December 20, 2006
This could be weird. I'm in Creel, Mexico on a Mexican computer with a Spanish keyboard and it's taking me minutes to type the above.

Mexico on $300 a day with Jesus as our driver
We flew into Los Mochis on Saturday night and took a $35 taxi ride into the town <(the travel brochure said the taxi would be $5, so that was a nice start. Fortunately, the kids can speak fluent Spanish, so they knew the cuss words to tell everybody off.

We went to the Toplobampo beach on Sunday with a taxi driver named Jesus. He had a dilapidated Nissan junker which he drove at about 35 mph and drove Kathy crazy, but he was such a hoot and I enjoyed calling him Jesus (as opposed to the Spanish pronunciation, "Hay-Suez"). He, in turn, called me "Pancho Villa," so I don't think he suffered any insults.

The beach was fantastico, what Mission Beach in San Diego must have looked like in about 1910. All white sand, three cantinas and maybe 12 people on the sand and in the water.

Travelled to El Fuerte on the bus the next day and got a cheap hotel for 500 pesos ($50), ate excellent tampiquena at Cafe Suprema right off the square. Got into a pick-up basketball game with the local kids at an outdoor, but covered basketball court. Deena got video of it and I'll post it next week. Learned how to say nice shot in Spanish ("Shot Tiro!") and "Bueno passe!" (good pass). El Fuerte is very historical and goes all the way back to 1540. I turned 60 there and only feel half as old as the town, especially after playing full court pick-up basketball. Scored two points, had four assists and 12 rebounds (they were eighth graders), and five unassisted hobbles off the court to catch my breath.

I had to come down on the family. Our budget is $300 dollars a day. We almost made it the first day ($255), but then we slipped back the next day to $197. I told them, Hey, we,re Americans, we can do this! Get out there and spend! Hopefully we,ll do better tomorrow.