December 31, 2014
Scott had been arguing with his bank, trying to transfer
funds from one account to another so that he could pay for another six months’
boat storage. Though he was transferring
money from one account to another within the same bank, they put a seven day
hold on the funds. He was beside
himself. He was on the phone with them
at a dollar a minute from the moment they opened until he finally had to leave
for the airport. Nothing got resolved,
but Enrique, the marina manager, agreed to take his card number and charge it
once the funds cleared. That reduced the
stress level several notches. He even
gave Scott a last minute ride to the airport.
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| Tarp Over Main Hatch |
My flight didn’t leave until 18:32, so I stayed behind to
finish closing up the boat. Enrique was
going to make a trip to town at 14:00 and said he’d take me to the airport on
the way. I spent the morning using the
internet and then went back to the boat to eat lunch. After lunch, I closed all the ports and
hatches. I took my leftover perishables
to Brad and Joanne on Loukia and had a last visit with them. Then I returned to the boat, lowered my
luggage to the ground on a halyard, removed the table in the main salon so it
wouldn’t get damaged when the engine went back in, and opened up the engine
compartment so that any water leaking through the main hatch would fall
directly into the bilge. Once the boat
was locked up tight, I stretched a tarp over the main hatch, which had a tendency
to leak because it had been disassembled so many times for engines to be
swapped in and out. I hustled up to the
office with my luggage to catch my ride, but Enrique had already left.
Being left behind was not a disaster, since my flight didn’t
leave for hours. I settled down to use
the internet and wait for Enrique or Memo to come back and call me a taxi. About 15:30, Memo came back from a trip to
the port captain’s office and gave me a ride to the airport on the way to town
for lunch. Once I got to the airport, I
was so early that everything was closed and I had to wait for another hour
before I could check in. My flight left
at 18:32 and it took just under two hours to fly to Mexico City. I had sent all my heavy clothes home with
Scott, so I was relieved that it was much warmer in Mexico City than it had
been on my way to Chiapas. I had about
an hour and a half before my plane to Puerto Vallarta. Unfortunately, all the restaurants had closed
early, so I was unable to get anything to eat.
The flight to Puerto Vallarta took just over an hour. We arrived before 23:30. It seemed like I got charged extra because it
was New Year’s Eve because the taxi ride to La Cruz cost 500 pesos (or $50.) It paid to have pesos because $50 worked out
to about 750 pesos. I had paid for a
taxi, but ended up getting put into a collective which should have cost half as
much. I didn’t complain because it was
late and everyone wanted to get off work and I might have been stranded if I
had been too particular. I shared a ride
with two French Canadian women who were going to a condo in Nuevo
Vallarta. I sat up front with the driver
and translated, since they didn’t speak Spanish. I was glad I had been reviewing my French in
my spare moments. We headed for La Cruz
after we dropped them off. I celebrated
New Year’s with the taxi driver in Mezcales.
There were fireworks from the hotels in Nuevo Vallarta and people were
launching floating lanterns from the beach and high places. Someone was actually launching one off the
overpass leading to La Cruz. I arrived
at my apartment about 15 minutes after midnight, but there was no hope of
sleeping until about 3:00 because of all the music, fireworks, and barking
dogs.
January 1, 2015
Despite having had nothing at all to drink on New Year’s
Eve, I moved slowly on New Year’s Day because I hadn’t had much sleep. The neighbors’ dog had been left outside, was
frightened by the fireworks, and whined and barked all night. He tried to dash into my apartment when I
came home. I probably should have just
let him (and his fleas) in. I did pretty
much nothing all day until late afternoon when I went down to the Gecko Rojo
for a couple of beers and a French dip sandwich. I was ready to say hello to some friends and
get out of the house.
January 2, 2015
Having done almost nothing the day before, I was in the mood
to be productive. I got up early and ran
before it was light. After breakfast, I
paid my electric bill and talked to Benito, the maintenance man, about the lack
of hot water in my guest bathroom and kitchen.
It turned out that the electrical breaker for the hot water heater in
the guest bathroom had been turned off.
I had flipped on all the breakers I could find, but Benito found another
panel I had missed. The kitchen was
another story, however, because the hot water flow was so low that judgement
day would have come before hot water reached the sink. Benito got his tools and adjusted the faucet
so that it produced a healthy flow of water that eventually did get hot. When I had stripped the guest bed in
preparation for taking the sheets to the laundry, I discovered that there were
no pillow cases. Carlos and Zit Zin had
not complained, so I had no idea. I
asked Benito for some pillow cases and he ended up giving me a complete set of
clean sheets so I didn’t need to pay to launder the old ones. I felt like I had had a productive morning by
9:30.
Once Benito left, I took my remaining laundry down the hill
to Sonja and then took a bus to the Mega to buy fresh fruits, vegetables and
toilet paper. Sonja was swamped with
laundry, so I had to buy another towel to use until she could finish my
washing. I visited the ATM before going
to the store and the lines were long at all the ATMs. All the retired people (and there are a lot of us) must have just
received their pensions on the 1st.
Back in La Cruz, I just had time to eat lunch and relax for a few
minutes before heading down to the marina for a meeting of women who sail. There were several interesting speakers
including a woman singlehander and a female captain who had survived being sunk
by a whale. There were about 75 women
there and it was a nice gathering, with wine and appetizers after the
talks. By the time I had stopped at the
Gecko Rojo for a beer, it was time for dinner and I headed back up the hill.
January 3, 2014
The last I had heard from Benito the day before, his wife
was going to come to clean my house in the afternoon. Therefore, I was quite surprised when they
knocked on my door at 9:00. I had managed
to keep up with the cleaning while I was here, but the house had gotten pretty
dirty while I was gone. Even with the
windows closed, dust and soot sifted in and the floor was filthy. I didn’t have a mop and honestly just didn’t
relish spending a whole day cleaning the house.
Valentina did a bang up job for 300 pesos. Valentina was also a runner and recognized me
from running at the marina. There
weren’t a lot of female runners in town, so I guessed the whole town probably
knew me as, “that crazy gringa who runs.”
She told me that Benito had told her to stop running because it made her
too skinny. I suggested she just eat
more and we had a laugh.
Once Valentina left, I ran into town to pick my laundry up
from Sonja before she closed. Sonja and
I have a mutual friend named Ron and I was amused to see my laundry labeled, “Amiga
de Ron.” I spent the afternoon trying,
unsuccessfully, to write song lyrics.
About all I accomplished was deciding that I had to get my hands on a
guitar. I looked for one on Craig’s list,
but the only one listed was an 10,000 peso Martin that I would have loved to
have, but did not need. About 5:30, I
once again descended the hill to pick up a roasted chicken with potatoes,
chiles, salsa, tortillas and rice for 95 pesos.
It would be good for three or four meals for me. Brad and Joanne in Chiapas swore by the roast
chicken stand down the hill from my apartment, so I had to give it a try. It was pretty tasty.
January 4, 2014
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| Market Area Deserted at 7:30 AM |
Sunday, I went for a run around the marina early. I started at the fish market end before it
got busy. At 7:30, there was hardly a
vestige of the farmer’s market that would envelop the malecon by 10:00. After my run, I had a leisurely breakfast and
then went back down the hill to the farmer’s market. Ever since I had moved in, I had wanted to
buy a colorful tablecloth for my apartment.
I had been resisting, but Scott convinced me that I should just go ahead
and do it. I looked at the ones at the
farmers’ market, but they seemed kind of pricey. I bought a sourdough baguette and headed
home, stopping at the tamale stand in the park to make my weekly tamale
purchase. On a whim, I looked at the
tablecloths being sold by a vendor in the park.
Without the high overhead of the farmers’ market, I got one 70 pesos cheaper
than the ones at the first place I had looked.
I chose one in shades of blue to match the color scheme of my apartment.
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| But Crowded Later |
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| My First Crayon Drawing |
No one had been sel-ling gui-tars at the mar-ket, so I de-cided
to catch the bus to the Walmart to see if they sold cheap guitars. The only guitars that Walmart had were
expensive electric ones. I didn’t need
groceries, but I picked up a toy to donate to the local orphanage in Bucerias
and a bottle of rum to take to my friends’ wedding reception the following
evening. The reality of two months in La
Cruz with nothing to do hit home, so I bought myself a jigsaw puzzle and some
art supplies so that I could work on my drawing. I returned home and spent a quiet evening
figuring out how to draw seriously using crayons, since they were all I had
been able to find at the Walmart. They
weren’t quite oil pastels, but I was still able to use some of the same
techniques to draw with them. I was
fairly pleased with the result.
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| My New Tablecloth |
January 5, 2014
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| My New Guitar |
Monday was a busy day.
I started off with 70 air squats and 70 sit-ups, plus 15 push-ups. I had started with 15 air squats and sit-ups
and had gradually increased them in increments of 5 until I had reached the
point where they were getting to be a major workout. This year, I was not going to return to
CrossFit out of shape and have to suffer through squats for the first week or
two upon my return. I barely had time
for a shower before the net at 8:30.
Once again, I inquired if anyone had a guitar I could rent, borrow, or
purchase inexpensively. Philo (of Philo's Bar) piped up
that he had a little Martin travel guitar that he wasn’t using and would be
willing to sell. I needed to be at the
marina at noon, so I stopped at Philo’s on the way down. The guitar was small and the body made of
formica. It wasn’t very impressive, but
it sounded okay, was well made, and was small enough to carry on an airplane or
stow in my bunk on a boat. A hundred and
twenty five dollars got me the guitar and a case. It was more than I had intended to spend, but
I bought it because it seemed like I could use it in the future and might be
able to stop buying a guitar in every destination.
With the guitar slung across my back, I continued on to the
marina to help wrap Christmas gifts for the children at an orphanage in
Bucerias that had been adopted by the marina.
We filled two pinatas with small toys and then divided up the mountain
of donated gifts into 27 piles, one for each of the children in the
orphanage. Clothes and blankets went
into another pile to be donated to the orphanage and distributed by the
caretakers. Once we had divvied up the
gifts, we set to work wrapping. It was
tempting to lump several gifts together, but we wrapped each one separately so
that the kids could have fun opening the packages. Even with a lot of helpers, it was a big job
and took us a couple of hours.
Home again, I ate some lunch and then sat down to attempt my
first online guitar lesson from a website called JamPlay.com. For a monthly subscription, you can gain
access to unlimited guitar lessons and they have a large variety of instructors
for different levels and styles. Having
slacked off on my guitar playing for decades and developed a lot of bad habits,
I decided to start fairly close to the beginning, hoping I would find
inspiration for my songwriting or at least learn to play some new songs. The new guitar was small and had light gauge
strings and was very easy to play. It
felt comfortable right away. I amused
myself for the rest of the afternoon until it was time to get ready to go to
Greg and Jen’s party.
I had met Greg and Jen the previous year when they were part
owners of the Gecko Rojo and then run into them again when I was house hunting. They had a big yellow house on a corner in
downtown La Cruz with a lovely walled garden shaded by mango trees. I was very tempted to rent a room there, but
had ultimately opted for my own apartment with room for guests. Still, they had invited me to their wedding
reception, which promised live music. It
was a very fun party. The band that was
supposed to play never showed, but three other guests (guitar, bass and drums)
picked up the slack. They had never
played together before, but were professional enough that they sounded
great. I met some new people and danced
a bit. I stayed until almost midnight
and could hear the music all the way home.
The music was still going strong when I finally fell asleep about 1:00.
January 6, 2014
Having stayed up late the night before and forgotten to turn
the radio back on after my guitar lesson, I slept through the net and didn’t
wake until almost 9:00. I was stiff,
anyway, from the previous day’s air squats and dancing, so decided to give
myself a rest from running. I made
myself bacon and eggs and studied languages.
Learning Spanish was an ongoing process and I had been studying Italian
for the past three years. With all the free
time I had in La Cruz, I was also reviewing the French and German I had studied
in high school and college, respectively.
I remembered more French and less German that I had expected. Daily, I cursed the fact that even the
romance languages couldn’t agree on the gender of nouns.
After lunch, I worked through another guitar lesson. My fingertips were starting to become
chronically sore. I knew from experience
that I would eventually build callouses, but would have to gut out the initial period. Every time I did this, I berated myself for
ever having neglected my playing and allowed my fingers to get soft.
At 3:00, I went down to the marina for a seminar on the
health of the ocean. The pollution and
debris in the ocean had reached a critical point. There were now 60 tons of plastic in the ocean
for every ton of zooplankton. The
mass of garbage was so heavy that it had slowed the ocean currents and was
now affecting the weather patterns. Two gyres, with their corresponding garbage patches, in the Pacific had coalesced into one gigantic gyre. The plastics
were killing sea life and making their way into the food chain, poisoning us
all. Just as devastatingwere the sewage
and fertilizers that washed into the oceans, creating over 500 dead zones where
nothing could live. Over 50% of coral
reefs had died. Last year, in La Cruz,
there was a red tide (an algae bloom often fueled by fertilizers that consumes
all the oxygen in the water) that killed all the fish in the marina and the
marina employees had to scoop the dead fish out of the water with nets. It was truly disgusting.
After that sobering talk, I stopped at the Gecko Rojo for a
drink and ended up chatting with Sherry and Bob from Nirvana. We compared dead engine stories and did more
chatting than drinking, which suited me fine.
When dinnertime came, we parted and I headed up the hill to make
guacamole before my avocado rotted and eat the remainder of Saturday’s roasted
chicken.
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