Car Trip 1

If we had stayed home that Sunday in 2005, none of this probably would have happened. As it was, our friend R, from Toronto, was in his third of four weeks here on the island. We were all a little tired of just lying around the beach all day. Since I had more or less decided to return the Jeep to the USA and sell it, we would need some sort of vehicle to replace it. We have our motor scooters, but they are no good on the mainland, no good for transporting groceries and definitely no good for motor trips. So we decided to pack up all our cares and woes and head to the auto swap in Cancun. Just to check things out, of course!

It was hot over there. The swap meet takes place in a big dirt lot with car after car packed together like sardines. The occasional pick-up is squeezed in for good measure. We three walked up and down the aisles, emitting various exclamations of ooh, aah or even a “they have to be kidding!” once in awhile. We had really given up on finding anything remotely suitable to replace the Jeep when, Wham! There it was. A bright, shiny red brand new VW Pointer. Seeing as how I will not even consider owning any other color than red in a vehicle, it was mightily to my liking!

We examined it from stem to stern, which means oohing over the color to me. We were actually quite adroit at ignoring all the wonderful points the salesman tried to show us that existed under the hood. It was a five speed manual, had a trunk and the doors all locked. That was enough for me. There was no radio, but that is an easily fixed problem. It turns out that it did have 3000 kilometers on it, which did make it slightly used. That’s 1875 miles in our measurements. We pretended to reluctantly allow the salesman to usher us into it and go for a test drive. I jumped in behind the wheel, inhaled deeply of that still new car smell and maneuvered us out of that crowded parking lot and into the busy traffic of Cancun. I was to ask myself many, many times later why I didn’t notice that it did not have power steering.

Back to the parking lot and the deal was negotiated, down payment was made and an appointment was made to meet the salesman the next day to transfer papers and get a new license plate. We completed everything we needed to do on Monday, drove to the car ferry and made our way back home. All the time sputtering “What have we done? We now own two vehicles and we are supposed to be retired and enjoying a simple life.” Oh well, days later, with Mexican car insurance purchased and nerves calmed down, we decided we had better take a little trip in our new car. Just to be sure that we really did like it and want to keep it.