A late lunch

First off, our internet problem has gone away as Starlink finally got us up and running again. I guess it was just a game of waiting. I’m disappointed with their support though. It was four days before I got any sort of a reply. Apparently, they had a large outage, so they would have been very busy.

It was the day that Martine came to do the cleaning. When she’s there we like to make ourselves scarce as she is a whirlwind and it’s not good to get in her way. A drive to Cihuatlán seemed like a good idea. We needed a new light for the kitchen. There wasn’t anything that would work, but then again, we didn’t look too hard as it was lunchtime and we were getting a bit peckish.

On the way home, our gas was getting low so I pulled in to get a fill-up—only our third since arriving. The attendant was polite and fun so he got a tip. Then I tried to start the car. Nothing!

I lifted the hood and saw that the battery terminals were very corroded. I cleaned them up with a bit of help from the attendant who got the hose and gave them a good wash. He also got a large adjustable wrench and used that as a hammer for a bit but still nothing. I shouldn’t have been surprised as I was scraping gunk off the terminal like peeling cheese. Obviously, the battery wasn’t getting charged.

It’s fortunate that there are some good friends here. One phone call and Jerry was on his way with his truck and some jumper cables. In the meantime, the attendant and another guy pushed us to a shady spot to wait. We were getting hungry but had some ‘yacca’ that we bought from the tianguis earlier so ate that to keep us going.

Jerry showed up after about fifteen minutes and our little old car was soon on the road again. Before we left the attendant got another tip for helping us out.

Back at the casa, I tried restarting the car and sure enough, it started just fine. I have to remember to check the terminals more often. Also, I understand that covering the terminals with Vaseline helps so I’ll do that.

After checking in with Martine and putting our stuff in the fridge we finally got our lunch at Resta-Rita by the lagoon.

The next day I cleaned the terminals and tried to start the car. Dead! Jerry came to my assistance again and I drove to ‘Cowboys Auto Repair’ where they installed a new battery. I also got the terminals changed as they were in bad shape. The total cost was $154 Canadian so not too bad and the car is running great again.