Life since we arrived Tuesday night has sunk into a routine worthy of a long term camper. We however will be leaving this weekend and next week will be stationary in Zihuatanejo. We sleep with air-conditioning because we can with a power cord to keep our batteries charged night after night, and because its hot. We're looking forward to mountain travel even though we will be leaving the beaches for a while. The mountains will be cooler and the cities will be hopefully more historic. The worst of our current campground is the lack of interesting photo opportunities. Rusty isn't too keen to walk much so I may considering taking off by myself to see what I can find. There is a dog in the far left hand side of the picture below. The Coconut plantation is across the street from our campground.
Our Canadian neighbors who live in British Columbia have been coming here for years. They rescued an abandoned dog and give money and fish to a local family they have befriended. Fish you ask? Yes, they love to fish along this shore, damaged by hurricane activity this summer:
The weird part is the local North Americans, people who travel here year after year and overwinter. Suddenly I feel like a "Touron" in Key West and it cracks me up. Some locals in the Keys love to treat their meal tickets like nuisances on the streets and as I've said before I empathize with exhaustion in a tourist resort but you have to acknowledge the value of your local industry, especially tourists, and I was always polite to visitors. Around here the North Americans are like a close ranked private colony in the village. Its a pity because I enjoy Dale and Bonita's stories of coming back here year after year. The ones I meet on the street studiously ignore me which makes me feel like an invader in their private corner of Mexico. I love being on the road and perhaps my happy smile makes me look weird or creepy?I have always even on my crappy days exchanged good mornings with passers by on the streets and I still do that here. My mother would give me a talking to if I didn't. Serious joggers get a pass.
It's just weird. I really like wandering around Mexico and I'm always ready to share the joy. Mexicans often start a conversation by saying how fat our dog is. Me too I reply, can't have a thin dog with a fat man. To think Rusty is fat gives you an idea how lean local dogs are, but then Mexicans themselves live in pretty lean times. By contrast a young woman and an older woman striding out of town ignored me as I watched them go. Rusty sped up and I passed them as they were studying and photographing some form of honeysuckle common to this area. Good morning I said and the young woman replied overly loudly to my greeting while the older women continued to ignore me. She wasn't deaf as they were talking together as they walked.
These kinds of encounters put me off the idea of ever settling in Mexico certainly in places where Americans "feel safe" doing just that. I don't want to be part of a colony, an isolationist outpost, and I don't want to feel that "touron" mentality towards outsiders again. I had enough of that in Key West. I don't even have work as an excuse to be grumpy nowadays and if you're spending a whole winter in these lovely places you should express your good fortune at least with an appearance of joy even if inside you are burning up with disappointment. I read Doug Bennett's posts from Key West (This Week On The Island is his blog) and I want my final resting place to be like that. I want my time on the road to be cheerful, and expression of the joy of the place and time, as he expresses with his pictures and words. I wouldn't mind being neighbors with someone like that.
It's a ten minute walk from the campground into the village of Barra de Potosí. Alert readers will have noticed quite a few towns called Barra de Something on our journey down the coast. Barra simply means sandbar, so any city called Barra de Something is located on sand and usually next to an estuary on the coast. In this case de Potosí. Potosí. apparently means fortune but that seems rather obscure in this case.
They've figured out the value of park g tin the village and I saw a ton of signs offering estacionamento (parking). for up to three bucks a day. The restaurants at the end of the village overlooking the water have prominent signs banning dogs so that's a non starter for us. If you look at this photo you could just shrug and say what else do you expect but its not that simple.
The town is actually quite clean with paint, swept streets and trash cans. This was actually a collection of trash, poorly binned, but swept up. There weren't people around as I walked Rusty early before the 90 degree heat kicked in.
Rusty prefers being on a leash and I worry less about him darting into the street to avoid packs of local dogs. Usually they aren't aggressive but three or four on one overwhelms little Rusty and he gets fearful. Sometimes I bend down to pretend pick up a stone to get them to back off. When he's happy his tail flies like a flag.
Mask rules at the entrance to town, and I just put my mask on despite being outdoors and socially distanced etc...it just seems polite.
On the whole I prefer towns without a strong gringo presence. I know we shop at Walmart and Costco but we take pleasure in checking out small stores and poking around the local neighborhoods. I startled a North American coming out of his home with two adopted Mexican dogs who were barking wildly at my silent companion. Good morning I said as my mother taught me. He just stared at me. A woman with a shopping bag on her arm scurried past me, both of us masked as the town prefers masks to be worn even in open air, and she glanced away as though I were infectious with something worse than Covid.
If you look closely at the washing line you'll see I caught a bird in flight...entirely by accident.
Bonita who lives in the apartment in the campground told us dogs were everywhere years ago but these days the strays have been removed and the dogs on the streets are owned and you can even see collars on them. In Mexico dogs actually live with a. lot more freedom than US pets cosseted and tied upon leashes or herded into yards. They run around all day and play and come over to inspect newcomers. The leash gives Rusty confidence I have his back. When he feels safe off leash he shakes his head and if we're off the main roads I let him go.
Rusty spends most of his day snoozing and watching people come and go form various spots in the sand. At night we have to practically drag him in to eat dinner and then later to make sure he sleeps properly in his bed. I'm not sure why it matters but I'd feel weird if he was outside perfectly safe in this tightly closed compound but I want him in the van. If one of us gets up to pee we let him out after five in the morning and he sits outside quite happily until I surface and take him for a walk.
A happy dog in Mexico.
