A view of Boquito Beach in both directions here at Santiago - this is a weekday so the crowds are downWe’re still here in Bahia Santiago surrounded by long flat beaches all around, access to stores and palapas (beach restaurants), and weather that has been warm and inviting. On Saturday and Sunday there was quite a turnout of vacationers – gringos on the patios of the beach houses and locals camped in the sand. Even with the stepped-up activity on the beach, we understand from cruisers who have been here in previous years that the population of beachgoers in general (and cruisers in particular) is down sharply. Apparently the economic situation up north has Mexico as well, and folks are deciding that a winter vacation is not in the cards for this year.
Jim at the soccer game - futbol hereOn Sunday we attended a local soccer game with Jim and Susan of “Windward Bound,” hosted by a former cruiser and his wife, Stan and Mary Jo (formerly of “SolMate”), who have decided to settle here in Santiago. Stan and Mary Jo are avid soccer fans and encourage the cruisers each year to come out and support the local teams. They picked us up in their van near the beach and took us to the playing field. It was 30 pesos apiece to get in, beer was 15 pesos (at a 14:1 conversion rate that’s about a dollar a beer), and the tacos are 70 pesos apiece. That amounted to a family entertainment cost of about $20 for a family of 4 if everyone has a couple of drinks and three tacos. How does that compare with taking the family to a movie or to a minor league ball game in the states?
Sunday night we had dinner with Jim and Susan of “Windward Passage,” a great chicken/broccoli casserole followed by Sheilagh’s pressure-cooker, lemon cheesecake. Sheilagh uses the pressure cooker quite a bit in order to consume less propane and speed up the cooking process. Afterwards we learned how to play a dice game, called “Farkle,” and a card game, called “Ninety-nine” from Jim and Susan. Nothing like improving our knowledge of competitive games that require no exercise! Now we just have to find some dice at one of the stores in Mexico.
Monday we gave Jim and Susan a ride into the beach in our dinghy because they had problems with their pull rope mechanism on their outboard. We later met them at the local gathering place, the Oasis Beach Club, for a drink before taking them back to their boat. It turns out that they had to leave the mechanism in town with the mechanic to be picked up the following day; so we made the next day a shopping trip into Santiago. We discovered the local “Mercado,” which is a conglomeration of shops of various types under the same roof, where one can get hardware items right next to the fish market (not my favorite place in terms of odor), and vegetables right next to shoes and clothing. While shopping we stopped at a local palapa and had tacos and tortas for about $6 per couple including beer.
Later we met at a crossroads, known as “Hollywood and Vine,” where cruisers are known to meet. The meeting place is a wide sidewalk outside a package store with dozens of plastic chairs in stacks for the use of customers. You buy your beer or soda inside, grab a chair off the stack, and place it in a circle with other cruisers to drink and converse. As we were sitting there we ran into new cruisers (to us), Fred and Cathy of “Sonrisa,” introduced by Jim and Susan, who had met them at an earlier anchorage. They were traveling by bus from Melaque down to Santiago (about 20 miles away) to pick up a sim card for a telephone that was available in Santiago as the closest location. In the normal working environment in the U.S. a multi-hour bus trip to pick up a phone card would not have been economically feasible, but here we have the time to make any trip an adventure.
My dragon piece for Mexican Train dominoes - story belowTuesday night we had Jim and Susan over for deep-dish pizza and margaritas. Afterwards they taught us how to play cribbage – well, they taught me because “nothing happened” when Sheilagh tried to focus on the rules. The end of a full day is not a good time to try to learn something new, I guess. So we decided to play Mexican Train dominoes and got trounced by them. I was even using a new dragon playing piece that was supposed to bring me luck, and that didn’t happen. I decided I needed to let my dragon become an observer for a couple of games before having it participate.
Washday on AuroraWednesday was to be the day when Sheilagh would try a new ammonia treatment on white items to get the yellowish stain out of the necks caused by sunscreen/perspiration. We had heard of cruisers soaking their whites in Oxyclean for three days straight, while ammonia was supposed to be a two-hour soak. Sheilagh decided she liked two hours rather than three days; so she dutifully followed the directions from other cruisers for using the ammonia. After soaking, washing, wringing them out in a hand-driven ringer, and hanging the items on the line to dry, she found no improvement at the end of the day. Needless to say, Sheilagh was not a “happy camper,” which caused me to contemplate slipping off the boat until she had settled down. Instead I made her a rum and coke to help her come to grips with her perceived washday “failure,” and that seemed to work. The upshot is that I am no longer allowed to wear white T-shirts and Sheilagh’s new washday miracle cleaning solution for these kinds of stains will be a blowtorch, she says.
During the week I’ve made several kayaking expeditions to the mouth of the river to try more surfing. When the tide is in, I’m able to paddle up the river hugging the sides, allowing for a casual return down river in the current as it works against a stronger tide. However, the waves are very low coming into the river; so there is very little surfing. At low tide I can’t get very far up the river, but the current and waves both are much stronger. So I now know to plan my kayaking for low tide, which is late in the afternoon at this point in the lunar cycle.
Wednesday night we entertained John and Cathy of “Batu,” who had come into the bay on the previous day. When we left them in the Barra lagoon, they had whipped me so bad at Mexican Train that I was still licking my wounds a week later. I knew not to use my new dragon until it had some more experience under its scales; so I allowed it to watch all night. Luckily my standard game piece stood me in good stead as I trounced everyone and recaptured my self esteem. Now if I can just get my dragon to understand its role, using its fire breath, I will be unbeatable.
This is actually a sunrise that I couldn't get Sheilagh out of bed to seeThursday and Friday we did a lot of resting and I spent more time surfing the mouth of the river. You might wonder how we can be resting all the time. I figure that I have about 50 years of catching up with missed sleep as a result of 1) studying for tests and writing papers in high school and college, 2) getting up at zero-dark-thirty for all-day Navy flights, 3) working late at night for various companies to insure "critical" things got done, 4) flying on red-eye flights and preparing for early morning presentations when I got there, 5) staying up with sick kids who needed to be walked in the middle of the night (while Sheilagh got some rest), 6) waking to calls in the middle of the night from daughters with problems of various sorts, and 7) well, be aware that I could go on. As a matter of fact I need to rest up from writing this blog.
More later . . .
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