Nicole Visits Mexico!

Very soon after my last post, my girlfriend Nicole flew into Austin on Jan. 21st to come visit me for a week, much to my delight. We spent most of the day Friday touring Austin a bit, and went out with friends to 6th street that night, and drove to Mexico on Saturday. We meant to leave Austin pretty early on Saturday but my car was having some issues with the exhaust train (like always) that had to be fixed first.

Getting into Mexico was interesting, to say the least. When we reached the border around sunset, we went into the Banjercito to try and get Nicole a tourist visa. But Nicole didn't have a passport, just an Enhanced Driver's License, which works perfectly for driving in and out of Canada, and in theory should work just as well for driving in and out of Mexico, but despite us arguing with the guys at the Banjercito for quite a while, they wouldn't issue her a tourist visa.

So... we could have decided to turn around and go back to Austin, but we didn't, hoping we could make it to Hidalgo without her visa. Unfortunately, we definitely had our visas checked at a checkpoint on the highway, and, well, they weren't too happy about her not having one. We eventually reached an agreement that we could go if we paid the cost of her visa... so we did.

Anyway, we reached La Posada pretty late and got our room keys and went to bed. We decided to do Satori the next day, which is a nice easy 7-pitch climb, but in hindsight, it was a terrible idea, because the hike is long and heinous and full of loose rock and even requires some rock scrambling. Plus, there were three people on it already. Regardless, we got up there and did the first two pitches, by which time the party above us was rappelling down, and asked us to wait at the ledge on the second pitch so they could rap past us. So we did, but with three people it took a while. We did one-and-a-half more pitches before we decided it was too cold and that we should descend (I led the 4th and rapped down).

Nicole and I hanging out on the 2nd pitch of Satori

Unfortunately, by the time we rapped down, the sun had set, and it became clear we'd be hiking back in the dark. I had a headlamp, but Nicole didn't, so we ended up doing a heinous hike on loose rock IN THE DARK. It was even more heinous than usual, and there were more than a couple of (minor) injuries sustained. I think we made it back to camp around 8:30pm, got some dinner, and went to bed.

On Monday, we decided to take it a bit easier, and went to the Mota Wall for some single-pitch cragging. We did three routes on the wall; a 5.8, 5.9, and 5.10, and Nicole led all of them like a champ. It was an excellent (and much more relaxed) day of climbing.

Nicole coming down from sending This Dog's Life (5.10a)

On Tuesday, we drove back to Austin, had dinner with some of my friends, and hung out a bit before going to bed. On Wednesday we slept in and then visited Mount Bonnell for a bit before driving Nicole back to the airport. I was very sad that she had to fly back to Seattle, but she's coming back to Mexico in February again soon =)

Mount Bonnell!