Click on a photo to enlarge it.
We drove 520 miles (812 km) north to Álamos and found out that the roads to avoid the tolls have been blocked off! But we only found out when we got to the other end
and had to move a few bushes to get back onto the main road!
The drive took 3.5 days and we arrived at 6pm on Saturday 15th May. We had arranged to stay in a Casita belonging to our friend Annabelle who was already back home
in Canada and had house sitters, Colin and Jan, looking after the house. We had emailed Colin and said we would be arriving on Sunday so they weren't expecting us on
the Saturday.
We tooted the horn outside the gate which is some distance from the house and so they couldn't hear us. But the gardener did! Then we heard a voice saying "Hello"
but we couldn't see him as he was behind the trees! So then we had a weird situation where he was saying hello and we kept asking "where are you". Quite surreal!
Eventually Colin came down and opened the gate for us. Colin and Jan are from England and Wales originally but are now Canadians. They are a really nice couple and
we got on really well with them.
We moved into the Casita which has a room with a bed, table and chairs, a bathroom and a kitchen. The air conditioning wasn't working but we have fans which we
plugged in.
The casita hasn't been used much so we had to evict a few spiders and outside there were hundreds of spiders with very long legs that we had to get rid of from time
to time.
Hundreds of spiders
Bird feeding
The gardener cleared off a space in front of the casita so that we could park Winnie closer to the building where there would be more shade. He will still be in the
sun until around 4pm though.
We stayed for two weeks and put up mosquito netting in the windows so we could leave them open. It was getting quite hot - 36°C. We also worked on the website and
got up to date and got Winnie sorted out so that we could leave him here until mid August.
We took everything out and stored it in Annabelle's house where it is cooler and then put a tarp over Winnie because the rainy season is July and we don't want to
develop any leaks whilst we are away!
Colin cooked a traditional British Sunday lunch for us which was wonderful, especially for Helen who misses her English food! We reciprocated the following week and
made a Shepherds pie!
Colin and Jan also drove us to Obregon airport which is about 60 miles away and was a great help as we didn't have to go by bus with our heavy luggage. It meant that
we had to wait 8 hours at the airport for our flight but we made ourselves comfortable!
We flew to Mexico City where we stayed with Annette until the 9th June. We met Annette and Gisela 4 years ago at a church that had been partially buried by lava near
Uruapan, Mexico. Since then we have kept in contact and Annette invited us to stay with her. She lives in Mexico City for more than 40 years.
It was after midnight when we got to her house. Great to see her again! Over a cup of tea we chatted for a couple of hours to catch up. It was already 2.30am when we
finally dropped dead into bed.
