The loss included my Texas driver’s license. It can’t be replaced until I return to the US, thus the need for a Mexican license.
It took me three trips to the Office of Transportation in downtown Bacalar. The first time I was informed that May first was a holiday and I needed to come back on Thursday. I got the list of documents that I needed. One was certification of my health, obtained from a ten minute visit to a local clinic and costing $4.00.
I gathered up the required copies and returned on Thursday. Oops testing starts at ten. After a coffee to take up some time, I returned for a third time to find a full house. The testing space was small and bursting with men all getting a driver’s license for the first time, mostly to drive a motorcycle, and me.
A friend had told me that the process was quite easy and the questions were bordering on the ridiculous. But when the woman handed me three pages in Spanish I became nervous.
As I read through the questions, breathe relax, I trusted my skill, finished fairly quickly and looked up. It was then that I realized that I probably read more Spanish than anyone else in the room. There is not a high literacy rate in Bacalar. No problemo, everyone was relaxed with heads together helping each other! I almost laughed out loud. One young man sitting across from me looking very nervous leaned forward to ask me the answer to the question, “who has the right of way, the driver or the pedestrian?” He had the correct answer. I told him that I had put the same answer. Mind you I was the only woman and a white haired foreigner to boot. He must have been desperate.
When I handed in the test, the clerk scanned the pages quickly then rolled her eyes. I didn’t know the color of various street signs so I just guessed. Oops. To my surprise, she pulled out a bottle of white-out and proceeded to CORRECT MY MISTAKES! Her comment to the other clerk, “She’s a foreigner.”
It’s official.
I am now the proud owner of a shiny new driver’s license and another story to tell that tickles me about living in Mexico.
I took my journal to Europe but didn’t have much time for sketching.
Press on picture.
Here are drawings from our travels and from our couch.
Sitting in the train station waiting to leave for Paris.Neuschwanstein Castle Bavaria
I also like to draw sitting on the couch in the evening watching TV.
Faces are some of my favorite things to play with.
I’m using mostly permanent and water color pens. I’ve liked to doodle since childhood. I find it relaxing and creative. I have numerous books of my drawings. it’s fun to see my life journey in art. Enjoy.
Returning from vacation requires hustling just to be in place, at least the place you were supposed to be in if you hadn’t left. This week was filled with getting the cars serviced, refilling the larder and chasing a yellow DHL shipping envelope all over Mexico.
We had submitted my MILs passport for renewal via DHL before taking off in February for the US and later Europe. The US Consulate in Guadalajara had already returned it once due to the wrong sized photos. But pictures were retaken and the passport and application were quickly off again. Fingers crossed.
Hung up in Cancún.
When we returned home and looked to see why the passport hadn’t arrived, we found it was hung up in Cancun, four hours away? Solving the mystery was time consuming, a long and winding story requiring numerous phone calls, a trip to DHL (45 minutes away) and promises of a speedy delivery. There was also much waiting on hold and standing in line.
My photogenic MIL
When the promised arrival time came and went, we returned to the trusty web tracking site to find the package was marked DELIVERED. Another phone call discovered that the envelope had been left at the hotel across the street! Now addresses in Mexico are long and complicated, especially when you live in the jungle. DHL had been given very specific directions which they chose to ignore. They’d already delivered the package once using the exact same address!!!
This week millions looked to the sky to watch the solar eclipse and gasp in amazement at the cosmic event. Last October Bacalar was in the totality of a solar eclipse. We watched through a crystalline sky in awe from our own roof! I cried.
October 14, 2023 path of solar eclipse.
During the last five weeks, Lisa and I were blessed to travel across Europe to London, Amsterdam, Paris, Munich and Salzburg. Talk about awe!
Westminster Abbey, Bath Cathedral, Van Gogh’s Sunflowers,Venus
When we returned to Mexico, I realized that my eyes needed a rest. For weeks I had lived and traveled in awe, staring at art, domed ceilings, gold leaf paintings, castles and towering mountains. There were so many flowers, sculptures, vistas and even caves. My eyes were perpetually wide open trying to take it all in.
Salzburg pedestrian walkway, castle Linderhof, Pantheon, Madonna
We have returned home to our very beautiful Bacalar, Mexico. I think that the daily awe and wonder of living anywhere, starts to wear off eventually and becomes the usual and ordinary. Perhaps that’s why we travel, to see the world with eyes wide open and appreciate home when we return.
Home sweet home.
I strive everyday to be grateful and pay attention to the beauty that surrounds me. This week it was hard to get out of my hammock. Still feeling jet lagged, I made big salads, hugged my dogs and gave my eyes a rest.
On our last day of the Dos Tortas unscripted, magical, mystery European tour, we joined forty or so Sound of Music enthusiasts to sing our way aroundSalzburg, Austria.
People from all over the world come to this corner of Austria just to walk in the footsteps of Maria and the Captain and their cadre of musically talented children.
The dramatic production was based on the lives of the Von Trapp family who escaped Nazi occupied Austria in 1938. Hollywood recreated the story using castles, lakes, gardens and the Alps as the backdrop for the academy award winning movie. Producers took liberties with the storyline. The Von Trapps did not climb over the Alps to Switzerland (See map). It would have been a long walk. They boarded a train for Italy and later migrated to the US.
My favorite stop on the tour was the Basilica St Michael. I always thought the wedding scene in the movie was magical. Visiting the cathedral didn’t disappoint.
The following day we caught the train to Frankfurt and left the next day for Mexico. It was a long flight but uneventful. We are struggling with jet lag but that’s a good problem to have right?
If you’ve been following our unscripted, spontaneous European adventure, you’ll know it’s been a whirlwind. One of our followers asked a bunch of questions. How did we do it? I’ll do my best to answer.
Breakfast extraordinaire Munich
First off, my wife is the queen of travel planning. She enjoys it and we’ve traveled enough together to know each other well. We are adventurous by nature. She does her best planning and then we are happy with however things turn out.
1) We are not extravagant. Hotels are a place to sleep. They were however much more expensive in Europe than we expected. We booked budget hotels close to the city center to use public transportation and/or walked to various sights.
Paris train station.
Clean, safe and basic is our motto. We’ve averaged about $200 US or so a night which is more than we’ve ever spent sleeping. We have had to modify our travels due to aging bodies and disabilities. We walk when we can, take hop-on-hop-off buses to get the lay of the land and boat rides when they’re available. We also take tours which mostly work well and are not expensive.
Hop-on bus ride in Paris to the Arc de Triumph and Eiffel Tower Tour to Neuschwanstein Castle, Bavaria
2) We tried to eat one meal a day, usually lunch, at a nice restaurant. (Our Paris and Munich hotels included a great breakfast.
Avocado bowl in Amsterdam
We looked for little grocery stores and purchased pre-made meals for dinner and fruit and granola for breakfast and snacking.
There were great grocery stores everywhere.
We hardly drank alcohol so that’s a big savings. Also there’s no suitcase room for souvenirs. No Olympics t-shirts were bought in Paris.
A “Free” church in Paris
3) As to whether we just “put it all on plastic,” the answer is yes and no. We had money budgeted for a water softening system for our house. I guess soft water will have to wait. The credit card will get paid when we get home.
Salzburg
Next week’s blog will be from home in Bacalar. We are currently in Salzburg Austria. There are no words for how much fun we’ve had. Until next week,
Some of my favorite things about London in no particular order:
Westminster Abby- a mish mash of statues, burial sites, alters, choirs and a royal throne. Lots of history, burials, weddings and a coronation or two. I loved walking around its many nooks and crannies but after awhile it all blurred together. The US has nothing to compare and I was awed on our first day in London. Or maybe it was jetlag.
Coronation throne.
The London Eye – a really cool big ferris wheel. So fun.
The hop-on hop-off bus which kept us dry the one day it rained. We hopped off and walked around Harrods department store. Too much glitz for our budget.
The day trip to Bath and Stonehenge was certainly worth it.
Some big ass druid rocks. Love stained glass. Bath Abby was lovely.Roman baths.
Amsterdam:
The Albert Cuyp outdoor market. The sun, food, flowers and energy. A great accidental find.
Residents hoist furniture outside because stairs are so narrow for top floor dwellers.
The Matthew Wong exhibition at the Van Gogh museum. This Chinese-Canadian artist moved me to tears. Such an expressive painter.
Video does not begin to showcase his work.
We really enjoyed riding on the canals and walking the city.
Lisa wants one.
I write today from Paris where the good weather is holding. Today the Louvre! What a whirlwind trip this has been!
As I sit on the Eurostar train between London and Amsterdam I contemplate this astounding trip so far. It’s been almost 15 years since Lisa and my last overseas adventure. A lot has changed. I am 72, she is 60. After Lisa’s multiple back surgeries, neither one of us can walk for hours nor stand gazing at antiquities. We return to the hotel in the late afternoon and collapse for the evening.
Stock image.
When I was pick pocketed in Athens in 2005 and had my passport stolen, we got to experience the darker and inconvenient side of travel. Any trip might include loss, loss of cell phone, hat, or scarf. I once left expensive headphones on the plane home to Mexico.
Amsterdam Canals
In an attempt at prevention I try to turn around from any stop and make sure nothing is left behind. To prevent pick pocketing, I carry a shoulder bag designed for travel with zippered pockets to protect phone, money and identification. And still it happened.
I lost my credit card.
In London everything is paid by tapping your bank card on a terminal. Some restaurants don’t accept cash at all. In order to hop the underground (subway) I had placed my card in a side pocket with my phone. Apparently I pulled out my phone and dropped the card. After searching everywhere I contacted my US bank.
Saturday Market
Fortunately we have other plastic but it could be so easy to get stranded with no money. The worst part was the sleepless night and self flagellation.
Thank God I’m over it. There’s nothing more I can do until I return home.
Dutch apple pie.
The trip continues and we’re having a great time. Weather has been unprecedented with sunshine in both London and Amsterdam. Crowds are small compared to high season. For an unscripted holiday, we’re doing very well.
Last week our wonderful house sitters arrived to care for the house for our trip to my niece’s funeral. The day before we left they offered to stay “a few more weeks”. Since Lisa and I are caregivers for her 80 year old mother and two dogs,we have not had a vacation, just the two of us, for sometime. This unexpected offer sent our imaginations spinning.
Alice’s big 8-oh.
Our heads were exploding as we discussed where to go. The possibilities were endless, Shri Lanka, Africa, Croatia. I didn’t want to be on a 20 hour flight as we did when we visited Turkey and Greece (2010) and Thailand (2005). My first thought was, I’ve never been to Europe!
I figured we’d get to see the most countries in the closest space. So here we are in London. I have to pinch myself!
Westminster was mind blowing. Changing of the Guard, Kensington PalaceThe best view from the giant London Eye Ferris Wheel.The Tower of London
We’ve had four days of sunshine! For these tropical girls it’s been chilly but we don’t care. We’re having an unbelievable time. Stay tuned because this party is just getting started – Stonehenge, Bath and tickets to Wicked! None of this was on my 2024 bucket list. I guess I’ll make room at the bottom of the page.
the adventures of dos tortas 
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