Sunday ; Bo’s severe earache and fever had diminished quite a bit overnight. He was still quite subdued which suggests he still had a headache. We did not take him for our regular noon beach session. After we returned from Escuinapa late in the afternoon we took him to the beach, but just for a short walk and no beach doughnut play session. He seemed to improve throughout the day.
This morning many dolphins were swimming by our beach, just offshore. Their dorsal fins rose out of the water as their backs slowly arched. It was quite fascinating to watch. One of the new arrivals in the park was out on a surfboard, attempting to surf. The dolphins were swimming by just a teensy bit further out than he was. As well as watching dolphins swimming by I watched him attempting to surf. It seemed more difficult than I thought it was. He had to be in exactly the right spot at exactly the right time to catch the wave as it curled over. More often than not, he failed.
Late this morning we headed to Escuinapa to run shopping errands. First stop was the mercado. We shopped for fish at the pescaderias, but today was so hot, the ice the fish were on was melting so fast, and the fish were smelling so strong we decided not to buy any today. We did buy a few packages of little chocolate bars at one of the dulcerias. And we had lunch at one of the little restaurants around the periphery of the mercado. It was a restaurant where we had previously eaten and it was worth a return visit. Their tostadas de pollo are “to die for” ! After placing our order
This morning many dolphins were swimming by our beach, just offshore. Their dorsal fins rose out of the water as their backs slowly arched. It was quite fascinating to watch. One of the new arrivals in the park was out on a surfboard, attempting to surf. The dolphins were swimming by just a teensy bit further out than he was. As well as watching dolphins swimming by I watched him attempting to surf. It seemed more difficult than I thought it was. He had to be in exactly the right spot at exactly the right time to catch the wave as it curled over. More often than not, he failed.
Late this morning we headed to Escuinapa to run shopping errands. First stop was the mercado. We shopped for fish at the pescaderias, but today was so hot, the ice the fish were on was melting so fast, and the fish were smelling so strong we decided not to buy any today. We did buy a few packages of little chocolate bars at one of the dulcerias. And we had lunch at one of the little restaurants around the periphery of the mercado. It was a restaurant where we had previously eaten and it was worth a return visit. Their tostadas de pollo are “to die for” ! After placing our order
I walked over to their drink cooler to look for a couple of soft drinks for us. I couldn’t find any Diet Coke for me. HEY … I’ll try a ToniCol. Never had one before. “Refresco sabor vainilla” / vanilla flavoured soft drink. “Es diferente” is their tagline. And it certainly is ! I liked it so much I bought a two litre bottle of it later at Ley.
After lunch we drove over to Ley, the supermarket. We bought a lot of groceries ! And …
After lunch we drove over to Ley, the supermarket. We bought a lot of groceries ! And …
< whispering > … a tarjeta de cumpleaños / birthday card. And … I had previously promised Joanne I would buy her a pastel tres leches / “three milks” cake for her birthday. But … < drooling > … the panaderia in Ley also had a rollo de cajeta / goat’s milk caramel loaf that I was not able to resist. So … she gets both the pastel tres leches and the rollo de cajeta. Eat hearty, my dear ! HA HA HA !
On the way home we stopped to buy a huge sack of oranges from a roadside vendor. HEY … I’m in Mexico … I will squeeze my orange juice fresh each morning ! Cincuenta pesos … four bucks ! OLÉ !
I dropped my relatively new Nikon Coolpix camera today. It survived the bounce off a concrete parking pad with nary a scratch. I’m impressed. And lucky, too, I suppose !
On the way home we stopped to buy a huge sack of oranges from a roadside vendor. HEY … I’m in Mexico … I will squeeze my orange juice fresh each morning ! Cincuenta pesos … four bucks ! OLÉ !
I dropped my relatively new Nikon Coolpix camera today. It survived the bounce off a concrete parking pad with nary a scratch. I’m impressed. And lucky, too, I suppose !
The day started with Joanne hurting my feelings. A lot ! Yeah, yeah, I know … it was unintentional. That doesn’t diminish it much for me, actually. I prepared a loaf of bread dough and baked it in the Sun Oven. Second time I tried this recipe. Second time I made a minor mistake. Second time the loaf turned out flat !
We walked twice on the beach today but no playing in the water for Bo. He’s still recovering from earaches due to seawater in the ears. We watched the sun set just before 6 PM then prepared to go into Teacapan for dinner at a restaurant. As often happens when we‘re preparing to go out, we squabbled because Joanne disliked the shirt I selected to wear ! Very bad habit of hers ! ! ! ! ! We drove into town, squabbling part of the way.
We drove back and forth through town, stopping frequently, me looking for velas de cumpleaños / birthday candles. Eventually I found some at a dulceria / candy store. I discovered a bit late that part of the problem was my pronunciation. I was pronouncing velas as if “v” sounds like Victor. It doesn’t ! It sounds like Bravo ! DUH !
We drove to the restaurant recommended by our neighbours. It was hard to find in the dark and … < sigh > … it was closed when we got there. In Mexico whether a business is open or not on any given day, or at any given time of day, is completely at the whim of the operator. So … Restaurant Pelicanos obviously decided that they were going to close by 6:30 PM tonight !
We returned home. I made a simple supper for us. Joanne was gracious about what a fiasco the day had been. As small consolation, the cajeta roll birthday cake was great !
Tuesday ; While the severity of Bo’s earache has diminished greatly, he’s still suffering pain between the ear and the jaw. Is that called the Eustachian canal ? So today we started him on oral administered antibiotic, in addition to the anti-inflammatory, analgesic, antibiotic ear drops. We’re better stocked than some pharmacies, I think ! HA HA HA !
We went for a long beach walk just before lunch. About a mile or so down the beach to the north we found … some kind of massively huge, dead sea creature floating in the shallows. A whale of some sort, I guess. It was larger than our fifth wheel trailer. It looked more like some sort of prehistoric monster than a fish. The beach nearby was covered in dozens of buzzards … waiting. So … maybe it wasn’t even dead yet ?
We have newfound respect for buzzards. Every day or two something dead will wash up on the beach, more often than not, dead pelicans. The buzzards reduce a smelly rotting carcass on the beach to nothing more than a skeleton in twenty-four hours. They do a good job of cleaning the beach. And … < snicker > … Bo loves chasing them. They are surprisingly bold, refusing to fly away until Bo is almost upon them.
The other “new” thing on the beach today was … lots and lots and lots of crabs ! Big crabs ! Having spent a month here we’ve come to realize that a beach is constantly changing. The sand shifts around, the shells that wash up change every few days, crabs are here, then they’re not, jellyfish come and go, Sand Dollars come and go … every day is different !
Joanne did laundry. I prepared the truck and trailer for departure tomorrow. We shared some cajeta roll birthday cake with our next door neighbours, and said goodbye to them. Nice people !
At 5 PM I took Bo for a brief, final play session on the beach here. I threw his beach doughnut into the shallow water a few times, making sure that it was in only a few inches of water so that he didn’t get his ears wet. A few hours later, while sitting on the sofa watching TV with Sully and Bo cuddled against me … < sniff, sniff > … EEEEEUUUUUWWWWW ! HEY ! Whose feet smell like dead whale ? And why ? The dead whale was a mile down the beach ! We had to give Bo a bath. And after he dried … his feet still smelled like dead whale ! Today’s lesson ? Dead whale makes the water smell as far as a mile down the beach ! ! !
Wednesday ; Teacapan to Mazatlan to Celestino Gasca
This morning Bo thought … WOO-HOO ! No more earache, no more dead whale smell, and … we’re going drivey ! We prepared for departure and left Villas Onac RV Park, heading back to Escuinapa and then north on MEX 15 Libre to Mazatlan.
Mazatlan was our destination for today. As we entered Mazatlan from the south we stopped at a large Pemex station to have lunch then refill with diesel. We drove through and around Mazatlan then entered it again from the north, finding our way to El Zona Dorado / the Golden Zone a.k.a. El Zona Hotelera / the Hotel Zone. We easily found our way to Mar-A-Villas RV Park, our destination for today. We didn’t really like it, so … we went looking for Mar Rosa Trailer Park. It was harder to find. We liked it, but … it was outrageously expensive. AND … we weren’t very impressed with Mazatlan’s Zona Dorado. It was way too … gringo ! The “hotel zones” in all the major Mexican resort cities … Mazatlan, Puerto Vallarta, Cancun, Acapulco … they’re not “real” Mexico ! We left Mazatlan and continued north !
We found our way to the ocean side village of Celestino Gasco. WAAAAAYYYYY easier said than done. It was a long afternoon of difficult driving, especially through the city of La Cruz. After the ordeal of getting lost in La Cruz ( because a road sign had been hit by a large vehicle and spun around … and it hasn’t been fixed and likely never will be ! ) we were unable to make the turn to Celestino Gasco because of a detour around road construction. In Mexico, when a detour is made necessary by road construction … you’re on your own ! ! ! Figure out for yourself how to get where you want to be. After much difficulty we found our way to the village of Celestino Gasco and then drove down a dirt trail following the ocean for a couple of miles until we finally found Celestino RV Park.
It’s probably quite nice. We don’t know yet. We arrived at dusk. By the time we got backed into a site it was dark. We had supper and watched a movie on VCR.
A kitchen cupboard door latch broke today. The wood face of a kitchen drawer split. The bedroom roof vent handle fell off. I don’t know if the trailer is going to survive this trip. I’m likely going to be spending the entire month of March back in Yuma doing trailer repairs ! Once again a day of travelling in Mexico has exhausted and demoralized both of us.
Thursday ; Nice weather, nice place. This morning we walked down to the beach to investigate. It’s quite different from the beach at Villas Onac near Teacapan. That beach was miles of soft sand. Here it’s a pebble beach. No long barefoot beach walks here, I guess.
We decided to stay here a week. The price is very reasonable. And they give a discount to Escapees, one of only a handful of RV parks in all of Mexico that do so. We slowly got set up ; refill freshwater, connect water, connect sewer, drain waste tanks, unhitch trailer from truck.
I picked up a coconut under the tree in our site ( they’re everywhere ! ) and with more effort than
I realized would be necessary drained out the milk to use for coconut shrimp tonight. HA HA HA … food preparation and cooking is quite different here in Mexico.
Bo’s earache is gone but now he seems to have a mild rash in one ear. Saltwater rash ? Heat rash ? Medication rash ? Parasites ? We cleaned his ears and applied a hydrocortisone cream.
We had lunch and I began to work on trailer repairs. I did a few minor repairs then set up the satellite dish. I’m still not very good at that task ! We went for a walk through the RV park to the road out front. Road ? That’s a donkey trail ! On the walk back through the RV park towards the beach, I noticed … HEY … one of our neighbours has a machete. “May I borrow your machete please ?”
Using the machete ( gotta get me one of those ) I hacked open the coconut that I had drained earlier, and pried out the fresh coconut meat. Which Joanne and Bo spent the afternoon munching on. HEY … both of you … that stuff is hard to get ! What ? You think coconuts grow on trees ? ? ? HA HA HA HA HA !
We went for a walk on the pebble beach. And found a few pieces of coral.
We’ve just finished supper. MMMMM ... I poached shrimp in coconut milk and freshly grated coconut. OOOOO … gotta get more fresh coconut milk !
Friday ; This morning we headed off to explore the area nearby. We drove slowly up and down the sand road in front of this RV park. It runs from the nearby town of Celestino Gasca for a few miles until it just finally … ends ! We drove onto the Sea of Cortez beach near the village of Celestino Gasca. We drove slowly around the village of Celestino Gasca. It’s smaller than Teacapan. We drove to La Cruz, a small city about ten miles away similar in size to Escuinapa. We found an aqua purificadora and refilled our water jug. I found a ferreteria ( hardware store ) and bought myself a … HA HA HA … machete. I have no idea how I’ve made it this far in life without having my own machete. HA HA HA HA HA ! We shopped for groceries at Ley Express.
After grocery shopping we drove around La Cruz exploring a bit. The small city of Escuinapa was more interesting. La Cruz didn’t even have a mercado. We thought all Mexican cities have a mercado. We drove back to Celestino Gasca and searched unsuccessfully for the fruteria where
Wi-Fi is available for an hourly fee. As we drove back down the sand trail to our RV park we went to check out a nearby beachfront restaurant and another RV park. We weren’t impressed with the restaurant. We were very impressed with the other RV park. And sadly … it was completely empty.
The RV park that we are in here has four rigs including us. The RV park we were in near Teacapan had thirteen rigs for most of the month we were there. Every week a rig or two would come in for a day or two. That park had 55 serviced sites. RV travel and tourism in Mexico is so down !
I feel sorry for tourism operators who work hard to maintain their businesses, and they just aren’t generating enough revenue to sustain themselves. Americans have simply stopped travelling in Mexico. And there just aren’t enough Canadians travelling in Mexico to keep the tourism industry alive.
There are four semi-feral cats living at this RV park. Two live at the front of the park, near the entrance and office. Two live near the beach and the restroom building. They’re a male named Pedro and a female named Nancy. I’ve fallen in love with Nancy. She’s SOOOOO sweet ! I’ve been feeding her some of Sully’s food. She comes to visit me in our site. She jumps up onto the little side table attached to my folding chair so that I can pet her and she can rub against me. Today
I learned the story of Nancy. She arrived here a few years ago, an unwilling stowaway in the storage compartment of an RV. She had climbed into the open storage compartment of a motorhome with one of her newborn kittens and they weren’t discovered until the motor home arrived here. Now … a few years later, her kitten is long gone, Nancy has a notched ear identifying her as a “sterilized feral”, and she lives here trying to convince gringos to adopt her and take her back to Norteamerica. HA HA HA … she just about convinced me !
With my new machete I drained the milk and harvested the meat out of three coconuts.
We went for a beach play session. Doesn’t matter to Bo whether the beach is sand or pebbles. “THROW MY BEACH DOUGHNUT ! ! !” Well done, Bo, good dog ! A few hundred yards out in the Sea of Cortez were a couple of human heads bobbing around two inflated inner tubes. HUH ? When they came back to shore I wandered over to see what they were doing. OH … they were oyster divers. They had large mesh bags hanging underneath inflated inner tubes. They were diving with neither air tanks nor even face masks and collecting wild oysters. WOW … tough job ! And they collected a lot of oysters. Each of the two divers had a large mesh bag filled with hundreds of oysters. And their little pickup truck on the beach already had about half a dozen full bags of oysters, each bag about the size of a large yard & lawn garbage bag. Productive day !
With the little bit of afternoon that was left I worked on repairs. I fixed a broken window shade.
I fixed a broken kitchen drawer. I fixed a truck battery cable. I worked on, but did not complete fixing a broken kitchen drawer wooden face that split. I cooked supper tonight. I squeezed orange juice. I downloaded and processed photos.
Saturday ; day trip to El Quelite
Today was a beautiful day, temperature reaching 90 degrees.
This morning we headed out on a day trip to explore the inland colonial town of El Quelite. It took us a long time to get there. We missed our first point of reference, the town of Dimas. Our directions were to head south on MEX 15 Cuota ( toll road ) a.k.a. Maxipista. The Maxipista is a four lane divided toll road with almost no entrances and exits, retornos ( u-turns ) about 50 km. apart. Once on the toll road, they don’t want you to leave it ! One of the things we HATE about Mexico is … if you don’t know EXACTLY where you’re going, you’re not likely to find it based on road maps and road signage ! ! ! We wanted to get off the Maxipista at Dimas and head west on SIN 2 to MEX 15 Libre. We missed Dimas and SIN 2 ! We travelled 50 kms. to a retorno … at the next toll booth ! We came back 35 km. and were able to find that the dirt road to the town of Dimas was behind a restaurant that had many large trucks parked in front of it. No road sign to Dimas ! No road sign to SIN 2 !
We eventually made it to El Quelite, a colonial village in the foothills of the Sierra Madres inland from the Sea of Cortez coast. What a lovely village ! Beautiful town square. Beautiful church constructed from rough hewn marble blocks. Colourfully painted houses. Men on horseback. Boys on burros. Roosters on the sidewalk. Turkeys in the arroyo.
While I was taking a photo of a turkey in the arroyo two children walked up to Joanne, each patting her on the leg, and engaging her in mostly one sided conversation. The girl was about four. The boy was about six. Joanne was staring at some ducks outside a restaurant. The little girl walked up, patted Joanne’s leg, and commenced a long winded speech about … who knows ? The boy, older and wiser, said to Joanne … and remember, this is all in Spanish …
BOY ; Do you speak … English ?
Joanne ; Yes, I speak English.
BOY ; Well … in English, these say “QUACK” !
Joanne : Yes, in English they say “QUACK” ! What do they say in Spanish ?
BOY ( looking at her like she’s a moron ) ; In Spanish they say “QUACK” !
And he walks away in contempt for the old gringa !
HA HA HA HA HA !
So … she says to the little girl …
Joanne ; In English, these are called “DUCK”. What are they called in Spanish ?
And the girl gives her about a fifty word response. HA HA HA ! So Joanne looks it up in her dictionary as the girl walks away to join her older brother. DUCK = PATO
El Quelite had a lovely, somewhat pricey, upscale restaurant. Joanne wanted to have lunch there, but she indulged me in my preference to have lunch at a small comida economica I had seen a bit earlier about a block away. The fancy restaurant was filled with gringos. There was a tour bus parked outside. We realized that El Quelite is close enough to Mazatlan that the expensive, upscale, all inclusive resorts would offer overpriced day trips to a real, authentic Mexican colonial village.
We went to the comida economica. It was operated by a middle aged woman and an older woman … likely “abuela” / grandmother. The living room of their home was the restaurant dining area. The family kitchen was the restaurant kitchen. Their meal price was cuarenta cinco pesos. They had two offerings ; pork ribs or chicken. Joanne had ribs, I had chicken. Side dishes were frijoles, a macaroni salad, and queso fresco / fresh cheese, a local product of some renown. And, of course, a covered bowl of many fresh, hot tortillas. Joanne had a Fanta Naranja, I had home made horchata drink, especially effective at “cooling” the salsa ! Very nice meal ! Very nice ladies ! Very nice home / restaurant !
We wandered around town. I took many photos. We drove around more of the town. We drove back towards home. Now that we knew exactly where Dimas was, and how to get in and out of the village from the Maxipista, we explored Dimas before returning home to Celestino Gasca. As we drove through the very tiny village of Celestino Gasca about 4 PM, a woman and her teenaged daughter were setting up a table outside their home, with a sign advertising “pan casero” / home made baking. I slammed on the brakes and backed up ! They obviously enjoyed baking and were proud of their offerings. And many townspeople began showing up to get some fresh baking. In Mexico, it’s very helpful if one knows such things as “so and so” sells fresh baking every Saturday around 4 PM. Otherwise, ya just gotta be lucky, like we were today ! We bought dos empanadas de calabaza ( had to look that word up … pumpkin ! ) and some bollos / buns for sandwiches.
When we walked on the beach I found a chunk of natural sponge washed up on the sand. I considered keeping it until … I discovered a little crab lived in it ! HA HA HA ! YUCK !
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