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Term
blacked out tent
They mean the car’s windows are covered with dark tint. Tint can make it harder for police to see inside and it’s sometimes illegal or restricted depending on where you are.
Car
Ford Fusion
A Ford Fusion is a regular, everyday Ford sedan. Here, it’s just the car the brother-in-law is driving, and they’re talking about whether it’s going too fast or too slow compared with the rest of traffic.
Term
pulled over
“Pulled over” means police stop your car and ask for your information. They’re saying they don’t want to get stopped by the police.
Car
Honda NSX
The Honda NSX is a sports car built for fast driving and sharp handling. People talk about it because it’s a special, high-end model rather than an everyday car. In the podcast, it’s brought up as a standout car during a group drive.
Car
Crosstrek Tracks Cross
The Crosstrek is a small crossover SUV meant for everyday driving. It sits a bit higher than a regular car, which can make it easier to handle roads and parking. In the podcast, it’s referenced during a simple city route plan.
Car
Skoda Felicia
The Skoda Felicia is a small, practical car meant for everyday driving. It’s the kind of vehicle you’d see used on normal city streets and local roads. The podcast mentions it while talking about how driving works at intersections and with speed limits.
LIVE
It is a city down in Mexico called Porto Peñata.
Peñata. Ha.
This is our parking
brought to you by right on and right.
Toyota, Scottsdale, Arizona.
I'm the host, Jeff ending recording
for my home studio here in Gilbert, Arizona.
Just getting over, I think, maybe COVID.
I've had the fever off and on the last couple of days.
I haven't been able to sleep.
My coffee tastes like shit this morning.
I thought it was a cup, kind of tastes soapy.
So I dumped it out, rinsed it.
The next cup tastes like shit.
Drink it anyway, because it's coffee.
Just got back from spending a weekend down in Rocky Point.
So if you're from Arizona, that probably means more to you
than if you're from somewhere else,
but it is a popular resort area
in a small town called Porto Peñata.
Peñata, Peñata, Rocky Point.
So we're going to talk about that trip.
I know some of you love my trip recaps.
Some of you are probably going to stop listening
at this point and drop off.
But we went down there with the family.
This is our first time going.
So there were some people that went with us,
like my brother-in-law and his family.
They've gone on there multiple times.
We have another friend that's,
I think it's like their fifth or sixth time.
But for the core, the nest, myself,
the people that live in this house, my kids,
their significant others, the grandkids.
This was our first time.
And we've been kind of hesitant to go
because almost anybody here in Arizona
that has gone or has heard of somebody going
has had an issue with like the local police.
Getting pulled over, shaken down.
And you have to carry cash, which can't carry it together.
You have to have like half the money in your shoe.
And essentially have to pay the cops off.
My daughter drove our churro.
So we have a churro.
I've talked about that before.
A little Volkswagen Turing.
Now she's used to driving a big
Durango SRT exhaust loud.
But the problem with her car is it's got blacked out tent.
The windshield is tended and she said she has a friend
that either lives down there or used to work down there
and they will ticket you for your tents.
And it's like 80 US dollars a day.
I don't know how applicable that is.
And when you really think about it,
I don't know how enforceable that is.
Especially when you're leaving the country in a few days.
But if you live down there,
I can see that being a problem.
But better safe than sorry.
And so they packed her Mario and the two girls.
Packed the Volkswagen Turing.
You couldn't even see on the back.
And then, of course, our grandson Zeek rode with us.
My mother-in-law and my wife and our car were packed.
And then my son and his girlfriend and their daughter
and a little Ford Fusion.
And so we were going down there and they had four cars
and we were driving, you know, and you've heard,
you go through these towns, it's kilometers an hour,
they will pull you over for one or two over,
especially without a country plate.
So there's a lot of Arizona plates down there.
And this is like the local.
This is the place to go that's regional.
It's like an hour on the other side of the border,
an hour and a half on the other side of the border.
And so when you're going through,
you switch your gauge over to kilometers an hour
and you're creeping.
Now, if you haven't been to anywhere in Mexico before
and some of you have been to like Cancun, Cabo,
Rocky Point, a few other places.
It's not uncommon, even Puerto Vallarta,
we saw this when we went down there with Alex and Jen.
It's not uncommon to see the federales,
which is not the same as the local police,
but you'll see the federales riding around in a pickup truck,
all like National Guarded.
It's basically the Mexican National Guard.
And there's always one standing up on the back
with a freaking cannon.
I don't know if it's a 50 cal,
but it's a mounted machine gun.
And that thing looks vicious.
And the only other time I've seen one that I remember
is when we were at the airport in Puerto Vallarta.
I don't remember if we saw one when we were in Cabo, maybe.
But those are things when you see them coming from America,
you're like, Jesus.
One thing you don't see a lot of our regular municipal police,
they stay in the city.
So I'll tell you a little bit more about this.
The road trip itself was interesting.
I'll tell you more about that and some of the vacation
and what we did, what we ate, what we didn't do,
things to look out for.
If you decide to go on there with your family,
all that and more coming up after this word
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Before I finish talking about this trip,
one thing I do want to address is
I recently uploaded a video from 12 weeks ago
of my good friend, Wes Tankersley,
and I talking on the podcast.
And we got to a point where he was talking
about some of the stuff going on in Idaho.
I think you guys have seen this.
And I was kind of,
you know, they say if you have to think about it,
don't do it.
And I was thinking about, should I post this?
But we really didn't say anything,
but we did give our opinions.
And one thing I want to say on that video,
and I've said this before on the podcast,
and I feel like I have to reset this every once in a while.
As people in this country,
we're allowed to give our opinions on everything.
I'm very careful with the opinions that I give.
I leave the door open for conversation.
I invite people, hey, if you would like to come sit down
in front of me and have an adult conversation
about anything, UFOs, flock cameras,
like I've made my position pretty clear on flock cameras,
and all of a sudden that's just become the rage
and all I say is we need to start asking ourselves why.
Something that's been around since 2017
is all of a sudden, all in the news.
What are we being,
what is our attention being taken from?
That's what you should be asking yourself.
I believe in some of the outrage,
but I also think that people are way misinformed
and fear-mongered,
but I'm willing to have that discussion.
I even had a friend post on their page.
If you feel this way on their page,
come talk to me and let's have a quick chat.
And here's why, he does network security,
which I admire.
I'm like, okay, here's a guy who knows what he's talking about,
not just some rando clicking on links.
And he gave a couple of other reasons.
So my response was, hey,
I would love for you to come on the podcast via Zoom,
because he's in another state,
and let's just have a conversation.
Like I just want a conversation.
I just want to hear that side.
And a lot of that stuff,
I already know I've been doing this for a long time.
I could tell you everything that I know,
and I am always going to err on the side of safety
versus over-surveillance, and I get it.
I understand the concern.
I understand the concern.
But I say all that to say that I am steadfast
in my opinions, but I'm open to conversation,
and I'm open to change them,
whether it's borderline political,
whether it's social issues.
You know, one thing that we talked about was
there's a sickness going on,
where if you don't feel the same way as somebody else,
all of a sudden, they're wrong, and you're right.
Or they're wrong about everything.
You know, there's no, this isn't a scantron.
Like life is not a scantron.
You guys remember scantrons?
Am I dating myself with that?
Scantron with the fill in A, B, C, or D?
Well, in this case, life isn't an A, B scantron.
And even if it was, if there's 50 questions,
you have 50 opportunities to answer differently.
And you have your passing score.
So if you need a 75 percentile to pass to whatever the case,
so if you enter at least 70% of your answers are B,
then you get put in this category.
If at least 75% of your answers are A,
you get put in this category.
Maybe it's 51% versus 49%.
What I'm saying is you have all those opportunities
to answer differently, and that ultimately determines
which bucket you fall into.
So there's going to be times you answer A,
there's going to be times you answer B.
It might be A, B, B, B, A, A, B, A.
But it's never, and it should never be all A,
and it should never be all B.
And think about that with life, and that's decisions,
that's opinions on things, those are discussion points,
not everything is black and white,
things are open for discussion.
This podcast affords me and my guests the opportunities
to answer A and B and have those discussions.
And two level, what is it, two?
Number two pencil and number two pencils,
which means nothing is an ink or permanent marker,
things can be erased, updated
in light of new information.
So when we say something like,
I think the big issue was restrooms.
If the world went to unisex restrooms,
no problem, I've been to a lot of places
that had unisex restrooms, not a problem,
one in, one out, they're for everybody.
But not unisex shared restrooms,
that's a different concept.
But if you don't want unisex shared restrooms,
if you only want a male restroom and a female restroom,
then that's your answer, that's your A or unisex is your B.
That doesn't make you wrong, that's just your preference.
And so if you're going to discount somebody
because they want gender specific restrooms
versus a restroom for everybody, like I don't care,
you can have a male, female, there's a family changing room.
I don't see anybody boycotting family changing rooms.
Family, family room only, take your family in there.
But it's just, it's weird and it's ridiculous
that we have that.
And so you're going to get that with this podcast.
I go wherever my guests want to go.
We stop, we peel it back, we peel back the layers,
we peel back the onions, we peel back the bananas.
We look at all the different layers of things.
And if there's anything we say that you
vehemently disagree with, come on the show, talk about it.
We're not going to argue.
I have plenty of friends with different opinions.
Some things I'm going to change my mind on,
some things I'm not.
But it's also not, so let's talk about the alphabet, right?
We'll talk about the alphabet community, the LGBTQ plus to infinity.
I have friends, I have extended family in the alphabet community.
Is it derogatory for me to call it alphabet community?
If it is, I apologize.
I don't mean it by that.
If I don't agree with some policy push or something,
if I don't agree with the flag being over here versus over there,
that doesn't mean I don't support the community.
Again, Scantron AB.
You know, we're in Seattle, as you know, and we were staying up.
God, I forget the town already.
Nice, cute little town.
Crosswalk, it's the entire alphabet flag, I'm guessing,
because I've seen it in Puerto Vallarta.
I notice it.
I don't care.
Who cares?
Okay, it's better than just a boring crosswalk.
Like, that doesn't trigger me.
Some people it triggers, and if that bothers you, why?
It's there because the town allowed it to be there.
It shouldn't bother you, but it also shouldn't bother you if I decide I don't like it.
I don't care.
I like the community, but it's like transgender.
I've worked with transgender people.
Normal fun people, they weren't the crazy people that you hear about,
biological male doesn't belong in a female locker room.
I'm not moving off that stance.
And so, you know, you can unfollow me if you want.
You can unfriend me.
I haven't had anyone unfollow or unfriend me that's worth anything that I know of.
But if that's what you want to do, then so be it.
If you want more car talk, go to a different podcast.
If you want more real talk, come back to hard parking.
And go through the catalog.
Go to hardparking.com, click on episodes, search guests.
Unfortunately, you can't search topics.
I don't think search guests.
Almost no two episodes are going to be alike because it's an open conversation.
It's a fun conversation and it's a comfortable conversation.
If you're willing to have the conversation.
All right, we're going to continue on.
God, it's been about two hours since I recorded that first opening had dinner
and all the like.
I had to jot down some notes to kind of recap my trip.
I know I talked about kind of going to the board and having to drive the right speed.
From my house here in Gilbert, it's about a four hour drive.
It felt like it was more four and a half.
But the thing is when you have four vehicles, there's another vehicle that
eventually joined us there, but they didn't drive down with us, nor did they come back with us.
But there's always somebody who needs to use the restroom.
So maybe somebody needs gas because you have all the adults.
You have a seven year old.
You have three children under the age of three.
Basically there's a three year old, a two year old, and a one year old.
So one of the big things that is of concern why we've been apprehensive to go down there
is huge cartel stuff and you try not to just suck into the media.
I mean, one of the trepidations that I can say that my wife kind of had
was with her mom because, you know, she watches all the news.
And the fear is we need to get her mother a passport.
I guess her other one expired.
We had a renewal in the mail.
It took forever to arrive.
I was tracking and checking every day because I get a notification from USPS of incoming mail.
But we also ordered her a new birth certificate and that never got here.
It's still not here.
But she had her own and she also had an Arizona enhanced ID,
which we hear when you're going from here to Mexico via land,
especially being a bordering state.
A lot of times that works because if you're a US citizen, they can't
detain you at the border.
They can slow you down coming into the United States until as long as it takes to verify
you are who you are and that you're a permanent resident here or a US citizen,
but they can't just keep you down there.
Another fear was that maybe ICE was going to pull us over because
my wife thought maybe they would take her mom because she's Puerto Rican,
which we all know that that's American.
But the thought was, well, maybe ICE, they don't know.
They do it all the time on TV.
I'm like, trust me, those border workers know they know.
This is what they do all day on both sides of the border.
So, you know, going into Mexico, they just ask you where you're going
or they just check your car.
Like this is what happens to me at every checkpoint security.
You have to pull into a bay.
They kind of look at you, roll your one down, they kind of look around the car.
Okay, go.
I don't even remember the Mexican authorities, which is the Mexican National Guard.
I don't even remember the authorities asking us really any questions.
I think they may have asked my mother-in-law a question in the back seat
because they had her roll her window down.
And I think we had one of our cars, didn't get pulled over,
but they kind of open it up and look around.
But we collected ourselves on the other side of the border.
So now we're in our first city, a bordering city.
I think the speed limit was like 40 kilometers an hour.
So at that point, if you can do this on your vehicle,
you're going to want to switch the units over for miles per hour to kilometers per hour.
Very critical.
And so we were driving well space.
But what happened is when we got on the other side of the city,
from that point, it was just basically a straight shot from there
to where we're going in Puerto Panasco, aka Rocky Point.
And there's a bunch of little towns in between.
So my brother-in-law, Wilson, he's the lead car in this.
He's been there, I don't know, 10 times.
He takes off and then my daughter and my future son-in-law, they take off
and we're a third and then my son's way behind us.
And of course, my wife's like, don't go too fast.
You're going to lose solo.
I'm like, maybe he can keep up.
I go with the flow of traffic, but he claimed his car is slow.
It's a Ford Fusion.
It's not fast, but it's not slow.
But when we looked at how fast we were going,
we were probably going 45 miles an hour.
And I think he was just, we've heard so many stories
of people getting messed with by the police.
He was like, I'm not trying to get pulled over.
Meanwhile, I can see traffic building up behind him.
And we can see the space in front of us getting bigger.
But then my brother-in-law doesn't want to go too far.
And you know what, when you're in another country,
when you're anywhere, when you're out in the open highway,
you never want to be the first car in a group, if possible.
Like I, when we go on our cruises,
I'm usually the first car with the NSX, but I have ways on.
I have all these other stuff on.
And I know just about everywhere I'm going.
And we got radios.
And so I'm looking at my son is just getting smaller
in the rear view in the side mirror
and everybody else is getting smaller in front of us.
And then people are starting to go around them.
And we're going through these little towns.
So let me back up.
One of the first things my grandson said,
and we crossed the border and we were kind of leaving
that small town and he put his iPad down
or his Nintendo switch and he looked around and he said,
God, this place is trash.
There's dirt, trash.
There's garbage everywhere I look.
And it's funny to hear that from him
because he just doesn't really notice that stuff.
But he's right.
Everywhere you looked, it was just garbage.
You know what it reminded me of,
for those of you in this part of the United States,
it reminded me of when you first drive
into California from Arizona, sometimes off the 10,
especially off the eight, which is on the southern side.
There's a lot of trash on the road.
California trash on their highways isn't nearly as bad.
Like this looked like you were driving through a dump.
Almost every building looked like a bomb went off.
Hardly anybody had windows, doors.
You could see all the way through these buildings.
Most of the trip to Rocky Point was like that.
It's just these abandoned buildings.
And it reminded me of when I was driving through 29 Palms.
We talked about 29 Palms when Bryce Chavez was on the podcast
because he trained out there, spent some time out there.
But it looked like it was a testing site.
And it was kind of eerie.
It's kind of scary.
But we stayed on the main highway, which is Highway 85,
which it's here on the other side of Buckeys actually,
which is kind of funny through Goodyear.
As we get closer, we all kind of group up
and we finally see a police car.
And it's got somebody pulled over.
This is pretty much the last getting off the highway,
the last main road.
So we took a ride off that main road
and we're following each other.
And next thing you know, you're kind of pulling into this resort.
And it's crazy because there's nothing around there.
I have some photos.
I'll share some photos as I talk if you're watching this.
It's almost as if you're on Mars.
Like you're looking at pictures of Mars.
So we pull in and as soon as we park at the front,
we check into the guard gate, we pull our cars up to the front.
And as soon as you open the door, it hits you.
It's this immense humidity.
And I hadn't felt that kind of humidity.
And we've traveled, you know, wait, I travel.
We go to Hawaii, we go to different parts of Mexico.
We've been to, you know, Miami, you know, we travel a lot.
I haven't felt that type of humidity since,
I want to say it's 2008 or 2009 in Miami.
When it was a hot summer day, when we went to Miami Sea Aquarium.
But for those of you who have ever played sports,
like pick up basketball, when you get out
and your hands are like super sticky, you can feel it.
You can feel it.
And I'm like, oh my God.
And so it took me back to when I was in high school playing basketball.
Because sometimes I'd go outside and it'd be humid.
I'd say this is great.
The basketball can stick to my giant hands a lot better
when it's humid than when it's dry.
Funny, funny callback on a memory,
but that's the first thing I thought of.
So we went inside and as soon as you step inside
to the air condition, you know, it kills the humidity,
which is great.
But the resort, we stayed at Las Palomas Beach and Golf Resort.
It took us about an hour, it felt like to check in,
which is really weird to get all our wristbands
and get both of our rooms taken care of.
So half of our party was staying in one room,
half of a party is staying in another room up on the eighth floor.
As soon as we walk into our room, it's hot.
We realized we thought the air conditions were broken,
but what it was is the sliding glass door was broken.
The glass wasn't broken, but somehow the glass was off the frame at the bottom.
I don't know how this happened with the weatherstrip kind of hanging there too.
I have a video of that if I can remember when I'm editing,
I'll upload that so you can see it.
And we decide don't empty everything out right now,
because we might have to transfer rooms.
So my wife starts calling to get some maintenance up there.
And we're taking stuff over to our other room,
which is like seven doors down,
which is where the rest of the family was staying.
Their place is nice and cool, which is great.
At some point in taking stuff back and forth,
my mother-in-law misplaces her bag of like medicine.
We still to this day, we don't know what happened to it.
But that was quite the issue.
Understandably so, it's important.
But for those of you who know me well enough to read between the lines,
it made for a rough start to the trip.
People start arguing in Spanish.
But we finally got the room fixed.
The rooms cooled down.
Thank God.
And we got settled in.
So that night, we all went out to eat.
Hey, what do you guys want to go eat?
And we go to some place and everything closed.
I felt like it closed down early.
So we had yet to go into town,
which is like a mile and a half up the road.
So we came right off the highway,
around the back into the resort.
So we didn't even have to go through the town of Las
of Puerto Pinasco.
So we ended up picking a place.
I picked a place.
Wasn't trying to.
I felt like I was being rushed.
Because here's the deal.
When you're traveling and you have a one-year-old,
a two-year-old, a three-year-old,
two borderline teenagers, or one just turned 13,
and one's 11, then you have your own kids.
And then you have everybody else.
You know, where are we going to eat?
And so, that wasn't even the first night.
That was the second night.
I don't remember what we ate the first night.
I guess it doesn't even matter.
But anyway, I'll get back to that story a little bit.
So we get settled in, and everything's good.
It's nice, a great, beautiful view over the balcony.
I mean, it was a stunning view.
We're looking down.
The ocean is down on our right.
You can hear the waves crashing through.
So you don't need to turn on the sound machine
to hear the waves crashing.
Because you can just hear them outside.
You look down, and all the pools are lit.
And it's just a really cool, cool thing.
Next day, we get up, and Zeke doesn't have his goggles.
And so, my future son-in-law, Mario, and I,
I'm like, hey, I want to go for a walk,
because I don't want to sit at the resort all day.
People are less adventurous when you have kids,
especially when the place is known for snatching.
Like, there's a lot of people trafficking,
and apparently kids get snatched left and right.
I believe it.
I don't know how often it really happens.
But it only has to happen once or twice to an American,
and it becomes all the time.
I get it.
Better safe than sorry.
I say all that to say that we didn't spend hardly any time
in the town.
We did go to the market once on Saturday,
and I'll tell you about that in a second.
So, the kid needs goggles.
His swimming goggles, because he's got a pair here.
He's got a pair at home.
He's probably got two pair here.
And so, it's like, all right, well, I need a toothbrush,
because I left my toothbrush.
So, I call my friends who are going to meet us there,
and they bring a toothbrush.
I'm like, all right, I got that taken care of.
I'll see you guys in a few hours.
They're driving down from here.
They've been there five or six times on a Jeff and their kids.
And so, we decided to still go for a walk.
Just for a walk.
Like, hey, let's go up the beach.
Yeah, I'm down.
So, we're walking, and it's like, my daughter's,
oh my God, you guys are going to walk down the beach.
It's like a mile.
You guys are dumb.
It's too hot for that.
It's like, whatever.
So, we're walking up the beach,
and we're like a half mile into it,
and I'm thinking, God damn, my daughter was right, man.
This is fucking hot.
This sucks.
But I have one of those long sleeve SPF 50,
like, boater shirts on.
Branded with hard parking, of course.
And so, we get to the town,
and the breeze that we had at the ocean just stops.
Now, it's not any good.
But as we're walking through the town,
we're going to one place that I found on the map,
and there's no way in hell I would have done this on my own.
I don't speak Spanish.
I may have a translator app, but I don't speak Spanish.
And it's different when you're studying, like, Duolingo.
But unless you're dropped into a country
and around the people and have to learn it like that,
you can study all day.
You're going to speak it slower than anybody.
You're not going to know the dialect.
You're not going to know the little things.
You're not going to know if they're talking about you.
So anyway, I was happy I had Mario with me.
I mean, he's Mexican.
He's an American Mexican.
He was born here, but he's Mexican.
And he looks, he's all tatted up.
You know, he's a tattoo artist.
And as we're walking, the road turns into, like, a dirt road,
because a lot of the roads there are dirt in this town.
It looks like a scene from something in the Middle East
where some shit's going to go down, some shootouts and stuff.
Then we have a federally truck go by us, like, right by us.
Like, we're walking up the road, and they go, like, right by us.
And the guy in the back on the mounted gun kind of looks like Mario,
looks at Mario and goes, kind of gives him a what's up.
I'm like, yeah, glad I'm with this guy.
Stopped to get something to drink.
Of course, they don't have any goggles there.
And fortunately, Mario is smart enough to say,
well, I'm going to get some Pedialyte.
You should get some like this.
I go, okay, let's get some Pedialyte or some sort of a,
some sort of an energy drink that replenish you versus getting water.
I was just thinking water, bottled water.
That saved our life.
Electrolytes, thank you.
That's what I was thinking of.
And so from there, I find an open up a map and I go, look,
oh, my phone, obviously.
I go, well, there's a department store, another
cord of a mile up the street.
If we go up two blocks and down six blocks,
it looks like there's a railroad track.
Can't tell from the map if there is a fence or wall.
So we won't know until we get there.
You down.
He's like, uh, yeah, sure, I'm down.
I'm like, well, he's down for anything.
Like Mario, he's down for anything.
That's kind of the joke.
Like, hey, man, you want to go, uh,
you want to go blow up some, uh, some spaceships?
Yeah, I'm down.
Like, all right.
So Mario's, Mario's just down.
So we're walking and we're like two or three blocks further
and the road's just dirt and it's abandoned and there's trash everywhere.
I'm telling you, it may have been in the middle of the daytime,
but this is no place for any type of, um, tourists.
This is not you.
This is truly what they say.
When you go to resort, you stay your ass on the resort.
Stay on the resort.
They're building all sorts of resorts there, but,
and there's all these, um, like can am and side by side rentals.
People flying by on four wheelers in the dirt.
You can rent a freaking horse like right there,
but you see the federales driving by.
You hardly see any other cars.
So we're walking and I see about three blocks in front of us.
Go in that a train track in that.
I don't think I see, and he didn't see it.
So now I'm thinking I'm seeing stuff.
We walk a couple more blocks and you can see the train tracks.
I'm like, all right, cool.
So we should be able to go to the train tracks, cross
get to the other side, then it's like four blocks up this major street
and we'll be at the department store.
So we get to the train tracks and we smell something burning and we realize
they have piles of trash that they've been burning, just trash.
And you look up on the back of the train yard and there's just blankets and pillows
and sleeping bags.
And you can tell this is where people sleep,
but I don't know where they're at.
Cause middle of the day, maybe without begging or selling something,
but there was nobody there, which is great.
So we're kind of roaming around and then we realize when we go to the other side,
there's a train just parked there.
And so in order to get to the other side, we have to climb over one of those carts
and some guy comes out and looks like he's a regular there
and he starts talking to Mario in Spanish.
And they're like, they're just talking kind of low.
And that's another thing that's like mumble Spanish.
So even if you're using dual lingo or one of these other apps,
you know, translator app, it's mumble Spanish.
And that's what I mean.
Like you could practice learning another language, but unless you're there using it,
don't even do it.
Whatever that exchange was, we saw another guy coming with his backpack
and he just hopped over the thing over one of the train cars.
And we looked at each other and go, I guess that's what we're doing.
So you climb up on like this little ladder,
you go up at the top of the train car and you climb down on the other side.
And then you go another block up and you're on the main street.
Now this looks more like a city.
It's paved.
There are cars parked on the side.
There's buildings like businesses.
Not a lot of stuff looked open, but it looked like a normal street.
It's probably four lanes, two on each side.
So it's a normal street with cars parked.
And that part was fine.
I still wouldn't want to be there by myself.
We walk up to the department store and it's like a Best Buy.
There's like a hobo outside who opens the door.
I realized that he doesn't work for them.
They're just opening the door for people.
So hopefully they would get paid.
As soon as we walk inside, they have a huge metal detector and a security guard.
Tell them we're looking for swimming goggles.
They say they don't have it.
Shit.
The website said you had it, but they don't have it.
So at this point, we're almost two miles away from the resort,
a mile and a half up the beach, right?
And then another half mile off the beach, at least.
Fortunately, two doors down, there's like a little shop.
It's weird.
It's like a little, it's like a beach shop that's not at the beach.
You know, so you walk in, they have all these miscellaneous.
They have some toys, some clothes.
It's kind of dimly lit.
It's not very big.
And then they had like swimming masks and swimming goggles.
So Mario bought a bandana and I go, well,
which kind of mask are we going to get?
And we ended up getting them just the regular goggles,
like a swimmer goggles, right?
Not the one with the nose that you would use with a scuba mask or snorkel.
At this point, we go, okay, so we start making our way back
and we're stopping underneath the shade every, I don't know, a few hundred yards,
because it's hot.
We decided to stop at this restaurant and have a beer and take a selfie.
And it was cool because we just got to talk, you know?
I mean, I like Mario.
He likes me a lot.
He's like a son because he's that age.
And I get to tell him about my life and growing up and stuff like that.
And he's telling me about his life.
This is what Mario said, man, I'm so glad I was born in America
as we're walking through the streets.
And this was like an hour earlier when we were walking through the dirt roads,
walking by all the trash.
Because he said his dad really wanted them to be born in Mexico
and he's so glad he was born in America.
And so we're talking about our beginnings and it was great.
And I don't think anybody at the beach cared that we're gone for so long,
but we had a couple beers and started our trek back.
At first, it felt like we're going the wrong way.
And then you had a couple more federally trucks pull up there.
And then the guys are kind of hanging out like again, they're all armored up.
They're suited up the National Guard camouflage.
It's kind of intimidating.
And then we finally get back to the beach and then we're walking in.
And from that point, we had actually gone past where we originally turned up from the beach.
Probably another quarter mile, which kind of sucked.
But from that point, the water had already regressed back,
probably 50 yards from where it was earlier, which is crazy to us.
We finally get back to the place.
Finally get to where we have the chair set up at the beach.
Hey, Zeke, here's your goggles.
I don't like them.
Well, fuck, you're gonna wear these goddamn goggles.
Do you think he wore the goggles?
Of course not.
No, no, I ended up buying him the kind he wanted the next day at the market.
But that's, that's my life.
But that was really the only adventure that I went on when I was there.
The next morning we get up and we go to the market as a family and all the different cars,
you're going to pay $5 parking.
So what's the market?
It's like this, it's like this couple blocks full of shops.
And it's the type of shops where every third or fourth shop has the same shit as the shop,
three or four shops ago.
You know what I mean?
And you can kind of be like, Hey, I want to buy that.
How much is it?
Well, what if I give you this instead?
And then they can say yes or no.
And so there's some finagling.
They had some cool stuff, nothing that I really wanted to pull the trigger on.
Because you travel enough, you see this stuff everywhere,
except for there's some unique things.
But what are you going to do with it?
We're not going to eat and it was super hot.
We wanted to take a picture in front of like a big family picture.
We didn't take a family picture this time.
So I kind of feel bad about it.
But it's also one of those streets where every restaurant has a person outside trying to wave
you in like, come eat here, come eat here.
You know, anybody who's traveled anywhere has experienced that,
whether it's traveled down to Florida, you know, like the Florida Keys or anywhere that
just is a touristy, super overgrown touristy place.
You have these people out there trying to get you to come into their shops and buy their food.
Happy hour or free shots of tequila, which by the way, when we first parked,
we walked past the place and they were offering free shots.
No, thank you.
I am not going to take a free shot at anything, especially in some other country that's known
to be very hostile and scary.
And I know, thank you.
In fact, most of this trip I was super cautious.
We refer at the, at the pool bar and people are handing out shots.
Nope.
People are pouring their own shots out of their own backpacks right next to the pool bar.
Like, bro, what?
So we go to eat and we're at this place called Federicos.
There's a Ponchos, a Federicos is right next to the market.
So why don't we go, we call it the market because you go there to buy,
they have these big coolers full of like red snapper and different size prawns and shellfish.
They didn't have crabs or lobsters or anything like that.
But that's why they call it that.
And it kind of stinks, right?
Because they don't have, they don't have like those air curtains.
You know what an air curtain is?
It's the thing that blows air down so hard that it prevents the insects from going in.
And it also prevents the air from escaping.
So if you have an air curtain blowing hard down over any opening,
it could be 110 degrees outside and that's not going to penetrate.
And the cooler inside isn't going to leave.
So anyway, so we're kind of at this market two doors down from the restaurant.
And there's like, there's flies like landing on the red snapper and it stinks.
And yeah, it's that kind of market.
We got, we bought some shrimp though, but we're at Federicos and the food was okay.
Tourist trap.
It was expensive.
I ordered, I forgot what I ordered like the garlic shrimp.
The shrimp was good, but it was little and your bang for the buck, it sucked.
Next time we go there, there's a place that all the locals and some people that we trust
say that we should go to, we didn't have time to go there this time.
So long story short, the food for the most part that we tried, tourist traps, sucks, don't do it.
So when Mario and I were walking the day before, we walked past a lot of bars, restaurants.
Apparently there was some strip clubs we completely missed.
We saw them the next day when we were driving to the market.
It's like, Hey, we were just, we were here yesterday.
I remember we ate right there.
We had that spot.
But they're probably all tourist traps, but they did have some cool places.
It was like a whiskey bar there.
It's like, Oh shit, whiskey.
What do they know about whiskey down there?
I'd be willing to find out, but this wasn't the group to do it with.
I can see how people can get in trouble if you're not going with a family or groups of people,
because you hear all these stories of these Americans and they're usually kids, right?
They're teenagers for 18 year olds are missing or an 18, 19 year old, a 22 year old and 21 year old
went missing.
Those are the ages where people just usually make the wrong decisions.
Rarely would you get kidnapped.
You think about this.
If it's a cartel ran area, it isn't their best interest to make it as safe as possible.
But there are rogue groups and there are territory issues.
My, my brother-in-law, he went there one time.
He stayed about 30 minutes away.
I remember seeing this few years ago, beautiful photos, beautiful house.
It was immaculate.
He said when he was going back over the border, they asked him where he stayed.
He told them and they're like, dude, you were like right in the thick of a cartel territory war.
You are damn lucky.
Nothing happened to you because they were pulling people over and shaking them down.
Research told me that as long as you stick to the highways, the main roads, I didn't
look day versus night, but to me it's obvious you want to be in the day.
As long as you stick to the main roads in between the towns, you should be good as a tourist.
If you start taking side roads like, hey, this looks like if we cut over here and we cut up
there and then we cut over here, we can beat this time by five minutes.
Don't do that.
Research told me those back roads are typically patrolled and controlled.
So patrolled and controlled by cartel factions.
And you just, just because it's cartel doesn't mean something's going to happen to you.
But the chances are are good that something could more than you just stand on the main road.
The weather there was crazy.
It was nice and hot.
Every night it was super windy.
One, our last night there, second to our last night there, there was a major storm.
And yeah, it was our last night.
There was Sunday money, no Sunday.
Yeah.
Saturday night to Sunday morning.
Okay.
There was a major storm.
And at this point I was done drinking.
I was tired.
I go, guys, I'm going to bed.
I'm going back to my room and I'm going to bed.
I woke up at 4am.
I was hot.
I'm like, God, why is this so hot?
Why is it so quiet?
And then I turned and looked and I realized I looked outside, no lights anywhere.
We lost power for like five hours and then we had to deal with that.
Eventually power came back on, but we were kind of panicking on what do we do?
We're on the eighth floor.
I told my wife, well, I'm going to go maybe buy some ice.
At the locals, because we didn't know how big the power outage was.
We later found out it affected like half the city.
Because when my wife and I went to buy some ice later, the ice and the ice things were
like half melted because of that storm, we looked and there was a boat that was like
capsized out on the beach about 300 yards down.
Jeff went down there and investigated and they said they think it's an insurance job.
The guy just pulled his boat out there and let the heavy winds fuck it over and take it up.
But people were going on board of this boat.
It's a pretty decent size boat, I guess.
I thought it was like a touring yacht or something.
And they were just grabbing alcohol.
He comes back with some random bottle of vodka.
I'm like, dude, where'd you get that?
Oh, I pulled it from the boat.
I'm like, what do you mean you pulled it from the boat?
Yeah, I went over there and people were just crawling over the thing and going in the
cabin and just taking whatever they wanted.
And the guy's like, just go in there and get you something to drink.
So he went in there and grabbed a bottle of vodka, some random vodka we'd never heard of
before, like a Mexican vodka or something.
But that was pretty wild.
And I lost my olacai.
Flip flops, they blew off the balcony.
I lost my swimming trunks, although I had two pair.
And I lost my auto cannon.
I have a white auto cannon shirt you see me wear with the type S pattern all over it.
Gone.
I looked for my balcony and I think this is my one of my olacai slippers.
My beach, my chunkless.
So that's why we went into town is we had to go to Walmart and we had to buy
like my daughter lost one of her, her like half of her swimming trunks.
And she had more with her.
These girls, they have tons of swimming trunks.
I think my wife said she has 50, 50 swimsuits, but I brought two.
So fortunately I still had one.
It's, it's funny because I wear like a size 12, 12 and a half shoe.
Typically like my Adidas soldier boots, 12 and a half.
So we're going to Walmart and I buy the biggest flip flop they have and my feet are
still like, dude, what's up?
But fortunately they had something on our way back.
One thing I noticed and this is what, this is what prompted all my research
about the streets and the roads and the towns on our way back, we're driving and
we're, we're sticking together.
We're obeying the speed limit when, when we can see a posted speed limit.
And I noticed a lot of cars are flying by us, man.
They were flying by and they weren't just like local Sonoran cars.
A lot of them were California and like 90% Arizona flying by us.
And I'm looking at the kilometers per hour thing and they're going like 75, 80.
Like you would normally go 85 on a highway and I'm thinking, God, these people are flying.
No wonder, no wonder there's so many stories of people getting pulled over
and getting shook down, but we didn't see a police officer or a federally.
I don't think we saw one once we left Porto Panasco until we got to the border.
Now we went through a few small towns and it's possible there was one somewhere,
but every time we hit a town was like 30 kilometers an hour.
We're going 30 kilometers an hour.
Not 33, not 34, 29, 30, 40 miles an hour or 40 kilometers.
Same deal.
And I decided looking up, I go, huh, why, why are there just, it just seems like
there's no police in certain roads on certain parts of Mexico.
Why is that?
Because I couldn't say all of Mexico.
Hell, this is, we were an hour and a half inside the border.
Mexico as a country is huge.
Okay.
Land mass size.
This was just a small bit, but it said because they're understaffed,
the police departments usually stick to the cities and city limits.
And here in the United States, obviously we have city police.
We have state police and the federal police you never see.
It's rare.
I mean, okay, ICE, right?
But that's, that's a law enforcement agency, but it's not necessarily a police,
a specific thing.
Unless you go to Washington DC, then you see the federal police everywhere
and you don't see other police.
Well, there it's the municipality police, the federal police, which are basically
their army that drives around everywhere in the National Guard.
And then you have the cartels.
And so it said that they're understaffed.
A lot of times the police municipalities are corrupted
and they're outgunned and undermanned against the cartel.
So they stick to within the cities, which makes sense.
So if you're driving through Mexico at any given time,
don't be afraid to drive fast.
Yeah, don't be afraid to drive fast.
But as you get into a city, you better slow your ass down.
And so I think the next time, because we were going and I was getting impatient,
I told my wife, I go, text, text my son, text Marcel, tell him to hurry his ass up.
Oh, he said that's as fast as he can go.
I said, that's bullshit.
He's going 40 miles an hour.
We drive this car in Arizona.
I guarantee you, you drive 75, 80 of the world's pick up the pace.
Let's go.
Because I don't want to be the front car.
And so when somebody in an Arizona thing flies by me,
I want to get behind them and ride as close to them as I can until they disappear in front of
me because I'm not going to leave everybody else who was actually behind me.
Because now we're the lead car because one of our, one of our group stayed back,
two of our groups stayed back.
We came in with four joined up with one more.
So at any given time, there was five, but we came back as three because one left later.
Well, the other two left later.
So now I'm the lead car.
But, you know, we get back to the, to the border and it's busy as hell.
Another reason why these people were flying.
Oh, by the way, as you're pulling into Mexico, we were warned about this,
but as soon as you clear the border, like right on the other side of the gate that
they close at night, there's people in the orange vest and they are trying to walk up
and they are spraying your car window.
They're trying to clean it.
And if you let them clean it, then they want you to pay.
And we're like, no, get away, get away.
And I get it.
They're trying to make money.
There's people begging as soon you cross the border and it's crazy.
Now the people on the beach are always trying to sell you stuff.
That's any tourist definition.
It was never as bad as it was in Puerto Vallarta where they were coming up every three seconds.
At least here, they're separated by a rope.
And I don't think they can actually pass that rope unless you invite them in.
Kind of like vampires, I guess, on the beach.
If you tell them you want to drink, they'll cross the rope and come up to you.
You want to get your hair braided.
We got a few people in our party to get their hair braided.
So that was cool.
But I would say for there, definitely stay on the resort.
It's okay to go into town to the market.
You can even go to the restaurants during the day.
I don't think I'd ever go there and hang out at night.
But as far as all the places I've gone on vacation, oh, the water, by the way, is beautiful.
It was warm, shells everywhere.
Current was a little crazy.
I would go back.
I think we were talking about maybe going back again.
But that's the only time I think we've gone on a vacation where it's truly,
with few exceptions, stay your ass on the resort.
Like I said, we went to Walmart.
And that seemed like it took forever.
It was like a 15 minute drive.
And I think it was only like four miles away.
But just stop sign, sign.
No speed limit, stop sign.
Where are the Felicia?
Because that's when, when you're driving in those areas,
that's when you're more likely to get pulled over.
But I think even my daughter would take her or Durango next time.
For sure, it just has so much more room.
But yeah, that was the trip.
So those of you who are still listening, thank you.
I know there's not very many of you, but for those of you who still are, I appreciate it.
I know I said I'm a lot because I'm processing as I talk.
So that being said, I want to thank right Honda and right Toyota,
AutoCannon officially licensed Honda in accurate gear,
Spark Forge, Arcus Foundry, my Patreon supporters,
Kuiya Automotive out of Winter Garden, Florida,
Automotive especially tool out of Owens Mills, Maryland,
Big House, small home design out of Traverse City, Michigan, and
Ashburg, Virginia.
Shave and Success, Treasure Valley out of Boise, Idaho.
God, I feel like I'm forgetting one.
Oh, the Lucky Break Sportsbreakers out of Caledron, Michigan.
Also want to thank my personal Patreon sponsors,
anybody, whoever sponsors this, you can drop in, out.
I appreciate it.
You can't rock with me forever, but I love you all the same.
Eddie Ramos, Richard Grays, Byron Jones, Drew Bunkley,
Andre Mullins, and Nate Robertson.
Questions, comments, concerns, info at Hart Parking,
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Help us get to 1,000 with myself anyway.
Let's tendersly, and I will catch you all next week.
Shut up.
About this episode
Just got back from spending a weekend down in Rocky Point, and the recap quickly turns into a real-world travel playbook. The hosts talk about Mexico border routines, speedometer changes to kilometers, and why they were cautious due to local police and even cartel-run areas. Along the way they share practical driving advice (stick to main roads), resort and lodging hiccups, extreme humidity, and a storm that knocked out power for hours. They also use a Scantron-style A/B idea to argue life isn’t simple grading.
Original notes
Scantron Test + Rocky Point Mexico Trip Recap. First family trip to Puerto Peñasco — convoy adventures, police realities, Federales, beach life, and lessons learned. Includes my Scantron take on how opinions aren’t always black & white (multiple choices, gray areas, and still keeping the conversation going).
Timestamps:
0:00 – Intro & Rocky Point tease
0:20 – Welcome, health update
1:11 – First family trip details
6:03 – Free speech & Flock cameras
8:19 – Scantron Test: Not Everything is A or B
~12:00 – Drive down & Federales
~25:00 – Resort & beach time
42:41 – Lost gear & Walmart
43:30 – Drive home observations
45:00 – Police in cities vs highways
47:00 – Border & vendors
48:30 – Would we go back?
Links: Rocky Point tips here | Spark Forge: arcusfoundry.com
Contact
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Hard Parking with Jhae Pfenning
Jhae Pfenning
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50:40