Dec 28, 2019
We had considered Monterrey just a stop over between the border and further stops inland but after arriving we decided we wanted to stay longer. First stop after I got up was to walk to the nearby McDonalds to get on their internet and do some clean up chores. The McDonalds had a large play place and decent internet but none of the power plugs worked. No problem, my laptop was fully charged and would be able to do what I needed. First I contacted Holly’s cell phone provider in the US and cancelled her phone account since it was no longer needed. Next I contacted Geico and got a quote for the very minimum car insurance possible which came out to $280 a year. I had considered just cancelling the car insurance since it didn’t provide coverage outside the US but then technically my US car registration would be invalid which might cause problems since I would need to show my registration at every border. Also many Mexican insurance policies require active US car insurance and might use the lack of US coverage as an excuse to deny a payout. Finally if I cancel the US car insurance completely it would cause problems when I renewed my Texas registration. Of course my car registration paper is a simple print out with the title “duplicate receipt” at the top and I don’t think some random immigration official in Chile will know what a Texas registration would look like anyway. However I figured $280 a year is not too much to be on the safe side and I could always cancel it later.
By the time I got all that done, Holly and Olivia had arrived at the McDonalds where they had breakfast before we all went to the Macroplaza park. The day was warm and sunny so it was a pleasant walk through the park until we got to the Mexico History Museum which was near one end of the park. In front of the museum was some water features and a large two story fountain that was really interesting.
However as we went in to Museum they stopped us since we were carrying bottles of water. Apparently water was not allowed in the Museum. We had just gotten started and I didn’t want to dump our water so I figured we would check out the river walk next to the museum. The river is a sunken manmade canal with nice walking paths along its banks. It is decorated with many waterfalls and fountains along its 2.5 km length.
As we started along the Riverwalk we saw there were tourist boats going down the river. I Googled the boat rides and in a rare utter failure Google maps sent us on a wild goose chase in the wrong direction until eventually I asked someone and they brought us to the boat launch. By then it was near lunchtime and we were hot and tired from a couple hour’s walking. I bought two adult tickets for 70 pesos each and a child ticket for 40 pesos but being hangry was not going to make for a pleasant boat ride so we went to a nearby restaurant called Siberiana which featured tostadas and even better had someone there that spoke English. There we ordered chicken salad stuffed in avocados, a chicken plate and a plate of assorted tacos. The stuffed avocados were really good, the chicken plate OK and the tacos were nothing special.
Refreshed we returned to the boat launch to find that the line had grown enormously. Holly and Olivia did some reading and then went to the Museo del Dulce (Candy Museum) while I waited in line. The Museo del Dulce was small and had all Spanish displays about candy making in the region with a few sample pieces of candy. They were done with the museum in less than 20 minutes and it was not cute like the Ice Cream museum in the US. It took over an hour before we were able to get on the boat.
The boat ride itself was nice, although the guide spoke just in Spanish so we had no idea what the landmarks were. Near the end of the canal was a festival call Luztopia which had a bunch of lighted features. It was still daytime and the festival did not open until dark so nothing was going on. We sailed to the end of the canal where the boat stopped and we could have gotten off but the line to get back on the boat was really long so we just stayed on the boat for the return trip.
Once back to the boat launch it was almost 4:30pm and our 24 hours for the parking was up at 5:00 so we hustled it back to the parking lot. On the way back we decided we needed to stay another night since it seemed there was a lot to see and we didn’t want to drive anywhere in the dark. Once back the parking lot I gave the parking lot girl the 200 pesos and told her we wanted to stay another night. She said OK but we needed move our vehicle and pretend we were not there when the owner came he would not know we were staying overnight. If we saw a green van with a fat guy we were to pretend we didn’t see him and that we were just leaving. No problem, we just retired into Rover, put the shades up and Holly started making dinner. I took Olivia and the parking attendant’s brother, Jose who was about 10 years old to the nearby McDonalds to play for a while until dinner was ready. Holly texted me when dinner was ready, we returned to the parking lot and had dinner in Rover.
When we emerged there were swarms of police outside. It turns out that another customer had returned to their car and got into a fight with his wife, the police were called and they were dealing with the incident. Whew, glad it had nothing to do with us. We decided to go to the Luztopia since it was open until 11 pm. We got an Uber and it took us to the park where the festival was being held but the line to get into the festival was way, way too long to try to get in. Lucky for us, there were a lot of lighted decorations outside the festival so we walked around a bit before catching an Uber back to Rover for the night.