Published in the Colborne Chronicle February 28th 2001
Most people
travel to Mexico by plane: fly in, fly out: Not Frank Kober or Marguerite
(Maggie) Samis. They drive! This intrepid couple from Honey Rd. (RR #2
Colborne) have been driving all over North America since Frank retired
from The Canadian Correctional Service five years ago.
They have spent the last three winters in Texas house sitting for Frank´s brother Carl, (another Colborne native). This year was no different, living in the ranchhouse southeast of Houston, they took care of the chores did a little remodeling and sat in the sun. But when an invitation came from two of their children to join them in Mexico for a couple of weeks, and that's all they needed to load up the ´95 Volkswagen Golf and hit the road.
Their plan was simple, hit the road, drive for two days and meet their son Charles and his wife Deb, (they and their family live on Honey Rd, Colborne) in Puerto Vallarta. The trip started south of Houston and the drive was a short one to Laredo where they stayed the night for an early start for the first real day of travel. Crossing the border was smooth although it took an hour and visits to five different offices for five pieces of necessary paperwork. Past the border they headed for Monterey. This industrial town is no friend of tourists; it's all business being the hub of the industrial economy. But through there in less than three hours Maggie and Frank were making great time.
That was the easy part. The next town to look for was Saltillo an hour away. What they discovered was that it may have been an hour's travel to Saltillo from Monterey but the road climbed 3400 feet in elevation. A long haul, Frank said afterwards, “I had to keep the accelerator to the floor just to get ahead on some of those hills.” A hard climb was only part of the problem. “Only a short distance up the hill we hit freezing rain and fog; and it went on all the way into Saltillo”
Now well into the Sierra Madres Occidental mountain range they were driving onto Guadalajara for a good nights sleep. Being no stranger to long drives, (one year they managed to drive to Las Vegas from Colborne in three and a half days) they had planned to be on the road for fifteen hours. But Guadalajara was still eleven hours away. Climbing the mountains, over a thousand feet in less than thirty miles at one point they settled in to a straight road and ascended to the highest point of the trip and crossed the Continental Divide at Zacatacas some 8,115 ft above sea level. Entering Zacatacas, which was the third leg of the “Trip according to Sanborn” (Sanborn publishes travel logs which drivers use as a bible in Mexico), they had a choice to make. Should they take the fast route, which had been mapped out by the CAA before they left, or should the take the shortest route on the map? As they pondered this they met a man at a gas stop, described by Maggie as a great talker, “He spoke great English and we obviously thought he knew what he was talking about, but he cost us three hours.”
There was nothing wrong with the choice except that route 54; the route
from Zacatacas to Guadalajara, was the old two-lane windy road compared
to the faster toll road system. “Frank loved it – he was driving; I was
in the passengers seat looking over the side of the mountain, it was scary,
but I loved it too!” said Maggie. Arriving in Guadalajara they had dropped
3,000 ft and still had to find a place to sleep. The Sanborn book recommended
places on route 15, being tired they turned left instead of right and spent
an hour looking for something that wasn't there. Finally finding someone
in a gas station, who spent fifteen minutes on the phone arranging the
room they found the motel. “It was amazing that a stranger in a foreign
country would do that but they did!” Frank commented afterwards.
In Guadalajara they could relax and they did, but only for a night, the next day saw them on the road for the last leg of the trip. Tepic was the next stop; they had to turn left there and head south to get intoPuerto Vallarta. “We wanted to enjoy the scenery, and we did." said Frank. Driving to Tepic at a leisurely pace on a road that dropped 3,000 ft in 30 miles didn't even faze them. The small VW 'golf' with over 302,000 kms on the odometer just purred along. Crossing the States of Nayorita and Jalisco, where over fifty percent of the agarve plants (they produce the tequila) are grown and a large number of corn fields exist Maggie and Frank felt at home in this country. "Looking at corn fields remind us of the farms in Cramahe" Maggie commented afterwards. Seven and a half hours later they were settling in to the timeshare north of Puerto Vallarta, where Maggie's son Charles and his wife Deb were staying. They planned to stay at the first timeshare north of Puerto Vallarta before moving to a second one to stay with another daughter (Doreen) who was staying with her husband (Ben) in the Town.
Not content to take the easy route back, Maggie and Frank are planning to go back to Houston by a different route that involves a road across the mountains through the dusty town of Durango, back to Laredo where they will recross the border. All in all a very adventurous month away from the ranchhouse in Houston. This undaunted pair of seniors plans to be back in Colborne soon. They certainly will have lots of tales to tell their friends back at Branch 187 of the "Legion" on those long Saturday afternoons between the meat draws.