Ixmiquilpan, Hidalgo to Jalpan Queretaro

I think I went through a little culture shock in Coatpec.  Well, that and we just about froze to death.  I was about ready to pack in the whole trip – head straight for the border where the roads are easy to manage, where you can drive 600km a day without a second thought, where the signs on major roads can pretty much be relied upon and where there are actually signs.  San Juan del Rio and Pachuca are now my two favorite cities for signage.  Amazing signage there.  There are so many times here that you have signs pointing in opposite directions, both indicating the same destination.  For example, the day we drove to the balneario I came to a “Y”.  To the right was a standard green directional sign with an arrow pointing right and a destination of Queretaro.  Directly in front of me was a concrete barrier and someone had painted “Queretaro” and an arrow pointing left.  Most of the traffic was going left but the road to the right was in much better condition (to the left was dirt).  I decided to go left and then took a look at all the trucks – 2 of them had some indication that they were from Queretaro, so I decided to stay left.  I didn’t get another sign indicating I was on the correct road for more than 50km.  This is so typical here in the interior but down in QRoo it is really not.

The boys, as expected, had an amazing time at the balneario.  However, even though I offered and suggested and tried to cajole them into using bloqueador, they decided to go without.  I had SPF50 on and got a little pink but they roasted.  Jesse has blisters all over his shoulders and while I didn’t give either of them much sympathy the first day after the sunburn, I am now.  I think Pike will be mostly all better tomorrow – his skin is naturally darker than Jesse’s – but I’m worried that Jesse will be in pain for a while.  We had planned to head to Rio Verde and Real de Catorce today, but Jesse was in so much pain and not wanting to sit in the car, even to wear a shirt, that we decided to stay another day.  I’m not certain that we want to spend 2 nights in Real de Catorce (yes, it is back on the schedule) and I’m also worried about the cold up there.  It is cool enough here – I ran 3.25 miles yesterday and I did not break a sweat.

It is hard to believe that steaming hot, the constant annoyance of mosquitoes and multitudes and variety of other bugs isn’t the norm.  I keep expecting the steaming hot and am constantly amazed with the warm to cool weather.  I keep wondering if there is a norte blowing through or something, but people keep walking around in shorts.  Weird.  Everything is so much less costly here also.  We are loving the variety of food and foods we’d forgotten.  After getting sick of gorditas and tacos I finally got the boys to start trying the comidas and they’re really enjoying them.

Since we had another day off of travel and I’d really hoped to see some of the missions in this area AND the trip TO Jalpan left a little to be desired in the eleventy million curves we negotiated, Pike and I headed for a nearby town today and fell in love with both the amazingly tranquil town and the beautiful mission church.  We found that the road was really the worst up to Jalpan was the worst part and had a great drive today.  We were soon back to Jalpan and spent the afternoon watching futbol from our balcony (it overlooks the field) and enjoying the town.  I’m hoping that Jesse will be doing better tomorrow because even though we love this hotel and love this town, I’m ready to head out.