shoestring gringa

The good news is that Mexico has a wondrous system of modern, well-maintained, four-lane highways going pretty much anywhere in the Republic you might wish to visit. The bad news is that they are toll roads (Cuotas), and they cost an arm and a leg.

I guess the other good news is that you don’t have to use them; you are always free to use the Libre, the free road, along with the rest of the hoi polloi and most of the trucks. The Libres are generally older, in worse repair, two lanes only, lacking in shoulders for important activities like tire-changing or avoiding oncoming trucks in your lane, hillier/curvier, more congested, and take longer to get from point A to point B.

Despite the above disadvantages, on some stretches the Libres can actually be nicer than the Cuotas (I haven’t been there recently but the Libre between Tijuana and Ensenada was at one time a little paradise on earth in the springtime).The trouble is, when traveling through unfamiliar territory, how are you going to know? The cautious traveler will usually elect the Cuota the first time around, especially if driving a large vehicle or towing something.

Apart from safety considerations, the Cuotas offer two notable amenities as consolation for the staggering fees they charge.

The first is that they usually have really nice bathrooms, which after all one would hope, at those prices.

An even greater convenience is that most Cuotas will take US dollars in payment, and give you change in pesos. If you find yourself running out of pesos, this can save endless hours of searching for banks or casas de cambio in strange towns. The Cuota stations usually have the (generally reasonable) exchange rate posted prominently on the booth. Some, but not all, will take only $20 bills or smaller. In the many, many toll stations we have passed through in the last two years, I remember seeing only one or two that did not accept dollars.

Mexican toll roads charge by a formula which is posted, with helpful pictures, on the approach to the toll booths. Basically they charge by the number of axles you have, as far as I can figure. So if you’re towing a trailer or driving something with lots of wheels, expect to pay more. On our most recent travels with a cargo trailer, about nine months ago, a cheap toll would be about 19 pesos (~$1.90 USD), an expensive one well in excess of 100 pesos (~$10.00 USD). I seem to recall a couple $20+ tolls. There is no apparent rhyme or reason to the charges with relation to distance; some 19-peso tolls were good for hours of happy motoring, whereas some of the “omigod, 15 bucks!!!” ones paid for only a half-hour stretch.

Driving a gas-guzzling V8 pickup, as we have been doing, and pulling a two-axle cargo trailer, we have found toll charges add up to somewhere between one-half and three-fourths of the amount we pay for gas. If you’re planning to use toll roads when driving in Mexico, be sure to include a generous amount for them in the budget!

Believe me, the toilet situation has improved tremendously over the last thirty years since I first visited Mexico. It still, however, has a way to go.

The whole toilet thing is not much of an issue when you are settled in your own house, but it looms large when traveling. Toilet availability in Mexico is quite good these days; all Pemex stations have Sanitarios, although they vary in cleanliness and amenities, and most Cuota (highway toll collection) stations have decent bathrooms. Most restaurants of the sit-down variety also have some kind of facilities, and more upscale places may feature gorgeous examples of tilework in the local style. The main things to be aware of if depending on public toilets are 1) paper; 2) seats; 3) water; 4) soap; 5) attendants.

1) Paper. Some got it, some don’t. ALWAYS carry your own paper, just in case. TIP: Check for a large roll somewhere near the entrance of the bathroom, as many places will have a full roll there, and empty rollers in all the stalls. And after you have used the paper, don’t forget to throw it in the trash bin provided. Never throw paper into a Mexican toilet, unless there’s no trash bin, which might or might not indicate that it’s okay. It can be disconcerting, but even the most elegantly appointed hotel bathroom will have the inevitable wastebasket next to the toilet.

Paper towels are much less likely to be provided. Use your clothing or air dry. Some places have those annoying blower things.

2) Seats. For some mysterious reason, many Mexican public toilets do not have seats. I don’t know if this is because they’re easier to clean that way, or because they think people will steal them, but it can be an unpleasant surprise at times. When traveling, always take full advantage of any good bathroom you happen on. Not to get too personal, but a couple tips for the ladies – skirts are easier to manage than trousers, especially if the floor happens to be wet. Have paper ready in one hand, and hang on to the tank or the wall with the other hand if your leg muscles aren’t quite up to the challenge.

And speaking of seats, if you are a devotee of those paper toilet-seat covers so universally available in the US, forget finding them in Mexico; we’ve seen them only one time in the course of all our considerable travels.

3) Water. All the bathrooms I’ve seen have had sinks, but occasionally the sink will not have water. Many sinks have two faucets but only one will be operative. In places with multiple sinks, check each of them — one might be working. When there’s no water anywhere, it’s nice to have some of those little travel towels in the car.

4) Soap. Although soap dispensers are often in evidence, they seldom contain soap. Carry your own if this is important to you.

5) Attendants. Some toilets will have an attendant hanging around, doing cleaning chores. Occasionally there will be a tip cup on the washstand, but other times it is less clear what is expected. I usually donate a couple of pesos. Some places will have a sign stating a fee at the door (usually 2-5 pesos), and an attendant to collect it up front. I have encountered one pay toilet (remember those, with the coin slot on the door?) at a cuota station, outrageously priced at 10 pesos (~$1 usd!).

Bathrooms are pretty easy to find when shopping in the city. All the bigger stores and supermarkets feature bathrooms which are usually decently equipped (Home Depot, Wal-Mart, Soriana, etc.), and clean, although it’s always a good idea to carry your own paper.

Mexico is a noisy country, and it can take some getting used to. Traffic is louder than in the U.S., due to lack of muffler laws, more rattly vehicles and one-cylinder motorcycles, and narrow stone streets which echo and amplify the above. Many houses are built with their front walls right on the street, and traffic noise can be very noticeable in the front rooms. If you live in a tropical area without glazed windows, add exhaust fumes coming into the living room.

Mexicans as a group seem to be very fond of noise. Celebrations are often observed by shooting off fireworks, and music tends to be played at high volume. Most restaurants will have a TV blaring in a corner somewhere. Some supermarkets set up giant speakers on the premises and blast music and ads at the hapless shoppers. For an interesting examination of this aspect of Mexican character see Octavio Paz’ classic The Labyrinth of Solitude.

There is really not a whole lot of defense possible against much of the ambient noise assault. With time one adjusts somewhat. Sometimes restaurant staff will comply with a request to turn down the volume. The main thing I would advise is to be very alert to the noise factor when choosing housing. A street which is tranquil at midday when you are shown the house may come alive in the evening, or for several weeks or months at a time if you live in a vacation spot. We lived for awhile in a small beach town which was inundated with holidaymakers during Semana Santa (Easter Week) and the months of July and August. During those times our unglazed windows let in a 24-hour barrage of traffic noise, blasting car stereo music, and exhaust fumes, and left us longing for the slow season.

Here’s a hot TIP if you do end up with a noisy living room. Hearing your own TV can be a real problem in the ebb and flow of traffic din; if you are playing DVDs, you can select English subtitles and rely on them to fill in the blanks when those trucks rumble by.

Before I get off the subject for good (when?? please!! you’re probably saying), I’ll just share one last laundry experience in the hopes it might save someone else from a similar pointless exercise.

A few weeks ago we were having a lot of rainy weather here, and what with our limited selection of clothes, I worried a lot about getting it to dry by the time we would need it again.

And then I remembered what my mother so un-fondly recalls doing when we lived in England in the early 1950s, which was to retrieve the frozen-stiff garments from the clothesline and iron them dry.

Brilliant, I thought, I’ll just do that! The old style! How simple, how elegant! (How labor-intensive, but oh well.)

How mistaken.

Oh, it still works with some things, pure cotton jeans are fine. But in most clothes nowadays, even the clothes of a natural-fiber freak like me, there lurks some small percentage of synthetic content which does NOT take well to being steamed dry with a hot iron. No, these fabrics will melt, rather than dry, under a hot-iron assault.

If you think about it, it wasn’t so long ago, maybe 100 years, that people boiled their dirty linens. That was before my time, but I can remember the days when Clorox was routinely used; everything white (read cotton) got bleached. And then they had bluing to counteract the yellowing effects of the bleach. I suppose all socks must have been wool back then. (A pair of wool socks costs at least $12 now, and you have to buy them at a backpacking store — when did that happen?) But I digress. In sum, take heed: old-style laundering practices can be hazardous to present-day fabrics.

So, it was back to the drawing board, or more accurately, to the clothesline, this time one strung up indoors for those rainy-day Saturdays.