2-26-05

I went for that morning swim and after I had showered I went back to camp and put on my shorts again and headed up town to get a sack of tangerines. When I went to pay for them I put my hand in my pocket and found that my money and wallet were GONE! Yikes, that got my attention. I franticly searched around and then asked everyone I saw if they had seen anyone around my camp. No one had. I then walked over to the guy who owns the camp and told him. The first thing he did was jump on me for smoking marijuana last night and he didn’t want anyone in here smoking that and what was I doing over at the talapa when I was only supposed to be using the shower and toilet, and on and on and  on. Well, that rocked me back as I hadn’t been smoking pot and didn’t know that anyone was. I cant smell anymore so  I am oblivious to that unless I get passed a joint, which I had not. I walked away after his big blow-up and went back and started tearing into lil Red and I found it! my wallet and money, they must have somehow fallen out next to the seat. Wow, what a relief. I had more money stashed as well as another debit card buy I would have lost my license and one credit card and one debit card as well as a couple of hundred bucks. I gotta be more careful.

About half the campers moved out that morning and I was one of them. after the ordeal with the owner I didn’t feel like I wanted to stay and well, I had a better offer.

When I was at one of the little stores I was buying a couple of beers and the guy behind the counter was trying to get across to me that there is a deposit on the bottles. If I would bring them back, I would not have to pay the deposit. I didn’t get any of this but there were a couple of gals ahead of me in line that were just getting their stuff packed up and  one of then came over and translated for us. She was very nice and asked where I was camping. I said I was in the street by the  Red Snapper. She said that  if I needed a  place to camp that they had a large back yard and I would be welcome to camp there.

I searched around the area where they said that they lived and finally found them. They are renting a rather old house with a large yard for $200/month but the place was all run down and they are trading work for rent. They have the place cleaned up and are now in the process of painting and maybe rebuilding some of the more rotten parts. The place is made of cement block and concrete. They didn’t prime and seal the concrete so it is  starting to crumble and the rebar inside is rusting and rotten. They have over a dozen coconut palm trees and several other kinds. I know that one of them is a mango tree as that is what they identified it as. It has a lot of small green fruit on it but I see in the stores that they are ripe someplace around here.

The girls names are Carolyn who is from Fiji but has lived in Australia as well as the US. Jill was born in southern California but raised in Europe.

 Caroline   Jill with Don Diego

Jill speaks just about any language you can mention.

When I came knocking they invited me in and Jill made me a sandwich as it was just as they were about to have their lunch. We sat and talked for a while and then walked out to see if I would like to camp in their yard. Their place has an eight foot wall around the perimeter and two locked gates to the street. It looked like that maybe parking lil red under a good size mangrove tree and out from under the coconut palms would be a nice place. The coconuts are falling now and that would make a BIG thump on lil Red. There is an outside toilet and shower. Their place is two blocks off the little highway so it is very nice and quite back here especially with a wall all around.

After I got lil Red situated and had my shade fly set up I told them that  I needed to take a nap.

After I got up we sat and talked some more learning about each other. Jill decided I was going to have supper with them as well so she had been cooking some chili con-carne and it was delicious. They met a gal in one of the bigger towns near by who had just had her credit card taken from her at a ATM machine when she wasn’t looking. She is a schoolteacher from Seattle, WA and is down here for a few days. They are going today and pick her up and bring her back here for a day or so. The have given me the run of the place and I guess I will stay here for another day or two. I will be heading down to the beach soon and just laze around.

Mexican Perequito, named Don Diego

Jill just got up and came out and brought her bird out to its daytime perch, which is a nice little flowering bush. She has his sunflower seeds in a dish and a small plate of water on a bench for him. His wings are clipped so he doesn’t fly away. The Mexicans catch these birds and they cut their wings and stuff them in little boxes and take them around and try to sell them. Jill said that she would like to buy all the birds and feed them here and let them go.  She bought  this one for $15. The birds have been handled so rough that it is taking along time to tame it down. He is just so happy to be outside and in his bush he hasn’t quieted down and just keeps squawking.

2-27-05

I just mostly hung around camp yesterday and read some things I had downloaded on the computer. I did take a walk over to the Red Snapper to see Kevin before he pulled out. He seems to think that he might have been exposed to hepatitis and it has him totally freaked out. He said that he felt better yesterday morning but was still spooked and has decided to go inland and maybe head for Guadalajara where there is excellent medical help if he needs some. He sort of indicated that they might be starting to head back north soon. Kevin is one of those people who is driven and on this trip he says that he has started to slow down some. The magical thing that seems to be making this possible is that he has been playing his guitar and that somehow has allowed him to connect with a slower more peaceful zone. I am trying to get him to stop by and see an old friend, Cactus Jack who lives in Salida, Colorado. Jack is one of the most relaxed peaceful persons I have ever met. He is so in tune with the inner peace and his music is expresses those feelings. I think it would help Kevin in his search. We will see if he gets anywhere near Jack I will try to get them together for a few songs and a good talk. Kevin told me that he was a speed skater when he was a young man. He said he still holds the record for the five hundred meters after 23 years, which is the longest held record. These may be Canadian or just Prince Edward Isle records, but nonetheless this gives you an idea of the drive that this guy has.

Jill has a little dog named Buckey.

 He evidently was an abused dog and is afraid of men. He is a great watchdog and keeps an eye on everything around the place. He doesn’t go out the gate (much) and if she tells him to be quiet he does. I thought after a couple of days now that I would be able to get a hand on him but Buckey is still afraid. That is Jill’s Honda Prelude and her new Honda Rebel motorcycle that she just bought. She is trying to save the car so she got the motorcycle for just buzzing around. She doesn’t drive fast she says, she just flies low.

I asked the girls out to supper last night and Buckey wanted to come along. We went in Jills little red Honda Prelude.  We were pretty well stuffed into it and Buckey sat right next to me and wasn’t afraid, but I was, jeez she drives like a nascar racer. The tires are good and the brakes are fair. Jill speaks fluent Spanish and the restaurant that we went to last night is her favorite in the area. It is out on the main  highway about three kilometers  away. Jill must have spent five minutes ordering all the food. She wanted me to taste the different kinds of things that are available. It was a feast for sure. I cant even begin to explain what we ate but it was all wonderful. Well maybe the large salad was a bit much but I struggled through it all. I even had a Modelo beer with it. The Mexicans serve a beer with a small lime in these parts. The idea is to squeeze the half lime in the beer. It is really good that way.

2-27-05

I rolled up camp this morning and left after I raked up all my foot tracks and tire tracks in their yard. The yard is raked sand so it looks nice with all the tracks cleaned up. Jill and Caroline left for Monzanillo to pick up their friend who had lost her credit card. They were going to go get her yesterday but there was a little rain and Jill didn’t want to drive on the wet roads. We didn’t get much rain but I guess it could make things slippery. I was just easing along and made a quick stop to get a juice bar at a little shop. I forgot to mention these juice bars that they have down here. I first went into this little store not far from the red snapper campsite and picked out what looked like a lemon Popsicle. They are actually juice bars I found out. the one I picked out turned out to be a pineapple one and it is the best Popsicle I have ever had. It was made out of a pineapple with lots of real pieces of pineapple in it. Wow, I was hooked. The next one I tried turned out to be I have no idea what but it had seeds in it, maybe guava? It was pink and yellow and great. Today I chose a pink with red spots in it and I think it was strawberry ice cream with something else in it. they must have twenty different kinds of bars. Some are juice and some ice cream as well as tubs of ice cream. This stuff is so superior to what we get in the states.

I continued on down the road when I saw a sign for Monzanilla that is ending in an A not the O which is the big town I was headed toward. I remember the  girls saying  that there are crocodiles there. I just pulled into  town when they pulled in behind me with their new friend. We all walked back to see the crocks and I had to run back and get my camera as there was a guy feeding them fish. I got back after the fish were all eaten but the guys were hanging around still.

Did I happen to mention that it is a jungle down here? Well it is for sure and this photo proves it. Their new friend Julie is a school teacher from Seattle and  is down on her mid winter break. She has traveled all over south America. She has a degree in archeology and when she graduated instead of going to Europe, she went to south America to see all the ancient temples and ruins. She has seen them all evidently.  It would have been interesting to have visited with her more but I wanted to get a few miles on lil Red before dark. Jill had given me directions on how to get around Monzanillo on the toll road and I am sure glad she did. I could see from an overlook that it is a beautiful town on  a bay but just another big town as far as I am concerned. Jill said it was easy to get lost in it and after my experience in Puerto Vallarta I don’t want to get in that position again.

As usual I have no idea of exactly where I am. I think I am south of Manzanillo and probably on the outskirts of Tecoman. I am parked behind a Pemex gas station in what appears to be a truck parking area. All the gas stations are Pemex which is a government run business.  I am planning on heading down to Lazaro Cardenas and then heading inland. I have been told that I will leave the jungle and get into the mountains where the days will be hot and the nights will be cool. That sounds good to me.

2-29-05

The road south follows the coast and it reminds me of the old coast highway that ran along the west coast of California and Oregon. There are rough rock places intermixed with nice big sandy beaches.

Most of the beaches have no one on them, but then it has been windy today.

I passed through miles and miles of coconut palms which often had small banana trees planted beneth them. I this is dual cropping with trees I have not seen before. These banana trees have sacks over the fruit to protect it from ???? rain maybe? Birds?

I also saw several other crops both tree and bush interplanted. I stopped at a little internet café to check email and went across the street and bought a juice bar. This bar was pink  and  had huge seeds in it about the size of buckshot. The juice bar I had before had smaller seeds more like 7 ½ shot. I tried to bite into one of these big seeds thinking that they must be good to eat if they put them in, but my teeth are not that tough.

I stopped along the way in the afternoon to have a look at the beach. I pulled into a place where they had Talapa’s for rent as well  as cabins. I talked to a real nice kid who is renting them for his dad. He is half Mexican and spent most of his life in Santa Fe and Taos New Mexico. He told me the prices and what went with them and I opted for just staying the night. What made me want to stay was the use of the laundry as my clean clothes pile is getting small again. Why in the world I brought along white tee shirts, I cant imagine what I was thinking.

This is the laundry. You scoop a bucket of water out of the tank under the brown boards and use the center wash table to scrub your clothes. The scrub table is recessed and has the black hose that runs the wastewater over to a tree. It actually worked well and better than the river where you have to keep an eye out for crocks as well as it is higher and you don’t have to get down on your knees. After looking at the picture, it seems to ba an optical illusion effect but maybe you get the idea.

This place is a surfer hangout as this photo will let you in on the life of some surfers from Vancouver Island, Canada. The guy on the left has been here for three months and the one on the right has only been here a couple of weeks.  He has been traveling to Costa Rica and I think it was Guatemala surfing. The life of the surfer goes like this they say. You get up in the morning and get out there and surf. You lay in the hammock all afternoon. If there happen to be girls in camp the evenings can become much more fun. There don’t happen to be any single gals around camp now but they are always hopeful. One of the guys said that during Christmas the beach was just filled with tents as people from all over come here for  the holidays. There are lots of Mexican families that have been coming here for generations.

The guy who runs it said that surfers from around  the world come here to surf. The best surf comes in April but these guys above have no complaints, the water is warm and the waves good. They did say that the last two days the surf hasn’t been great but are hoping for swells tomorrow.