Our plan was to drive from Punta Perula to the small town of Mascota.  Mascota is a Pueblo Magico (magic village), one of several villages in Mexico that have earned the distinction due to their stunning location, their colonial architecture, or their historical significance.

Google maps wanted to take us all the way up the coast to Puerta Vallarta, then inland.  Mapsme took us a different route, heading inland south of Puerta Vallarta….that looked way more interesting as we generally prefer not to retrace our routes too much.

We followed the directions given by the Mapsme software, weaving our way through farmland and small villages, all on paved roads….looked good until the app told us to turn right at an intersection in a small town.  The road turned from dirt to a washed out earthen path with ruts in it deep enough to lose a small child.

We slowly made our way along.  Was it going to continue like this, or was this just a damaged section that had yet to be repaired?  We had seen in many small villages that the road in town are dirt or cobblestone, but then they become pavement again when you exit the village.  About 200 meters along the “road”,  we came upon a couple of local woman chatting.  We pulled between them, one of each side of the truck, and attempted to ask them if the road ahead was in similar condition or whether it got better.  “Mas o menos”, the younger woman said (more or less).  We told them we were trying to get to Mascota, and the older woman launched into a  two or three minute dialogue, waving her arms around in the air, most of which we didn’t understand.  She then told us we could turn around up ahead, so we decided to head back to where we had turned off.

We looked at the mapping software, and saw that if we continued through the village on another road that we would hook on to what appeared to be a larger road, so we decided to try that.  Moments after leaving the boundaries of the village, and still on very poor roads, we met two men on a small motorbike who looked surprised to see gringos.  They stopped and after a few attempts of trying to communicate about the route ahead, Derek picked up that the man was saying words like “no bueno” (no good), “muchos gente mala” (Lots of bad people), and “marinos”  (the marines, not a bad thing in itself, but an indication that there was tension in the area).  Okay, you don’t need to hit us over the head with a saguaro cactus….we turned and retraced our steps to the main highway, and decided that the long route through Puerta Vallarta was, after all, the way to go.

When we got to P.V., we decided to do some shopping and visit an ATM.  Great idea.  I put the card into the bank machine at the grocery store, and was promptly told, in english, that the card had been disabled.  Crap!   ‘Cuz you know, we are going to need that card!  And so the plan changed again.  We ended up staying the night in a Walmart parking lot in P.V.  Within minutes of arriving two young men were over wanting to wash our rig, later a man wanted to sell us windshield wiper blades (he was successful), then a woman asked us for 30 pesos as she needed “ayuda por mi camion” (help for her truck?)….it was getting a little tiring.  One of the car wash guys came over to chat with us, and when we explained that we needed to visit el banco tomorrow because our bank card was no functionado, the guy offered us money (not sure if it was a gift or a loan, we didn’t ask).  He explained that he was able to make the offer as he had worked in the parking lot washing cars for 3 years and had saved up 1,000 pesos (about $65) .  We declined, but were humbled by his generosity.

The next morning we visited a branch of Scotia Bank, and explained in our broken spanish the issue.  The women took us to the ATM so she could see what the issue was, and TA DAH!, out came some pesos!  It was such a very happy moment for us!  Seems that the problem the day before had been with the machine and not our card!  We celebrated with breakfast at a restaurant then headed on our way.