The tallest building in Guaymas isn’t dedicated to commerce, and it’s not a rules building… it’s a church. That should tell you a lot about the town. Since we were getting ready to head south and we hadn’t spent much time wandering around Guaymas, Kaila and I decided that some further exploration was in order.
We checked out the town center. Went to the marina and watched the Pelicans dive bomb a swarm of fish. Played with the crabs and barnacles on the rocks. And as it got hotter we walked to the Plaza Centro… a beautiful shady park.
The old timers sat in the shade and talked.
The kids chased the pigeons and played in the sprinklers. And kaila was right there with them.
What language barrier?
Back at camp, later in the day we had a long jump contest…
and a tic-tac-toe extravaganza… Malia’s creation to attract the local kids… it’s amazing how universally known a simple thing like tic-tac-toe is.
We were sitting in the shade enjoying a cold beer as the sun was setting on our improv biathlon and a new friend came to join us.
He and his wife have been traveling for more than fifteen years in their van. Through Africa, South America, Mexico, and now they were headed to Alaska.
Holy smokes… the stories. After about fifteen minutes I leaned over to Malia and said that either Dos Equis had settled for the second most interesting man in the world, or we just met a true life incarnation of the Baron Von Munchausen. I certainly couldn’t do the stories justice. And they’re his anyway… he should tell them. But… just a sample: Imagine getting stuck in a sandstorm of sand so fine that it get’s inside of your watch… and completely clogs your engine. Now imagine taking that engine apart from the INSIDE of your car… because of the sand everywhere. Storing the pieces in plastic bags… to keep them clean. And when you finally need to pull the block to re-assemble the engine… in the front seat of your car… a seventy-plus year old sailor with arms the size of both of your legs shows up from another village and… pulls the engine block out… with his bare hands… no spinach needed. And when it’s all put back together… you guessed it… the sailor comes back and drops the engine back into place.
Yep… that was just one of em. And the kids… alright… me and Malia too… were on the edges of our seats for hours!
And it’s been like this for us throughout our travels… we haven’t run into any crazy situations where we needed to hire Popeye the sailor to carry our engines around… but we keep meeting the kindest, most interesting people from all over the world. I can see the boundaries coming down… or maybe I should more accurately say not being built in our kids minds. And I watch as their global network of friends… REAL friends (not the facebook variety) that they’ve touched, and shared meals and stories with grows. Very cool.
It turns out that our new friends were stuck in Guaymas suffering from difficulties in getting auto insurance in America. I was happy to help. So we spent a couple mornings on the phone with various companies and… no dice.
It’s always seemed obvious to me that all these rules that we in the states live with make life harder… not easier. They’re more a sign of having too many lawyers than they are an indication of an advanced society. And here was a perfect example of it. Typically when you pass from country to country your insurance, which is required, can be easily purchased at the border.
Not in America. The major companies require the car to be registered in a state. The Mexican companies require the car to have Mexican plates. US international insurers require that the car be no older than twenty years (their van is twenty-two yrs old)… and on it goes.
The irony of course is that they’re trying to do it the “right” way… but even though they try… they can’t comply (Hah! Thank you Johnny Cochrane) And so these guys… who’ve driven fully insured in more countries than the average American knew existed, and negotiated the CRAZIEST of legal black holes… couldn’t find a way to simply buy auto insurance in the “most advanced society on earth”.
Ultimately unsuccesful they decided to continue north and see what happens at the frontier.