headed south

Hello from Mexico! At the time I’m writing this we are 3 hours away from cruising into Ixtlan.

We headed for the border this morning while it was still dark. Our experience at the border was really, really good. Praise God! Thanks to everyone who prayed to Him to help us through. We got everything done that we needed to get done to get a temporary permit for the Jimmy in less than an hour. Then we shimmied into the Jimmy and made like a snowbird, heading south to Ixtlan.

Mexico is different than the U.S. One of the first things we met as we entered the country was a beggar that was missing a leg. He wasn’t the only one without limbs that we saw throughout the day. To be honest it was hard, with such a stark difference and in the comfort of a car with a place to go to even feel compassion, even though they deal with incredible challenges. Traveling through Mexico made me realize that I take a lot of things for granted as rights back in the States that a lot of the world, real people with real stories, don’t have access to. One of these rights includes having toilet paper in public bathrooms.

Some of the other highlights of the day included getting swindled out of 100 pesos at a gas station, seeing a fresh accident of a semi flipped on its side, eating food at an authentic Mexican restaurant, and having an unexpected encounter with the Federal police.

Every once in a while throughout the highways the federal police have a checkpoint, where they randomly stop cars and ask a few questions. We were asked if we had jumper cables, which they borrowed for a few minutes to start a vehicle stranded on the road a couple hundred meters away from the checkpoint. If we had been on our toes, we would have tried to get a ride in a cop car out of the deal, but Taylor and I don’t speak Spanish and Grant was too busy trying to tactfully answer if he liked the women of Michoacán.

Tomorrow we plan to spend the day in Ixtlan and then head to Guadalajara airport on Friday morning.