This place isn’t located in Sonora and doesn’t have to do anything with our recent trip, we actually went there a couple of month ago. But it was such a great place, so we felt talk about it. It’s only about 12 hours away from Ciudad Obregon!

Not many foreign people have visited the place - yet, at least that’s the feeling you get when you drive down the narrow roads to the little village San Blas. We’ve actually drove to it from an even smaller village about an hour away. While we drove down with our ‘guide’, who was an uncle of Estefania, he told us that this street used to be dangerous. Not long ago there were raids on it all the time, including car-napping, kidnapping, homicides and normal raping. Maybe he was still scared a bit and that’s why he didn’t leave us alone with a taxi, or he just wanted to spend some time with us. After over an hour driving down narrow and curvy roads in the middle of the jungle we finally arrived in San Blas. Estefania has been at the place before, but for me it was a total different experience, everywhere they sold fish, shrimps and candy.
La Tovara is just located a bit outside of San Blas, while driving to it we crossed a few rivers and each time we looked desperate to see a crocodile in it. Just a few meters in front of the entrance of La Tovara we actually saw some laying in the water and getting warmed up by the sun. A cold sweat went down in our necks… But then were we about to enter a reservoir where crocodiles just come out of every corner. Maybe it’s a bit paradox that some people who are scared of reptiles visit such a place.

Before you can make the trip you have to pay at a little office, it’s not expensive and totally worth every single Peso. You can choose between two different tours: One that takes you to the pool directly or one that will take you to the crocodile, pig and raccoon cages. If you ask me the second one is very amazing, well that means if you can overcome your fear of crocodiles. Next to the little office there are the boats, or nutshells. When I saw them I just said “Estefania those are our boats, won’t they flip over?” she insured me that nothing will happen and we entered the boats. You don’t drive the boat yourself; there is an ‘experienced’ boat driver that’ll take you through your tour.

In the start of the tour there weren’t any crocodiles, but lots and lots of little turtles and exotic looking birds. I’m guessing about 4 minutes in to the tour we encountered the first contact with a crocodile. Luckily it was just a small one, nothing that could get threaten our life!

We drove around curves and more curves and on every side was high grass and jungle like trees. So that we lost the orientation pretty quick, and I just thought “Don’t get lost, don’t get lost, boat don’t sick, don’t sick. I don’t want to fall into the water. Please oh no.”

All my fears got even stronger when the boats man stopped and said in Spanish something like’ Crocodile, crocodile!’. There was an about 3-4 meter long crocodile lying on a stone watching us, but he didn’t seem to be bothered from our sight, because he just kept on lying there.

A few more curves and some smaller crocodiles further, we came to the first end of the tour, where about half of the people got off. We then took off with a smaller group to the second part and even more exciting tour. Again we’ve saw a lot of crocodiles, birds and turtles, but then we arrived at the second part of the tour: the reservoir. In that place they grow crocodiles and keep some larger ones in cages.  Just one minute after we left the boats I got my second or third shock: A nasty looking snake was hanging on a fence, one that you don’t want to mess around with.

In this part of the tour we got an extra tour guide, which showed us all the different animals they held in the cages. Some of which didn’t look so safe anymore. Yes, you won’t believe me, but in one cage was a 4 meter long crocodile and there was a hole in the face. I’m guessing the very brave visitors put their fingers, foot and hands in it so they can touch the croc.  Next to the reptiles there were also some cute looking pigs. I don’t even want to think that they could become food someday, they just were so cute! While looking around we saw how a Mexican dude insults a croc, and it immediately snaps, luckily the fence was strong enough…

The tour took about half to an hour and was totally worth it. Then we got into a boot again drove back to the first stop - the pool. Calling it pool is probably wrong it’s more like a laguna. Located right next to the part where the crocodiles swim, actually it’s just separated by a single fence. Next to the laguna there is a little restaurant and a bathroom. The bathroom isn’t big but you can easily get changed inside, if you forgot to put on your bathing suit before. I for my part did it, while we waited for our ordered food.

They don’t have a too big selection of foods, but surely some good ones, if you enjoy fish. But when I got there again I’ll bring my own food though. Because the food I ordered were 3 fried fish. Till now it all sounds tasty no? That’s what I thought as well, but then when the food came I was pretty shocked to see that the fish still had eyes and everything else you expect not to find on your food on them. Estefania just told me, when she saw my shocked face, that here in Mexico the people want to have the face on the fish. For me that was enough, I wanted to be ‘Mexican’ so I tried to eat it anyway. Even though that’s one of the experiences I don’t need to make again.

After we both had finished eating our food and watched the fishes in the laguna and we decided that it was time to try and see how ‘cold’ the water was. While walking to the entrance of it, we saw two marines with big rifles and thought: ‘Good, they’ll shoot the crocs, if they try to enter the laguna, or will they shoot us if we leave the laguna…’. With that feeling we jumped into the laguna, the water was refreshing and it was kind of an adrenaline rush, even though there were many other people in it. But just the thought to swim in water with thousand of fishes and a just little fence between us and the crocodiles was enough for us not to stay in the water for long. All other people seemed to enjoy the water though, they jumped in from the side, swam to the fence and back and tried to chase the fishes.

“La Tovara is a fresh water spring. The water is crystal clear and perfect for swimming especially since they put up a fence to keep the crocodiles out. Swim at your own risk.” That is copied by the official page…

Those were the major parts of Las Tovara; I bet there are still parts we or I haven’t talked about. So you should consider of visiting - to see for yourself. This is definitely a place you want to visit, probably one of the best places in Mexico.

Just so that I don’t disappoint anyone this is just a reference for people, especially for people out of the European Union, which apply for a Mexican student visa. The visa is free - no application fees or any other costs besides the price you pay for making 4 pictures. It’s much easier than applying for an American visa - that’s for sure!

My nationality is German and it took about 2 weeks to apply and get it handed out to me. For other countries that might be different, I believe to have heard that for Russians or Chinese it takes longer up to 4 month.

You can acquire the visa at every embassy and consulate. But bear in mind, that you need to do it in the closest one to your home. If you live in ‘Hessen Germany’ Frankfurt am Main will be the place you want to go.

Now to my story and how I got my visa.

I had a bit of telephone contact with the embassy in Frankfurt, which was difficult because their working hours aren’t the friendliest ones (Monday till Friday from 9am - 1pm). While talking with them on the phone they’ve told me that I only can get a visa when I have a written letter from my university that says that I’m a fully accepted student. A letter that says that I’m a guest hearer wouldn’t be enough.

This was an important fact for me. Before the phone call I was still looking for a guest seat, that all changed after the call obviously. ‘How I found my university’ can you read in an earlier post of me.

To the other problems I had already came on top that the official website of the Mexican embassy in Germany was down, so that I wasn’t able to get the proper forms. Luckily I was able to get them faxed to me by a helpful employee for the embassy. The forms weren’t too complicated to fill out it basically just asked for normal and reasonable information:

“Will you visit the northern border of Mexico? Will you visit the southern border of Mexico? Where will land or enter the country? What are you intentions (student, worker, employee)? Have you ever had a visa before? Was your last visa accepted? ” The questions ‘where will you enter the country’ supposes that you bought a ticket before your apply for a visa. Or am I mistaken? I found that a bit weird, but OK.

What wondered me the most is that they didn’t want an address were I’ll be staying. On the paper it said further that I need to have a bank recipe that ensures that I’m having at least 500$ at a monthly basis - I guess they just want to make sure I don’t starve in Mexico or become a bum. All the paper work was filled out pretty quickly just took about 10 minutes. I think the hardest part of it all was just getting the proper papers from the embassy.

There I was, all happy and smiling, in the train to the embassy with all my papers:

• Appliance letter
• Passport
• Bank recipe
• 2 Photos

It took just 30 minutes for me to arrive in Frankfurt and luckily there was a train station next to the embassy. But it’s not like I found it immediately, oh no I searched for approximately 20 minutes till I saw that little sign saying: “Mexican Embassy”.

At least there weren’t too many people in the embassy, just an hectic Russian that was anxious to cut me in line. When it was my time to get to the counter the woman was very friendly and she accepted my papers - except my bank recipe. She told me that she would prefer a letter signed letter from my dad with something similar like that on it:

” With this letter I’m assuring that my son Thomas will be getting 500$ each month from me. Dad”

I just thought: “great I made the entire journey for nothing”. But at least they kept my papers and passport and promised that I just need to send them this letter and they proceed from there. The same day my dad faxed them the letter. So we called them again the next day but then they told me that this wasn’t enough they also wanted a copy from my dad’s passport. Another day was lost. Finally at the third day they seemed to be happy and said they process it now. This was the start of just waiting and hoping that everything will turn out good. There are all those myth that Mexicans are lazy and it usually takes them longer till they get something done, but not this time. After the 10^th working day has passed I’ve called them and asked whether they got my visa done and they said ‘yes, you can come and pick it up.’

Score! About 2 hours later I was at their office and standing in line for picking it up. I got all nervous because the person who wanted to hand me the visa out didn’t find it at first - I guess he mixed up my last name, well that happens to a lot of people. Once he found it he wanted me to put one finger print and a signature in a booklet - or my student visa. Yes, the Mexican visa is an extra booklet with lots and lots of pages where you can put lots and lots of information… Next to the booklet he also handed me my Passport back, they also put a new sticker in it, saying that I’m a having a visa. The employee also told me that I need to carry with those two items (visa and booklet) the entire time while traveling around Mexico.

That was it basically. Hopefully this will help someone someday.

Thomas

Ps.: The student visa allows you to leave the county and entering it again. Oh, and if anyone wants or needs the forms i’ll be happy to send them to you!

Let’s begin. To be honest I don’t have a lot of information about my new university yet. Reason for that is once my language barrier and secondly that they seem to have holidays already. As soon as I arrive I’ll write something more for example the number of their students, what they offer, how the transportation system is and much more.
Anyway, for now we have to life with the little information we got. The full name of the university is: Instituto Tecnológico Superior de Cajeme. It’s located a bit outside of Ciudad Obregon Sonora, but I heard that there is a Wal-Mart close to it. So that’s definitely going to be a plus, this way I’ll be able to buy me always new notebooks, socks, shirts, shoes, cloth or food when I lose mine on the bus. To get a little idea of what it looks like I attached a photo of Google maps. The university doesn’t look too big - but still very pretty true? They offer a variety of subjects: ranging from tourism to software development.

How did I find the university?

That was easier than I thought. Since I didn’t study already at a university I also couldn’t relay on partner universities. Meaning it was all up to me, I tackled that problem all alone. Ok, to my excuse: I know a few people in Obregon Sonora and they were at least able to give me some names of the universities. Yes, Ciudad Obregon has more than just one University - there should be about four. All of whom claim to accept international students, at least if you trust this website: http://gotosonora.com/education-sonora.htm.

Like I said earlier I have friends in Obregon which told me that ITSON would be a great university. So I had a couple of weeks contact with ITSON either by phone or email. But after weeks of talking it soon got clear that they most likely couldn’t offer me anything because there just weren’t enough interested students.  After that I had a bit of contact with private school, they were quick in answering and they got a lot of experience with international students, the biggest downside was the price of over 5000$ usd. per semester.

That’s why I kept on searching and then - by a lucky - convenience I saw that there was another university listed on the Webpage: ITESCA. My last hope and it worked. They immediately were able to talk to me in English and didn’t keep me in a long waiting line unlike others. Just a few hours after my first call  and an email later I got the administrator for the students on the phone. He told me in a few words that he would be also interested on having - another - international student. And that they could offer me most likely something like a big buddy program.

Maybe you guys still know it from Junior High or Elementary school. Basically it’s a person that stands by your side and helps you with administrative, language barriers, homework and any other kind of help - just like a big brother should be, huh.

He then transferred me to a mate of him. She told and cleared some of the details with me. Since ITESCA, she said, is a public school the fees are much lower even for foreign students, approximately 500$ usd.  per Semester, plus about 100$ for a Spanish course). She also send me a few pdfs with the information of my courses - the only problem was that they were in Spanish. Luckily the computer-stuff words are similar in German, English and Spanish. So, that I understood most of it even without a proper translation. That’s the stand I have for now.

Well, just one more thing, there seems to be a club for ‘free software’, basically a bunch of Linux geeks, at this school. http://www.linuxgli.org/. I’ve talked to one of them, he seemed pretty nice. He also told me that they sometimes make LAN parties in school. So, for all you addicted computer-players that’s the right club for you.

I found an English speaking person at every university I’ve called except here: http://www.ulsa-noroeste.edu.mx/, because of the looks of it they weren’t capable to transfer me to the right person. And a phone number I got from them of a website was wrong, so that I kept on calling a private household with a pretty confused Mexican mother on the phone.  I actually called the poor woman twice, because I thought at first I dialed the wrong number.  That was basically the talk I had with her: “Hello, do you speak english? Habla  espaniol?  - “No habla  ingles, habla espaniol?” - “*disappointed me* Noo, perdon” ( two minutes later the same thing all over).

If anyone should ever get interested and want some information about this university, and I shouldn’t have posted it already on the website, let me know I’ll do my best to collect them for you. This only includes information about this subject and not your newest math homeworks!  It’s just about 22 days till I will stand in front of the university and beg for more information and a guided tour through their holy walls.

So long Thomas

There are more and more free video sites jumping out of the ground, the most known is probably Youtube. It mainly hosts user videos in bad quality. Then again there are other sites like veoh.com which show videos in great quality and speed. The biggest problem about this site is that it needs an extra player so you can view the videos in full length. Hulu is different then all those other sites because it doesn’t host videos from little shouting children that want to get famous by putting videos of their sleeping dog in the internet. It focuses on one think only: quality entertainment. There are tons and tons of videos, series and movies. Just to name a few:

• Family guy
• Hell’s kitchen
• American Dad!
• The Simpsons
• The office ( one of my favorites)
• 30 days
• and Saturday live.

The movies it hosts aren’t the newest, but surely some pretty amazing classics like:

• Dude where’s my car
• Ice Age
• and the Big Lebowski.

The best thing about it it’s FREE. There is not registration what so ever. They finance it with little Commercial interruptions. The only downside is that only people from inside the US can access the moves, series and clips.

How can you bypass it? It’s fairly easy all you need is an American IP. You can archive that by using some kind proxy software – that fakes or cloaks your ip-address.

I made some pretty good experience with that program: http://anchorfree.com/downloads/hotspot-shield/

It’s freeware, the installation is quick, the only problem is that slows down the stream and surfing speed, but try it out what do you have to lose? Hotspot builds on opevpn (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenVPN), this is a widely used open source vpn software. That means it also encrypts your data, so that you can surf safely over wlan, actually that was the main purpose of this program: securing wlans or hotspots.

The installation von hotspot is very easy and shouldn’t be a problem, just keep in mind that the program installs a ‘virtual networking adapter’ that means you need administrator rights and most likely accept a message box from windows telling you that you’re installing an non certified driver.

After a few weeks of development, research, hair loss and sleepless nights the gates to ‘love-mexico.com’ are open. On this website we’ll keep you updated on the newest events around Guaymas and Obregon.

Next to that the major part of the website is going to be our experiences on living and studying in Obregon. The web usually offers a lot of information about any kind of subject. But we weren’t able to find any new experience guides over Obregon Sonora.

Ok, there might be a few websites about San Carlos, Sonora which is pretty close to Obregon, but it’s more a touristic place – or not?. So those are the major parts of this website. Next to that we’ll also write, well that means Thomas writes, about his experience on learning Spanish – in the hopes that it can help someone else.

For those who don’t like to read and rather look at pretty and colorful pictures is already taken care of, because we’ll be adding plenty of pictures as well.

At very last we need to tell you that English isn’t our native language therefore please excuse any mistakes or errors. We always like critics, and other kind of advice. Let’s hope that this explains everything and wraps up everything. Just in case there are questions just write us an email or add us in MSN. T-kreis (at) hotmail.de , fannie_9123(at)hotmail.com

So long take care and adios. Best wishes Estefania and Thomas