the first surprise was when we picked up the rental car. They didn't have the midsize model we'd reserved so we got stuck with this:

Yeah, I know how badly you feel for me, LOL.

It was below zero in Michigan, so I was pleased to see the beach:

Of course, I had to get into the water first thing, it was much warmer than Lake Michigan in June!

I shared the beach with fishermen, birds and jellyfish:

Makayla had already warned me to stay away from sharks and stingrays, they "are not nice". (grin) Still, we went fishing and caught a stingray, which the crew released:

We caught whiting, eels, crabs, stingrays, catfish, ocean perch. The whiting was kept, everything else thrown back except the ocean perch, which the crew fed to these guys. They are an endangered species, the brown pelican:

We both caught fish:

and we outran the pirates, LOL:

We took it back to the room and cooked it in our $7 pan from the Dollar Store, LOL. I made a fresh mango and black bean salsa to go with it:

We bought oranges and grapefruit from a nice Hispanic man selling fruit from the back of his truck. The oranges were nice and juicy, but the grapefruit was amazing, they were huge and nearly purple and didn't need any sweetener at all. We ate citrus and seafood every single day!

We had shrimp a couple of times, and made fish tacos out of the leftover whiting one day. The food in the island restaurants was mostly batter dipped and deep fried, nothing to brag about except one small diner where we had carne guisada with beans and rice:

This sign pretty much said it all:

we bought seafood here, the combination bait shop and seafood market, which I got a big charge out of:

My favorite, I think, was the Texas BBQ in Los Fresnos. The menu was on the side of the building, nowhere else:

For $5.99 they sold me a HALF POUND of BBQ'd brisket with beans and rice, it was nicely smokey and the sauce was slightly sweet with a bit of a hot pepper bite:

check out the smoke ring on the brisket:

We went to Mexico, it was....exciting. We walked across the bridge and into Nuevo Progreso. Halfway across the bridge I saw the "blanca cavello" (I think) a little boy was chattering about, a white horse drinking from the Rio Grande:

No pictures of Mexico. We walked across the bridge, past the armoured vehicles with mounted machine guns, past the wall of sandbags shielding the soldiers with more machine guns, past the soldiers in full riot gear with assault rifles. We had been told that if we took a picture of soldiers they wouldn't shoot us, but we would be detained and our camera would be confiscated. We would not get it back, so I stashed the camera. We walked three blocks, crossed the street and walked right back. As of this minute I have no desire to ever return to Mexico, although they had a beautiful hand tooled leather saddle for $200. I'd have brought that home if I could have figured out the logistics...

We also drove to corpus Christi and met with Brenda, I'll post those pictures in a new thread because this is going to take forever to load!

I came back tanned and today it was 50F here, so the warm weather must have followed me home!

Annie

SharonCb

Nancy

I love seeing vacation pics and these are so beautiful!!

Cheers!
Susie

Looks like you had a ball!

Great shot of the pelican following the boat.

So glad you had a nice time, Annie.

Chase you should have come along. It wasn't a road trip, but it was sure a trip. Toronto will be much better to visit than Mexico, now we both have passports! Get ready...

Annie

Thanks for feeding the brown pelican. They were near extinct a few years ago. There numbers are climbing every year and it's so nice to see them making a comeback.

Thanks for sharing your trip with us. I couldn't wait to see what you caught because I knew you were going to cook it. I'm not disappointed!

These dolphins also followed the boat around, I don't know why:

Of course, there was still some damage from the hurricane too, like this boat:

Annie

David

Some women actually pay for dermabrasion, they just need to stand on the beach while the wind is 30MPH, they'll get sandblasted! LOLOLOL

And yes, we got a convertible in California too. We didn't reserve one either time, but we lucked out in both places. Seems people want little, cheap cars that get good gas mileage, not Mustang convertibles. (grin)

Annie

I've been to Nogales, Tijuana (decades ago) and Ensenada. Border tourist towns, I agree, ugh. Mexico is vast, I'd like to visit and see the other side of the coin. I hear Mexicans are among the most hospitable people. Just gotta stay away from the bad elements.

I'm glad you enjoyed at least one 'restaurant' meal, LOL. Now I'm craving brisket, time to go to Costco and have DH fire up the smoker for sometime this weekend.

Convertibles are fun....until you have to get out of one in the rain wearing a long skirt....grin.

I put the top down on the car the next day, when the sun was shining.

Fishing with other people was much like fishing by myself, except that the crew took the fish off the hooks for us, which was nice. We still baited our own hooks, for for $22 a person they gave us four hours on the bay and supplied the equipment and the bait. It did seem kind of wrong to be using shrimp for bait, though!

If I ever really go to Mexico, instead of just hopping across the border, I'd like to see the Aztec ruins.....

Annie

Cathy

Too bad about Mexico -- the border towns are the worst with the drug stuff right now. Ugh. But do visit again - talk to a travel agent about a romantic seaside town untouched by the drug wars.

It's great that you got to cook your own fish - now that's fresh!! When I was in Puerto Arista, Chiapas, my traveling friend José helped some fisherman who gave him a large fish, and we had someone cook it for us in her yard, which was an ersatz restaurant. She hardly charged us anything for that, and our hotel rooms were $1.60 a day - but that was back in 1978, I believe. They're probably almost ten times that much now!

Lars

If/when I go, I'll make sure I give you plenty of notice, I think you'd make a great tour partner!

Annie

Annie

~Amanda

Just a good excuse to go back when YOU'RE in Austin, that's what it is!

Annie