Company’s coming

Thursday, January 15, 2009


The group of volunteers is going to the next clinic in Ixtlahuacan. One and a half hour south, towards Tecoman.
In the evening, they will drive direction Manzanillo, to Cuyutlan, which is at the coast.
They will spend the night there and hold another clinic in Armoria. Before the long drive back to Cofradia there will be a farewell dinner in Cuyutlan.

We will miss them all and would love to come along, but we are going on another mission. We are driving by car to Guadalajara to pick up my Mom, who is flying in from Amsterdam via Mexico City and will be staying with us for a month.

We have been so busy every day, there has been no time to do laundry, tidy up the house or log our adventures on the blog.
We say goodbye to our friends of whom some will not return to Cofradia.
I load the first batch of clothes in the machine at the Hacienda and start downloading the batch of pictures and write our adventures from the last three days.

While I pack an overnight bag, back at the RV, Ramiro helps with the vacuuming, and makes a quick lunch. Rather late for our standards, but we need ot get used to the Mexican customs of having lunch around 2:30 pm and our evening meal around 8:30 pm. Of course we have a snack in between and keep the evening meal light.

I pack some snacks and plenty to drink. It’s going to be a long drive. By 3:00 pm we finally leave.
Dark clouds are hanging over te mountains. We can;t even see the volcano.
It start to rain. Wow, that’s quite unusual for this time of year.

We already started on the free road, which has an enormous number of curves, but the scenery is so much nicer.
The rain forces us to catch on to the toll road and about half an hour before Guadalajara we stop for a bathroom break and to stretch our legs. The temperature has dropped to 16 degrees. That’s only 7 degrees more than in Edmonton where it is unbelievable warm. I am reading 7, 9 and 11 degreess and SUN!
Well, enjoys my friends it won’t last long. Yes, every now and then someone sends us news from back home. The news that Kelsey’s Restaurant in Spruce Grove burnt down for instance is quite something.

We have a reasonable good map of Guadalajara and know that we just take the ring road and follow the signs. Well, when the rain comes down in buckets and there are large trucks right in front of you it is easy to miss a sign. So we dod a little bit of backtracking. Aren’t we glad we are driving the car and not the RV.
We turn in a side street to catch the road we should have taken in the first place and find ourselves facing a flooded street. Will we make it? Imagine the car stalls. It does not, but the car besides us does, and the next one, and the next one. Good to know that angel is still on our shoulder.

The pollution here is so bad that our eyes are burning, even Ramiro is complaining about it.
We reach the airport just before dark and are so glad that the hotel, that Susan at PA has booked for us is only 50 steps from the receiving hall. We check in and Ramiro calls his Cousin’s son, who lives in Guadalajara. We go for a well deserved glass of wine and soon Patricio arrives. We’re having dinner at the hotel and walk to the airport. Patricio joins us. We enjoy his company, what a great kid.

We check the arrivals and yes, the flight from Mexico city has arrived.  We wait and wait, and nothing happens. Did she miss her flight from Mexico city? Has she been detained for some reason. The amount of people on the receiving end slowly diminish and not many passengers come throught the hall anymore.
Ah, there comes Mama’s luggage, but where is Mama? We wait another 20 minutes and there she comes. She spots us and waves and her gestures show that she is totally pooped. I can imagine. This is a very long flight, 12 hours from Amsterdam to Mexico City an enormoous transfer from the international airport to the national and another 1.5 hour flight.
Well, you did it Mom. We’re proud of you. Not bad for an 85 year old lady.
She is happy to see us and we are happy to see here. We can go straight to bed after enjoying a cup of tea.