The Sickness Saga

Even though last we updated our blog we said we were better in hindsight we were not.  We ended up pushing ourselves to experience Hidalgo and San Miguel which resulted in us feeling far worse.  14 days after first getting sick we ended up taking a Covid test to find out it was positive.  We are unsure we we "just" had Covid or a stomach bug with Covid, but being how few people we interacted with after initially get sick we don't really know how that is possible.  Either way we both feel this variant of Covid, the KRACKEN, has lived up to it's name.

January 18^th – Difficult decisions

Today we had planned to check a bucket list item off our list.  When researching Mexico, we created a half dozen must do thing, one of these things was to visit a developed hot spring called Grutas Tolantongo.  This location often appeared on Instagram due to its other worldly beauty.

Sadly, Kendra woke up with a bad cough so she made the difficult decision to not go to Grutas Tolantongo today.  Her thought was that if she took it easy and relaxed that she would feel well enough to go tomorrow.  Lucky for Kendra we he had booked an Airbnb close to the hot springs that resembled a cute cabin in the country side.  It had everything Kendra needed to have a very relaxing day.  She spent the day watching TV, relaxing on the upstairs patio (it had 2 patios) and hanging out with Rupert.

Paul drove to Grutas Tolantongo and was blown away with how large the facility was.  The whole park is separated into two sections that are barely accessible to each other.   The first section was the section with the terraced hot pools that had shown up on Instagram, known as the Paradise section.  The second section was known as the Grotto section and consisted of a Grotto, a tunnel and a river!  Paul went to the Grotto section first because that was the entrance to the park he drove into and was blown away that this section somehow hadn’t made the Instagram reels, it was beautiful.  The grotto was surrounded by a waterfall and had a number of caves branching off from the main chamber.  Paul even got into trouble when he went beyond a rope that was designed to keep people from going any further.  He just wanted to explore!!!

Ainsworth Hot Springs in the Kootenays of BC is known for its tunnel.  Kendra and Paul had been there previous and thought the tunnel was cool, but it was nothing compared to the tunnel here.  There were no lights, but somehow that made it more interesting.  The tunnel was almost 100 meters long until it was too tiny to walk through.  It was a bit claustrophobic but after a couple minutes it was easy to enjoy.

After exploring the Grotto and the Tunnel Paul wanted to find the pools he had seen on Instagram.  He had asked an employee where they were, but their answer made no sense (probably because he only understood 25% of what they were saying).  He understood he had to go to the ticket office, that it wasn’t close to here and that there was a bus.  After looking at the map Paul learned it was in the Paradise section, and decided he’d walk there as the bus would cost 60 pesos.  This was easier said then done, mostly because the Grotto section is near the bottom of the canyon and the Paradise section is 1000 feet uphill.  It was only after he arrived that he learned that he could have driven, that the ticket he had he could have shown at the other entrance (the entrance to the Paradise section) and he could have parked right by the pools.

The pools were as beautiful as expected, the only thing that was not expected was their temperature, they were colder than Paul thought they should be.  They were still warmish, but so they are accessible and “enjoyable” year round, (even in the summer) the temperature is controlled.  Paul had decided to go to an empty pool, which was part of the problem, the higher the pool, the warmer the water meaning the higher the pool, the busier it was.  After learning this Paul moved to a higher pool.

Before he knew it the day was done and drove back to the Airbnb to get Kendra excited for her day tomorrow at Grutas Tolantongo

 

January 19^th – Exploring Grutas Tolantongo like champs

Kendra was feeling better meaning we had plans to spend the day at the hot springs.  They opened at 8am, so we made sure to be at the gate of the pools right when they opened.  Because Paul had learned where to park and where to go yesterday, we spent no time figuring out what to do, or what to prioritize. 

We started with a couple hours in the pools taking all the photos we wanted to take with very few people around us then moved to the Grotto section exploring the caves and the tunnel while putting our feet up and relaxing in the very warm/comfortable water.  It was the perfect way to spend the day while prioritizing the best thing to do at the hot springs. 

Before we knew it was time to go, we had to pick up Rupert from the Airbnb and make our way west.  Grutas Tolantongo was the furthest east we would travel as we “kill time” for when our friend and Kendra’s family visit us in Puerto Vallarta. 

Lucky for us there was a reason not to travel too much farther today, there was another Magic Town enroute known as Tecozaulta.  We are not too sure if we lucked out with our timing but the whole community was alive.  It seemed like the entire population of the community was in it’s El Centro at a massive market spanning multiple streets and alleys.  It was easily the largest market we had seen in Mexico meaning it was amazing, if not totally overwhelming to explore.   We even stopped for some tacos where some locals, recommended another hot spring close to the area. As we were eating our quesadillas and gorditas a man walked by offering his cheese for sale.  We picked up some artesanal cheese for very inexpensive- about $4 Canadian, and it was delicious!

El Geiser, according to their website, is a volcanic vent that heats water.  In other words, this isn’t your typical hot springs.  What made it unique was the giant steam vent with seats around it and the pools of varied temperatures.  There were even pools that were closed because they were too hot for people to go into with signage saying the temperature was over 80 degrees Celsius.  Unfortunately, with all the fun at Grutas Tolantongo we only spent a few hours in this hot spring as we were tired and our bodies were reminding us that we were not 100% yet.  Lucky for us, we could “camp” in the parking lot of El Geiser for free!

 

January 20^th – Executive Decisions

We are still sick!!! Ugh!  Although better than before we are still not 100% so we decided to get an Airbnb in the next community we are visiting for some R&R.  This works out well for us, as the next community were are set to explore is San Miguel de Allende, one of the most visited cities in Mexico, meaning there is very little camping anywhere near where we would want to explore.  It is also a very historical city meaning the roads aren’t really designed for traffic from an “American” standpoint i.e. they are very narrow with very little parking.

We booked our place, (it was in El Centro and came with free parking for $100 CAD) but check-in wasn’t until 3pm so we had some time to kill.  When we looked at what to do to kill some time we were surprised to see that we were in the outskirts of another Magic Town known as Tequisquiapan.  This was another beautiful colonial town known for wine and cheese.  There were so many tours to cheese manufactures and wineries but due to our time constraints we couldn’t indulge.  Instead, we explored the community and people watched at a café.  This was another community I wish we could have spent more time, but before we knew it we once again had to hit the road.  

We did make one unplanned stop at a winery.  As we drove we kept seeing signs for wineries and thought maybe we should pick up a bottle from a local winery.  We choose one right off the highway and spent $10 CAD per glass of wine on some of the worst wine we have had in our life.  Unfortunately, this made us want good wine even more.

San Miguel de Allende was amazing.  Just driving around made us excited to walk around instead, but that was easier said then done as finding street parking was impossible and every intersection was an uncontrolled intersection so navigating the community was a slow process.  We did eventually find parking close to our Airbnb in a loading zone, but one of the big perks, as mentioned, was the free parking at a parking lot 3 blocks away.  After taking everything out of the van we parked it and decided we wouldn’t touch the van until we left the community.

Paul had one big want for the next couple days, to sit on the patio of the Airbnb and drink a bottle of wine as he watched everyone walking on the street below so his big task was to walk to a liquor store and buy wine.  As he looked for a liquor store he ended up finding a massive candy store, so couldn’t stop himself from picking us something to satisfy his sweet tooth and enjoy with the wine, which he eventually did find. The funny part about this candy store was that you couldn’t buy individual candy, you had to buy a whole box, needless to say Paul or Kendra did not complain about having an entire box of chocolate bars. 

The evening was spent drinking wine, enjoying chocolate and watching TV. 

 

January 21^st – Another “take it easy” day

We decided to relax for most of the day, Kendra was still not feeling well but Paul was almost 100% again so he spent most of the day on the patio while Kendra relaxed and slept.  By 7pm we decided to explore downtown and we think our timing was perfect.  El Centro was full of people and live music making the whole area seem magical.  The buildings were colourful and down every road or alley was a spot that seemed to need to be captured on film.  Before we knew it we had done 10,000 steps and were needing some food. 

Kendra found an elote vendor (Mexican street corn with mayonnaise and queso) and checked eating street corn off her to do list. We then went to a local taco cart but decided to get the food to go.  We didn’t know what to expect, but knew we wanted to enjoy our food on our patio.  Surprisingly we got the food to go with all the fixings already added to our bag, so we tried our luck with getting some ice cream from the ice cream stand right next door as well.  The ice cream complemented the tacos perfectly and we highly recommend eating dessert first!

 

January 22^nd – Back to square one

Paul woke up with a bad headache, a bad cough and a runny nose.  It was so frustrating to think that we were STILL sick, but at least Kendra was almost 100%.  Paul spent the day in bed sleeping or relaxing barely leaving the room in the hopes that he would feel well again soon.

Kendra spent the morning relaxing as well, but by 2pm decided to explore the community.  She and Rupert walked to various viewpoints and explored El Centro in the light of day.  It was easy to both get lost in its streets and enjoy getting lost. She was also on the hunt for more “fresquitos” like we had in Mineral del Chico but had to settle on a mango shaved ice with chamoy sauce and dulce straw (a raspado) instead (for $2 Canadian). We are still on the hunt for a blended fruit juice smoothy but now know they may be called chamoyadas instead of fresquitos, we will keep you posted on how this hunt goes.

The evening was spent having soup and quesadillas with our market cheese hoping we’d both be well tomorrow.

 

January 23^rd – Not better

Paul barely slept due to a headache and a cough, while Kendra was starting to feel worse than the day before.  We debated on staying another night in San Miguel but decided that we could probably find more affordable places to relax and get over our sicknesses.

We left San Miguel, but decided to put on our face masks and explore the two markets.  We are not too sure if it was because of how we were feeling or not, but they were not as impressive as we assumed, at least not comparing them to the other markets we had seen in the last few days. Maybe we were too early in the morning too because half of the stall were still shuttered.

Our first stop was an art gallary at the side of the highway that was free to enter called Mexico Lindo, which was the perfect spot to streach our legs before jumping into the van again and going to our next stop.

The next stop was to the “must visit” community of Dolores Hidalgo, another Magic Town and the location of the start of the Mexican Independence movement.  Unfortunately, we weren’t feeling well enough to truly enjoy it, and most of the things to see and do were museums that were completely in Spanish.  We ended up getting smoothies and heading towards the city of Guanajuato, a city that had routinely come up by American immigrants in Mexico as their favourite to explore.  On the way we got to witness some pilgrims making the journey towards San Juan de Lagos (they would be travelling 200+ kms by foot for this pilgrimage- which Google informed us as the second most popular in Mexico- and were camping on the side of the highway). Kendra found a lakeside campsite online for us to stay at, but the gate was chained and locked, so we decided to make our way directly to Guanajuato. This place had an added benefit as having a campground only a 20 minute downhill walk to El Centro.

We arrived late, ate some food and went to bed, already deciding we wouldn’t explore, or do anything until we were better.

 

January 24^th – Still not better

We lounged around all day and slept.  Kendra seemed to be going backwards and managed to cough up her dinner while Paul spent the evening coughing and in the bathroom.  We are honestly considering going to the doctor. We’ve been questioning if we have a bad flu, a bad cold, a parasite, or the infamous C to the O to the V to the I to the D.

Paul did get a few things done.  He spent an hour talking to the Canadian Revenue Agency trying to get into his business account to file his GST forms.  Accomplished!

Kendra slept more hours than she was awake.

Paul also did some work for his little business.  Accomplished!

Kendra finished watching another season of The Circle (a show she isn’t fully invested in or enjoying due to all the screaming and unauthentic people, but it’s a great show to have on because if you sleep through ¾ of an episode you don’t miss much).

Here is to hoping we are better, even slightly, tomorrow.

 

January 25^th – Mystery solved

We woke up feeling defeated as we were still not 100% and we needed to go into town so Paul started  looking up health clinics.

Don’t get us wrong, every day we are a little better but no where near where we wanted to be.  A couple we were camping beside (Tausha and Josh from Ontario) were kind enough to give us some oranges and left over medicine they had when they were sick with similar symptoms.  They also told us when they had gotten sick it took them 2.5 weeks to get over it.  This made us feel a bit better as maybe we were a couple days away from being 100%.  They also let us know that they had a covid test if we wanted to take one.  We had wondered if we had Covid and thought that this would be a way to squash those concerns.

Welp, we are now POSITIVE with what has been making us feel ill for so long. Paul “took one for the team” and the test came back positive. We won’t test Kendra because living in 30 sq feet means she’s most likely positive too.

Well mystery solved, frustrating how much covid has once again taken the wind out of our sails and made us incredibly sick.  I know some people get it and shrugged it off as “not too bad’ or say “I’ve had worse colds” but every time Kendra and I have had covid it has destroyed us, with this one being the worst.  Maybe you have read between the lines but January has been a really tough month and has made us question this trip with the biggest issue being our health; we can not remember ever being this sick.  Some have commented that it looks like we have lost some weight, it was not due to hiking or eating better, it is because we have been unable to eat, or the food we eat does not stay in our bodies very long.  Everything that goes in our mouth comes out somewhere with velocity.  We have woken up in coughing fits with headaches, had muscle pain and chills.  Having covid in Mexico in a 30 sq foot van has been rough! We do not recommend getting COVID while living in a minivan, it is about as fun as it sounds.

We grabbed our masks and jumped in the van to grab some more cough suppressants, water, and gas.  We did all our errands and added some money to our phone accounts. We have to leave Guanajuato in a couple days no matter what and would be heartbroken if we never saw this community so we decided to do our own little driving tour and are so glad we did. This is an incredible mining town built into a mountain with tunnels connecting different parts of the community.  The streets are narrow and busy with lively markets everywhere.  Once again around every corner is another perfect picture and hopefully we will be able to properly experience it soon, but won’t do so until our symptoms disappear.

We went to bed early, and for the first time in a long time slept the entire night (probably thanks to the cough suppressants and Theraflu-aka Neo citron).

 

January 26^th – Isolating

We are not too sure what we should do, we’ve had symptoms for 14 days, we don’t know if we are contagious, but we do tire easily.  We decided to continue our plan of rest until we are better.  Covid has ruined the last 2 weeks and we refuse to give it any more days than we have to.  We want to enjoy this trip, we want to enjoy Mexico, but know that won’t be possible if we are sick.  Thank goodness we are isolating in a place with good weather, showers, flush toilets (with toilet seats, but bring your own toilet paper!!!) and good cell service.  Another bonus was a man came by the campsite selling delicious bread and donuts, so we were able to have a little flavour of some locally baked goods without leaving the campsite.

Our kind neighbours who gave us drugs and oranges have left but new neighbours from Ontario just pulled up in rigs that make our mini-van look extremely mini! We let them know we are on the tail end of COVID so they can keep their distance from us, but after talking to them we realized we have been sick longer than they have been on the road, so we were able to chuckle to ourselves about how long we have actually been sick for…fingers crossed we are getting better.

 

January 27^th -  “We will return”

We continued to keep within our bubble, we played games and didn’t do very much, unfortunately   today was also our final day in Guanajuato as tomorrow we do need to start to drive towards Puerto Vallarta.  It was an incredibly hard decision to not explore the city; Guanajuato is an UNESCO world heritage site and was a highly recommended location for us to see.  Every person we camped beside told us how much they enjoyed exploring the city which made it all the more difficult to just sit on our hands and wait until we improve.  Frustratingly, we still had a couple symptoms and no energy.  We thought it best to relax just one more day and pray that tomorrow we would no longer be sick.

Paul must have been feeling a bit better today, because when the ice cream truck came up the road he quickly gathered his mask and money and hustled significantly faster than he has the entire month of January to get some ice cream.

We did decide to make a promise to ourselves. After we leave the Puerto Vallarta area we would return to this city on our way to south-eastern Mexico.

 

January 28^th – Is it over?!

We left Guanajuato relatively early, we also felt way better with the majority of our symptoms gone.  We still did have a lingering cough, but it would only be a nuisance when we were tired, and it was not something we couldn’t handle with a little bit of cough syrup.  We believe we are well enough to do things again and well enough to see people again.  This is perfect timing as our friend Simon arrives in a couple days into Peurto Vallarta and it is roughly a two day drive to the area.

Nothing of note occurred on the drive between Guanajuato and Guadalajara, other than seeing the pilgrims, this time thousands of them walking along the road. It is amazing to think that as we hunkered down in bed the last few days they’ve been walking almost 200 kms!  It also took forever to get through Guadalajara due to traffic. Guadalajara is such a large city (over 5 million) and by the time we were through the city sunset was only a couple hours away.  Just before leaving the greater area of the city we decided to get some tacos from a gas station taco stand, this seemed like a good idea at the time because we were hungry, but they were the worst tacos we ever purchased in Mexico.  I don’t know what we expected. We also put some candy bars from a lady in the middle of a road in a construction zone, something we always wanted to do, but were nervous how it worked.  It was easy, put on your four way flashers, stay in your lane, pay the money and enjoy chocolate!  Probably something we will do more often now.

We try really hard to go to places where people recommend us to go, one such place was a hot spring river just outside of Guadalajara, and being that night was coming, we would be foolish to pass up this campground.  Other travelers made the road out to be quite the journey but I guess they were not used to Baja or northern Canadian roads as we thought the road was in great condition.  Before we new it we were cooking dinner and lying in a warm river watching nightfall.

We are so excited to be doing things again!!!

 

January 29^th – Making the most of our drive

We were in no rush to leave the hot spring river, we didn’t have too far to drive and wanted to make sure we spent the night about an hour away from Puerto Vallarta as there was no affordable places to camp close to that city (in reality there are very affordable campsite but at $500+ pesos per night it’s a bit steep for what we are familiar with paying for camping).  That meant we only had a couple hours to drive today.

It was evident it was a weekend (a Sunday) from the amount of people visiting the river, but because it was a river and not a collection of pools their was ample space for everything.  It really was the perfect way to enjoy the morning.

Once it was too hot to sit in warm water we packed up and left.  We decided to take the free highways into the Puerto Vallarta area as the roads were safe and only 15 minutes slower than the toll roads which would have cost us almost $60 CAD.  The free highways had the added benefit of going through a Magic Town and near free camping spots. 

Once we arrived in Mascota- another magic town, we decided to go out for dinner.  We were in the mood to celebrate as our coughs had more or less disappeared and we had hopefully finished the Sickness Saga of our journey.  It had been a long disappointing month and a really tough couple weeks of trying to recover while pushing ourselves to experience different locations within Mexico, which probably delayed our recovery.  The dinner was delicious, and Kendra enjoyed her Pina Colada while Paul got a frappe made with Baileys. 

We found a campsite just before sunset and couldn’t wait for our new chapter of this trip to begin, one with a friend and Kendra’s family as well as two weeks sleeping away from the van.