Angostura Mexico – Part 2

Luckily it appeared that the driver was not hurt and neither were the other two trucks that had to avoid hitting him.  I think that if we had been there a few minutes earlier it could have been us avoiding the truck.

A little bit further we arrived in Santa Ana where we had planned to sleep for the night.  Unfortunately we stopped at 4 different hotels and each one was full.  We decided it would probably be best to continue on and sleep in Hermosillo instead.  At about 3am we arrived in Hermosillo and found that the hotels there were all full as well.  The holiday rush was upon us and we were unprepared.  After a bit of searching we finally found that the Holiday Inn had a handicapped room available for us.  We were quite happy to be able to finally get some sleep.

After a short four and a half hour nap at the Holiday Inn I woke to Maria bribing me with the back seat of the truck.  She said that if I would get up now she would let me lie down in the back seat and Miranda would sit up front.  Since I’m still trying to kick a nasty cold it appeared that my body wanted more sleep than four and a half hours so I got up and climbed into the back seat.  Rather than head for the highway immediately Maria wanted to stop at her favorite taco stand called “Taquerias El Chino”.

I’m not sure why they named the place the way they did as there are no Chinese people working and they don’t serve anything with a Chinese flair.  In spite of this, the tacos they serve are still really good.  The first time I ever had tacos de ojo was here.  They are a little juicier than tacos de cabeza, but definitely not anywhere near as gross as they sound.  With a little salsa and cilantro they are pretty damn tasty.  Since they did not have a drive-through, Maria went and picked up some tacos while Miranda and I stayed in the truck. 

We figured we would try to eat them on the road, but this didn’t work out very well since they are so messy.  We ended up eating them in the parking lot of the Kumon which had some nice pictures of kids playing together.  Their slogan was a little weird and I wasn’t sure how to translate it properly.  After our stomachs were full we hit the road once more.

Since I was still in the back seat I decided that I would take advantage of the time and go through an awesome ACN getting started book that Jeff gave Maria and me right before we left.  It has some great forms and ideas for getting the business up and going.   Since Maria was still driving I helped her get some ideas for people to contact when we get back to Tucson.  She used some of the memory joggers to think of people she knows that might be great distributors.  After a little while we lost track of the subject and I started listening to a Xango CD my mom made for me and then dove into my Critical Thinking book which is very interesting.  It was a text book that I purchased for a class at the University of Phoenix a few years ago, but never got the chance to use it because I had to cancel the class.  I will get some more info about this posted later once I’ve had a chance to read more than the first few chapters.

The next four hours went pretty quickly and soon we were passing Los Mochis and Maria began getting very teary eyed.  She was missing her grandmother who passed away earlier this year and we had just passed her house.  She asked if we could stop at her Tia Mapy’s house to say hello since this was where her grandmother had been living prior to her death.  We stopped by the gas station that her aunt owns, but she wasn’t working so we continued on to her aunt’s house. 

When we got to the house Maria and her aunt hugged for a solid minute or two and I think Maria needed that very badly.  Soon we were ushered into the house and saw little Pilarcita who is now about 14 months old.  She is the cutest little girl I’ve seen in some time.  She is still very small and quiet and seemingly curious about most of the world around her.  She and Miranda ran over to the Christmas tree and began playing with all of the lights while the adults were telling stories.  After about twenty minutes of chit-chat we said our goodbyes and got back into the truck.

Maria wanted for us to go through La Palma which is a small town where her dad was born.  To get there we needed to take a small dirt road that separates a few of the bean fields a few miles and then turn.    She gave us a guided tour of the town and where she remembered playing when she was young.  There can’t have been more than the equivalent of 1 city block of houses and I believe most of the people were farmers.  About a half of a mile outside of the town we finally entered our final destination which was Angostura.  It only took about 20 hours of travel to make it from Tucson to Angostura.

After saying hello to everyone we quickly began unpacking the overloaded truck.  It turns out that Maria’s parents had 2 brand new rooms added to their house and we were going to get to stay in one of them.  They are not huge by any means, but they were perfect for Maria, Miranda, Fito, Megan and I to crash in for a few days of partying.  I told Maria’s dad that if he added a few more rooms he’d have the perfect setup for a small hotel.  Considering the fact that Angostura only has a population of about 30,000 people and no hotels it could come in handy.

Soon after unpacking we all gathered around the table on the back porch to catch up and have a drink or two.  Since I don’t usually drink beer I grabbed some of the whisky that they had and mixed it up with some soda water.  We had also brought some Disorono and Megan came up with an awesome idea to mix some of it in to sweeten it up a bit.  This worked beautifully and when mixed with the Marlin dip and some tortilla chips I was quite content.  The weather was perfect.  It was about 70 degrees once the sun went down which was cool enough to keep the mosquitoes at home and keep me from sweating.  As always Maria’s mom was running around serving food and drinks, and trying to make sure that everyone is having a great time.

                David and Fito decided that they needed some beer so I hopped in the pickup with them and we headed for the Tecate stand.  While figuring out how many cases of red and how many cases of light beer to purchase there is a crazy old Mexican man that comes over and starts questioning us about where we’re from.  He keeps yelling “MEXICANOS GABACHO” which I didn’t understand at the time.  It turns out that he was telling me that he was from Mexico and that he knew I was from the United States.  Luckily my Spanish isn’t very good and I told him “nice to meet you” which I believe kept things friendly all around.  David later told me that since the guy was older he didn’t take it offensively.  If it had been younger people it might have started a fight.  We took our Tecate and headed back to the house.

                When we arrived back to the house Maria’s sister Cynthia had proclaimed that her pregnant belly would like some carne asada tacos from one of the local taco vendors.  The ten of us piled into two vehicles and headed to the taco stand.  They have a special menu item there called Vampiras which translates to “female vampire”.  It was a regular carne asada taco that has been flattened like a tostada and then they add some extra picante sauce and tomatoes and toast it until the tortilla is a little dark.  It turned out that even though I didn’t order one of these I got one with my dinner.  I think it was supposed to go to Tia Florida, but it was misplaced in front of me.  Since I don’t know the difference I had it almost finished before anyone had even noticed the mistake was made.  It turned out just fine and the ten of us ate dinner for about five hundred pesos which is equal to about forty dollars.

                We took two small bags of tacos to go and headed back to the house.  To our surprise Maria’s older brother, Javier had arrived while we were out eating.  He brought along his wife and four children from Monta Rey, Mexico.  They brought some very weird looking fruit that his wife Jaqueline likes called cherimoya.  It is about the size and color of a green apple, but the outside is shaped like a human heart and has many small divots in the skin that allow it to be held very easily.  It tasted very sweet and was quite refreshing.  We all continued to hang out and visit for a while more before bed.  After only getting a few hours of sleep the previous night I was exhausted and slept very well.