Category: Mexican Vacation

So for the low, low price of US$163,000, condo unit # 3 could be yours.  What a pleasant thought!  Oh well, no time soon, but it sure would be nice to have someplace to run away to.  And I must say, Barrie and Helen have found a nice little hideaway here in Bucerias.

http://elementsofmexico.com/realestate_detail.php?id=2407

Sadly, today is our last full day in Mexico.  We were up at the usual time, about 09h00 or so, can’t remember, ha ha – that’s kind of the definition of “vacation”.

We needed to vacate to let Estella, the maid, clean the condo.  So at 10h00, we zip around the corner where they’ve just put up a sign that says they can inflate tires, toys, balls, whatever.  Rather interesting, I think maybe it’s a small commune of young folk, and they are having trouble making ends meet.  This home on the corner has been alternately quiet and loud for days.  A few days ago, a sign appeared on the corner, advertising the availability of a shower.  The next day, another sign.  And two days ago, this sign about inflation of balls, etc.

You may recall (well I hope I blogged it back when we first arrived anyway) that when Eric bought the little football to play with his cousins in the ocean, it was flat and needed inflation.  We had a devil of a time finding someone with a needle to fill it up!  Too bad we didn’t know about these guys on the corner, then!  Oh well.

Anyway, today I wandered into the compound (almost every home is in a walled-in compound, should add this to my observations) and called out a few times, but nobody answered.  Again I wandered, but again didn’t go right to the back.  Then just before I was about to leave, I saw a sign on the door that said something about “timbre” and had a small cowbell hanging there.  I shook the bell, and a young fellow jumped out of the far building.  I showed him the football and said deflate, and he said yes, yes.  On the window ledge, he moved an image of the Virgin Mary, and there was an inflation needle!  Great!  Then he started off with the football.  I kept saying, “empty”, “let air out”, “deflate”, but he went into the garage where an old dusty car was kept, into the corner, and fired up the compressor.  “No, no, no,” I kept saying, and took the ball and started squeezing the air out.  He held up the hose end and pressed the release, letting out a burst of air, saying something in Spanish which I would imagine was, “This will fill the ball up!”  But i kept squeezing and saying, “No, deflate!”  Finally he twigged to what I meant and turned off the compressor, grabbed the ball from me, and squeezed it flat, chuckling.  We both learned something, I think.  I asked him, “How much,” and he protested, “No, no.”  But I gave him all the change I had anyway, about 9 pesos, and we both went away happy.

Lesson learned: look up the key word(s) in Spanish before going down to get the ball deflated!  I just looked it up on Google Translate (wow what a service), “desinflar” is the key word here…

Then we went down to the Royal Decameron Resort and ordered our taxi to the airport for tomorrow morning, one step closer to home, ugh.  [ it may always be nice to get home, but I hear it’s a little cold and breezy back home so I’d rather stay here, thank you very much! ]

We wandered down to the market and picked up a few things, including a couple of gifts.  A couple of them were pottery and were heavy, so we took them back to the condo.  Estella wasn’t quite done, but she let us dump them off.

One of the places we stopped at is run by a bit of a character – a nice guy.  For the month of January, he accepts Canadian Tire ‘Money’ for payment!  He gives it to a Canadian friend who takes it back to Canada and buys tools, etc. that he needs and ships them back to him.  He showed us his present wad of Canadian Tire ‘Money’, it was quite a bit, six inches or more thick!

Here are a few arbitrary observations on my first visit to Mexico.  They don’t seem to fit in elsewhere, or I neglected to note them way back:

• The large majority of the vehicles here are standard transmission.  All the buses are standard, and have huge stick shift levers over to the transmission in the centre of the bus.  Even SUVs and large pickup trucks have standard transmissions.  Most of the automatic transmission vehicles I’ve seen are from outside Mexico.
• There are a lot of stray dogs here.  Just hanging around in the street, eating out of garbage.  They do not threaten, they just flop in the street.  In fact, at night, they sometimes sleep in the middle of the street – probably because it’s a warm spot, or something like that.  
• The people here are genuine and warm.  They are not pretentious about their lot in life.  They don’t look down on those who sell stuff on the beach, or do supposedly lesser jobs, or jobs that would be lesser in our culture.  Wow, they just do it, and don’t complain.  They don’t take our “no, gracious” personally, they just move on.  We could learn a lot from these people!
• And speaking of jobs, they use a half dozen people for a job that would be done by two in Canada.  I think it’s their way to cope without welfare.  For the smallest little job, they have someone doing it.  This seems to be a good thing – it gives them something to do, dignity and self confidence.  Even for tough, difficult jobs that we would get a machine to do – like digging for a foundation or a pool, for instance – they get a bunch of guys with shovels and wheelbarrows to do it, wow!  And, I understand that the vast majority of building projects are done with concrete that is mixed by hand on site, wow!  Tough, tough people.
• The roads here are, um, interesting.  The main roads are well paved.  The main streets are stones with pavement between them.  Pretty nice.  The side streets are not nice at all.  They are stones but with clay or packed sand between them.  The side streets are rough, an ankle sprain waiting to happen!  But, when they need repair, the boys just dump sand in the middle of the street and get out their shovels.  They dig up the stones they might need to dig up, put stones back in, pack sand or dirt or clay or whatever it is in around them, and walk away.  As a result, all of the vehicles here have rattles, squeaks and bad suspension, or so it seems.
• I’ve heard that Mexicans are legendary for being laid back, slow and tardy.  Well, it’s not all true for sure – our cabs have always been right on time, our buses have driven like mad to keep some kind of schedule (not sure whose).  But overall, they don’t get fazed over anything.  As per my notes when I was parasailing, if they get worried, you should be worried.  But, as a result, the garbage piles up in the streets – because it seems, nobody worries about garbage.  Especially at the end of the street at the beach, there is garbage laying around, it smells awful – but the Mexican folks, in their laid back way, just walk right past.  Wow.
• There are a lot of Canadians down here.  Like, we are talking, there can’t be many left up there in Canada!
• Most houses are built as part of a walled-in compound.  Some are more isolated than others.  Dave’s observation was that you never know what’s behind the wall.  The wall can look awful and crumbling on the outside, but then one day you see the gate open to let a car in or out, and there’s a beautiful house inside.  On the other hand, some places seem to be better fortified than others.  The one shown below, for instance, I call “the embassy” because it has broken glass on top of the brick walls, and the walls that are made of wrought iron have outward facing “hooks”.  These are typically used to fortify diplomatic residences in other places in the world!

Well, today started lazy enough – I was slow to get going.  Actually, both Dayna and I were, but, as usual, I win the prize.  The four of us finally got out the door at about 11h00.  We caught the same bus that brought us here from Puerto Vallarta – these buses, which already bring you a long way for the ridiculous cost of 12 pesos a person (right around a dollar), actually run alternately up to Villella and to Sayulita, something like another 3/4 hour.  Well we were lucky enough to have a Sayulita bus waiting for us as we arrived at the stop on the highway.

The ride was, um, interesting.  Shortly after leaving the populous area of Bucerias, the road went down from 4 lane divided to 2 lanes, and snaked through the mountainous jungle.  It reminded me a lot of the drive up number 10 highway through Riding Mountain National Park, but of course with very different vegetation.  There were beautiful mountain streams, clearings where you could see the treed sides and tops of the mountains, and curve after curve after curve, as the road followed the passes and the streams.

The bus driver shifted down, then down again, as we climbed in the jungle.  There was a lot of traffic, including big trucks, other buses, passenger cars, and much more.  Then, descending the other side, it seemed we were going a bit too fast – but hey I’m not a thrill seeker.

We arrived in Sayulita, and all the Mexican folk on the bus got off.  The driver looked a little perplexed, then we realized that the bridge ahead over the river was out – we weren’t going to get to the other side unless the bus started to fly!  There were about a dozen other gringos remaining on the bus too, and we had a good chuckle as we got out.

Today was a pretty lazy day.  We slept in, got up late, and went to the market for vegetables.

Today is Eric’s day to fly home.  Eric set up the taxi yesterday when Dave had arranged his.  Eric’s flight was at 12h40, he wanted to leave the condo at 10h00, so he would have lots of time.  Wise, that’s the way I like to do it too – spend extra time in the airport instead of risking a delay messing you up.

Sigh, New Year’s Eve here in Bucerias.  Quieter than we all expected, actually.  We walked down to the town square at about 22h30.  There were more people out and about than other nights, but not that many.  A few of the bars and restaurants had music coming from them, but only a few had live bands.  The streets and houses themselves were very quiet.  Certainly quieter than on Thursday night, when that bar or whatever a block away was pounding out the tunes until 03h30!

Joe Crow’s and Yoyo Mo’s (two blocks past square) were happening places with live bands.  Well, that corner has four different open-air bars, each with its own live band.  We should have stopped at Joe Crow’s for a drink – the music actually sounded pretty good.

But oy, the firecrackers and cherry bombs!  The kids around here are devilish!  And with the little safety regulation, there are folks lighting little fireworks and tossing them about.  On the corner between Yoyo Mo’s and The Twisted Rose and La Pachanga, there were two young guys, buying fireworks from a twelve year old, lighting them, and tossing them straight up.  They laughed hysterically when the fireworks went off, spraying sparks everywhere, including on nearby cars (yikes).  With all the jumble of overhead wires at that corner, they were hitting the wires once in a while, and the fireworks would go unexpected directions, and of course more hysterics.  The young men were accompanied by several young ladies and one older fellow (their father?  I doubt it, but wonder at what his role in all this was) who were also giggling incessantly, then they all went back into Yoyo Mo’s, presumably for more beer!

Down on the beach, restaurants were setting up their tables for an influx of folks around midnight, to see the fireworks across the water.  We wandered back to the condo to spin out an hour, then down to the beach with our lawn chairs to see the festivities.

There was a nearby resort which had about fifty people out on the beach with sparklers, making patterns and swirls in the dark.

At midnight, there was an explosion of colour out to our far right (La Cruz) and to our far left (Puerto Vallarta) with huge bursts of fireworks that went on and on and on.  On the La Cruz side, it went for about ten minutes or so, with occasional colourful bursts every two to five minutes after that.  Over in Puerto Vallarta, the fireworks on the shore went on for at least twenty minutes nonstop, then more started downtown.  There were smaller displays at some of the resorts along the water; then there was also a few back a few blocks and to our left.  Overall, the fireworks must have lasted about a half an hour.

There were about a half dozen kids behind us, along the grass line, who started shooting “whizzers” over our heads into the water – Dayna and Barrie didn’t quite react as strongly as Helen and Dean – who cowered in their chairs, hoping that they didn’t get hit with errant sparks!  [ Eric, ever the cool one, sat on the end, snickering ]

Then the most interesting thing happened – something none of us had ever seen.  We saw what looked like a kite on fire drift up from somewhere down the beach to our right, and drift on the wind out over the ocean.  Then, all of the sudden, there was a second one.  We realized that from the group just to our right, they were launching them.  They were actually little hot air balloons, with a small candle or burner or something like that generating flame in the bottom.  The balloon itself is either a cotton material or something else translucent, so you can see the flame inside the balloon.  The entire thing looks like a kernel of corn, and it’s about the size of a large man’s torso.  They carefully light the flame, take it to the shore, hold it up skyward, and let it go.  Often it drifts back and forth as it rises up, then floats out to sea on the prevailing wind.

Soon we spotted more floating out from La Cruz to our far right.  Eventually there were dozens, all drifting out to the ocean, quite beautiful, really.

Of course, me being who I am (pathological “thing” about fire – don’t get me wrong, I was into burning garbage in my youth, and know how quickly it can get out of control), made a crack about it being a way to get back at your neighbours – hoping it lands on their thatched palapas roof and not yours!   But it really was nice.

Eric wandered off, but on his way back to the condo, he cut through at the resort where they were launching the balloons, and he saw one that went up and got hung up in a tree.  Apparently, nobody worried about it, it just burned itself out after ten minutes or so, and then they lowered it down, reloaded the candle or whatever was inside, lit it and let it off out onto the ocean.

We called it a night fairly early.  On our way back to the condo, there were a couple of kids along the street, tossing fireworks onto the road and the sidewalk, scaring the daylights out of us.  And their dad encouraging them!  Oh well, as I’ve said, it looks like here in Mexico, anything not explicitly regulated is openly allowed, and there are no regulations!

As I said, it was pretty quiet.  But, very interesting too.

And not a single refrain of “Auld Lang Syne” was heard – in spite of the many, many Canadians and Americans around here.  Hmm.  No doubt though, it is the new year now!

Here’s to a healthy, happy and prosperous 2011 for all of us.  Salut!

This morning, the men were lazy and hung out at the condo, while the ladies went to La Palapa Boutique (ladies’ clothing 100% cotton tailored to fit) and Cotton House (where you can see the actual looms upon which they make place mats, napkins, table cloths, and the like).