Our return to the States has begun before we actually have pointed the car towards the US border.

For the last year we have been living in Oaxaca under a visa called a FM3, making us "rentistas." With the FM3, we could have our car, we could exit and reenter Mexico at will, but could not work. Although we live in Oaxaca, we had applied for and received our FM3s in Cabo San Lucas where Georgiana's father lives. Pepe helped us through the application process, which can be a bit daunting. Our FM3s were to expire April 8th but we were not actually leaving Mexico until June. This posed a problem.

We went to the immigration office in Oaxaca and explained our situation. Well, we thought we explained. The officer, however, believed that we just wanted to renew our FM3s and told us politely that we were in big trouble. We were supposed to submit a change of address request within 30 days of changing our address--remember our FM3s were issued with a Cabo San Lucas address. Our oversight entailed a hefty fine, about $160 US per month per person. We politely re-explained that we were just seeking to extend our FM3s for two months or perhaps exchange the FM3s for standard tourist visas that would see us out of Mexico. Once he realized our situation he said that we should drive to Guatemala (not too far from Oaxaca and certainly closer than the US), cross the border, and then return to Mexico. Upon returning, we should surrender our FM3 visas and request tourist's visas. Oh, and don't mention the address thing. Before going to immigration, we had thought that this scenario was probable. It now had official unofficial blessing.

Georgiana, AKA Doctora Mama, the great planner that she is, planned an eight-day excursion through Chiapas to Guatemala and back. On the way back we were even going to the beach. Rene Bustamante and Ann Miller, our vecinos (neighbors), offered their insight about the border activities as well as highlighting their favorite places and things to do or see along the way. Georgiana has also carefully planned our six week trip back to the States and our sojourn in Chiapas and Guatemala would test some of her assumptions about how long we could drive each day and how much we will actually spend on food and lodging.

So: we gotta reason n we gotta plan.

Next: we're off.

April 3: Camila, Paul, Georgiana and Emiliano outside the BelAir Hotel in Oaxaca, stuffed with a breakfast of eggs and tasajo, ready for the road to Guatemala.

April 3rd, about noon we left for Guatemala after having breakfast with Tim & KT, our landlords. Passing through Tehauntepec, we arrived in Juchitan (hoo-chi-tan) about six. Both towns sit near the Pacific on a narrow, extremely windy plain called the Istmo. The wind blows relentlessly from the Caribbean to the Pacific. Mariners find the adjacent patch of the Pacific, called the Gulf of Tehuatepec, difficult on good days. On land, depending on their travel direction, people lean forward or backwards while they walk. Trees grow at sever angles. Cars sway. Watermelons in the roadside stands are ready to lift off.

Day two and we headed for Chiapas. Our goal was San Cristobal de las Casas by way of Tuxtla. We had breakfast in a roadside restaurant near Niltepec, which is after La Ventosa which precedes La Venta ("venta" is wind). The children had enfrijoladas and tasajo (a folded tortilla in a bean sauce with a piece of steak sliced extremely thin---folks, you can only get tesajo in the state of Oaxaca and I will miss it.) and the people riding in the front seats had huevos al la Mexicana (eggs Mexican style-scrambled with onion, tomato, and serano chilies served with tortillas de maiz). The gentle woman with gray braids who waited tables, cooked, and washed up made the best chocolate con leche I've had.

Tuxtla, Chiapas' capital, looked like a prosperous berg on the way up, if you like that sort of thing. While marveling at the relatively wide streets and synchronized traffic lights in the downtown, we had to detour around a large demonstration.we think the demonstrators were teachers. From what we read, the same may be going on soon in California and Oregon-shame on us. The toll road out of Tuxtla rises up, up, and up some more until we were in a pine forest and then glides down into San Cristobal de las Casas.

In the land of Zapatistas, sub-comandante Marcos, and nervous government troops, one can, without much effort, find Pierre, the restaurateur from France who has been living in Chiapas for some time. Rene and Ana suggested we see him and even had us transport a gift for Pierre from them. We had to see him to deliver the gift and we had to eat because one must eat. Pierre blends an exceptional sangria. The food was some of the best I've had anywhere (first the chocolate con leche that morning and now Pierre's entrees.my kind of excursion).

The meal up to that moment could reasonable justify our jaunt but then Pierre offered dessert. Awash in sangria and satiated with hand made pasta, my will collapsed. One half hour later, since he had to conjure it from First Cause, I'm fighting the children for a fresh pear baked in a pastry flour based crust resting in a thin pool of orange sauce.

A meal at Pierre's alone is worth a trip to Chiapas. As for San Cristobal itself, the city and its setting, envy best describes my initial impression. It's cool, it's green, it's compact. San Cristobal de las Casas is the denotative definition of "picturesque."

Georgiana and I, however, observed that the city center contains mostly shops geared towards tourists that seemed to be owned by people who came from elsewhere. San Cristobal reminded me of Sausalito, California which is scenically perfect but utterly lost to tourism. We also noted a large contingent of apparently semi-permanent, mostly young foreigners (Europe, US, Canada) constantly traipsing around town. San Cristobal must be one of the desirable places for young world travelers. Maybe they came to eat at Pierre's and couldn't leave. We had to, since Pierre gave us regalos (gifts) to take back to Rene and Ana.

The next day, Friday, after having a problem with the car's suspension fixed, we left San Cristobal for Comitán. A conservative agricultural center, Comitán covers a hilly area and offer used relief from tourists. We saw few stinking buses and noticed instead many vans full of passengers circle the handsome zocalo on their way to other parts of town.

We visited a couple of small museums and stood under the eves of the town's Cultural center waiting for the first rain of the season to abate. Rene and Ana said we should try some "posh," a local spirit that comes in various fruit flavors. We forgot.

On Saturday, instead of heading straight for the border, we stopped at the Las Lagunas de Montebello and the ruin called Chinkultic (cheen-cool-teak). Chinkultic is small and set up on a hillside surrounded by small lakes and streams. The "lagunas" are a series of lakes set in pine forest. Some of the forest was burned off in a fire several years ago. The children swam in one lake and then we drove over to a comedor (eating place) to eat before leaving for the border. While eating, we talked with the young man who waited on us. He said that he'd been to the States to work and earned enough to build a house. He wasn't sure he'd go back. Getting there was expensive and dangerous, living expenses are high (even for illegal farm workers in the deep South!) despite the rough living conditions, and it's difficult living without any rights.

We arrived in the border town of Cuahtemoc (qua-te-muk) about 2:30 pm. We had two goals: get new visas and make sure that the car was legal. It's 3,000 miles back to San Diego. The town is a rough looking hotel and the main Customs and Immigration offices. Cuahtemoc is not a place one wants to stay, especially with children. The actual border lies a mile or so up the hill. We needed to get our business done quickly since Customs (the agency that handles cars-we actually "import" the car temporarily) would close at 5 pm and not open again until Monday.

In an effort to reduce corruption Mexico does not allow immigration and Customs officers to handle cash. One pays immigration fees at an actual bank such as Banamex or Bancomer and makes Customs payments through a branch of a designated bank. Each Customs station has a caja (literally a box) or teller by which one completes Customs transactions. The actual Customs agent was at comida (gone to lunch) so we talked to the teller in the caja who gave us the skinny on the hours and noted that our car's papers didn't seem to be quite in order. Instead of waiting for the Customs official, however, we thought we'd go do the border-crossing thing as fast as we could and be back before 5 when the Customs closed.

Up the hill we go, fast as is safe. Then, along a long curve, stretch a series of tiendas and slightly more permanent structures. Just beyond some official looking buildings, which happen to be the Customs station on the right side of the road and Immigration on the left lies the no-mans-land between Mexico and Guatemala. The cyclone fencing and moneychangers tipped us off. We stopped at the Customs station and Georgiana talked with a big agent with a crew cut. We explained our mission, that we had FM3s that would soon expire and needed to just cross the border and return immediately Mexico. It took us a while to explain ourselves well enough for him to understand, but once he did, he was a huge help, explaining the crossing procedures on both sides of the border. Finally, he said, "Yeah, go across."

As one crosses the border, one must stop and pay a fee to have the cars wheels fumigated. "Our" Customs agent immediately went over to fumigators and told them not to charge us as we return to Mexico in a few minutes. Way cool. We changed a little money and went into the Guatemalan immigration office. This seemed to be easier than we'd thought.

The office was a threadbare affair with several people watching a tele-novella (soap opera) on the TV. The "official" looking guy came right from central casting. Thin and balding with a dirty, wrinkled uniform, this guy must have done something really bad to get banished to the Cuahtemoc border station. He looked like he'd been there for many years and had lost all hope. The other immigration official was younger man in standard, clean street clothes.

Georgiana explained our situation, that we want to get our passports stamped and return to Mexico immediately. This, however, is not allowed. One must stay for 72 hours. This would not do, we pleaded. The young guy re-explained. The seedy agent looked at him, looked at us, and then started to swing his right hand--palm up, index finger extended-limply to and fro--all the while sort of mouthing words. I was silent because it's always best if I say nothing in these situations. Georgiana said nothing, waiting.

The seedy guy continued "waving," and young guy "got" it. They worked out the "fee." We happily paid the 50 bucks and the Agent Seedy stamped our passports.

We turn around and "drive" to Mexico. The Mexican immigration agent looks at our passports and tells us that the law requires that we cannot return to Mexico, once we leave, for 24 hours. Since the Guatemalan stamp indicates April 5th and today is April 5th, we cannot return to Mexico until the 6th, tomorrow. We look over to "our" Customs agent and he walks across the street. We explain and he points out that we still have our FM3 visas that allow us to exit and return at will. We show our FM3s to the immigration agent and he says something to the effect of: "Why, of course, welcome back!"

It's now about 4:30 and we must now scoot to the bottom of the hill and negotiate more immigration (we want to turn in our FM3s and get tourist visas (FMTs) activities and do Customs with the car, once we have our FMTs. Customs closes at 5. The immigration office is empty but the TV blares a soccer game. We wait. After several minutes the immigration officer returns, hitching up his pants. We explain what we need: turn in FM3s and get FMTs. He hands us the forms. We fill them out. He never looks at the date stamped in our passports. He takes the FM3s and gives us FMTs. It's now 4:50.

Next: Well, what d'ya know…

Well, what do you know...The customs agent never came back to work. We can't import the Jeep. Now what? We talk to the teller at the caja who's still there and he says the agent won't be back until Monday but we can go to the larger border crossing in Tapachula. "What if we get stopped?" No problem as long as we remain within some boundary that Tapapchula apparently falls within. Tapachula is three hours away and we won't make before dark, so it's off to find a hotel.

We do in a little town called (I believe) Frontera. Hot, dusty, busy: the town does not exude charm but the people are friendly. The hotel is a work in progress but our room is huge, newly painted, and only $18 US. Done and it's time to eat. Walking around Frontera is a different experience than we were used to. Most of the people seemed to be from somewhere else and there seemed to be no sense of place that one finds in small towns with indigenous populations.

The next morning we head for Tapapchula. Known for little other than being a hot, humid border city, we hoped to be in and out in a couple of hours.

Tapapchula has two border stations and we thought that the inland crossing might be larger and therefore have a Customs office open on Sunday. Georgiana and I often travel with less than a complete set of maps. We must negotiate Tapachula using dead reckoning and street signs. Not always a good choice. However, we find the border. On the way, we ask directions from some agents at a customs inspection station. We explain what we were doing and why. They laugh, noting that the Customs folks in Cuahtemoc son flojo (are lazy).

The Customs agent at the border in Tapachula says that we needed to backtrack some miles to a place called "Viva Mexico." The actual boarder at Tapachula is a model for all ugly border towns. Little kids jumping on the car, offering to guide us and watch the car. Big guys offering money exchange and to guide us...to what I'm still not sure. This is a place to make a movie and we were glad to leave. However, if it were a movie, you'd have noticed, as I had, a big group motor cyclists leaving Guatemala and heading into Mexico.

Next: Is it the time or the money?

As it turns out, we had passed Viva Mexico, a large Customs inspection station, on our way to the border. As it also happened, those six motor cyclists all needed to get Temporary Import permits, too. They got there first. Two hours later, we step into the air condition office where the caja teller also does the importation paper work in Viva Mexico. I should note that our children are hanging in there with us. Very commendable...good children, those two.

The teller/agent begins to review our documents. The "Pink Slip" is in Georgiana's name. He notes that Georgiana's driver license has expired. Georgiana and I have birthdays separated by one day, namely Emiliano's birthday, and we both had applied for license renewal by mail. I got mine but the ever-vigilant California Department of Motor Vehicles has lately begun cross checking divers license applicants with their Social Security records. Well, Georgiana Hernandez the Social Security registrant and Georgiana Hernandez Flowerman the California driver may not be the same person. No license by mail for her!

Not a problem because I produce mine. Yes, a problem, since how does the Mexican Customs bureaucracy KNOW that Geogiana Hernandez Flowerman (US Passport), the registered owner of a green 1994 Jeep Cherokee, and Paul Flowerman (US Passport), owner of nothing, are married? Where is our marriage certificate? In Santa Rosa California, of course. Oh, the certificate is also probably written English, and, if we could get a copy (not a fax of a copy), it would need to be translated by a certified translator. This is a week at best. We hem and haw. We tell our story. We show all our documents. We are now in big trouble.

When we applied for and received our FM3 visas about a year ago, we asked about the car. We were told no problem, the car goes with your FM3. We were even stopped twice in Oaxaca by roving Customs officials. We'd show our FM3s and they'd say have a nice day. However, we were supposed to clear our initial Temporary Import permit with Customs before it expired. We didn't and now could not be issued a new permit. We need it because now we have FMTs that require a Temporary Import permit. It is a $300 penance for a green 1994 Jeep that was not properly cleared as well as a lot of paperwork and a bunch of "what a couple of idiots" stares, sighs, and admonitions.

We have guests coming in three days. We can't afford to spend a week in Tapachula trying to work this out. We don't want to ask someone to go to Santa Rosa, get a copy of our marriage certificate, and then DHL to us in Tapachula. We don't want to pay for an official translator. We don't want to ...

Suddenly, the teller/agent, an Asain looking young man with a gravelly voice, asks if it's the money of the time. A shaft of light appears...well, not really but he says that maybe he can fix things up. Clear the car and overlook the expired license thing. OK, were in business. All our teller/agent needs is the $300 US in cash and he'll handle the paperwork on Monday for the clearing the old import permit. OK, his assistant, who has been hanging around and running errands all afternoon, and I rush off to the automated teller in Tapachula. OK, I get the 300 bucks in pesos. OK, we rush back to the caja. OK, he clears the old import permit (I'm sure there's a lot of other paper work to be done!) and issues us another. OK, I hand over the cash.

We get the new sticker and apply it to the windshield.

The actual Customs agents, the saps outside in the heat and humidity, looking in car trunks, the guys with the nice uniforms and polished boots-the status, wave us through. It's 5pm, the caja closes, and the teller is off to something big for the weekend. We're off to Hautulco for a dip in the ocean.

Next: Click your heels together three times...

Decay, especially in the tropics, has a countenance. The charcoal-gray patina sweating from painted plaster, the angular jostling of broken concrete walkways, the surly curl of stained linoleum, the cloudy emerald hue looming from the pool, the fleshy pulp of rotting wood. Though a bit long in the tooth, the little resort hotel in Huixtla, just outside Tapapchula, offered us comfort and relief from our border affair. The children frolicked in the pool with some other kids, and, at dinner, I sent back the stack of moldy tortillas with a smile. However, Georgiana, Chancellor of the Exchequer, made the waiter sweat more than broken air conditioning would encourage, drawing the line at the $10 over charged on the meal check. I think the place recently acquired a new owner and we wish him well, though he does have some structural and staff work to do.

After a long drive to Huatulco next day, we spent two nights and a full day relaxing at the beach before heading back home. Camila had her hair done in beads. Once again, with new found gusto, Emiliano and Camila were eating, tlayudas, large tortillas - sometimes 12 inches in diameter - strewn with beans, aciento, tomato, avacado, quesillo (a string cheese found only in Oaxaca), and sometimes tasajo - often folded. Folks, one can only get tlayudas in the state of Oaxaca. Both of them got to watch cartoons on the cable television in our room. TV has been a rare treat for our children since we have lived in Oaxaca and will be likewise uncommon once we move back to Forest Knolls. Georgiana and I got our first inklings of sticker shock that awaits us in the U.S. We saw CNN.

Leaving Huatulco, our Guatemalan quest over, we are now on our way back home ... back to what feels like home. Back to Oaxaca. To San Pablo, Etla. Camino al Seminario, 102. Is that our home? Are we getting ready to leave for home from home? Conversations about home frequently confuse us. Often the confusion is merely contextual. Sometimes while talking in the car, for example, we must clarify (Camino al Seminario or Tamal Road) when someone says, "When I get home ... I want to ..." When we get wistful, or philosophical, or talk of the future, the confusion is harder to dispel. Our confusion may lie in forgetting that home is wherever we (Camila, Emiliano, Georgiana, & Paul) are, that the rest is merely memory and desire, perhaps collective and surely personal. We forget or do not yet know that memories are not the unvarnished truth of past events but deeply held, finely worked constructs which herd us toward what's next; that our desires and expectations must adapt to the vagaries of future events.

We have many reasons and much desire to stay in Oaxaca. Emiliano has grown fond a stubborn old horse named Zapo. which is short for Zapateco, the name of the largest indigenous group in Oaxaca. Both children have learned to ride horses, an activity we could never afford in the States. Georgiana has made some good friends whom she will miss; as well, she had the time to read and learn how to cook with chilies. Camila, after learning to negotiate the ever shifting alliances of girls - a hazardous adventure at best, seems happy as ever at school. I could stay for the food.

One American family we have become friends with came to Oaxaca for nine months. They are in their fourth year. We could easily do the same. A parent from the school the children attend, kept asking me every time we'd talk, "Why are you going back?" I repeatedly could give no real answer but only that our money was running out. With a bit of effort, we could get by. Our future, however, seems to be pulling us back to Forest Knolls ... at least for the near term. Family, friends, professional goals ... memories and desires.

Oaxaca has been our home for almost two years because that's where we've been. None of us seem sure what we are returning to but we do know what we are leaving.

Next: How we lived ...

We have seen and participated in ways of life that either no longer can be found or just never existed in the U.S. One day I sat on our terraza stumped by a Java programming problem and watched old men and women along with young boys and girls (most adults are working jobs and no longer can or perhaps do not want to work the fields) spend the day plowing steep hillside corn fields with oxen and a wooden plow. Some of the harvest will be sold but the families working the fields will keep much of it for their own use, for their subsistence. A medieval languor quietly dissipated the scene's pastoral charm. I thought of myself working on the next hill over, preparing for the summer rains, rain that last year sputtered and stopped in July. Most of the fields around our house were lost. This year, people are neither optimistic nor pessimistic; they plow in April, those few who are left.

Georgiana enjoys cooking and has for as long as I have known her. After finishing her doctorate and completing her last consulting contract, Dr. Mama got down to some serious cooking, and serious cooking requires fresh fruit and vegetables, meat, and poultry which one finds in abundance among all the small vendors that constitute a mercado, or market. Georgiana is now a member of the secret society of women who shop in mercados and carry their daily bounty home in vinyl bags given only to loyal customers of elite vendors. These bags, though ubiquitous, may only be used by women. They are usually red, pale blue, or sometimes yellow. White or black lettering proclaims the name, location, and quality of the bestowing vendor. Carrying a vinyl bag identifies you as one of the chosen, the select, one of the loyal few worthy of such honor. Though she was pleased when she was granted a doctorate, Georgiana was exhilarated when she got vinyl bag from her favorite fruteria in the Santa Rosa Mercado near our house in San Pablo, Etla.

In the months leading up to the invasion of Iraq, I listened to the BBC on short-wave radio, hearing much about the posturing and realignment of relations among countries. These shenanigans played out across tables in the UN Security Council, over secure telephone lines, and in smoky hotel rooms pale when set against the intrigue and mayhem that resulted when the 4th grade girls at Colegio Monte Alban decided to create a club (that's pronounced "klewb" among Oaxaca's next generation of world leaders). Camila's daily tales of woe or delight, wrought with tears or giggles, related in Spanish, from which we would try and assemble a sequence of facts would have been an anthropologist's dream come true. Machiavelli would have been dazzled amidst these 16 9-year-old girls at Monte Alban. Recess-by-lunch tumult. Who's in, who's out, who cried, who turned away, who started a new, counter club. Finally, ending the madness after month or so, her teacher, a gentle man who has a true fondness for Camila, outlawed clubs. As the heat gradually dissipated, we realized something. This is when Camila acquired a deep, intuitive grasp of Spanish, when her language skills became robust, when I could not even try to keep up with her any more, and when fundamentally Camila's Spanish became as good or better than Georgiana's. This was what we had come for. Camila had joined the klewb.

Some activities and ways of doing thing will forever be foreign to Georgiana and me. We never would tip the garbage man to get better service -- KT and Tim have since slipped him a few pesos for which I have from them a written apology. We could never, with lawless abandon, run a red light. In Oaxaca, a green light means "go", a yellow light means "caution", and red means means "stop" but has an asterisk which when refernced says "go.". Waiting in line or at a stop light is an activity for saps, for fools, for the ignorant, for everyone else -- oddly, waiting itself rises to an art form in Mexico while impatience permeates most activities American. This divide reaches somewhere near bedrock, and we could never cross it. I could get very frustrated waiting for someone, a repairman, for instance. However, at a little league game snack shack, I would walk away without a memela because I found no line, could not force my way to the counter by pushing through the others -- especially kids. I have a temptation to wax foolishly on this subject as I sure most who have observed the cleavage could -- from either side -- but it's a subject best left to the more bellicose, insightful (see Octavio Paz), or more foolhardy.

These have been a few glimpses of a rich, peaceful, and reflective time for us. Our host, Mexico, has been most gracious, treated us well and stuffed us full of experience and experiences. More of our time in Mexico may show up as we make our way back, and much more could be written (and may be by one or more of us) but this is a travelogue, after all, so ... off we gom ... we are actually leaving this time. Back to we do not know what.

Next: The Longest Mile and a Half ...