La Purificación to Obregón

Well it happened. After nearly 3 months we received our shipment from the United States. Apart from a few broken glasses and banged up furniture it arrived unscathed. Our new gardener, Hector, helped Esten unload things from the huge trailer into a borrowed CIMMYT truck and then unload them again at our house.


Our street was too narrow and the power lines too low for the truck to make it to our house.

Esten, Rowan and I unpacked most everything as quickly as possible, packed up some different toys and clothes and headed north for our "two-month vacation" to Obregón.
While Esten and Hector were working hard, I took a few pictures of plants in our yard.
Some apples are blooming.

Some are small and tasty.

And the avocados are bountiful. We’ll likely miss some of them but there are plenty more on the way.


We left for Obregón last Saturday and let’s just say, Ro and I are flying home. We live just east of D.F. (Mexico City) and had to drive through that unorganized, over populated city (you can only drive your car certain days according to your license plate number because there are simply too many cars) to be on our way. We had a GPS system that works really well, minus the times when it told us to turn left into a field or onto an unpaved road, but still managed to miss ONE turn. That one missed turn cost us three hours of two lane, slow, windy, steep, tiny village, mountain driving. I was pretty sure we would never get to Guadalajara. That was our first stop. We made it, barely, but later than expected. We couldn’t find a hotel for over an hour but while stopped at a red light, low and behold a cop pulled up beside us. We asked him where to go and he told us to pull over ahead and we did. He asked if we were looking for a particular hotel but we told him any nice hotel would do. He must have saw our diplomatic plates because he kindly weaved us through centro (downtown) Guadalajara and led us to Hotel Moreles. We passed the valet parking, but no problem, he held up the traffic while we backed up and pulled in. The hotel was very nice and we were so tired that we ordered room service and passed out. The next morning we grabbed breakfast at Chai, a hip bistro and hit the road. Day two goal: Mazatlán.

Oh bless you day two, long, straight, toll road the whole way. We arrived and downgraded our hotel (mistake) but enjoyed ourselves anyway. We took Ro down to the beach and at first sight he was frightened by the waves, but after we played run away from the waves he warmed up.


We walked on the seawall and watched the sunset that night and packed up and left for day three early the next morning.


Day three was uneventful also and after paying at least $200 from D.F. to Obregón, we arrived.
Obregón is a newer city and is much more like the US compared to Texcoco. It's easy to navigate, restaurants are abundant (hot wings, sushi, tacos, Spanish, etc...), and get this, people stop at red lights. We’ve been here a week and it’s been rough. Let’s see: Ro's first head bang resulting in blood, no hot water in the kitchen (good thing about the restaurants), and a rollover stroller accident. Rowan was in his caddy of a stroller so he was fine. I almost boxed a 200 lb man, came up with muddy shins, shoes, hands, and clothes, bloody knuckles and knees. It’s a long story and we're getting ready to leave for San Carlos for my birthday so it’ll have to wait. Things can only get better from here.
And I'll leave you with Rowan getting busted unrolling the toilet paper.