Aged but not deceased

The reason for going back early this year was to finalize our Residente Permanente. This gives us the rights of permanent residents. The main reason among many is so that we can keep our Mexican-plated car; such as it is.

Please note that it is an electric

We decided to use the services of our friend Eddie Peña to do the leg work for us for which he will be adequately compensated. The language barrier is the worst part of the process and of course, he knows English as well as his way around the system.

There was an appointment to meet him at the immigration office at 9:15 a.m. and after signing some documents and parting with some money, the worst of it was over. Then the wait for final approval, to get our new ID cards. We thought we had paid all that was owed except to pay Eddie. Apparently, there were another three thousand pesos each (we thought) before getting our new cards.

When we did it ourselves in the past it was way more difficult and entailed lots of visits to the office as well as internet work and photocopying. Back at INM the cost this time was over $6,000 pesos each. I cringed but as we had come this far, what the heck. So, we have been approved and eventually got our new cards. Rosalie is not happy with her picture!

And while we waited we played.

I’m addicted to Maynard’s Wine Gums so I bought a 1k bag to bring to Mexico. I paid $12. 49 and got another small bag for free. I figured that I could order more when I got here. Wrong! I can get them on Amazon okay but the cost works out at over $202 CDN a kilo. On Mercado Libre, they are $310 CDN. I don’t think so! I guess they don’t sell too many down here.

One of the unique experiences here is sitting outside watching TV in the middle of a nasty thunderstorm. It was fine to start off with but as we live outside it soon developed into a panicked attempt to get all the electronics inside. Our patio is covered, however, the spray from the wind and the general splashing threatened to soak everything.

So after getting everything inside, we sat back and watched the local geckos chase flies around and a friendly little land crab trying to get past us to get to the beach.

It’s been a warm summer according to some of our friends here. Lots of heat; the other day it was 28C with 91% humidity. There hasn’t been a lot of rain so far but temperatures are slowly getting better/lower.

I’ve mentioned before that there are these evil little devices in Mexico called topes. Unfortunately, they have their uses. In Canada, we call them speed bumps. In the small towns on the highway, they are essential. The speed limit though is usually 40 km an hour but as I’ve said before, this is only a suggestion.

There are various types of topes. Some are small and rattle your teeth and some are large and, if going at the correct speed the larger ones are quite pleasant. However, you don’t want to hit one at speed, as you will be launched into the air and come down with an almighty crash. Venders often stand at the side of the road where they are, because everyone has to slow right down and it’s a great opportunity for them trying to sell something.

They do have signs warning you that one is either about to come up, 200 metres ahead or that you have just passed one and will land soon. There are only signs on the highway but not in town. Then there are ones made by laying a three-inch rope across the road, they are very nasty.

There are some on Isla De Navidad that are especially bad. They consist of rows of concrete squares, that rattle your teeth no matter how slow you go. Before you cross them it’s recommended that you take out any false teeth and tighten bra straps.

Someone who makes the decisions on these things decided to paint the larger ones on the highway with yellow stripes. Eventually, of course, the paint wears off so that you can’t see them until you hit them. I think camouflaging and the location of the topes is a college course. Most, we find, are in the shade of trees so that they can’t be seen until the last moment. Others are the same shade of black as the road. The best time is at night because they cast a shadow in your headlights that’s easy to see.

The unofficial inverted topes (potholes,) are everywhere, and these are not small holes in the road some are craters. It’s surprising that there is enough asphalt to make topes but not enough to fill the potholes. They have been filling some lately but rely on the traffic to flatten them out, so now we have mini topes all over the place.

Even though I know where most of the local ones are I still manage to hit them occasionally. A while back I hit one so hard that the jarring really hurt my back. I noticed when I got home though that my back felt better than it had done for quite some time. I’m going to take people with sore backs out for a ride and charge them for my chiropractic services.

When in a strange location where I don’t know where they are, I try to follow another car to see when they pass over one. It’s fun to see the motorcycles go over them as they rarely slow down. If they have a passenger you often see them lift several feet off the seat, and that’s not an exaggeration.

What we need down here now are a few roundabouts; that should cause a little more confusion.

In the morning we did laundry and hung it up knowing that it would be dry by early afternoon. Later, it was pretty warm and humid so once again we needed a trip to Barra to the beach. Unusually, there was very little breeze that day. Ronda and John showed up as well as their neighbours Eric and Anna. There was a lot of excitement when a turtle appeared in the surf but it turned out to be a partially submerged log; I even took pictures. Everybody was having a great time, then it started to rain.

It bucketed it down for a while, however, I was four beers in and Rosalie was on her second margarita so we didn’t care much. Fortunately, it held off until we got home but soon there was another downpour. Oh! Yeah, the laundry! It was soaked. The next day it rained again so now we have to wait for a dry day.

The next morning, up on the palapa on the roof for a morning of doing very little it started to rain again. It was on and off for most of the morning and early afternoon. tropical storm Norma storm passed by out at sea so I guess we got the effects of that. There are ten centimetres a day expected until Saturday. My dilemma is, do I take the car to high ground yet, or not? I think it will be fine for now.

While the rain was coming down, Rosalie got a phone call from the guy who was supposed to come and cut our coconuts down last week, as they were getting really big and would do some damage if they fell on your head. As we leave, I make Rosalie walk on that side just in case.

Her Spanish is getting really good and she explained to him how to get here. After a while her phone rang again and from what I could make of the conversation he was somewhere nearby. Not so, he was still on the other side of town in Villa Obregon. More directions didn’t seem to help as he called again a little later; still lost. I went out to the street several times to see if I could see him only to find that he was still in Villa Obregon.

I think he called about five times, at least he was persistent. But he obviously knew nothing about his own town. In the end, I told Rosalie to say “olvídalo” (forget it.) I think he had had enough by now and wanted to give it a miss anyway. The odd thing is that last year he found us with no trouble.

When it stopped raining we went to Tito’s just to get out of the house.

I was using my MacBook the other morning and had to charge it. Nope…It refused to be charged. I took it to the PC Doctor and now I await the news. (It was fixable so that’s good.) The stock market was down as well, so a great start to Friday the 13th.

As it gets so hot here we have to force ourselves to the beach most days to catch the soft breezes to cool off.

Our usual time is about 2 o’clock, but a few times have gone in the evening and this was one of those times.

After sitting at three different tables as the sun moved around we eventually ended up sitting on bar stools overlooking the beach.

Rosalie likes to point out the young chiquitas to me just to get my heart racing. Most of them wear floss bikini bottoms. This is a double-edged sword. To a guy it sounds great looking at all those young girls with next to nothing on, however some of them should not be dressed that way. I go between Oh my god that’s beautiful, to…what the hell is she thinking?

That night the restaurant owner, Victor, was having a fifteenth birthday party for his daughter who is a nice young lady, slightly special needs.

Watching from a distance Victor saw us and was obviously proud of his daughter as he kept looking in our direction. Some of the Mexicans at the party were known to us from other places and got the odd nod and wave.

As the party started to break up Victor brought us a slice of birthday cake. To us, this was a great honour and much appreciated. I just hoped they didn’t add it to our bill.

Tony, our mesero (waiter) is the hardest-working mesero on the beach. He was serving people a hundred meters along the beach as well as in the restaurant. It must have been tough walking in that sand. There didn’t seem to be anyone else to help him and he was literally running a lot of the time. The poor guy looked worn out.

It was nice watching the sun go down and the Mexicans playing in the surf. It was a little dangerous as the waves were pretty high. There was one person swimming up and down parallel to the beach for a least half an hour.

Eventually, dragging ourselves away, we noticed that we were the only non-Mexicans there and had been accepted as one of them. I guess it’s because there aren’t too many Norteños here yet so we are a bit of a novelty at this time of year.

Walking back to the car, we had to run the gauntlet of several more Mexican acquaintances, mostly store owners, who know us and wanted to say “Buena Noches.”

Another beautiful sunset, and all in all, a great day for Friday the 13th.

Our daughter Lisa as I have often mentioned, is heavily into crafts. When we were visiting she showed me her new 3D printer. I’ve always wanted one but thought they would be in the thousands of dollars. Well, they’re not necessarily.

Then I thought why would we get one? What would we print? I started off thinking about hydroponic parts and so far we haven’t stopped adding to the list; not just hydroponics, but tons of other stuff too.

Then I wanted to know how to design this stuff. I don’t really need to, because there are thousands of free plans to download off the internet. However, I’ve always been fascinated with creating stuff so I downloaded a few CAD (computer-aided design) programs and got started.

We waited until Mexico before ordering the printer online and after a couple of weeks, got one. It’s a Creality Ender 3 and had to be assembled. It took about two hours and after I hooked it up, set it up and started it up. I tried their test print…total failure. I was sure it was because of the humidity so I ordered a dryer box for the filament.

No matter what I did I could not get it to work properly. After some communication with the supplier, I gave up and took it apart to return. I then ordered the same brand that Lisa uses although a less expensive model. I can’t get it in Mexico so I asked Rod and Sue if they would bring it when they drive down. They said it would be fine so I guess they have earned a few margaritas or maybe rum and cokes.

There is an awful lot to learn about this new hobby; fortunately, it’s not too difficult. Everything can be answered by Google and I use that a lot. I have to know about the types of plastic filament to use, temperatures, and a thousand other things. For instance, humidity can affect the printing process as the filament absorbs moisture. The humidity here right now is between 65 and 90% so that’s why I thought it was the problem.

It was so hot today that we saw a bird blow on a worm before eating it.

Remember the phone that I had so much fun with? Well, the fun continues. The other day the screen started to do strange things and finally blanked out altogether. I took it to the PC Doctor Luis, who said that the battery had been installed improperly and it pushed up on the screen causing the problem. As I hadn’t touched the battery when I worked on it I doubted that was the problem. The fix was over $200 so I said no I would get a new phone.

Back at the casa, I checked it out and it looked as though the battery had swelled a bit and did the damage. I had had enough by this time so I got on to Mercado Libre, the Latin form of Amazon, and ordered a new iPhone.

It arrived within two days and I looked forward to getting it updated. I couldn’t get all the info from the old phone so I relied on iCloud. It started off fine but then the internet kept quitting. By this time I was fed up with phones and decided to go back to smoke signals. I think I just wanted to set fire to something.

I contacted Mercado Libre and filled out a return form. I had to wait two days for the supplier to respond so I decided to wipe the phone clean and load all my apps manually instead of using iCloud. Dang me, it worked! I think I overloaded it with all the crap I was trying to download. Anyway, it’s working great now and I love it. It’s a great improvement over the old one. However, I still have to download all those apps.

Oh! And by the way, Mercado Libre has locked my account for some weird reason.

Eventually, things started to settle down and one of the first things I had to do was have a fight with a huge spider. I slapped him against the wall, so round one to me. This seems to be an annual occurrence so I have to be on my guard, the bastards are everywhere.

Later on, while Rosalie was having a nap I saw a huge cockroach on her stuff in the bathroom. I couldn’t find the super dupper Mexican-style Raid that I keep on hand, this is the one that sends up a small mushroom cloud when used, so I chose the regular kind and attacked. He was tough and sneered when I first sprayed him but eventually even the Canadian toxic fumes got to him and when he passed out I was able to apply the Coup-De-Gras with the toidy brush.

Some of the things that we are always fighting are the tiny little sugar ants. They don’t do any harm and don’t bite but can become a nuisance when they decide to try your margarita.

We have discovered over the years that they love Ant-B-Gone. I think they take it back to the nest, share it with their buddies, sit back and declare “Wow dude, that’s awesome shit” and then die. Maybe I’m just a drug supplier to the millions of ants living in our yard.

Not trying to be negative about Mexico but there are a few things that we have to put up with, like running out of water. I went to water the garden today and found that the well wasn’t pumping water. There hasn’t been much rain here for a while so that adds to the problem.

What do we do in these situations? We did what any normal sane human being would do, we went to the beach for a margarita and hoped the landlady would sort it out. (After writing this it rained overnight just to make me look silly.)

The next day, Castulo showed up and castigated us for contacting Blanca instead of him. Then he went ahead and started to fix the problem.

The Melaque Hotel which was damaged 25 years ago in an earthquake is finally being demolished. Let’s hope they don’t put another monstrosity in its place.

We have a brand new main street as the flood eradication project is underway. It looks very impressive and from what I’ve seen it should work just fine.

They should help to carry some of the water away.

The roads are still a mess though as the main street is partly closed as well as some of the one-way side streets. So now it seems that all streets are two-way which adds to the usual chaos. Most of the streets are so narrow that two vehicles can’t pass each other. Anyway, as always, Mexicans adapt and it all works fairly well.

I used that title because people will think I’m going to post every day…well I’m not.

The first thing we did on arrival was to go into town to find a restaurant open. At this time of year, it’s not so easy. First, we went to our old haunt La Cabaña (formerly Papa Gallos) but they were closed. However, we met one of our new Mexican friends who runs the pharmacy close by, Yolanda.

When we did find a place open we met up with Gabino who used to be a mesero at Papa Gallos. We then headed to the square to get some churros when we ran into Omar. After meeting all these Mexican friends we really felt at home.

Rosalie’s arrived home. I was afraid that she would fall in and drown herself so I had to help her out

That was all the first day we arrived so not really the ‘first’ day.

On the real first day (the second day) we found some of our stuff and started to unpack. The first thing I did was hook up the Starlink dish to get us online. Once that was done (after many swear words and threats to cancel) we contacted Castolo to help us get our car on the road. We have a second set of car keys that we stowed somewhere before we left in April, but neither Rosalie nor I could remember where they were hidden.

Castolo found the set of car keys that were left with him, but when he tried to get into the garage he had to try about four hundred keys before finding the right one. Eventually, I hooked up the battery and tried to start it…nothing. Then I remembered that you had to fasten both terminals onto the battery for it to start. That did it, Brrrrm: first time.

Backing out of the garage was a lot of fun as there was about a foot of dust on the car so I couldn’t see a thing. Back at the casa I threw some water on the windshield and declared us safe to drive to the car wash.

The guys that wash the cars are like robots. The guy was pressure washing the dust off before I was out of the driver’s seat. Everything is done by hand and they obviously have a great system as they didn’t miss a bit. The whole thing took about 10 minutes including the hand drying. And the cost to us? 70 pesos (about $5.50) and that included the tip.

The temperature was 34 with 70% humidity so we had to get to the beach fast for some lunch and rehydration. La Cabaña was open this time and we met up with another Mexican mesero friend Tonio.

Eventually back to the casa for a bit more unpacking but we both needed a laydown first, and so the afternoon passed us by. Still can’t find the spare set of keys.

During all the panic of winterizing, I checked our itinerary and found that I couldn’t find a reservation for either the ferry or the flight. 

The ferry was more immediate so our good friend Peter drove to the fast ferrt terminal in Nanaimo and found that we weren’t booked but there was lots of walk-on room.

They told us upon arrival that there was a booking in our name but our payment had been declined. No idea why, but the important thing was that we got on board. It was a very fast and comfortable trip. It was a bit chaotic at the Vancouver end as there was a bit of trouble finding our ride, Rosalie’s cousin Jeannine.

The next problem was our flight. It was a little strange as I had checked our status about a month earlier and saw all the details. When I tried to get the boarding passes the day before we left, I couldn’t find a thing. After a while though Rosalie received an email confirming the flight, but saying we had to check in at the airport. Whew!!

The next morning we got to the airport early, checked in and went through security. Very easy. Things seem to get easier at the airport, I’m assuming it’s because we are off-season and they weren’t too busy. It was a pleasant trip to PV. It was very quiet, hardly any people in the airport upon arrival as we were the only flight in at that time. So we just grabbed our stuff and left. 

Flair may have had their troubles but our experience with them was just great. Everything had to be paid for though, including coffee, and of course a glass or two of wine, and no free snacks whatsoever.

After landing, we got a taxi to the bus depot to book our seats for the next day. Then another taxi to the hotel

Our hotel room was ready and after settling in we walked along the Malecón for a nice meal and our first mango margaritas. Later, we sat outside our room and watched the rain fall.

The view from our room while the rain fell.

The next day the bus took us home to Melaque and so our new season begins.

It’s that time again. I have a huge list of things to do that can only be done in the last few days before we leave for Mexico. I have a list of twenty-one items for the last days and another twenty-one for the day we leave.

It’s been a short but busy year with all the doctor’s appointments and especially the Melaque party. That was fun. Then there was our new car, and of course, we wanted to go everywhere with it to learn what it could do.

One of the chores was to take the hydroponics apart, clean it up and put it away until next year.

Sadly, because we’re leaving early I had to pick the veggies before they were ready. However, we got a pretty good crop. We vacuum-packed them and put them in the freezer until the spring.

The tomatoes went a little wild, also, we harvested about thirty lemon cucumbers but I had to compost about the same again because they were too small to use.

Then of course there is the sad job of the last pub day. I always worry about this as the guys try to run a tab in my name while I’m gone. Fortunately, they haven’t managed to do it yet, but I know they won’t give up.

Adding to the problem are several doctor’s appointments in Nanaimo taking up half the day. However, I’m confident it will all get taken care of.

Come Thursday, when we arrive there will be the heat of Puerto Vallarta. Although, I just checked: it will be 28C, feels like 30C so not so bad; however, there will be some rain and a few thunderstorms.

Peter’s birthday was on the 18th so we had a really nice lunch with him and Suzie as well as Ray and Yvonne at the Rusted Rake pub in Nanoose.

Arriving in PV on Thursday evening and then Melaque on Friday so I won’t be blogging until after that. Bye for now.