Escapees Chapter 8 Rally and beyond

The Internet in Mexico has been slow, iffy or non-existent, so we haven’t had any possibility to post a new blog.  The Escapees Mexican Connection Rally is over and done for and we are now in Alamos, Sonora together with two other couples on February 21, 2015.

The Chapter 8, Mexican Connection Rally was in Kino Bay, Sonora. There are actually two Bahía de Kino’s, Kino Viejo (Old Kino) and Kino Nuevo (New Kino). We were staying in Kino Nuevo in a nice large RV park with a lot of permanent winter RV visitors (snow birds) but plenty of room for our 25 rigs.

The beach is just across the street, and the aquamarine water shimmers in the sun, with a mountainous island just across, in the Sea of Cortez. The weather was very nice and not too hot and we even had three days with some rain. Very unusual for this time of the year!  Being President of the Chapter meant that we didn’t have a lot of time to “play”; we had several meetings and we were also involved in the work of the Charity Committee fulltime.

New Kino is very gringo-ized. Lots of Americans and Canadians live here and have built houses and the whole 5 mile long road between Old and New Kino is full of restaurants, hotels, condos, etc. and not very Mexican at all.   

A neat cupola in New Kino, the "Church on the Hill" and this is a "home" in Old Kino!

Old Kino is a poor fishing village, with a few hotels, one campground, lots of little street-side places where you can eat –good and inexpensive. More like the real Mexico to us!  The Wagonmaster on the scouting trip had made contact with the Americans of the Club Deportivo, which supports a lot of local community organizations and through them our Charity Committee found several places where we could leave all our in-kind donations (lots of clothes, medical stuff, some school supplies, soccer balls, wheel chairs and more) and later on we visited institutions which could use the money we had in donations and from an auction we held one of the nights.

The wheelchair was so appreciated by this man---the kids at the "Breakfast Club" enjoying desayuno

So we ended up with $5,000 cash which was divided up between the AA (Alcoholics Anonymous) program in Old Kino which works with drug, alcohol and behavior problems, where they badly needed a new coat of paint in the drab rooms where about 48 people (6 of which were women) stayed “locked up” for three months working to become sober; a breakfast program where elementary school kids could go for a nutritious breakfast before school, a school for handicapped kids, a club for people with diabetes, Mexico’s #1 disease, where Americans provide the patients with syringes, test strips and glucose meters (the Mexican government provides insulin for free, but no means of using it); a type of “Habitat for Humanity” program, where single mothers and or widows get small loans to build homes, which they pay off by making crafts. This is a continuous program, since they build their homes in stages, for example getting money to build the foundation, pay off that loan and then a small loan next for walls & windows, and so on.  The last charity possibility was a very impressive rehab center where they have a hyperbaric chamber for rescuing divers from the bends but also use the pure oxygen they have for wound healing, arthritis, stroke victims and many other health concerns we didn’t know about.  The fishermen in Kino Bay are not using  scuba diving equipment; they use snorkels and old hookah gas-powered pumps, often contaminated with oil, with air hoses down to the diver. They dive up to 100’ or more, sometimes don’t know how deep they are, since they walk on the sea floor and stay down much longer than advisable.  Many people have died and over 80 people a year are brought to the hyperbaric chamber to be helped.  We visited all these places and were very impressed with some or appalled by conditions in others and could really see where the need was greatest.

The kids are delighted with the "diablo" and the bags full of stuff from Office Depot

This area of the Sea of Cortez is where the Seri Indians live. The Seris are famous for the beautiful ironwood carvings. There was a large Seri fiesta at the Seri Museum in Kino Bay on Sunday February 8, which was set up to coincide with our group’s visit.  Behind the Museum, many Seri women had set up their tables full of wares, and you could get your face painted in a typical Seri fashion. Besides the Ironwood carvings, they make beautiful baskets, soapstone sculptures, and fantastic jewelry mostly made of shells and painted fish vertebrae.  
 

Necklaces are made of limpet shells and fish vertebrae---basket on left bottom is the one we bought

Of course we had to buy some baskets as well and some carvings. You could haggle a little bit but except for the really big baskets, things were not too expensive. We even learned some Seri words and got a lot of smiles when we said something was beautiful and thank you in their language, although most of the younger  Seris speak fluent Spanish.  Some of the boys wore rattles (seeds) on their legs and did some dancing, while a man or woman chanted.  We had seen similar dances of the Tarahumara Indians in the Copper Canyon, and maybe the tribes are related or their customs are similar. We were amazed about the handicrafts and couldn’t resist buying several necklaces, bracelets and the pièce de resistance was small basket earrings for Maryke. They are beautiful and so original!

We had several good meals, especially in Old Kino. One of the restaurants, Mariscos Bahía, is on the beach and we enjoyed a beautiful sunset there.  







We also drove to the Estero (Estuary) where they were growing oysters and there was a lot of birdlife especially pelicans sitting on the boats

On the second Sunday (2/15) there was a fiesta on the plaza in Old Kino, it was a fundraising for the women of the Familias Unidas (the women who are building their houses), and folkloric dance groups of the local high school performed. They did a great job. We would have never known about this local fiesta if we had not seen an announcement on the board in the office of the Familias Unidas when we visited them and had asked them about it.

On Monday the 16 we had a Rally bus trip to Hermosillo, the capital of the state of Sonora, about 60 miles southeast.  It was very interesting visiting the impressive Governor’s Palace with lots of murals and then walked around on the Plaza Zaragoza.

We went to a “Coyotas” factory where they make a type of empanada with a dulce (sweet) mixture inside that was very good.  We went to several curio stores and one very nice indigenous people’s crafts store, where our people enjoyed shopping. 

Making of the "coyotas" in Hermosillo

Unfortunately the Cathedral was locked, they said, but we weren’t too disappointed because the next day we and another couple went back to Hermosillo (in their car) to buy some of the stuff we could not buy in Kino for our charity recipients, so we made it a point to visit the Cathedral, a beautiful building outside (built around 100 years ago) and typical for those churches inside, but nothing like some of the cathedrals we have seen in other places in Mexico. We went to Home Depot for paint for the Breakfast Club and a hand truck for the handicapped kids. Didn’t know the word for hand truck in Spanish is “diablo” (devil).  The handtruck we purchased was a Diablo #7—check it out at your nearby Home Depot in the States and see if they have any Diablos!!  Also went to Office Depot for art and craft supplies for the school and “mice” for their computers and even went shopping at Walmart and had lunch at McDonalds.  Are we still in Mexico????

The Palacio del Gobierno and murals

The Club Deportivo organized our final Rally dinner at the Club and they too had two groups of dancers perform folk dances for us. They were excellent. That night the “installation of officers” happened and we could finally relax with the new title of Immediate Past President!!  

The last day of the rally we took our rig and drove to the first Seri village at Punta Chueca, after we heard that the road was all paved. It is a very poor fishing village, but of course the moment we were spotted, the women came out with all their crafts. They were not pushy and we did buy a few more things, especially after we met Lidia again, an older woman with a great wrinkled face, who we had met at the Seri fiesta. She also recognized us and Maryke purchased a very beautiful necklace from her with a scallop shell encrusted with many tiny shells.

The road to Punta Chueca through cactus fields and impressive mountains

Most people had a good time at the Rally, although the organization and communication could have been better. Three rigs were the only ones going further south. We were the leader (since we had driven this stretch before) and after making a stop at “KM 98” for our vehicle permits (called hologramas) moved on to San Carlos, a nice beach town just north of Guaymas. The car permits took forever, of all the confusing information we had gotten from the Internet the so-called Sonora Only permit is only for cars, and RVs need the “all of Mexico” permit, which is good for 10 years. The price was even the same ($60) and a lot more $ than we expected. Both other rigs (large motorhomes) had a “toad” (towing a car) so they needed two holograms and it took over 1=1/2 hours to get it all figured out and paid for. The people at KM 98 were extremely friendly though and the girl at the Banjercito (where you pay) even spoke fluent English. What delayed us as well was that we passed the building, because there was no sign and there was a lot of construction on the shoulder of the road (building a new lane we think) and finally 5 or 6 miles down the road we asked at an agricultural inspection station, and found out that we had indeed passed the KM98 building and had to make a U-turn, not an easy feat for two 40’ motorhomes with a towed car attached, but we made it! And now we are good for ten years of traveling all over Mexico!  We stayed that night at Totonaka RV Park in San Carlos, with excellent wifi, but of course this wasn’t written yet. San Carlos is just like New Kino and full of Americans, and fishing is the main thing here for the tourists.  The difference is the natural setting of very scenic mountains.

Two little girls watching the dancing in the plaza

From here we are going further south to Alamos, one of our favorite Mexican towns. That will be the next blog post.