Sunday ; This morning Joanne discovered that the trailer's exterior thermometer is gone, having been knocked out of its mounting bracket beside the kitchen's back window, presumably by the irate Guasave a*****e "car washer" as we drove away. Hopefully that's the last of his retribution that we find.
This morning we headed downtown to run some errands. It's been almost three weeks since we've had access to self-service laundry facilities. Yesterday as we drove through Guaymas we saw a lavenderia auto-servicio. While Joanne did laundry I went next door to Burger King and did an hour and a half of online work using their Wi-Fi, including uploading my weekly blog entry.
After laundry and Wi-Fi work were finished we went exploring, driving through Guaymas and over to the nearby upscale resort town of San Carlos. While checking out an RV park in San Carlos we came across the family that had been our next door neighbours at Mr. Moro Hotel & RV Park in Las Glorias. We chatted with them briefly and will see them again at our next destination. We continued exploring San Carlos then drove back to Miramar on back roads following the coastline. The hotel and RV park that we're staying at is technically not in Guaymas. It's in the nearby resort community of Miramar.
We had a very late lunch. I napped briefly with Sully. We headed back into Guaymas to do some shopping. I dropped Joanne off at Ley to shop for groceries and I drove over to Home Depot. I found one of the three items I was looking for. Next stop was AutoZone. Again I found one of the three items I wanted. I joined Joanne at Ley and helped her finish the grocery shopping. We rushed back home to be in time to see the season premiere of Amazing Race.
Monday ; Another beautiful, hot, sunny day. Joanne suggested we spend another day here. Good idea. We needed a "day off". Too bad we blew the entire day squabbling and sniping at each other.
This morning I attempted to improve upon the temporary repair on the freshwater city water inlet system I had to do a month or more ago. I bought a plumbing part yesterday at Home Depot. While installing it ... I broke it ! Story of my life ! I drove back to Home Depot and bought three more ... just in case ! I installed it successfully and now have two spares. BUT ... it's still a temporary repair, although improved. I used a "home" plumbing part and it's not exactly the RV specific plumbing part that is needed.
This afternoon I went over to the hotel's pool patio to use Wi-Fi. What a lovely setting. I worked on the computer sitting under a canopy looking out over the Sea of Cortez.
Tuesday ; Guaymas to Bahia de Kino / Kino Bay
Today started out cloudy and cool at Guaymas but became sunny and warm this afternoon after we arrived at Kino Bay.
This morning we prepared for departure and left Hotel Playa de Cortés. We headed through Guaymas then north on MEX 15 until we reached Hwy. 24, a secondary highway "shortcut" heading towards Kino Bay. Well ... wasn't that the worst 80 km. / 50 miles we've ever driven ? ! ? We turned east on Hwy. 16 and before we reached Kino Bay we pulled off the highway to have lunch. While Joanne prepared lunch Sully and I went for a walk in the Sonoran Desert. We seemed to be in a Cholla Cactus "forest". I found two dead Cholla and decided I would like to have a couple of Cholla Cacti "skeletons" as landscaping in our Yuma yard. I pushed the dead Chollas over with my foot and loaded them into the back of the truck. In the meantime ... Sully had managed to get himself tangled up in some thorny bush. Sully seems to lack some desert "smarts".
Joanne chastised me for allowing Sully to wander around in the desert unescorted just a few minutes after we saw a wolf cross the road in front of us. My response was ... Hey, he's old, I don't think he's that tasty. HA HA HA !
When we arrived in Kino Bay we found our way to Islandia RV Park in Kino Viejo / Old Kino ( as opposed to Kino Nuevo / New Kino. We selected a site, got set up quickly, then went for a long walk on the beach. WOW ... what different shells from the other beaches we've been on. Our shell collection is getting ... large ! We plan to glue our collected shells onto our Keremeos yard's low fencing. After our beach walk we once again set up the satellite dish so that we could watch Survivor tomorrow evening. < gritting teeth > It's not getting much easier ! While I worked on repairing today's road vibration damage < rolling eyes > Joanne stripped the "bark" off the dead Chollas. Nice cactus skeletons ! I hope we can get them across the border into the U.S.
Wednesday ; Sunny, cool, very windy !
This morning I worked on some minor repairs, touching up some Mexico road rash on our new dinette chairs with stain and varnish. < sigh > Imagine taking all the furniture in your home, and putting it into a giant, tumbling clothes dryer, that's what travel on Mexico roads does to furniture.
I also worked on buffing and polishing out the Guasave car washer's vandalism scratches on the truck's rear door. A*****e ! ! ! While checking the air pressure in the trailer's tires I discovered ...
< sigh > ... the newest trailer tire, the one moved from the spare position onto the trailer in Teacapan was severely damaged by yesterday's pothole filled roads. Now I have two severely damaged trailer tires, one in the spare position and one on the trailer. I hope I can make it back to Yuma without blowing a tire ! Maybe I'll buy two new trailer tires in Tucson. Where ... we've found out a few minutes ago ( 12:30 PM ) ... it's snowing ! Snow in Tucson ? ! ?
We went for a walk into town, looking for pescaderias / fish mongers. This is a fishing village. Most of the pangas / fishing boats were sitting on the beach by the wharf. Too cold and too windy for the fishermen to go out today, I guess. Only a couple of pescaderias were out selling fish today. We checked out their offerings, but didn't buy any fish today. We went for lunch to a restaurant that looked appealing. We ordered their special, filetes de Lizas. We didn't know what kind of fish Lizas were. YUCK ! First Mexican meal we didn't like.
This afternoon the family with the little girls that were our neighbours at Las Glorias arrived here today. Sedona and Georgia came over to visit with Bo and Sully. Their mother sent a coconut over to be opened. HA HA HA ... have machete, will travel ! Georgia joined us on a beach walk to find interesting shells. One of the RV park's many semi-stray dogs also joined us.
Thursday ; Today was a lovely, sunny, warm day. Yesterday's cold spell lasted only one day.
Yesterday's high waves washed a lot of stuff up onto the beach ; lots of stinky seaweed, shells, chunks of coral, garbage, sea creatures, and ... all sorts of stuff ! This morning we went for a long beach walk. At least three times Bo flipped and rolled on something dead. Later in the afternoon Joanne found a chunk of smelly, dead fish on his harness. For crying out loud, Bo ! When I saw a squid on the beach I reached down to touch it to see if it was still alive. It was ! It squirted "ink" on my finger ! The moral of that story is ... don't poke live squid ! HA HA HA !
Our new "family of friends" invited us to join them on a walk to the panaderia in town. Of course ! We were almost out of pan dulce. Even if we weren't we wouldn't decline an invitation to go to a panaderia. After stocking up on lots of pan dulce we wandered around the village of Viejo Kino. We walked out on the long wharf and then part of the group walked back to the RV park down the road, and some walked back down the beach. Joanne went by road, I went by beach. I collected more shells on the walk home. Perhaps I've collected too many shells ?
Early this evening I fulfilled a promise I made to the little girls while still back at Las Glorias / Mr. Moro. I built a campfire and performed more magic for them. While I was performing a magic trick for the girls, some neighbours brought chairs over and joined us around our campfire. Then more neighbours. Then more neighbours ! We chatted around the campfire until late in the evening. And I got rid of all the firewood I had, as it wouldn't be allowed back across the border into the U.S., despite being firewood from Cathedral Gorge State Park in Nevada.
Friday ; Another beautiful, sunny, warm day at the beach. Our last one !
This morning I phoned MasterCard in Canada. My latest U.S.$ MasterCard billing has three fraudulent charges, all made the same day, all made at the same Esso station in Montreal, all made on Joanne's card number. It wasn't difficult for their fraud department to understand that I ( or Joanne ) can't be in Mexico and Montreal at the same time. Her card had to be cancelled, a new one will be sent to Yuma.
We took Bo for a beach walk, probably his last one for a long time. After lunch and a nap with Sully we walked into town to buy some fresh fish. We bought a couple of pounds of lovely, fresh flounder fillets, and a pound of fresh large scallops. A kilogram of flounder fillets was setenta-cinco ( 75 ) pesos and a half kilogram of scallops was sien ( 100 ) pesos. The scallops were so large that we cut them in half before packaging them into four meals. We packaged the flounder fillets into five meals. This was our last opportunity to buy fresh fish and seafood. Nine meals of fresh fish and scallops ... about fourteen dollars. Firewood can't cross the border into the U.S., but fish and seafood can !
I chopped open our last two coconuts from Las Glorias. Lots of clear milk, lots of tasty meat. We gave all the coconut milk and half the coconut meat to Nicole and her family. Since we ran out of dog food today, Bo will be eating cat food and fresh coconut for the next couple of days. HA HA HA ! He's very happy about that ! I got a lot of computer work done today, both online and offline.
I don't know when we will next have access to Wi-Fi. We watched the sun set on the Sea of Cortez for the last time. Beautiful ! After watching the sunset I went to perform my last magic trick, as promised, for Sedona and Georgia, and two of their Mexican friends.
Saturday ; Bahia de Kino, Sonora, Mexico to Nogales, Arizona, U.S.A.
Another beautiful, sunny day. This morning we prepared for departure, said goodbye to Robin, Nicole, Georgia, and Sedona, and left Islandia RV Park in Bahia de Kino. As we drove through town on the way back to the highway we stopped at an aqua purificadora and refilled a water jug.
We drove east on SON 16 towards Hermosillo. We stopped at a Santa Fe supermarket in the town of Miguel Aleman to buy just a few grocery items. We needed to keep the fridge pretty empty for crossing the border. We weren't sure that we would drive all the way to the border today, but it was a possibility.
We made it to and through Hermosillo without too much difficulty but it certainly wasn't due to good road signage ! And after we drove from the south around the city on the west on what seemed like a relatively new ring road, we ended up on MEX 15 ... southbound. There was no way from the ring road to get onto MEX 15 northbound. Why would one want to drive all the way around the city from the south, only to end up on the north side of the city ... heading south ? ! ? Typical Mexican road "engineering" ! ! ! We pulled a retorno and headed north on MEX 15.
We refilled with diesel at Hermosillo. The Pemex pump attendant was passive aggressive. I guess he's got a chip on his shoulder towards gringos. Eat s***, pal ! I suppose you can tell that by the time I'm typing this at 10 PM I'd had enough today !
We drove a lot of miles today. We reached the border at Nogales, Sonora, Mexico around 5 PM. We pulled up to U.S. Customs and while answering the CBP agent's questions another agent came over to ask if I knew that the trailer had an exploded tire ? AW, **** ! ! ! Story of my ****ing life ! ! !
CBP sent us for a secondary inspection by Agriculture. That's common, and sensible, for RV's. The Agriculture inspector was mostly interested in the contents of the trailer's fridge and kitchen cupboards. They wouldn't allow me to change the trailer's exploded tire there so I had to drive slowly to a Shell service station just beyond the border crossing.
We were now in Nogales, Arizona. I pulled into the Shell station and changed the exploded tire. The trailer's spare was the tire I damaged in Mazatlan, so I'm not very confident in it. It's not likely to survive much more. While I was changing the tire an employee of the Shell station was "hanging around". I thought he was on a meal break and was killing time. He seemed to speak no English.
I thought that was odd since we were now in the United States. We later discovered that most of Nogales, Arizona doesn't speak English ! When I was finished changing the tire and was about to pull out of the Shell station he came over to advise me that there would be a $4 "parking fee".
I ... < ahem > ... advised him that I would not be paying a $4 "parking fee" to change a tire ... and I ... < ahem > ... left ! And I thought, in my ignorance, that that sort of crap existed only on the other side of the border ! I guess Mexicans are Mexicans no matter which side of the border they live on !
With a bit of difficulty we found our way to the Wal-Mart in Nogales, Arizona. Before pulling into the Wal-Mart I stopped at Home Depot to look for a few hardware items. We pulled into the Wal-Mart parking lot and went into the store and ... spent a long time and a lot of money there ! The automotive department was closed, but ... I could see that they carry the Goodyear Marathon trailer tires I want. I need two tires ! First thing tomorrow morning I will go back into the store and hopefully they will have the size I need.
I shouldn't have gone to Home Depot. By the time we were finished shopping at Wal-Mart it was after 8 PM. We were very tired and very hungry. We returned to the trailer and ate supper. Then Joanne cleaned up all the exploded tire black rubber "dust" that had found its way into the trailer at the bottom of the living room slide. < sigh >
This morning I phoned MasterCard in Canada. My latest U.S.$ MasterCard billing has three fraudulent charges, all made the same day, all made at the same Esso station in Montreal, all made on Joanne's card number. It wasn't difficult for their fraud department to understand that I ( or Joanne ) can't be in Mexico and Montreal at the same time. Her card had to be cancelled, a new one will be sent to Yuma.
We took Bo for a beach walk, probably his last one for a long time. After lunch and a nap with Sully we walked into town to buy some fresh fish. We bought a couple of pounds of lovely, fresh flounder fillets, and a pound of fresh large scallops. A kilogram of flounder fillets was setenta-cinco ( 75 ) pesos and a half kilogram of scallops was sien ( 100 ) pesos. The scallops were so large that we cut them in half before packaging them into four meals. We packaged the flounder fillets into five meals. This was our last opportunity to buy fresh fish and seafood. Nine meals of fresh fish and scallops ... about fourteen dollars. Firewood can't cross the border into the U.S., but fish and seafood can !
I chopped open our last two coconuts from Las Glorias. Lots of clear milk, lots of tasty meat. We gave all the coconut milk and half the coconut meat to Nicole and her family. Since we ran out of dog food today, Bo will be eating cat food and fresh coconut for the next couple of days. HA HA HA ! He's very happy about that ! I got a lot of computer work done today, both online and offline.
I don't know when we will next have access to Wi-Fi. We watched the sun set on the Sea of Cortez for the last time. Beautiful ! After watching the sunset I went to perform my last magic trick, as promised, for Sedona and Georgia, and two of their Mexican friends.
Saturday ; Bahia de Kino, Sonora, Mexico to Nogales, Arizona, U.S.A.
Another beautiful, sunny day. This morning we prepared for departure, said goodbye to Robin, Nicole, Georgia, and Sedona, and left Islandia RV Park in Bahia de Kino. As we drove through town on the way back to the highway we stopped at an aqua purificadora and refilled a water jug.
We drove east on SON 16 towards Hermosillo. We stopped at a Santa Fe supermarket in the town of Miguel Aleman to buy just a few grocery items. We needed to keep the fridge pretty empty for crossing the border. We weren't sure that we would drive all the way to the border today, but it was a possibility.
We made it to and through Hermosillo without too much difficulty but it certainly wasn't due to good road signage ! And after we drove from the south around the city on the west on what seemed like a relatively new ring road, we ended up on MEX 15 ... southbound. There was no way from the ring road to get onto MEX 15 northbound. Why would one want to drive all the way around the city from the south, only to end up on the north side of the city ... heading south ? ! ? Typical Mexican road "engineering" ! ! ! We pulled a retorno and headed north on MEX 15.
We refilled with diesel at Hermosillo. The Pemex pump attendant was passive aggressive. I guess he's got a chip on his shoulder towards gringos. Eat s***, pal ! I suppose you can tell that by the time I'm typing this at 10 PM I'd had enough today !
We drove a lot of miles today. We reached the border at Nogales, Sonora, Mexico around 5 PM. We pulled up to U.S. Customs and while answering the CBP agent's questions another agent came over to ask if I knew that the trailer had an exploded tire ? AW, **** ! ! ! Story of my ****ing life ! ! !
CBP sent us for a secondary inspection by Agriculture. That's common, and sensible, for RV's. The Agriculture inspector was mostly interested in the contents of the trailer's fridge and kitchen cupboards. They wouldn't allow me to change the trailer's exploded tire there so I had to drive slowly to a Shell service station just beyond the border crossing.
We were now in Nogales, Arizona. I pulled into the Shell station and changed the exploded tire. The trailer's spare was the tire I damaged in Mazatlan, so I'm not very confident in it. It's not likely to survive much more. While I was changing the tire an employee of the Shell station was "hanging around". I thought he was on a meal break and was killing time. He seemed to speak no English.
I thought that was odd since we were now in the United States. We later discovered that most of Nogales, Arizona doesn't speak English ! When I was finished changing the tire and was about to pull out of the Shell station he came over to advise me that there would be a $4 "parking fee".
I ... < ahem > ... advised him that I would not be paying a $4 "parking fee" to change a tire ... and I ... < ahem > ... left ! And I thought, in my ignorance, that that sort of crap existed only on the other side of the border ! I guess Mexicans are Mexicans no matter which side of the border they live on !
With a bit of difficulty we found our way to the Wal-Mart in Nogales, Arizona. Before pulling into the Wal-Mart I stopped at Home Depot to look for a few hardware items. We pulled into the Wal-Mart parking lot and went into the store and ... spent a long time and a lot of money there ! The automotive department was closed, but ... I could see that they carry the Goodyear Marathon trailer tires I want. I need two tires ! First thing tomorrow morning I will go back into the store and hopefully they will have the size I need.
I shouldn't have gone to Home Depot. By the time we were finished shopping at Wal-Mart it was after 8 PM. We were very tired and very hungry. We returned to the trailer and ate supper. Then Joanne cleaned up all the exploded tire black rubber "dust" that had found its way into the trailer at the bottom of the living room slide. < sigh >
DSK
loved reading your post about beautiful San Carlos, Miramar and Guaymas. I was puzzled and offended by your statement about the gentleman in Nogales "Mexicans are Mexicans no matter which side of the border they live on !" WOW! talk about racists. You probably should not be visiting Mexico again if this is how you think. I have found people to be people, good and bad no matter what their ethnicity. Too bad you left such a bitter taste in my mouth with your last statement. I was enjoying the viaje right along with you until you said that.
ReplyDeleteme too--what a awful thing to say byt then rico Canadiens don`t understand how awful it is to be poor...............
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