Tabasco to home

We all slept very well and didn’t get up under after 7am.  For some reason that felt very late to me and I scrambled about trying to get ready quickly.  We knew we had even more mileage to cover today than yesterday and we had no toll roads to count on for making the kilometers fly by.  BUT, the Yucatan roads are relatively new and the route we picked had very sporadically spaced towns (and thus, fewer topes).  We were on the road by 8am and since Frontera is such a small town, we were really on the highway by 8:09.  This is such a weird way to travel – stressed by getting on the road early and stressed by putting away the kilometers instead of discovering new places, but we were all Very Ready to get home after almost 4 months on the road.  It is really very very different traveling from hotel to hotel without your house. Once you’ve traveled with your house (trailer, RV, camper of some kind) it is incredibly hard to take that same nomadic life from hotel to hotel.  And we were Very Ready to settle in for a rest of some kind – if nothing else, a rest from the endless pursuit of more kilometers under our collective belts.

We decided to drive up to the Ciudad del Carmen area and then drop down to MX187 and over to MX307 and up the coast home.  I’m not sure I’d make that same decision – it is definitely pretty, but I think heading up to Merida, then down to Coba, over to Tulum and up might be a faster way to do this in the future.  We remembered many of the towns we went through and had an excellent surprise in what we affectionately call “the armpit”, Escarcega.  We always stop at the Pemex there – it is an excellent place to wait out a hurricane or spend the night with your rig.  They also have a hotel/motel there and cafe.  I took the girls inside for a pee break when I was treated with the site of an espresso machine and simply could not leave without a sample.  She filled my coffee cup, we got gelatin, flan, gum and a latte for Jamie and hit the road yet again.  Back in Ciudad Victoria I’d noticed a small truck towing a boat from Houston and we were shocked to see it pull into the Pemex at Escarcega!  The kids cheered me on to catch up to it, but first we had a chicken lunch to get and wrong streets to meander.

The kids got more and more excited as we got closer and closer and after crossing the state line (Quintana Roo) we finally caught up with the boat.  Not sure where she’s headed, but I have a picture of her outside Ciudad Victoria and along MX187 outside Escarcega.  Our amazing neighbors had cleaned our palapa and I can’t imagine how much work they had on their hands, especially considering our neighbor has been under construction (wood and lots and lots of concrete) the entire time we’ve been gone.  There must have been a good couple inches of concrete dust everywhere.  We are so lucky to have such good friends.

The kids have been playing non-stop since they got home but i’ve been laid up with some gut thing.  I started the raw garlic regime yesterday though and hope it will be kicked by tomorrow.  Poor Jamie has been trying to unpack and get provisions but I was, finally, able to get internet up late last night and the kids were all very happy about that.

We’re seeing lots of things we want to do with the palapa – we’re thinking of converting the diningroom to the boys’ room and we have plans for the upstairs as well.  But first we have 2 ACs which are about to die and a fridge we’re not sure will last the week.  And oh yeah, there is that house in Merida.  So our dance cards are definitely full.