“Victory at sea...”

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night. Today is December 24, one day before Christmas. The last two days have been very windy. It’s what forecasters call victory at sea because all the old war movies have the sea battles in big windy waves that make it look more heroic. Unfortunately, this translates to crappy surf conditions. The water is very choppy, and the wind pushes the waves down before they break, so you have to catch them very late, while navigating the chop and trying to stay in the same place. It also doesn’t leave a lot of open wave to ride, so rides are short, but better than sitting at an office desk. Nevertheless I managed to catch a few on video today.

It seems as though my surfing has improved greatly over the last week with many waves under my belt, and I have now started to pump along with the wave instead of just riding with it. The next step is some real turns. We have one more full day here in Puerto Escondito, and then it’s a run for the border. We still haven’t decided our route through Guatemala and Honduras into Nicaragua, but I’m sure that it will work out well. I’m excited to see some of the sites in Nicaragua, including the two volcano island in the middle of the big lake. All of the Central American countries are rather small compared to Mexico, so we should be able to navigate through them quite quickly, whatever route we decide upon.

Aside from the surfing and the beach sitting, there’s not a lot else going on here. We’re doing our best to just relax, knowing we have bureaucracy and countless hours sitting ahead. There’s an aerial assault of skydivers every night on the beach just before sunset. The beach is quite big, but they come in so fast, I keep waiting for them to take out an umbrella or land in the ocean. Especially yesterday when the wind was so strong, but alas, they touch down gracefully and without incident every time. We get our own assault on the sidewalks every night from the sky dive crew with their pamphlets and videos, yet we still have no desire to throw ourselves from a perfectly good plane in a second world country.

I hope everyone has a great Christmas and a happy new year. We’ll be making some phone calls tomorrow, but after we leave Puerto, I’m not sure when we’ll have internet again.

Hasta luego and Feliz Navidad.

Tyler.

“Mexican pipeline...”

Well, we’re sitting in our hotel in Puerto Escondito, home of the Mexican pipeline. Playa Zicatela to be exact. It’s named after pipeline on the north shore of Oahu in Hawaii because the wave is very similar. Very hollow, big, scary, and breaking over very shallow water. I’ve never quite seen anything like it before. We spent quite a bit of time watching people surf from the beach. You can’t really see the sets coming along, they just get very big very quickly, and it seems as though you have a very short time to catch the wave before you get thrown to a violent end.
Yesterday the waves were a little bigger than today, so it wasn’t as fun watching today, but more people were getting tube rides today. Not many manage to make it out, although I saw one guy this morning disappear for about 10 seconds before coming out the other side. Needless to say, I’m not setting foot into the water there. Yesterday we walked as far as we could in both directions, which is quite a long ways. Probably about 5 km of beach all in all. At the very far end, the east end I suppose, we found a nice little point break. On the other end, the far west end, closer to the middle of the city, there were no waves at all, but a very unique cement walkway along all the rocks for quite some distance.
Puerto Escondito, or “hidden port”, is about 55,000 people, so it’s a fairly big beach town, but doesn’t really have a city feel to it at all. The port was established in 1928 to ship out coffee beans from the cool forest canopies of the Sierra Madre Sur mountain range. The coast highway that we drove in on was constructed during the 1970’s, but apparently very little has changed since then. It’s quite a pleasant place, not unlike Sayulita, but with more room to breathe. All of the Mexican families seemed to be gathered at the far west end of the beach yesterday, where there are no waves, but plenty of dirty boats and garbage. Today we ventured down to the east end after a morning of watching the good surfers. The waves here were much smaller, but just as busy as the main beach. As it was a point break, there’s pretty much only one place to catch the waves, with everyone waiting in that same spot. The problem is that a lot of beginners were hanging around. They lack a lot of surf etiquette and just try to paddle for every single wave, even if someone is already on it. This was the case for most of my session.
I managed to catch a lot of waves, but not many without some fat guy on a long board just happy to be alive paddling for a wave that I’m already on and riding. Oh well. I think we’ll go back there again tomorrow, because it just felt so good to catch a tonne of mellow waves with little consequence and fear of death. Hopefully the sun reappears tomorrow. It made a brief appearance today at sunset, which was quite spectacular due to all the clouds that we’ve had for the last couple of days.
Denielle has been relaxing on the beach with me watching surfers, and catching the odd nap today while I was out in the water. She could keep working on her tan if that sun would come back. We’ve also been on a quest to pilfer free wireless internet. We found some yesterday at a restaurant we ate at, so Denielle phoned her sister and Pete, but having to eat out to get internet could add up. So tomorrow morning she’s going to get a coffee from a cafe and try to get the password so we can continue getting internet from our hotel. That’s all for now, more surfing in the days ahead...
Tyler.

“Mucha Sol...”

Pain radiates from my body like shockwaves of thunder after a lightning strike. Heat floods from every poor of exposed skin, the color of which now resembles salmon, further curing to a darker shade of lobster. Foolishly we basked in the sun for hours for the first time of our trip. Taking in all the vitamin D that we have been deprived of in our cold wintery homeland, we become greedy and now not when to quit. At first it appears not bad at all, only a minor inconvenience, but as the night draws longer, the skin grows darker and more painful. This is our fist sunburn. Coinciding with the numerous mosquito and sand fly bites from our time camping, the strong urge to scratch down the bone is only briefly quelled by the drinking of Benedryl to soothe the pain. Will we have learned from this experience? Probably, but for how long? Repeat offense is guaranteed, but worth it to enjoy the sun.

Tyler.

“Shakedown in Acapulco...”

I hate Acapulco. It’s a shithole and it smells like urine, pardon my Spanish. We had just spent two mediocre days in Playa Azul, a dirty little town on the Pacific, and decided to head towards Zihuatanejo, next to Ixtapa to try the internet. We left fairly early in the morning in case we wanted to keep going to Acapulco, about a 6 hour drive in total. We stopped in Zihuatenejo, found an internet cafe after about an hour or so and Denielle sent a brief message to let people know we were still alive. Internet has been fairly sparse.
We decided to keep on trucking towards Acapulco, a city of 1.5 million. Unfortunately we came upon the city at 3:30 in the afternoon, somewhat of a rush hour. Although I’m not entirely convinced the streets are ever empty. There is no sense of lanes, order, or anything remotely resembling how traffic should go. It was the most stressful driving experience of my life. We found a hotel and splurged for 70 dollars for the night. As you can tell by the views, it was a rather nice place, but fairly run-down. The next day we slept in, planning only on travelling as far as Playa Ventura, about halfway to Puerto Escondito.
On our way out of the city we got lost. Acapulco is comprised of steep hills along the coast, with very windy roads that snake in no particular direction. We did a complete circle and managed to get yelled at by the police for running through some kind of checkstop. We found our way to the main road by the ocean, our ticket out of this dirty city, when not even ten minutes later we get pulled over by the municipal police. Denielle thought it was a taxi at first. Apparently we were changing lanes too fast or some other trumped up thing, even though it’s very apparent that the rules are only meant to be followed by the tourists.
This fat policemen proceeds to tell us that we are getting a fine, and that we’ll have to go to the police station to pay it, but if we want we can just pay it here and he’ll forget about the whole thing. So I said fine, I’ll pay the fine at the police station, let’s go and talk with your supervisor. So he pretends to make a call on his cell phone, and then returns and tells us how to get out of the city. No fine. So I’m pretty happy, having just called his bluff, and we are on our way again.
We almost make it out of the city when once again some greedy Mexican police see our car and pull us over, this time for speeding. It’s funny because we are purposefully going very slow, getting passed by anyone and everyone so as not to get another pull over. These cops don’t go for the routine and will not give back my driver’s license. I’m getting really mad and arguing, and he tells us that we can get our license back from the station in 5 days once we have paid our 300 dollar ticket. No joke. I tell him he’s not going anywhere without me getting my license back, but he won’t budge. So I talk to the other guy, and we barter for 150 dollars so we can go.
Mexicans appear to be getting quite greedy. Not all of them, but a healthy proportion now seem to rely upon taking advantage of tourists. I will never go back to Acapulco, and if anyone is thinking of visiting there, then hit yourself in the head with a shoe and smarten up. Whether it’s the police, or greedy hoteliers trying to extort full prices from an empty hotel, these people will all get a big wakeup call one day when the tourists stop coming. I told the first policeman when he asked how long we were here that I hated his city because it was dirty, implying both the police and the condition of the city, and had too many people. But now we have made it to Playa Ventura, and will be off to Puerto Escondito in a couple of days. We may spend Christmas there, as they should have more reliable internet.

Tyler.

“Puerto Escondito...”

Two nights in Playa Ventura was nice and relaxing. We went on a nice long walk down the beach to a rock outcrop full of giant boulders stacked upon one another. Closer towards the water we heard a lot of animals making chirping noises from beneath the rocks...bats. So many bats. They were flying around all over the place which was kind of neat. We spent a lazy day on the beach, and met up with Barbara, a retired teacher from Winnepeg spending 4 months in Mexico. Every year she travels, but usually somewhere more exotic like Africa or Asia, but she broke her ankle in the summer and wasn’t sure she’d be healed in time to get a visa, so she headed south. She was a pretty interesting person that Denielle had actually talked to before in Playa Azul. After waking up early this morning, we headed out for Puerto Escondito.
It took us just over 4 hours to get to Puerto Escondito today from Playa Ventura, for 285km. It’s getting a little tiring having to slow down for all the speed bumps in all the little towns. Who puts speed bumps on a major highway every five minutes? Also 2 military checkpoints were encountered, only one of which we had to stop for and answer questions. This was the third checkpoint that we have stopped for, but all went well and we were on our way. We walked around in the heat for a while looking for a place to stay. It’s amazing how much hotter it feels once you get away from the breeze on the beach. The prices jump significantly around Christmas. We found a place up on the hill with a great view of the ocean. It’s crazy just how close the waves break to the shore.
For the first 4 nights we’re paying 25 dollars a night, and then it jumps to 60. Crazy. But we have a kitchen with a full size fridge, a hot plate and a sink, so we’re pretty happy. It’s still cheaper on average than a lot of the other places we have been staying. There’s a lot of little cafes with free wireless internet as well, but we can’t seem to pick any up from our room, so we’ll have to set up shop elsewhere to skype and whatnot.
From what I can tell from the last few hours on the beach, the waves are pretty scary, even though they’re quite small right now. Some sets are coming in head high, and very hollow. They call this place the Mexican Pipeline, as the wave is very similar to Pipeline in Hawaii. It’s pretty busy in the water. I hope that the swell gets really big so I can watch some good surfers. I’ve already seen two get barrelled today. Hopefully I can find a more mellow spot to get in the water so I don’t kill myself.
We’re here for 8 nights to take us right through Christmas, and then it’s on south to Nicaragua. We have to study our route through Guatemala and Honduras a little more. I’m hoping that we can do both countries in one day, as it’s only about 400km, but we’ll see. It all depends on the border, so we’ll probably end up for one night in Honduras.


p.s. check the previous posts as I´ve added new pictures

check the link below to see the map from mazatlan to puerto escondito.

link to map
Tyler.

“Sayonara Sayulita...”

Well, 5ft at 17 seconds turns out to be much too large for Tyler. I never caught a single wave while in Sayulita, not without great effort however. There are two waves in Sayulita, both coming off of a rock reef in the middle. You have the left point which is generally bigger, but cleaner, and can be ridden all the way to the beach. Then you have the right, which gets a bit messy, and you also have a throng of beginners to avoid on the inside. I usually surf the left point, even though right waves are easier for me to ride because I’m a regular foot, not goofy. The problem with a point break is that there is one takeoff spot, and that wave goes all the way in. There are usually at least 20 others vying for the same wave, with the best huddled right off the peak, and the others, including myself, perched like vultures waiting for any scraps that may be left behind. This leaves you sitting out in the water for great lengths with nothing to show, but to enjoy the show. 5ft at 17 seconds turned into some sets at about 12 feet, with most in the 6 to 8 foot range. I had the pleasure of watching one young kid get barrelled from down the line on the same wave. I also saw him get swallowed up and spit out.
After two nights and one day in Sayulita, we headed south towards Manzanillo. After a couple of hours of driving we pulled up to a beach next to a golf course where we could have camped for free, at Playa de Cocos. There wasn’t much to do there, and the waves were no good, so instead we decided to just have lunch and keep going past Manzanillo. We ended up camping on the beach for free in the middle of nowhere. This was not before getting the car stuck in the sand with about an hour of sunlight left, right up to the undercarriage. After some frantic digging, we took apart a fence made of palm tree planks to put under the tires, and I also deflated the tires to get more grip. I tried pushing but Denielle kept stalling the car, so we switched, and with Denielle’s mighty pythons, we got the car back on the road. After a short re-inflation with our tire kit, we set up the tent, and I managed to get in the water and catch one wave before it got dark. We then had a nice fire that I managed to start with a single match, using only driftwood found on the beach. We also managed to get about 8 thousand bug bites which we’ve been itching all day today.
In the morning I tried surfing again, while Denielle relaxed on the beach. On my way out I saw a gray whale breach, and several stingrays jumping out of the water. Very strong longshore currents prevailed and I managed to paddle for a couple of hours just to keep position, the wrong position, while not catching anything. I should say I did catch 2 waves backwards, despite my best efforts, which resulted in 15 second hold downs. I need to work on holding my breath. We packed up the car after talking to a man from Vancouver that had permanently retired there. We were going to visit some nearby waterfalls, but being Sunday, we did not want to fight with the crowds, so continued south towards Playa Azul.
This journey was only 285 km but managed to take just over 5 hours. This did include a stop at a beach along the way for leftover pasta with avocado from the night before, where lots of black vultures awaited. If anyone has ever driven from Nanaimo to Tofino, then that would be a good indication of the type of road we travelled today. Decrease the speed and increase the number of turns by about 2000% and you get the road we travelled on today. Don’t get me wrong, it was a lot of fun riding the serpentine Mexico 200, but took a lot of concentration. And with the temperature reaching 33 degrees, some sweaty palms and white knuckles ensued. At one stretch we appeared to find the place that donkeys go to die. Within 500 m of road we encountered 4 separate dead donkeys. Denielle thinks that they fell off of a truck going up the curvy road, one at a time. That brings us to now. We’re spending two nights here to get our bearings and relax before pushing south. I’ve already taken the opportunity to wash my underwear in the sink, and have now had the spiciest enchilada known to man. I haven’t studied the map well yet, b

“lleno con verde...”

This phrase translates loosely to full with green. You may think that represents some kind of eco-friendly motto, but really it’s just how I ask to get the car filled up with gas. Pemex is the Mexican gas station. There is no competition, only the government run gas stations. Green is the regular, and red is the premium. At first I was just using hand signals, gestures and grunts to indicate that I wanted a full tank. But thankfully, I picked up “lleno con verde” from one or two confused attendants. We have spent a lot of time on the road up to this point, so I thought sharing a little intricacy of our road habits would be appropriate. The odometer clocked in at just over 5,000 km today, or 5 megameters.
We are now past the halfway point of 8,200 km to Panama City. Right now we are in Sayulita, in the state of Nayarit. This is our third Mexican state now. First Sonora in the desert, then Sinaloa, and now Nayarit. Next on the docket is Jalisco, through Puerto Vallarta. The last couple of days have seen some great off road adventures and hideaway surf breaks. Yesterday we were in Mazatlan, having arrived the night before. We took a trip up to Playa Bruja, on the north end of the beach. I tried surfing, but all the waves were closing out. Having only caught a couple brief waves, we decided to try our luck with a mysterious wave in Marmol.
Now, when you can’t find a town on a map, it usually means that you probably have no business being there. However, after a brief reconnaissance on the internet, we discerned that kilometre 31 on highway 15 was the place to turn to find a nice secluded left point break with no crowds. However, at kilometre 28 we ran into the toll booth, and not wanting to pay the 8 dollar toll, we made a u-turn in the middle of the highway and took the next available overpass towards Mazatlan to try our luck. Overpasses off of the toll highway, or auto maxi-pista, in Mexico are a little different than what most of you would encounter. There is no lane, no off-ramp, no indication at all, except that you can see the overpass crossing the highway. You have to come to a complete stop within the width of the overpass, and climb up a gravel road around to the other side. It’s hard to explain, but once you get the hang of it, you’re set.
Using the contours of the coast on the gps, we followed a paved road for a while until we came across a large pile of gravel in the middle of the road. An insurmountable pile if you will. Thankfully the matrix has the heart of an off-road machine, and we navigated a path along the side of the road to enter into Marmol. Several turns, speed bumps and cobble stones later, we followed a narrow road separating two large marshland areas, slowly creeping towards the ocean. We ended up on the beach, and then turned around knowing that the tide was coming up eventually. We walked around to find a totally empty beach, well, except for the abundance of shore birds and vultures, and a nice small peeling left point wave. We had a nice lunch of peanut butter and avocado sandwiches (with honey right in the peanut butter), and then returned to the car to prepare the surfboards.
With vultures circling overhead, and a mysterious wave breaking over unknown ground, you could say the mood was ominous, and that peril may be eminent. I walked out towards the break instead of taking the short cut by diving in from the rocks on the side to get a feel for the ocean floor. Some rocks, but mainly sand, and a pretty mellow crumbing wave gave me all the confidence I needed to exhibit some mediocrity on those waves. I had a few really nice long rides, and all in all, it turned out to be a fun wave. Denielle went out into the white water for a while and caught some waves, and then we returned to the car to go back to Mazatlan.
We wanted to avoid the toll again, as the way that we had come into town was now completely blocked by the machinery that had left the first pile of gravel, so we took another road that was on the wrong side of the toll. So we kept going east, in hopes of running into the free highway. The pothole-filled gravel road was not encouraging us in our route choice, and after a while, Denielle commented that maybe we should turn back and pay the toll. But as always, I wanted to go just a little further to see if we ran into something. We almost did. A herd of stampeding cows came running towards us around the bend, but we managed to steer clear of cow on car contact. A few more minutes found us in a small village with a sign pointing towards Mazatlan, so we had succeeded.
The next mission was finding a place to stay. The night before was nice, but a little expensive for what we got, so we kept looking. All the advertised prices on the outside of hotels were nowhere near what they said once you asked, so we kept on going until we were heading towards Tepic, near the airport, in the dark. Never drive at night they say.... Just as we were almost completely out of Mazatlan, Denielle spotted a hotel on the wrong side of the road, so we made a quick u-turn on the highway and rolled on in. For 270 pesos, almost half of what we paid the night before, we had ourselves a nice Jacuzzi suite with king-size bed, a personal garage, and two free beers. This place was strange, but cheap, couldn’t quite put a finger on what was wrong, but we may be on the internet somewhere. Out of the 8 channels on the television, 2 were porn. That was fine, as the place was really nice. However, at 6:30 in the morning the phone rang, with a lady ripping off Spanish on the other end. Denielle handed me the phone, to which I stated, “no entiendo, no hablo espaniol” (I don’t understand, I don’t speak Spanish). Half an hour later there was a knock on the door, and the security guard said we were supposed to be out by 7. What kind of hotel has a 7 am checkout time? We quickly packed up our stuff and were on the road by 7:10.
This early start to the day got us into San Blas at 10 am. The first time I came to Mexico we took a bus from Mazatlan to San Blas took around 8 hours. Today it was 3. We picked up some groceries and ate breakfast at a restaurant, and then were back on the road towards Platanitos. I can’t believe some of the places our little car has gotten us into, who needs four wheel drive? We parked at the end of the road, literally, and walked down the steps along the cliff to the river. With backpack on, Denielle and I paddled across the river to the empty beach and set up for the afternoon. When we first pulled up, the waves were peeling nicely to the right off the river mouth, and twice the size of that in Mazatlan. However, the tide was coming up, and the waves started to close out once I got past the breakers. I ended up paddling around for a couple of hours with catching little in the way of fun rides. So we decided to make for Sayulita before the sun set.
That brings us to now, having just returned from 2 for 1 fish tacos and beer. We picked up some avocados and cereal for the next day. This town has changed so much in the last few years, and is totally packed right now. The waves are supposed to be 5 ft at 17 seconds tomorrow, which is really nice. Now only if I could compete with the 150 kids that are going to be in the water. Two days here, and then we’re heading south towards Manzanillo for a little town called Barra de Navidad. I’m not sure if we’ll make it out of Mexico before Christmas. 5,000km in a week is starting to catch up with us.

Tyler.

Mazatlan

We have arrived in Mazatlan, just after sunset thanks to some searching around for a mystery surf break that peter passed on. A crazy dirt road at 30km worthy of a truck led us to the ocean, but alas, no olas. tomorrow we will try playa bruja, or just take a day at the beach in the sun. We have passed the halfway point, now at just over 4600km on the odometer, with a high temperature of 30 degrees, we are finally warm and sticky.

If the waves are no good, then it will be down towards san blas and platanitos.

Tyler.

“Parablas sucio...”

We’re sitting here in a hotel in Ciudad Obregon. I’m not sure how big the city is, but I can tell you that we’ve driven through a lot of it before finding a hotel. Our journey today started at 6am in a tent in the desert. It was our second night camping at Patagonia Lake State Park, about 15km from the Mexican border. The first night was very cold, and I can tell you that an equatorial sleeping bag rated for 20 Celsius doesn’t quite cut it for -1. Last night was a lot better, only dropping to 8, in addition to the 1mm neoprene shirt that I was wearing. Quick thinking resulted in zipping Denielle’s +10 rated sleeping bag to mine, using mine as the bottom, and a little bit of body heat kept us sleeping through most of the night.

The desert was a lot of fun. We had a productive day in Tucson, which might as well be in Mexico because everyone is from there. I picked up a new pair of shoes, ate out at the Olive Garden, and got our windows tinted on the car. Yesterday we walked through the desert around Patagonia Lake, which wasn’t much of a trail, but quite an adventure. 4 hours later we made it back to the camp with no rattlesnake bites. We did see some wildlife as well, not counting the cows. Apparently there are a lot of birds here, which draws some birders from far around. I was more excited about the cotamundi though. We also saw some white tail deer, some kind of really small desert deer, and quite a few rabbits. The desert is a very pokey place though, and I’ll be thankful to have the beach to walk on without constant worry of cacti in the legs.

This morning we got up before the sun as mentioned previously and took the short trip to the border. Apparently it’s quite easy to get into Mexico as it happened without us even knowing it. 21km later however, we came across the tourist building where we imported our car for 6 months. This was a lot easier than I had ever expected. We just filled out the standard tourist cards, took our car registration and passports, paid a fee, and were back on our way. We encountered a hiccup in Hermosillo however, as the main road was under construction, so with no detour signs and a lack of detailed information on the GPS (i.e. a floating car with no roads on the map), we took a scenic tour of downtown for about an hour before finding our way back to the highway. Driving in busy Mexican cities must be an acquired taste that I haven’t come around to yet. A few choice words were spoken, and frustrations ran high. Perhaps tomorrow we’ll shoot for Mazatlan, unless the waves are good along the way. Peter gave us the names of a couple of spots just north of there that we may check out. We did drive past the ocean today, but once we step foot inside of it, the nerves will be calmed. It’s finally warm and humid, so no more surviving through the desert nights...

Tyler.

Tucson Arizona

Quick update,

we arrived in Tucson Arizona today, just an hour north of the Mexican border. We'll spend a couple of days in the area, and plan on heading into Mexico on Monday, when the border is less busy, and then down to Guayma Mexico, on the Pacific.

check the map link here: Flagstaff to Tucson

and another map here: Tucson to Guayma

Tyler.

“This is why you’re fat...”

There’s a website out there in the interwebs called “this is why you’re fat”. People send in pictures of food from all over the US like deep fried cheeseburgers and such. I would suggest that if you have a weak stomach that you don’t look this site up. The reason I’m talking about the website is that for supper this evening we had a bag of Doritos and some of Reese’s peanut butter cups. Don’t tell Reese, he’s a bully. We finished off by going to Denny’s for some grease at 10pm, and of course, an oreo milk shake to start. Tomorrow is going to be fruit and vegetables.

More interestingly however, our day started off great in Beaver, with a somewhat relaxed start. With no traffic and an ensuing turnoff, I was apparently coasting along at 88mph while looking at the GPS. I know the exact speed because a nice gentleman in a white car pulled me over to tell me. I batted my eyelashes and proclaimed “I’m from Canada eh, ...” and he left me with a warning, a $115 early Christmas present in his words. Too bad the police weren't more like the ones we drove by in Kanab...

So no ticket, and a more careful eye on the speedometer, we started heading up a secondary highway towards the Grand Canyon. At one point the road elevation was 8042 ft, which is 2451 meters. I believe that’s higher than the peak of Moose Mountain, and over a kilometre higher than Roger’s pass. Crazy.

We drove by some signs for Bryce’s canyon, and being on a canyon finding type of trip, we decided to swing by. Less than 5 minutes later we found red rock canyon. I don’t think I can ever go back to Drumheller now after being here. And we were just getting started. After walking around in the snow for a while, we got back into the car and headed for the Grand Canyon.

We came across the end of Glen Canyon at the Glen Canyon Dam and decided to stop in, but weren’t interested in any dam tours. The dam was pretty impressive, much more so than Dixon Dam on Glennifer Lake, but more importantly, one of the staff informed me of a short hike to Horseshoe Bend just past the Walmart. Any hike just past a Walmart has got to be good, and it turned out to be my favourite part of the day.

We hurried back to the car, racing against the sunset to get some photo time in at the big canyon. The sun set about 15km before we got to the park, but we paid our $25 to get in, ouch, as it was still light out. We raced to the first lookout point and jaws dropped. It was also very cold, so I fired off as many photos as I could before I couldn’t feel my hands.

Right now we’re sitting in Flagstaff Arizona, and probably the worst part of Arizona. The town’s elevation is 2106m or 6900ft, which is kind of neat, but the hotel smells like cheap aftershave, and I’m a little worried about waking up in a bathtub full of ice sans kidney. Tomorrow we’re probably going to skirt through Phoenix and go on to Tucson, which is just an hour north of our border crossing into Mexico. We might camp there if it’s warm enough, as here the temperature tonight is -12 on the Celsius. But Tucson is supposed to be 20 during the day and 5 at night, so we’ll see. Still need to tint the car, and poppa needs a new pair of shoes.

Tyler.

“All coked up and nowhere to go.”

14 hours on the road and two monster energy drinks later and I can almost see through time. At least I haven't started seeing bats, which is a real possibility with Las Vegas at the doorstep. Now we’re sitting in a hotel room in the home of America’s best tasting water, Beaver Utah. Who would have thought that Beaver water would taste so good? Hopefully the caffeine wears off soon so I can go to sleep. The hot tub should help with that. It has been a long 3 days with finishing the move and beginning our trip. Monday saw the return of the uhaul and a farewell to the Colclough clan in Rimbey. At least we had a real taste of winter before our trip began, with a few inches of snow and blizzards on the highway. The odometer was reset and the trip officially began from this point.

We arrived safely in Olds to say farewell to my parents and finish up a few last minute details (Shaw decided they no longer wanted me as an email client, so initiated a new gmail account, and they’re glad to have me on board). Tuesday afternoon we left for Raymond, just south of Lethbridge, to say goodbye to my brother and provide a good starting off point for the states. That night we met up with my brother and Jackson to watch some fencing action at the University of Lethbridge. There were quite a collection of “athletes” to behold. I guess the small proportion of Dungeons and Dragons crowd that aren’t confined to their homes due to the width of their doorways and girth of their persons find fencing to be the activity of choice. Jackson got off to a rough start in the tournament, but finished strong, beating the small crazy Asian contingent with a little help from some creative rule enforcement from the referee. But we’ll take a win any way we can get it. Next stop the Olympics. My brother on the other hand efficiently dissected the advances of his much younger and less bald opponents with the agility of a sloth.

The next morning at 5 am we got up and were on the road by 5:30. We arrived at the Coutts border just after 6 am, and after stating that our final destination was Panama and that we did not know for certain how much money combined in pesos, Canadian and American dollars we had in our possession, we were directed to the shed for further inspection. With butt cheeks clenched at the thoughts of having to unpack and repack all of our worldly possessions for the next 6 months, we arrived in the shed to find a friendly ginger gentleman who sent us on our way, not without first embarrassing my knowledge of the Spanish language. So what began at a balmy -15 in Raymond soon warmed up to -7. But as the temperature climbed, so did our elevation, and soon we found our self at 6600 ft just outside of Butte Montana at a temperature of -27. Ouch. The roads were a little icy, but soon we found ourselves on the most boring stretch of highway outside of the Calgary to Medicine Hat route. Thankfully the lack of traffic and generous 75mph speed limits, we found a steady cruising speed of about 150kmh and arrived at Idaho Falls before we knew it, just on the good side of the “E”.

Traffic steadily picked up the closer we got to Salt Lake City. 7 lanes of traffic on each side had us quickly retreat to the safety of the car pool lane, and not a minute later our previous lane came to a stop. Unfortunately for the car beside us, this observation went unnoticed, and a fender bender ensued. I almost thought he had the stop, but the crunch indicated otherwise. It’s a good thing we switched lanes, or that could have been us with the Chrysler up our hatch. Smooth sailing and a steady 80mph brought us to our current location in Beaver Utah. By my calculations, that puts us about 2000km from Rimbey, and about 3 hours or so from the Grand Canyon, our next location for adventure. That’s all for now, keep fit and have fun.

Rimbey to Beaver Utah

Tyler.