Back tracking another two weeks – – –
I was wandering in the Golden Zone here in Mazatlan just looking at stuff when I ran across a laundromat. Now this is important because I’m staying here at least a month and I need to do my laundry at least once every two months or so and it was getting to be time to do that.
So I walk up to the laundromat…but first, you guys need to know something about Mexico and their building codes. Or rather lack of them. They don’t seem to mind having a 3″ step right in front of their buildings. You also see 2″ steps followed by 8″ steps followed by a 4″ step. Get the picture? Most stairways around here are crazy with all sorts of step heights, each step being different from the previous.
Anyway, as I approached the place, the paint job was so good that I simply did not see the 3″ step, and promptly, with force, hammered my left foot big toe into the cement step. DAMN, Shit, Whoa!! Pain and agony ensued. But I limped into the place and checked prices like I’d intended. That helped me ignore the pain.
Now I’m limping and can hardly walk. I expect that the toe on my left foot is broken but if you go into a doc with a broken toe they usually just shrug and say, “Yeah, it’s broken, sorry. Bye.”.
I hobble down the street a ways and decide to take the bus instead of walking. Jump on the bus and 2 miles later get off to go to a bar for 1 or two beers to kill the pain. I wander in at The Purple Onion and find that there is only one seat left at the bar right at the end…where the waiters drop off the empty glasses. I clean myself off an area at the bar and hoist myself up on the stool using my left foot for leverage on the foot bar. OF COURSE it slips off the damn thing and my toe bashes into the bar. YIPE! Whine!
So I drink 3 beers instead of the one or two I planned on and try not to think of the pain.
Around an hour or two later, I leave the bar and climb into a bus to take me to the RV park. The bus is nearly empty but I don’t want to walk to far back into it so I choose the first seat. You know, the seat right close to the front door? And here in Mexico the buses have a barrier between the entrance and the first seat but it’s also closer to the seat then buses are in the states. So while I’m sliding into my seat I WACK my toe on a metal pole. HOLY SHIT did that hurt.
Within 4 hours, I’ve wacked my toe HARD 3 times. I haven’t looked at it yet. I get off the bus and hobble to my RV. When I look, there is no blood but it is swollen, the nail is broken and it’s black and blue.
The next 2 weeks I always wear socks and shoes for protection and had to put a box in my bed to lift the blankets up off my foot in order to sleep. But now it looks pretty good, it doesn’t look like a big, rotten purple grape anymore.
Ahhh, Mazatlan. Worth the pain.
Meanwhile, and backtracking this storyline by 2 weeks, I was heading into Culiacan on Mex15 and I was pissed at having to pay tolls every 50 miles or so. I ended up bypassing some of the toll roads, but missed about 3-4 of the bypasses because the signs are all in Spanish.
So, when I get to the outskirts of Culiacan, pop. 300,000, I bail off the freeway (non-toll road) onto a bypass route right through the city that I think will get me to the next bypass. I’m driving a 37-foot long bus and immediately get into trouble because my lane is fast disappearing and there are hundreds of cars trying to get in front of me. Made it but just barely.
I follow the ‘Mex15 – Mazatlan’ signs deep into the city. Finally, the signs peter out and I make a wrong turn onto a 6 lane but surprisingly homey street. I travel a mile or two, don’t see any Mazatlan signs and stop to ask a traffic cop, ‘Mazatlan?’ while I point in the direction I’m heading.
He answers ‘Si’ and I continue driving east. 4 miles later I’m cussing the guy. Not a single sign for Mazatlan. So I look for a left turn to do a turn around. Three or four streets later, I give up and just turn onto a side street going north, about a block up, I take a left into what initially looks like a street I can get the rig through.
Big mistake. I get onto the street and it’s a two lane, with cars & trucks double-parked all along it. The one owner who saw me coming moved the first truck out of the way. The next truck? I hear a ‘clank’ as my tail passes it. I stop, jump out and run back to talk to a guy looking at it and find that it’s the driver side mirror folded over. I’m groaning when a local that was nearby wanders over, grabs the mirror and shows me that it’s just flipped over, it is one of those breakaway mirrors and all he had to do was flip it back out to where it belonged. Gave me a big smile as I climbed back into the RV. Whew.
I wiggle my way up the street and finally get to the intersection but there is a small pickup truck with it’s rear end half way into the intersection. Damn. So I start jockeying back and forth trying to get around the damn truck so I can take a left turn. I’m frustrated and not very competent so I’m nervous as well. By now there are several cars that I’m blocking coming behind me and on the right too. Around that time, a guy walking down the street sees what’s going on, walks out into the intersection, sizes the situation up, and starts to guide me in the turn, basically motioning me to go for it. I follow his directions and I slip into the intersection, around the truck, and by all the other parked cars, straightening out and off down the road felling much happier. I give the guy a beep and a wave and he smiles back. Nice people down here. Oh, and all those other people I was blocking? No body even beeped at me. A couple drivers waved as I headed on down the street.
I get back to the main drag and finally find the sign I needed and a few minutes later I was back outside of town. I’m on a 4 lane highway and about 15 minutes later, I see that building that means ‘toll road’, I’d just passed a truck stop so I whipped a U turn and headed back. Then I wander around the truck stop asking people if they speak English. Finally found a guy and ask him where the free road is. He points and tells me where I missed the road. I head back the way I came and, following his directions, found the on ramp. Which I notice has a big ass sign that reads, ‘Libra’, Oh, FREE. Huh. Now I know what to look for.