Beach Bound Bengals: 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 😊.