Xalapa Veracruz

 Huh.  I just checked out my blog entries from 2022, and it looks like I didn't write a single thing about the two days we spent in Xalapa (pronounced Jalapa) on that trip.  Surprising!  It was one of the highlights.

Xalapa is located in the mountains between Mexico City and the Gulf Coast, is the capital of the state of Veracruz, and is home to the University of Veracruz. All of that makes the city of roughly 800,000 a bustling place with a moderate climate.  The historic centre of town is pretty, there are a lot of parks and greenery all over, and, as Harvey likes to say "the town is clean and the people look happy".

Parque Juarez -- Xalapa's central square

Central church getting a touch-up

Historic State Government Building

Busy downtown street in the evening

Random residential street

Courtyard with restaurants near our hotel

Honestly, while the city has some things to offer tourists, mostly Xalapa just feels comfortable -- not too big, not too small, lots of cultural events, some appealing-looking bookstores (if only I read the language more fluently), a big central library, posters for yoga classes, lots of coffee shops and bakeries, and a superfluity of pizza restaurants.

Biblioteca Carlos Fuentes

I don't know how to capture this visually, but the number of Italian restaurants in the centro is truly ridiculous!  We kept searching google maps for places to eat, particularly for dinner in the evenings, and most of our choices were coffee shops, Mexican places that closed by 5:30pm, and pizza places. Honestly, there are at least 3 within a block and a half of our hotel.

Despite the restaurant issue, Xalapa feels like somewhere that I could imagine living (if I and the world were different).

Somehow we're in Mexico again

It all started with the idea that we travel to Colombia to go birding.  As we started to make that idea into a plan, we discovered that our best flight to Bogota included a change of planes in Mexico City.  Suddenly our plans included two weeks in Mexico.  Bonus feature of this plan -- the elevation of Bogota is 2640m and we live at sea level.   Spending some time in CDMX (elevation 2240m) beforehand would give us some time to adapt.

We've been to Mexico City before, and looked forward to spending some more time there after our last abbreviated visit. But.....

Mexico City is big, it's crowded, and it's a little overwhelming.  Don't get me wrong, we saw some amazing things in our first two full days in CDMX.  

  

Palacio Bellas Artes.

 

Museo Vivo del Muralismo

Museo Nacional de Antropología

But we were also a little over-confident about travelling to Mexico after having been here 6 times before, and we neglected to refresh our memory on a few practicalities.  So we got ripped off on our taxi fare on arrival (we paid about double what we should have), messed up the activation of our Mexican SIM cards, and ended up eating some mediocre meals.  Oh, and I didn't spend enough time on my Duolingo listening exercises and had trouble understanding what anyone was saying.

Nothing terrible, but I wasn't displeased to leave for Xalapa on Day 3. 

Road trips: Route Planning in an electric car

 So some of you who haven't travelled long distances in an electric car might be wondering what it's like.  Certainly, we keep getting approached by folks at chargers who exclaim at how far away from home we are, and who have questions about our car's range and what the trip is like.

I guess the first thing to clarify is that in some ways the actual numbers associated with our car's range is irrelevant.  Unlike a gas vehicle, in an EV you don't just head in a random direction and travel until you need to refill your gas tank.  Chargers just aren't that common yet.   Instead you basically travel from charger to charger and the spacing between chargers dictates how far you go before stopping. The availability of chargers also dictates exactly how you get from point A to point B and where you travel.  There are still places you just can't go.

So the first step in a long EV road trip is planning your route.  

Fortunately, Teslas can do this for you very easily.  You just press a button on the steering wheel and say "Navigate to X". This can even be "Navigate to Hillsboro Texas" when you're in Vancouver BC.  It's a miracle of modern technology that the car will figure out a route for you for the entire cross-continent trip in only a minute or two, complete with every charging stop that you need to make along the way. It will even include an estimate of your arrival time at each place (making the assumption that you travel the speed limit the whole way and that the only stops you make are to charge).

For simple trips, at this point you're done.  Steer your car in the first direction indicated by the navigation system and continue until you reach your destination. 

For longer trips, you might want to do a little more investigation before you head out.  For example, we brought camping gear along on this trip and a telescope, which means that we needed to put the pod on. 

 The pod affects the car's aerodynamics and therefore its range.  The car's computer will eventually figure this out and adjust its estimates, but at the start of the trip it's going to assume we're driving a standard Model 3.  That means that the possibility exists that the navigation system could accidentally take us somewhere where we could run out of juice and not be able to make it to the next charger.

So we also use a 3rd party app to check Tesla's routing.  The A Better Route Planner (ABRP) app allows you to manually adjust the power consumption that it uses for your car when it does its routing (which we can estimate ourselves from previous trips with the pod).  We can also tell ABRP about all of the EV charger adapters that we own (almost a complete set!) so the app can plan a route that includes non-Tesla chargers too.  (The Tesla route planner only knows about Superchargers.)  

We can then look at the route in more detail and check for any problematic sections, like ones where we need to charge to 100% to get from point A to point B, or one where we arrive with less than 10% charge.  What's wrong with charging to 100% or arriving with less than 10% you ask?  Well, charging to 100% takes forever, because the battery fills more and more slowly as it gets close to full.  And then there's the possibility of wind. Strong headwinds can significantly reduce your range (while tailwinds can of course extend it), so any segment where you need to be close to 100% to make it to the next charger is higher risk. 

When we find a problematic section, we look around for alternatives.  Are there chargers between the recommended charge points where we could stop if necessary?  Is there an alternate route available that's lower risk?  For example the standard trip plan for our trip south routed us east through Wyoming. However, that part of the trip included several segments where we needed to charge to a very high percentage to reach the next charger, and there was absolutely nowhere in-between to top up if needed.  But if we instead diverted a bit further south and travelled east through Colorado, there were lots of alternate chargers and the entire trip would take maybe half-an-hour longer in total. 

Travelling through Colorado made way more sense.

So, in 2024 long road trips in an EV are definitely possible, but still require more planning than similar trips with an internal combustion engine.  On the upside, when's the last time filling your gas vehicle cost you $8-15?  And we're much happier producing fewer carbon emissions in our travels.

Blah blah blah

 I know what you're thinking.  Blah blah blah blah.....where are the pictures?  Well, here's a few from the past few days instead of a lot of words.

Petroglyphs National Monument Albuquerque

Albuquerque, NM

Galveston, Tx

Road trips: car woes

 So, our windshield was successfully fixed a few days ago, and we decided to start heading North.  We're headed home, although we're planning on doing a few fun things along the way.

Alas, our car woes are not quite done.  The left rear tire keeps reporting that the tire pressure is low.  Tesla service insisted that the tires were all fine, but during our 12 hours on the road yesterday Harvey added air three times.  So maybe it's not just the sensor going?

We're currently waiting in Discount Tires in Albequerque, NM to try to figure out what's up.  We travelled through some rather unpopulated regions to get here, and will be travelling through some rather unpopulated regions to get home and we don't have a spare.  Best to get things straightened out while we're able.

Update:  We picked up a screw in that tire, but the tire can be fixed.  Yah!  We don't have to buy a new set, and they can fix it this afternoon.  AND the fix was free.  Patronize Discount Tires when you're in the States, y'all.  

American Mexican Food

I am puzzled by American Mexican food.  No matter what corner of Latin America the food claims to be from, it is always Tex Mex.  Bland blended pinto beans, too much mild melted stringy cheese, tangy but not particularly tasty salsa, tortillas and a little bit of shredded iceberg lettuce to go with your shredded chicken or ground beef. I mean, it's generally not offensive, but it's not much like the tasty and varied foods that we've found in Mexico. 

It's really puzzling, especially given the numbers of Latinx people around.

The only explanation I can come up with is that this is America's version of Canadian Chinese food.  In Canada, every small town Chinese restaurant serves Won Ton Soup and Chicken Chow Mein and Sweet and Sour Pork, because that's what everyone expects Chinese restaurants to have. What the Chinese families that run these places eat at home is irrelevant.   

Similarly, everyone here expects bland Tex Mex burritos and tacos, so that's what Mexican restaurants serve.

The only exception I've found so far was the Mexicajun food at Tia Juanitas in Winnie, Tx (and Beaumont, TX. It's a chain.)  You can get your tacos stuffed with blackened fish or shrimp, or even alligator.  It's one of the few places where we've gotten a nice meal since Austin.

Waiting for a windshield

 It's happening!  It's really happening!  Our windshield is finally being replaced today.  As you may recall, it was broken in that hailstorm in Austin.  

Fortunately, the windshield wasn't broken so badly that we were unable to drive, but the cracks keep spreading as time goes on and light glinting from those cracks keeps triggering the automatic wipers.  Which you can turn off, but turning off automatic wipers also turns off cruise control, and no one wants to drive from Texas to Vancouver without cruise control.  (Modern first world problems, I'll admit.)  A non-first world problem is that apparently cracked windshields become dangerous when the cracks intersect.  Fortunately the two cracks that threatened to become problematic decided to veer randomly in another direction so we've had no reason to panic.  But we really wanted to get the windshield fixed before heading home.

The car is in the shop as I write.  We'll soon have a new windshield.  Yah! The hail dints in the hood and body will have to wait until we can get to an ICBC authorized repair facility in British Columbia, but in the meantime we'll have the distinction of driving the most beat-up Tesla we've encountered so far.

So, what to share this morning? How about a few more reflections on Texas?  

Is everything bigger in Texas?  Well, highway rest stop gas stations certainly can be.  Have you ever encountered a Buc-ees?  

A Buc-ees is a roadside gas station with attached convenience store -- on steroids.  I'm afraid I didn't count, but Google tells me that they have on the order of 100 gas pumps, and their huge restrooms have about 25 stalls each for men and women (or maybe more?).  

The convenience stores are huge too. The photo above was taken from the centre, facing towards one door.  They're about half the size of a Real Canadian Superstore, but instead of carrying a complete selection of groceries they have a whole aisle dedicated to various sorts of gummy candies (with separate aisles for every other type of roadside snack you can imagine), a large collection of T-shirts and home tchotchkes (with slogans like 'A real woman can do it all -- but sometimes chooses not to'), Texas-themed photo-realistic paintings you can purchase (cows and wildflowers predominate), alongside hot food to go.  Staff work continuously to prepare pulled pork sandwiches, brisket sandwiches, and burritos that go directly from their hands to warmers, so that you simply can grab what you want.  Super-convenient, right?  It is, as long as you're happy eating a burrito whose cheese component is artificially-coloured liquid nacho cheese, or truly indifferent pulled pork sandwiches on too-sweet white bread buns.  

We've stopped at a couple of Buc-ees because Superchargers are sometimes located there.  It's definitely an experience.

Other thoughts on Texas?  Well, there's a lot of money here.  The majority of the bird sanctuaries we've visited are actually privately funded by groups like the Audubon Society, the Texas Ornithological Society, or private conservation groups (notably, the Artist Cove Coastal Heritage Preserve).  The latter organization (largely the founder, Karla Klay) has raised tens of millions of dollars in only 10 years to preserve some of the last remaining rural land on Galvaston Island from development. 

Most of these preserves have excellent facilities, like flush toilets, boardwalks, and even raised tree-canopy walkways, like the one Harvey used at Smith Oaks to take sunset photos.

In other words, these privately-funded and operated preserves have facilities of a quality that you might expect to see in a major National Park in Canada.

Other indications that Texans, or at least, bird-watching Texans have a lot of money?  The number of locals who mentioned their "second homes" in casual conversation and the ubiquity of Swarovski binoculars.  For those not in the know, Swarovskis cost somewhere in the neighbourhood of $2000-5000 Canadian.  Only the most dedicated (and affluent) birders around Vancouver carry them, but they seemed almost like an obligatory birding accessory here.