2012 Mexico - Melaque

I've been wanting to go out fishing ever since we got here, but the boys went out the day we arrived here and I had to wait for the next time around.  That's today!  Four of us from the villa (Bob, Joe, Terry, and yours truly) are off to kill a mess of dorado (maybe) and if we get lucky a sailfish or marlin or three.  The boat is a SuperPanga, which is a 26' open fibreglass boat with a canvas bimini top and twin 75hp outboards.  A 7-hour cruise is 3000 pesos ($3000p) plus tip, and you bring your own food and drinks.  With a healthy tip and a half-dozen Pacifico it's $70 for a full day's fishing, can't beat that!  We're leaving from the Barra de Navidad lagoon at 7:00, so it's up at 5:30 and into Bob's car at 6:30; I knew there was a catch....  It's a gorgeous morning with Venus putting on a very pretty show as the morning star, and the lagoon is a hive of activity on arrival, with water taxis bringing locals to work and fishermen heading out for ...

So there we were sitting around minding our own business when Kelly and Cheryl called up wanting to know if we would like to go on a driving adventure northwards.  After a milisecond to consider it we said "yes!" and an hour later we were all packed up and out the door.  The plan today is to head northwards along the coast and check out a number of deserted beaches north of Tenacatita, which is the last 'developed' beach between here and Punta Perula 1.5 hours north of here.  I have a particular remembrance of Tenacatita, as it has a gorgeous calm beach where I got slam-dunked by a rogue wave 8 years ago and lost my glasses, causing me to imitate Mr. Mole for the next week until we got back to Canada.  But I digress.   The first road we try is 9 km of slow rough road into a marvelous beach.  At least we think it's a marvelous beach; it's now gated at about 4 km.  Bummer, these things happen.  The next beach is on a road leading into a little commu...

  We've had invites a number of times to go a-horseshoeing, but we've just been too darn busy nest-building.  But now we're not, so it's time to see what this is all about.  Deb is off doing Pilates but intends to join up as soon as she's done, so I wander down at 10:00 and there's already 4 guys getting ready to play!  I say 'getting ready' as the tide is high enough that there isn't any room to put the stakes, and as we have no stakes because Chuck hasn't shown up with the stakes.  Or the horseshoes, which are also apparently items of importance. But other than the lack of horseshoes, stakes, and beach, we are good to go!  The good news is that we're sitting under beach umbrellas and the restaurant staff are happy to bring us beers while we wait.  That just seems to make any problem a whole lot smaller.... Horseshoe groupies. Award-winning style by Joe. Finally around 10:30 the tide is on the wane and the equipment is here, so off we go.  D...

Deb has heard about another festival/event/happening going on Tuesday night down at the zocalo (central park with gazebo) in Villa Obregon, which is a town/suburb on the east end of Melaque.  It appears to be another part of the Festival of Guadalupe, which pretty much fills up the first 12 days of December every year to honor some guy that apparently saw the Virgin Mary in 1640.  Appears to have been a stroke of marketing genius by some church official back then, but I must say that it beats the Death By Christmas Carols that we have to go through in Canada!   So we're off to see the sights, and stop on the way for a great rib dinner; we're learning so we split one order between us - works perfect!  A big platter of ribs with all the trimmings and 2 glasses of wine, $12 including taxes and a healthy tip.  On arrival at the zocalo, the place is busy as it always is during the evening; families use the zocalo to visit, eat, flirt, gossip, etc.  In other word...

Another beautiful day in the neighbourhood, and we're off to Barra de Navidad, a beach community just 2 km down the beach, 5 km by road.  The plan is to meet up with our friends Jack and Irma and to mooch around Barra for the day.  We decided to stop in to see our friends Kelly and Cheryl on the way over, who promptly invited us out for a day's sight-seeing in their jeep, so the Jack-and-Irma-visit will have to wait for a bit!   Our first stop was Playa de Oro, which is a deserted beach at the end of a 7km bone-jarring bush road.  We got down there and, can you imagine, there was another family there!  On OUR beach!  Oh well, we'll just have to make the best of the remaining 5 km or so of unspoiled sand.  There's a honking big rock in the intertidal zone, and when we walked around it I noticed a young man and woman in the surf up against the rock.  We had various opinions about what they were up to out there by themselves, but we were all wrong as...

Woke up to our first full day in Mexico, it's warm and the sky is blue and life is good.  Except.  Debbi has a determined look in her eye which usually means lots of work for Steve.  Time to go buy all the groceries and housewares we'll need to get set up here for a bit.   Luckily there is a bodega (corner grocery) just a block from our bungalow, so down we go to buy 2 big bags-full and lug them home.  That was easy! Steve thinks, but then of course it is made clear that now we have to go downtown to pick up the few little things that the bodega didn't have.  Many kilometres and 3 large grocery bags later, it's time for a cab home.  Debbi is now starting to make high-pitched noises about not having enough room for everything, so I think we're getting close!   Once everything is unpacked and spiffied up, it's 4 pm which is Happy Hour!  Actually I'm not sure when HH starts, but it appears to end at 6.  This one, our first, was particularly...

Well, we survived another trip to Mexico without any major foo-foos.  Got to the Westjet counter at 04:51 because we wanted to be first in line with all our extra bags, and we were.  The very nice lady at the counter tried about 20 times to print out our baggage tags, and when the Infernal Machine finally decided to work it pooped out enough tags to take us around the world a couple times!  Very uneventful flight, which is my favourite kind.   Manzanillo Airport is actually about 30 km north of Manzanillo, half-ways to Melaque.  It's right on the beach in the middle of nowhere, which is actually a pretty good place to put an airport when you stop and think about it.  Barring tsunamis, of course....fortunately there wasn't one scheduled for today.  Instead, we got shaken down by an airport security guy because of our 3 - 50 lb Humanitarian Assistance (HA) bags!  This is a first for us, as despite what you see in American movies the Mexican public s...

Yesterday a nice man came and took the Trailblazer away.  Well actually I had to drive it to Vernon for him, but it sounds better the first way.  It's going into semi-retirement, as he will be parking it at his lake-side cottage in Ontario and it will only be used in the summer to-and-from the lake.  An honorable semi-retirement, kinda like the one we are all looking for!   Deb sold it through an ad on Kijiji.  First day posted, we got a call from a guy in Lumby who wanted it for his 9-month pregnant wife.  That evening we got a call from a guy in Kelowna who advised us that our truck was now listed with a car dealership in Kelowna, and within a day it was also being advertised in the States!  Gotta love Kijiji....  We got the bogus ads pulled, but holy cow it's the Wild West out there!   So, I'm sitting here looking at an empty parking space which feels kind of weird, but now we have room for our new (to us) truck that we hope to drive home ...

Just checking to see if this is the site we want to use for our 2012 trip, so far it appears to be pretty good!  We had our Strata Christmas Party last night, it was pretty cool.  Everyone here is friendly and helpful, and it really felt like a friends-and-family get-together rather than an official function. Headed to the airport to check out our baggage weights.   The bags are packed.  This is kind of a big deal this time, as we are doing a Humanitarian Assistance run for an Indio community.  We have 2x50 lb, 4x20 lb, and 3x50 lb humanitarian, so the dog sled is appropriate as I don't think it will all fit in a cab....  I think the security guy at the airport knows us by name now, we've been down there checking out weights so many times!   Debbi has a frantic week of saying goodbye and making sure the stove is turned off.  I'm trying to remember all the things I've forgotten, which is pretty much a full-time job for me nowadays.