Adventura que nunca olvidaré

Ok. This is a story that hopefully with explain a little bit about what living here is like and if it doesn't cover that, hopefully you will all find joy and get a smile out of this story. My host sister, Rosio, has a boyfriend from France who has been living here for six months, but is going back to France. They decided that it would be fun to go to the beach for his last weekend here and very generously offered the trip to my friend Lesley and I as well. They threw the idea at me one day, just kind of thinking, and the next day it was set. At first we were going to go by bus and it would cost about $57 each way to travel via bus, but then Alex decided that it would be much more econimical to go by car and we would save about $50. Lesley and I said bien, let's do it. So we get up to leave at 4:30 am on Saturday morning. Senora Magda is up and dressed and as we were walking out the door I told her goodbye and she said, oh no, I'm coming too! Ok, wonderful!! The more the merrier right? Turns out we are taking her little VW car that holds 5 people with a quite small backseat. There are now 6 of us going; 4 of us sitting in the back seat. Whatever, we are going to the beach...no big deal, we can be cozy for a while. Well at 4:30 in the morning apparently Guanajuato is quite cold, so the first part of the trip I wanted to cry because I was absolutely FREEZING and starving. After about four hours of having a numb behind from the cozy coupe, we finally stop and eat quesadillas made with homemade tortillas and Mexican coffee. They made the tortillas right in front of us. DELICIOSO! I also found out at this time when you travel in Mexico you apparently have to bring your own toilet paper. Rest stops; nowhere has toillet paper and when you find some, you cannot flush it. We are about to get going again after our breakfast, well it's something we'd eat for lunch in the US, and I'm getting in the car and Alex takes off. I have to hurry and kind of jump in the car and slam the door and in doing so spill coffee on Lesley's pants. He never stopped going even when it was obviously I wasn't in the car...Don't worry, I think he was just excited to get to the beach. So anyway here we are traveling in this tiny car (cochito) and the subject of gas comes up after about 5 hours. Turns out we ran out. First we pulled over and asked a truck driver for some, he had none, so we drove further and pulled over. We waited in the cochito for an hour while Rosio and Alex took our waterbottles and went to find gas. While waiting I bought a bag of oranges for 10 pesos (it's 14.68 pesos to the dollar right now) These oranges were pretty dang cheap. But this time we were also sweating because it had warmed up quite a lot. So after about an hour we were on the road again. We arrived in Zihuatanejo after 7 hours in this tiny cochito. We finally found the motel. There were 3 beds for the six of us...hhhmm. Lesley and I decided to pay a little bit more for our own room. It was a total of 250 pesos, split between two people, 125 pesos, which is less than $12 for one night. Jeeze. So we arrived at the beach finally. Holy Moly the trip was well worth it. We hung out on the beach for a while and then went to the motel to shower and walked to the market. We bought some delicous bread for the morning and then Lesley and I sat on our balcony for a while. The next day we went to Playa Linda (which I guess is known for sharks....yikes, glad I didnt know that when I was in the water for a while, actually at one time a bunch of the Mexicans ran out of the water so I did too, but they got back in so I just assumed it was ok...man oh man). So anyway, we hung on the beach and then took a water taxi to Isla de Coral and spent the rest of the day there where we had a wonderful, muy ricoso, meal. I had a big ol fish and it was incredible! AFter the island we got in the car to return home, only to get lost again on the way home and to spent another 7 hours in the tiny VW. When the trip was said and done, the total for my trip was around $1oo, including meals, taxis, ice cream, and a wonderful sunburn in February. It honestly was an incredible trip and am so lucky and glad that I got the chance to experience such a viaje! I don´t think I´ll ever forget this trip. Especially the part where we ran out of gas and they took my waterbottle to go find some. The best part was that it was no big deal to them, almost like the had expected it to happen. ¡Que bueno! Tengo mucho suerte para recibir el regalo de esta vida.