Tony working hard for Ocean Spray

Our little green tent is resting happily in the aubergine shadow of the Grand Occidental Oriental mountain range tonight.  Having passed with minimal drama through the border crossing at Brownsville, Texas into Matemoros, Mexico, before lunch we’ve come south to the city of Victoria, nestled against the mountains in the state of Tamaulipas.  It has been a good day.

The children spent the afternoon hunting for saguaro cacti… none have been seen thus far and there is a fifty cent bounty out on the first one sighted… and counting crosses by the roadside.  This morbid assignment comes from their Gramps: “It’s like in Holland, Mom,” pointed out Ezra, “when he wanted us to count windmills.”  They also spent the day quizzing me on “what does this say, or how do you say thus and so…”  My brain is tired already.  It’s going to be a long week, coming up to speed in my third language… and even “up to speed” isn’t as quick as you might think.  I refer to myself as “functionally literate” in Spanish, meaning, I can get us through life, but don’t expect subject-verb agreement on any kind of regular basis.

Have boys will travel!

It was a day of satisfying our long lost tastes of Mexico:  for the children, butterfly cookies and heavily sugared bow-tie pastries, for Mama, guavas and a one dollar pineapple, for Daddy, black beer… okay, maybe that was mostly for Mama too.  We bought a tall stack of tortillas (half a kilo) for fifty cents and sopped up our bean and hominy soup, with limone squeezed over the top, quite happily.  It was a good first day for our taste buds.

A shot from the highway

We pulled into the campground in Ciudad Victoria in the late afternoon.  Rosie, the kindly proprietress was having her siesta, so we let her sleep while Hannah and Gabe set up tents and the little boys helped me hand was yesterday’s clothing.  It turns out that our nearest neighbours are from Kingston, Ontario… where I spent most of my childhood, across the river from the island my parents still live on.  We chatted for a while about the small world we live in before realizing that their daughter, Kristen, and I went to high school together.  I remember her quite clearly… funny to be camped next to her folks two countries away from home.  God has a sense of humor.

Tomorrow we push south, headed over the next few days for Mexico City.  The children are keen to climb pyramids and Hannah has an eagle eye out for the pink and white coconut jelly squares that she so loves.  The best news of all:  it is finally really warm!