February 2023 Recap

As is typical, the short month of February went by very fast.  The absolute best thing that happened in February was the confirmation from the vet in Valle Dorado that Heffay’s eye was completely healed!  What an immense relief that was.  It had been a very long haul of wrestling him three times a day to put the three different medications in his eye.  We were so very relieved!

In February we also made the difficult decision to put the kayak up for sale.  As much as we love it out on the water we’ve accepted that it is just too much boat for us to manoeuvre at this point in our lives.  It’s far to heavy to move back and forth to the water.  If we had a property on a lake somewhere that we could dock it, we would get another one in a heartbeat.  Dan put the add up in Marketplace Nanaimo and miraculously we had a bite within a couple of days.  Even more incredible is that the people interested happened to be on a sailboat sailing to Costa Rica.  At the time they saw the add they had just sailed passed Lo de Marcos a few days earlier.  So, obviously they couldn’t see the boat in person, but having bought their sailboat virtually they were comfortable trusting us.  We had a quick video call through WhatsApp so they could see the boat and the deal was made.  And the next crazy part….they want to pick it up in Nanaimo!  Talk about a small world.  The deal is made, a deposit has been received and we’ll deliver it to them by mid May when we are home.  In the place of the kayak Dan already has a line on an inflatable fishing boat that will be much easier for us.  We’ll pick that one up in Abbotsford once we cross the border.

This is the boat we’ll pick up to replace the kayak once we get home to Canada

I started off the month on a good foot or good feet 😊 I treated myself to another wonderful gel pedicure for only $300 pesos ($21 Cdn).  I also tried lash extensions for the first time.  So many women have them down here.  For $600 pesos and after an hour and a half I had my new lashes.  Wow, how different they feel!  I wasn’t sure how the glue would be as my eyes are sometimes sensitive to makeup.  After the first day the glue didn’t bother me, but the feeling/view looking out my eyes with these long lashes was something to get used to.  Sometimes I liked how they looked, but honestly most times I felt like Miss Piggy lol!  They just weren’t “me”.  After a week I decided I couldn’t take them anymore and decided to remove them.  Thankfully a little olive oil and a cotton swab was all that was needed to remove the glue.  

See what I mean? Lol! 😂 

We also decided to get our recliners and dinette booth recovered in a lighter cream colour to brighten up the RV. Yes, they’ll show the dirt more easily, but I’ll make some arm/back covers to help protect them.  I already picked out a couple light weight Mexican blankets that I’ll use for the fabric.  The furniture should be done just before we’re ready to leave at the end of March.  Total cost quoted is $14k pesos (approx $1000 Cdn).  Our neighbours here in the park recently had their couches and recliners recovered by this upholsterer and the outcome was amazing.  We’re really looking forward to it!

In February I had the temporary filling removed and a permanent one to replace it.  I was grateful not to need a root canal.  Total cost start to finish $1100 pesos (approx $80 Cdn) for first check up, two x-rays, a temporary filling then the permanent filling.  And although I didn’t get a cleaning, for interest sake the cost is only $500 pesos (approx $37 Cdn).  Incredibly affordable.

Dan got his last tattoo for this season from Bobby, a portrait of Tweety one of our cats who passed away unexpectedly late 2019.  It now balances out the tattoos on both arms.  His plan next year is to work on full sleeves to blend everything together.  Total cost $2500 (approx $180 Cdn).

After noticing so many people in the park went without A/C during most of the day and every night we decided to try it ourselves.  We started by turning off the A/C in the evenings once the sun had gone down fully and the outside temperature started to drop.  I was concerned it would be way too humid, but after a few days doing this we got used to the humidity.  The humidity climbs up to the high 70 percent mark inside with the windows open, but the temperature does eventually cool down nicely.  It’s nice to have some fresh sea air moving through too.  That is until the overnight burning of trash starts.  Every now and then someone nearby in the community burns what smells like trash in the late night/early morning hours.  It wakes me up instantly and I run around the RV quickly closing the windows.  Thankfully, that isn’t an every night occurrence.  And so now, starting early February we no longer run the A/C 24/7.  It goes off around 7pm each night and we don’t need to turn it on again until 10 or 11 a.m. the next day.  The evenings cool down nicely to around 17 ºC outside and inside has gotten as low as 19 which is just perfect for me!  It’s making a big difference on our electrical readings, so much so that the owner Juan Jose even noticed and asked us about it.  It’ll be nice to reduce the final electricity bill at the end of the season.  By end of February we’d paid $5580 pesos for electricity which is just over $400 Cdn. By comparison, last year we paid $7000 pesos for the same amount of time.  And, with the dollar dropping like a stone, every penny counts.

Back at home this month they were still getting snow storms on the island in late February!  Crazy but not necessarily “unusual”.  It’s a reminder to us that it is still winter and gets us thinking about staying longer down south to avoid nasty weather.  Although we’ll still be home by early May, we really hope not to have a repeat of the crappy spring we experienced at home last year.  Fingers, toes and eyes crossed!  Our plan remains to leave LDM at the end of March.  We don’t need to exit Mexico until April 23 (our 180th day in country) so we may stop and stay a few days at other parks here in Mexico along the route home.  We’ll stretch out our time in the nice warm sunshine as long as we can.

Our big guy Lou back home playing in snow dumped in a late February storm

We had a few other “firsts” here in LDM this month.  One was getting the truck washed at a new wash station on the highway just north of the town.  For a mere $150 pesos (approx $11 Cdn) upwards of five or six Mexicans pressure wash the entire truck, do a complete detail of the inside, apply armour all to the dash and tires and dry the entire vehicle.  They do an absolutely AMAZING job.  And, as you wait there is a convenient restaurant right beside where you can sit outside, enjoy a cold drink and have a few tacos.  Good food too!  May seem odd to get excited about a car wash, but this town is so dusty and the truck and everything else gets absolutely covered in no time.  Having a place to take it to clean inside and out for such a great price is a real luxury! 

Good food and a shady place to wait 

Two to three cars in the production line at once.  A very smooth operation

You can almost smell how clean the inside is from the picture

Sparkly!

The other first was our introduction to the Green Orchid Bee. Wow!  What an incredibly beautiful creature.  We had an up close and personal visit with one at our site.  A unique feature of the male species of this bee is their attraction to certain neotropical orchids which produce strong medicinal scents.  Dan’s Medistik,  which contains menthol and eucalyptus oil is what lured this guy in to visit us.  

Most of the month however was full of up and downs with Gizmo.  The integration into the house was really taking some time.  We knew it’d be difficult as where not in a house that has lots of room for separation.  We made due by closing off the bedroom for him, but that was difficult for HeyZeus as the bed was where he came to get cuddles and sleep in between Dan’s legs.  With time though, he and HoseHey seemed to adjust.  The real challenge was getting him to feel safe, although HeyZeus was starting to come around, HoseHey was not.  We’d have to watch him like a hawk as he was always primed to attack.  Poor Gizmo was a nervous wreck and sadly his anxiety drove him to start peeing on our bed!  😳 That was not fun, I was doing laundry every day and researching how to get the smell of cat urine out of the mattress.  Of course, even though we have a mattress cover, he had an accident on it one day when the cover was on the line drying.  One positive, I learned how well hydrogen peroxide and baking soda works to remove urine odour - wow!  

At one point late in February after having many days of up and downs we decided that it might be best for Gizmo to have a home he wasn’t so scared to be in.  It broke my heart as I’d become so attached to him, and he to me.  Finding an animal a home here, especially a cat is not an easy task.   Thankfully I found a cat rescue that would take him.  It is an amazing place called Paraiso Felino.  Although they had over 300 cats, they were willing to bring him in.  The plan was to take him to his new home at the end of the week, but then Dan said “let’s give him another shot”.  I’m SO happy that he said that because things seemed to turn a corner.  Although he’s still wary of HoseHey, HeyZeus began to form more of a relationship with him. He’d come into the bedroom and lie with him and he once again resumed his routine of sleeping between Dan’s legs.  I think this, coupled perhaps with the purchase of a Feliway Diffuser, helped relieve Gizmos’s anxiety and calm HoseHey’s aggression. That and I swear he sensed we were going to send him away and so he decided he’d try harder smile 😊.  

Heffay letting Gizmo know he’d never hurt him 💕 

My sweet baby boy

HeyZeus and Gizmo cuddling up together

HeyZeus back to sleeping in his bed on our bed…but ever watchful where Dad’s hand is!

I’ll end this recap with some pics of the newly painted archway in the town square.   Each image depicts a local activity or person.  Stunning artistry.

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January 2023 Recap

January started out rather interesting with some violence in and around Mazatlan after the arrest of El Chapo’s son Ovidio Guzman Lopez.  On the highways trucks were set on fire to block the roads and the Mazatlan and Culiacan airports were shut down after gunfire at an airplane.  Following that businesses closed and residents were urged to stay inside.  Pictures of the deserted beach and city streets were very ominous.  The violence lasted for a couple days and then things returned to normal.  That activity was a fair distance from us here in Lo de Marcos.  At 400 km we were far enough away to not notice any difference in normal day to day life.  A couple bloggers I follow stay in Mazatlan at different parks and both reported no concerns for their own safety even though they were technically in the heart of the action. That said, I am glad it wasn’t happening close to us.

Early January also brought a beautiful full moon coupled with a high tide that took away most of the beach and flooded some streets.  It also brought with it huge waves that local surfers flocked to. It was a fun few days watching all the different surfers enjoying themselves.  This year we’ve noticed the water to be much rougher than we remembered last year with many days of high waves and red  flags warning swimmers of strong undertows and rip tides.  

The clearest picture of a full moon I’ve ever taken without a tripod!

This year we brought with us a small washer/spinner we got on Amazon.  It had been wonderful!  Especially since we had our unfortunate incident at the laundromat where our sheets were “lost”.  The only downside of the machine we got is that it was not quite big enough to do king size sheets.  So, even though our machine was brand new I started looking to see if there were slightly larger ones available.  They seem to be prevalent down here in Mexico, not really something I’ve seen available in Canada.  We purchased a 10 kg capacity machine, double the capacity of the one we brought with us.  Wow, what a difference!  Not only can I do a complete set of king size sheets including pillow cases in one load, the size saves so much time as I can do fewer (but larger) loads.  I never thought I’d enjoy doing laundry so much lol!  And the extra bonus of getting it back the SAME DAY!  After spinning it almost dry, it takes next to no time at all to fully dry on the line in the wonderful sunshine down here.  I’m grateful we have the ability to do our own laundry in this park, as well as hang our clothes to dry.  Many parks in the US don’t allow any kind of clothes rack to be outside your RV. 

By mid January we started to experience more and more issues with our power.  The breaker on the box began flipping rather regularly.  We reviewed our load, all that we have hooked to power and made some slight changes like turning on the electric water heater only when we were going to use it, or using the gas water heater and unplugged our outside fridge/cooler.  We discovered that even with the Sola electrical voltage regulator box which boosts low voltage by up to 10% we were only getting 103-105 volts at times.  That was the source of our issue, not so much what we were using but our surge protector flipping the power off because the voltage was too low and could damage electronics and appliances at that level.  We discovered many were having the same issue throughout the town, not just the park.  Not much we can do about it, but continue to allow the surge protector to do it’s job.

Also mid January the water issues resumed.  Not just poor pressure but the volume of water.  Often overnight I’d notice that there was no water at all. The park owner Juan Jose cautioned everyone to conserve water and asked that no more washing vehicles took place as the well was running dry and was taking longer to replenish.  We continue to keep our tank full of water and alternate between using the onboard water and using the water straight from the outside outlet. 

And, more exciting animal news this month too!  Dan saw a post about a stray kitten who needed a home.  Who am I kidding, he was LOOKING for posts for kittens needing a home 😊.  We brought him home January 15 after a kind hearted Mexican family rescued him from a busy gas station on the highway in La Peñita.  They had five cats of their own and couldn’t take him in, but wanted desperately to find him a good home.  We were happy to answer that call 💕. At first we thought we’d name him Marco after Lo de Marcos, but soon realized it didn’t suit him.  We then settled on ‘Gizmo’ as his name.  

Gizmo when he was stranded at a gas station in La Peñita, looking for someone to love him.

He’s absolutely the sweetest little guy, full of cuddles and purrs.  He sleeps with me everynight, running up and flopping down on my chest before crashing to sleep.  Our biggest challenge would be integrating him into our “wild” home, particularly with HoseHey as he’s the “moody” one.  Initially I also thought it might be challenging for him to trust the dog.  The poor guy literally pee’d himself as I carried him past Heffay on day one 😢.  In a short amount of time though, after observing Heffay with HoseHey and HeyZeus he’s become completely comfortable around Heffay, thankfully!  As I write this blog post now in mid February, the integration with HoseHey and HeyZeus is still a work in progress.  Not so much HeyZeus, but definitely with HoseHey. All I can hope for is that he’ll be settled in enough to feel safe once we hit the road at the end of March.  I’m sure that’ll be a bit scary for him, once we start the engine of our beautiful beast and his whole house starts to move and make loud noises. 

Day 1 - “Ah, home sweet home.  Yes…this’ll do” 💕 

Poor guy had oil and grime from the gas station all over his chin. 

The day we picked him up.  
He was a little dirty and very scared but quickly settled into Dan’s cat whisperer arms ❤️ 

For the first time this year we visited the Hilltop J.E.E.P Refuge in La Peñita.  Wow, what a gorgeous place.  The view is breathtaking.  It’s unbelievable how many animals they help each year. 

Hilltop Jaltemba Equine Education Project (JEEP) refuge in La Peñita de Jaltemba, Nayarit

How gorgeous a setting is this?  Raised food bowls on platforms looking out to the ocean.  Million dollar views!

Also a first, this year I took some time to actually walk around Sayulita.  Last year we only drove through a couple times and that can be very overwhelming.  It is such a busy little town.  My neighbour and I went in and walked around one afternoon to check out the shops.  A few hours was just the right amount of time! Many wonderful shops, murals and restaurants.  It’d be far too  overwhelming for me personally to spend too much time at once there.  Let’s just say Dan was happy not to join us, lol! 

Pretty shops, but not near as cheap as you may think when you think of Mexico

Huichol art store

Colourful streets

Beautiful murals

On the way back from a Costco run in Puerto Vallarta we also stopped to check out one of the various copper vendors along the highway.  Simply spectacular pieces!

This year we also started feeding the local birds.  We have a pair of orioles that now visit us daily along with a small woodpecker and other birds.  We feed them with sliced oranges placed in the palm tree at the corner of our pad.  It’s very peaceful to watch them.

A pair of Oriole’s enjoying the sliced oranges
This is a zoomed in shot through our sun shade.  The male is in front and his mate just behind him.  
You can just see her face and beak

A bit of a shocking discovery down here has been the price of medications.  Everyone knows Mexico is famous for their plethora of various drugs available over the counter.  But don’t be fooled, they are crazy expensive!  I’m not talking about those drugs though, I’m talking about simple allergy meds.  I take Reactine daily for allergies (both seasonal and animal allergies).  I buy them in Canada at Costco.  Getting the Kirkland generic brand I pay approx $23 Canadian for 200.  Realizing I would run out while down here I went to the pharmacy to find some.  They don’t have the “Reactine” brand but there are Mexican manufacturers who sell the same ingredients under another name.  I was shocked to find they cost $159 pesos (just under $12 Cdn with the current exchange rate) for TEN!  That’s more than $1 per tablet!  Ouch!  And no other brands, no larger bulk quantities available. Sold in packages of 10 only!  I don’t want to assume it’s this way throughout Mexico, perhaps there are more options in larger cities. We ran into the same issue in getting bulk Benadryl for Heffay.  With his constant scratching I give him Benadryl to sometimes help.  The dosage for animals is based on weight and is WAY more than a human would take.  Heffay’s dose is 4 tablets at a time.  Those too are expensive with no real generic brands.  Let’s just say I’ll be sure to bring enough stock for next year from Canada.

And in Kayak news, the crack is considered officially repaired.  Dan had it out in the water a few times and it was dry as a bone inside.  YES! 

Throughout January Heffay’s eye continued to heal and seemed to be going well for the first few weeks with the running and itchiness basically gone.  Then, near to the end of the three week treatment the watering returned and I noticed a nasty looking blood blister like dot on his eye 😢.  I was so disheartened and thought for sure this was a bad sign.  Particularly because he had started to rub at it again and with such force that I had to wrap his front dew claw to prevent him from making it worse!  Off to the vet we went, at least a one hour drive each way for the three week check up.

Ouch!! 😢 

Thankfully I was completely wrong, the vet was elated to see the bloody red dot and said that was a sign it was healing and that he was ready for a new medication to be added to the regime.  So off we went with more drugs and another two weeks of 3 meds/day.  Fingers crossed we’d be officially done this medication routine by early Feb!

The day we got back from the vet in Valle Dorado, I noticed Gizmo straining in the litter box.  When I went to investigate he had blood in his pee, a significant amount too!  So, off to the vet here in town we went for some antibiotics.  We were hopeful it was just a bladder infection and not crystals.  I’m happy to report his fever cleared within a day and the blood disappeared from his urine.  Phew!  And, just in time for us to get him fixed 😊 His surgery went well and a mere $600 pesos later ($42 Cdn) he was fixed. Next steps were to complete his vaccinations. 

In other medical news lol, I booked myself in for a dentist appt.  I’d been experiencing some pain occasionally when I bit down on my lower right side.  Now that I’m retired (or unemployed as Dan likes to jest), I don’t have any dental coverage at home.  No better place than down here to have things looked at where it will be much less of an impact financially.  My check up appointment including x-rays only cost $300 pesos ($21 Cdn).  From the x-ray they determined that I may need a root canal of one tooth where a filling I have was within a millimetre of the root.   Next appointment would be to remove the current filling, apply “medicine” then refill it temporarily and see if I experience the pain again.  If yes, then I’ll need a root canal.  If not then the medicine and a new filling should do the trick.  So far, no charge for that service yet…they’ll charge me once they determine what the final treatment will be.  

The month rounded off with a nice surprise.  The breeder of HoseHey and HeyZeus Jewelspride Bengals wrote an ebook about travelling with cats.  She asked if she could use some of my pictures in her book and of course I was happy to assist.  HeyZeus is now on the cover of her book

HeyZeus is a star! This picture was taken down here in Lo de Marcos last winter.

So, all in all January was a pretty busy month although felt primarily filled with veterinary visits.  I’m not complaining though.  I can’t imagine how much it would have cost us to have all those vet visits in Canada.