After visiting the banana plantation in Cihuatlan, we got on the toll road and made it back to Colima quickly with no problems. At this time, in our truck, we had Angelina, Armando, both our kids, Dora and her baby Hazel. As crazy as it may sound, Dora and her baby road in the back of the truck. They could have squeezed in the cab with us, but 7 people in the cab on that long of a drive would have been pretty rough. Her husband had driven home the day before because he had to work, and she had to stay because she had a class to teach at the local university in Manzanillo (just a short distance from where her in laws live in Cihuatlan). It worked out great for everyone that she could continue to show us around, and we could give her a lift back home.
Nursing Ezra to sleep in the front seat of the truck driving back to Colima. No one uses carseats in Mexico. At least no one we knew. Dora had a carseat for her baby, but she never actually straps it into a seat belt or uses it properly. We in the U.S. have such an obsession with using baby items correctly, making sure they aren't recalled or expired. I can't help but be somewhere in the middle. I mean really, do carseats really become defective overnight when the expiration date approaches? We were on the opposite extreme end of the whole baby safety issue while we were in Mexico. If I had had a carseat I would have used it, but we didn't. It was however very nice to nurse Ezra while we were driving, especially since we did so much driving. Dora uses her carseat to strap Hazel in, keep him from crawling around and to have a place for him to nap comfortably.
Esperanza passed out on Angelina in the back of the truck
Once we got back to Dora's house, we cleaned up a little bit, visited, let the kids play then went to the store to get a few things. We had a late dinner and had a heck of a time getting the kids to sleep. It was so hot and humid there. Her house is tiny and to avoid having to sleep on the concrete floor, we bought an air mattress to make sleeping a little bit more comfortable while there and for the future floors we would be crashing on. Still, it was an uncomfortable night and we got very little sleep, but I did get a lot of bug bites!
A corner of Dora's back yard. She has a clothes washing sink where Angelina is washing some clothes. There is a 'regular' washing machine, but it is rarely if ever used from what I understood. Hand washing is easier I suppose for those who were raised hand washing clothes.
A little tree in the middle of her little yard. This was the first place I saw a 'lawn' at anyones home in Mexico. It was tiny too.
In the morning, we packed up and headed out for a day adventure. Dora was going to show us some neat places in the area. Our first stop was a restaurant/playground/forest. Almost all the trees had some sort of food growing on them: guava, oranges, avocados, mangos, coffee beans, etc. It was a really neat place.
A coffee tree - they were everywhere around this part of Mexico
Next, we walked around a small town called Coloma.
One of very few Mexico family pictures we have
Orange trees lined the streets (and thats Dora in the pink pants)
School kids running around
The center of EVERY single town in Mexico has a Jardin (garden). The size of it often represents how big the town is. Almost all of them are kept immaculate with beautiful foliage, walking paths, open spaces for people to gather during events, lots of benches for sitting and a gazebo of some sort in the center.
Dora's son Hazel (it's pronounced liked 'Hu-zel' not the girly name or eye color that is spelled the same)
Ezra was still just crawling
We got back into the truck and drove another hour or so. Our destination: Laguna La Maria. A stunning lake in the middle of lush forest. This place was amazing. In my 'love for lush old forests and crisp clean air opinion' it was hands down the best place in Mexico we went. It's a shame we were only there for a couple of hours. Dora said she and her husband go there to camp sometimes and I wish we would have done that. To give you a better idea of where we were - we were very, very, very close to the Volcan de Colima (aka the huge very active and potentially destructive volcano near Colima). We had driven so far a little over 2 hours from Colima uphill, towards the volcano and had entered the 'danger zone'. It was an overcast day so we couldn't see the mountain/volcano from through the clouds, but I suspect it would have been quite the site if we could. After the small town of Coloma, there weren't any more towns or villages that we passe. We did see a sign that said San Antionio and you can find it on Google Maps, but there wasn't anything there except for a small hut selling coffee. I'm guessing there are still a large handful of die hard people who live there someplace and refuse to leave the area. Honestly, I can't blame them. It is a beautiful area.
Esperanza found the tiniest frogs hopping around the place. They were pea size! She refused to put one down and carried it around the whole time. I think she squeezed to tight. It died.
Parking lot and picnic shelter/benches
Concrete picnic table and bench - coffee tree to the right
I wish I could crawl into this picture
Lots of coffee trees
Fisherman. Check out his makeshift fishing pole. He had quite a few fish caught already too.
Hiking in flip flops. Too bad no one thought to translate our plans for the day before we left Dora's house. This would have been the hike to live for if we were more prepared. The hill was quite steep and the ground a bit too wet for flip flop hiking. We tried for a ways. Then we began to wonder what types of creatures live in the forest there and decided it was probably best to turn around before we encountered something we really weren't prepared for.
Beautiful trees
On our drive back into Colima, it was raining. Really hard. So hard in fact that there some pretty serious flooding started happening very quickly. I don't think they have storm drains in Colima like they do here in the Pacific Northwest of the United States.
Dora had an appointment to take her son to get a hair cut that day. Since Esperanza's braids needed to come out, yet I was dreading having to figure out another solution at keeping her hair from sticking to the sweat on her neck and face every day for the next 2 weeks in hot and humid Mexico, I gave in to her pleas for a hair cut. Timing could not have been more perfect.
Before (kinked from the braids)
During
After
She was overjoyed with her new do!
We spent one more hot, bug bitten, restless night at Dora's house. The next day we would travel a very, very long distance to the city of Uruapan, where Angelina's sister Maria lives with her daughters and granddaughters. We still have 2 weeks left folks...I'm getting there, slowly.
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