One month ago today, we said goodbye to our little blue bus and hit the road. We had a leisurely 6 day journey to Mazatlan – no drama, no surprises… We took advantage of the hot springs in T or C, slept a couple of nights on the beach in Puerto Penasco, watched baseball playoffs in lots of different towns.
Because of our early arrival, we were able to watch our end of town come to life. Our first drive through of the area brought us through a ghost town – nothing was open… One by one, we watched things open up (and found ourselves to be the first customers in several of the places….). One of the fun perks of being here before any of our regular places were open is that we got to check out 3 new restaurants. All of them have turned out to be excellent discoveries.
A big part of our Mazatlan experience is the food. That is one of the reasons that our first couple weeks here were kind of an adjustment. I fasted for 3 days at the beginning and Hal was definitely on half rations those same days. We threw ourselves into unpacking and setting up and then threw ourselves in an extreme opposite direction with the full moon on the beach.
It took a while to adjust to the heat and humidity. Never was I so grateful for our sweet little air conditioner. It has made all the difference. Every day, I can spend a little more time outside. The beginnings of a garden are happening.
We have reconnected with almost all of our Mazatlan friends. It warms the heart to know that they are as happy to see us as we are to see them. And it is fun to hear about everyone’s summer experiences. We are coming from the worst drought we have ever seen and they have just experienced the wettest August in a while…..
We have watched our end of town slowly open up. Cafes and restaurants are almost all back up and running. We were sad to see that our pescaderia (fish market) was not able to make a go of it. But so far, all of our friends are back in business. The economy is still struggling with even less tourism in sight. But these people are a resilient breed. From what we observe as we explore, the money from the city coffers is going into new schools and keeping the city clean and beautiful.
The city also continues to offer lots of amazing cultural/art events – we attended a wonderful concert last week with Abed Azrie (nope, we had never heard of him, but it was pretty awesome).
Hal has already overseen work on the bus (brake lines) and on the truck (air conditioning), tried out his boogie board, done 2 tarot readings, has been swimming a lot and has ridden his beloved bike. He has a sweet little coconut station by our “shed”.
Last year, coconuts were a huge discovery for us. This year, we are adding guava to the list. I love this tropical life.
And we have already started our little road trips – we went into the mountains last week and checked out Concordia and Copala – old mining towns. Lovely scenery.
So far, we know that November will bring us our first visitor, our sis Hannah! But enough for now. We’re off for a cuppa joe at the Looney Bean.
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