Arrived in Valle de Juarez

It almost felt like old times leading a group of RV'ers through Mexico! Except that there were only three rigs this time... and the ones we were leading are now experienced Mexico RV'ers in their own right!

But nonetheless, they allowed Ruth and I to take the lead, and they even loaned us a radio to communicate with them.

Into the town of Atotonilco

We all hopped on the bus to Atotonilco at around 10:30am. Have never been to that town, so we just wanted to go in and wander around.

The bus cost 23 pesos ($1.60 CAD, $1.10 USD) per person for the 13 km (8 mile) ride.

This is where they grow tequila!

Tuesday was a bit of a cool cloudy day. With a daytime high of only 20C, that's a bit chilly by Mexican standards!

But, it was great hiking weather. So the group of six of us took off up into the hills behind the campground to find some nice views.

The numbers...

Our regular readers know that we carry some games with us, and almost every day we play either backgammon, yahtzee, or cribbage.

To add a competitive edge to things, a few years ago we started keeping track of annual totals so we could see who was in the lead. It makes things more interesting!

Arrived at a new RV Park

It was a bit of a long drive for us. Not so much distance wise, but we took a lot of back roads and you don't get anywhere very fast that way in Mexico... but, it is the most interesting way for sure.

We got a bit of a late start and didn't get out of Yuriria until 10:30am. Originally, I was thinking that we were going to stop somewhere along the way. There weren't a lot of options though.

We stumbled onto a fiesta!

Most people would just take the toll road heading west towards Guadalajara, however we like to explore. There was a route heading up to the small city of Yuriria (pop 70,000), and we had never been there before. In fact, until we looked up the route, we had never even heard of it before!

The only tourists in Ciudad Hidalgo

We got up at 7:00am and hit the road right away. Might as well use Igor's engine to heat things up. Overnight temperatures get down to 7C (45F) or so, so it can be a little chilly when we wake up.

We weren't going far though... only into the city of Ciudad Hidalgo (pop 80,000) to a big Bodega Aurrera grocery store parking lot.

Great first day back on the road!

We had a plan to set off by 9:00am, but our host Chago didn’t seem to want us to leave. He kept coming by to ask questions, and wanted my help to try to set up his smart watch. But I have no experience with smart watches! Anyhow, it's nice that he doesn't want us to leave! We may be back in April!

It was almost 10:00am by the time we left, which was totally fine. I figured we had about a two and a half hour drive to do.

It's time to hit the road!

We always love our time here at Valle de Bravo. Good friends, great scenery, and perfect weather. We could live here, but we're not ready for that yet! There is too much to see out there, and we're not even close to ready to settle down. 

And as much as we love it here, after a few weeks, we're ready to go somewhere new.

How much did we spend in 2024?

We'll start off with our monthly breakdown of the month of December, then I'll give you a recap of our totals for the entire year. We knew December was going to be an expensive end to the year due to our vacation with our daughter and grandkids in Playa del Carmen. There weren't any surprises and we came in pretty much right on budget! That doesn't happen very often!

We spent a total of $5,475 CAD ($3,800 USD), which was our second most expensive month of the year.

What's in the plans for 2025...?

Obviously, we are starting 2025 in Valle de Bravo, Mexico.

But on January 2nd, we are heading west towards the Pacific Coast. It will probably take us the full month of January to get there, because we have a stopover planned at Valle de Juarez... one of our other favorite places in Mexico!

Market day!

We love going to the once a week Sunday tianguis market here in Valle de Bravo!

So around 11:00am, we said goodbye to friends Paco and Oti. They were getting ready to head back to Toluca and would be gone by the time we got back from the market. We are hoping to see them again late January around Mazamitla or maybe even Guadalajara.

I had to sneak a photo through the bushes!

One of the kitchen items that Ruth had purchased before we set out with Igor was a small 2 Quart Electric Crock Pot. She's used it a few times already, but yesterday she did a small pork loin. So it was on cooking all day. With clear skies and sunshine, the rooftop solar panels combined with the new portable one put out enough power to keep our batteries nicely charged up, even with the crock pot cooking away.

Fantastic views above Valle de Bravo!

I was going to tell you about our plans for 2025, but since we did a little excursion yesterday, the 2025 blog post can wait until we have a quiet day.

We've definitely been feeling like we're lacking in the exercise department so yesterday we went and did some hiking! 

2024 Year in Review

We started the year 2024 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and we ended the year in Valle de Bravo, Mexico.

And in total, we were in 15 different countries during the year. Malaysia, Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, Maldives, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Turkiye, France, England, Albania, Italy, Portugal, Canada, and Mexico. Several of these were new countries, and we have increased our total countries visited count to 72.