Okay, with the car
purchase behind us, it was time for Caroline to enjoy the Great
American Shopping Experience. With the mini-van, we have
virtually limitless space to fill up with all that stuff that we
think we need only when we're in the U.S. Our big stop for
the week was the enormous outlets about 45 minutes north of San
Antonio. The most important finds included curtains and
pillow covers from Caroline's new favorite home store, the giant
Pottery Barn outlet.
We decided to force ourselves to do something more interesting
than all of that shopping, so we drove up to Austin for a
half-day on Tuesday while waiting for our new car registration
to arrive at the dealership. Our visit was short, mostly a
driving tour somewhat guided by a suggested itinerary from our
friend and Austin expert Meredith. We took a quick hop out
of the car to see the nation's largest state capitol building
(this is Texas). After visiting George W's old workplace
and driving the outskirts of campus, we went for some muy
delicioso 'queso compuesto' at Chuy's, another Meredith
recommendation. The area around Austin was beautiful, and
we decided we'll need to head up again some time for longer
stay, maybe look into a long weekend home exchange. The
drive from San Miguel can be done in one (long 13 hour) day -
just around the corner... for us. |
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As our faithful
readers may recall, our formerly steadfast 1996 Chevy Cavalier (aka
Chevy-Girl or Chevy Rojo) started giving us problems
(overheating issues) since our trip to Michigan this past July.
She has been to numerous repair shops and dealerships for
repairs over the past 6 months. Her last visit to the
Chevy dealership in San Miguel may have done the trick, but
after the scares she's given us, we vowed to trade her in before
it was too late. With all the driving we do, sometimes in
remote areas, we just weren't feeling safe anymore. She's
been a trusty and reliable beast of burden for us, able to haul
us as well as
an amazing amount of crap all over the continent (and oh, the
gas mileage!) and we've been through a lot together over the past 9-1/2
years, but it was time to say goodbye. And besides, we'd
been toying with the idea of getting a mini-van since the
beginning of this adventure in order to make it easier to lug all of our stuff
around and to be able to buy and carry with us the larger items
that are involved in furnishing and remodeling 2 homes.
Well, as all the
gringos down here will tell you, cars are very
expensive here in Mexico and the quality is not as good as up
north so as soon as we returned from PV (we spent one night at
home in SMA and repacked some clean clothes), we hit the road for San
Antonio, TX! Scott had done quite a bit of mini-van
research and late in the game we decided to blow our budget and go for a
2005 Chrysler Town and Country or Dodge Grand Caravan, as these
are the only two vehicles with the new "Stow 'n' Go" seats that
fold into the floor completely, giving you, in essence, a
convertible cargo van. Since we plan to lug around quite a
bit of stuff (including our eventual move back to the U.S. when
our money runs out and we need to find jobs again) we figured
we'd need the seats out of the mini-van much of the time.
We have a tiny apartment and absolutely no storage space, so
we'd have nowhere to put the seats, so although we were initially looking for
something a little older (and about $8,000 cheaper!), 2005
was the first model year for the Stow'n' Gos and we just had to
have it!
After 2 intense and
exhausting days
of visiting car lots all over San Antonio (San Antonio is a HUGE
city and is very spread out, similar to Detroit), talking to
sleazy used car salesmen and having the van of our dreams sold
out from under us (we called to say we wanted it 2 hours after
looking at it and the dealership was drawing up the paperwork on
that same van for another couple when we called!), we settled on
a van with more features than we wanted to pay for (including
Sirius satellite radio!), but we got a decent price (end of the
month and all) and we love our new (as yet un-named) mini-van!
It was really sad to
drive away on that rainy Texas morning, leaving Chevy-Girl in
the lot behind us. We just hope that she goes to a good
Mexican-American family, who she'll feel comfortable with, since
she speaks Spanish now and identifies with the Mexican culture,
of course. |
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