El Rollo and beyond

Yesterday I had the strangest senstation as we were driving back from the El Rollo waterpark. For about five minutes I had myself convinced we were driving to my parent´s house in Princeton. I don´t know if it was the one I grew up in or the one they moved to after I graduated from high school but it felt so familiar that it made me very lonely when I finally shook off the day dream. I have no idea what sparked the feeling because we were driving past fields of sugar cane and little mountains and half-finished stone houses and absolutely nothing that looked like Princeton or even the Midwest.

Anyway, so we took a break from the heat and went with Leonardo (the husband of Felipe´s sister who died in December) and Deysi to El Rollo which is a water park about an hour away. It is near Tlaltizapan for anyone looking at a Mexico map or google earth. It has loads of waterslides, pools, wave pools, playgrounds, picnic areas and burger stands. Unfortunately business here is unlike the US and since there were so few people they actually closed down almost all the water slides. Felipe and Leonardo when on two and then we spent the rest of the day in the wave pool or wandering around. It costs about $20 for the day and $10 for kids (based on height) and would be a fabulous place to spend the day with kids, assuming all the waterslides are open!

We left about 4 and made our way north to Cocoyoc which is about 8 km west of Cuautla. There we stopped at this place called Hotel Hacienda Cocoyoc for dinner. It is a hacienda built in the 1500s to entertain rich Spaniards and it is absolutely amazing. I wish Maren had been there to capture some of it in pictures. The place was absolutely everything you would think an aristocratic hacienda would be. Absoultely huge and sprawling with multi-levels and high ceilings and arches and tile floors and white walls. The pools had these ancient looking stone walls with acrches surrounding them. There were trees growing right out of the walls with arm-like roots reaching for the ground. It seemed like the kind of place Disney would create as their Mexican-themed hotel except for the little hidden pockets of trash that we found here and there. It was gorgeous and we definitely plan to stay there some day. The rooms atarted at around $140 for two people which didn´t seem bad for what we saw. Dinner was enjoyable (but not quite as delicious as Las Mananitas) and after a pitcher of pineapple water (I will REALLY miss the fruit waters) we hopped in the car and headed for Cuautla.

Our stop in Cuautla was because our fan fell out of the window and broke in the morning and we couldn´t stand the thought of sleeping without one (plus it was his family´s so we couldn´t leave without replacing it. It was very interesting to see the prices of things here. A stackable washer and dryer was about $1000. Stoves were around $500 - they are all gas here. Washing machines were about $250 for the kind that doesn´t wring out your clothes and $500 for the kind that does. I can´t remember what the refrigerators were priced at but they are the 3/4 apartment-sized ones, not huge ones like we all have. I should pay more attention to prices. One thing I thought was surprising is that fresh honey is $40 a liter. Since there are 3.8 liters in a gallon I suppose that makes a liter a little less than 4 cups. The thought of paying $10 a cup for honey is crazy. Meanwhile, Felipe paid only $6 for 3.5 pounds of fresh fish the other day. True, you had to clean them yourselves but still!

And I suppose you may be wondering about my poor little PT... Well, the mechanic came over and jumped it. His opinion was it was a dead battery, not the alternator and that our battery is just very weak in general. We have been starting the car every morning and evening to make sure it works. However, this is no guarantee since the very first time it refused to start it was only 90 minutes after we had it running. We are only going to park in places where it is ok if it doesn´t start and we can get an easy tow. It has made us think about our plan to drive back a little bit and if we should stay here longer and drive back to Juarez in long bursts. However, we´ve decided it is better to go a little bit at a time and enjoy ourselves and try to keep relaxed. We are stopping mainly in big cities that should have good mechanics. We just need to make it the 1500 miles to the border where my AAA works! Did I mention that we aren´t using the air conditioning or radio to save the battery? Ugh!