There’s no word for bug in Spanish. Insect is insecto, and beetle is escarabajo. We were planning to drive the VW Bug to Mexico, but we certainly didn’t want to call it Insecto while we were there. People might think it was infested with six-legged vermin. Escarabajo is too long a word. Escara means “It’s expensive,” and bajo translates to “low.” “Car” is coche, which reminds me of a cockroach. Maybe we could say Caro, which means “dear” and gives the connotation for how we feel about the little blue chariot.

We planned to drive the Bug to Boulder in February to visit the new grandson, Harrison Ezra Skye Reynolds, then stop at my brother’s place in Tucson on our way for our annual wintering in Sayulita, on the Pacific coast of Mexico. H got the Bug’s oil changed and checked with our insurance company for a rider to cover any hazards we might encounter on Mexican roads, three hundred dollars’ worth for the three weeks of our stay at Villa los Palmas, a condo community on the beach.

While I investigated the best route south from Tucson, I found an article about buying diesel fuel in Mexico. Not a good idea unless your diesel is older than 2000 models. The Bug is a 2014. Apparently diesel gas in Mexico is substandard and could cause new engines to seize up. H agreed that maybe we should reconsider driving the Bug. I offered my new Subaru Crosstrek. The only problem was that I’m leasing it and am restricted to a thousand miles a month. If we drove all the way to Sayulita, we’d be piling on 8,000 miles in five weeks.

How about if we were to fly from Tucson? Muy expensivo. The least expensive flight was from Houston. We have friends in Galveston and figured we could leave the Subaru with them for safekeeping while in Mexico.

So we loaded up with winter clothes for the drive through New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Iowa, Indiana, and Kansas as well as tropical outfits for Sayulita. Colorado was experiencing global warming, and we needed only sweaters in Boulder. The mountains around the city were glistening white with snow, but downtown people flip-flopped with bare toes.

Ezra, as they’re calling him, is a darling little guy who prefers to be in arms rather than in his rocking seat, so we passed him around for the three days we were visiting. He didn’t mind, and we were delighted, especially H, his grandfather. H asked to be called Mondy, which was his name for his own grandad, and we tried getting used to it. I thought Grumpy would be a better name, but H protested.

We could barely pull ourselves away, but we had a flight to catch. Santa Fe was our next stop, too touristy for my tastes. I preferred El Paso, where Mexicans cross over to work in the hotels and restaurants then return south of the border for the night. They weren’t thrilled about the prospect of a wall being built, as one can imagine. We took a room in the classiest hotel in the city for just $80 a night and sat at the hotel bar under the second largest Tiffany glass dome in the world. Hermosa!

            The drive across Texas was flat and endless without much to report except for being stopped by the border patrol. I guess they were checking for illegals, and they waved us on without checking our I.D. Must be don’t look Mexican.

Leah and Mariano live in one of the oldest houses in Galveston. In fact, it served as the Galveston Historical Society headquarters until they purchased it from the University of Texas at Galveston, where Mariano teaches and heads the department of microbiology at the medical school. They didn’t tell me the house was haunted until I awoke before sunrise thinking the cat was breathing cold air on my face. I batted at it, but there was no cat. In fact, the room was warm except for that breath of cold air, as if some tiny air conditioner were blowing on me. But Leah had turned off the a/c before she went to bed.

Curious ghost? Harmless, apparently, and I suffered no ill effects.

During our stay, Leah took us to the marshland where she photographs exotic birds that come to feed—all sorts of wading birds, osprey, and waterfowl. We stopped at the Bryan Museum which houses artifacts of Texas history, including a huge reproduction of the scene where Sam Houston defeated the Mexican army led by Santa Ana to claim Texas’s independence. Santa Ana was captured, paraded as a prisoner, and then sent back to Mexico, where he was hailed a hero.

Finally it was time to catch our flight. I find people on flights to Mexico are more joyful than on domestic flights. Maybe it’s because drinks are free, but I prefer to believe it’s because we’re on our way to Paradise.

But I haven’t forgotten that this blog is about Bug tripping. Bugs are big in Sayulita, and I’m not talking about the hard-backed, six-legged kind (although there are plenty of those). I mean VW Beetles. Vans, too. They are hacked apart and redesigned, their tops opened up, painted happy colors, and loved as much as H loves his diesel Bug. They’re economical, easy to navigate along narrow streets, and exhibit a coolness that’s universal—almost as cool as H.