The family that had kindly let us stay had a small auto hotel, these places are ALL over Mexico and would be great if Peggy would fit in! The hotels are basically a garage with a room above them so you can safely lock away your vehicle (if it is less than 7 foot tall) and have a snooze and a shower. Richard  the owner kindly allowed us to park on his neatly manicured lawn among the orange and lime trees and we cooked oursleves bubble and squeak for tea, grabbed a well needed shower and slept for what felt like days in the peace and quiet!

The next morning we had our breakfast of left over bubble and squeak (waste not want not…and the milk had gone sour for cereal) and got the van ready to go. Just as we were packing up Richards daughter came and invited us in to the family home for coffee. Alex eagerly accepted and we headed in to meet everyone.
We were seated at the table, our places set and within minutes were handed plates of steaming potzole (stewed beef with potatoes, cactus and tomato) and piping hot, freshly made tortillas in different varieties. Our mugs were filled to the brim with coffee and we were urged to eat.
The whole family joined us and we made conversation through the few words we had picked up, hand movements and with lots of laughs and mistakes. We talked about the butterflies, the mummies and where we should go next, they gave us leaflets on the ‘night of the dead’ festival which had just passed and told us to visit the pyramid nearby.
We ate as much as we could (Alex cleared his plate but I just couldn’t after my bubble and squeak!) and we emptied our cups and sadly had to hit the road.
We said our goodbyes and had some pictures with everyone and they even gave us some posters to take with us. It had been such a privilege to meet and share a meal with such a kind family and even though we spoke different languages, chat about every day things!
We left with our hearts lifted and big smiles on our faces and an overwhelming desire to learn Spanish. Our day had gotten off to a great start, we were well rested and very well fed and we were heading to Oaxtepec. We noticed as we drove that there were more VW campers on the road than we had ever seen in our lives and it transpired that these are actually the local buses! It made us chuckle each time we saw one!

Tootling along on our 170 mile journey we were stopped by the police. We have been stopped by the Federales before and they generally just ask where you are going, check documentation and send you on your way…however, this was the Municipal Police! Whole different kettle of fish!
We were pulled and surrounded by about 7 police officers all holding automatic rifles and asked if we speak Spanish. We explained that we speak very little and told them we were from England. The 7 officers became 2 and they started with their bribary attempt. We had been warned it would come but we didn’t really expect it and it took a while for us to realise what was going on. The officer doing the talking had as much English as we did Spanish but he knew the word for money.The long and short of it is this; He explained that his partner (the officer guarding the other doors to the van) was the chief and he would let us enter the town with our 2 number plates on Peggy if we gave him $2000 (peso which is £100 ish). We told him we had no money and would go back the other way. He refused and said he would come with us to a cash machine or let us write a cheque, we refused. We could get the gist of what he was saying but pretty much played dumb to as much as possible however he just wasn’t going to budge on letting us go without getting a penny! We gave him what few notes we had in our dash board tub (which was luckily only about 40 pesos, the rest was stashed in our super secret hiding place) and a $20 (USD) that was in there by happenstance. He eventually realised we had nothing when I offered him the loose change in the dash (which he took!!!) and let us go telling us we MUST get a plate removed for that one city!

We drove off absolutely gobsmacked. It was hard to register what had just happened! We had just been bribed by the people paid to protect their country! Its so wrong but there is very clearly nothing that will be done about it. We thanked our lucky stars that we had our cash stashed and had gotten away with a small loss and eventually laughed about it!
The journey from there got progressively worse and as we started to climb yet another mountain similar in grade to a black grade ski slope at approximately 4 miles an hour we realised that our day had gone to the dogs.

6,000 feet up we gasped at the scenery around us and watched the snow topped mountains appear. The GPS completely did us over again as it sent us down yet another free road riddled with more potholes than a huge Aero chocolate bar and then told us to turn around when possible!
We finally arrived at our campsite which was like the local waterpark but run by the government (and guarded like the government lived there) and on being told there was the internet in one of the hotels we pulled up in their carpark and hijacked the wifi in the hope that I could FINALLY watch my sisters wedding!

See what happens next on our traveling wedding adventure!