Downtown

Last year this street corner was occupied by a delightful women’s Co-op restaurant. Not any more. 

Oxxo is the Circle K style convenience store chain across Mexico, followed closely by the equally garish Kiosko chain.

Punta Pérula is growing and has two Oxxo stores and one Kiosko which seems like overkill. 

One camper mentioned in relation to a recent rash of bicycle thefts that Punta Pérula is a “cartel town” so crime against tourists isn’t tolerated. How anyone knows where the cartels operate and how they work is beyond me. She said a Mexican she has befriended told her about the drug traffickers’ reach. For outsiders like us this is just another Mexican beach town.

But I do want one of these coaches one day. I’d convert it to a camper and drive it everywhere just as the Mexican bus drivers do. This one brought a load of youngsters from Aguascalientes ten hours away for a weekend at the beach. It has huge storage bays underneath…yum. 

Strawberry and banana milkshake shared between the two of us as a pick me up. 

Many dogs live good lives in Mexico not locked away indoors but free to come and go and nap on the sidewalks. 

Dog ownership is increasing in the Mexican middle class, but I keep Rusty leashed near traffic as not all drivers are dog tolerant. 

The main square. I was looking for fresh flour tortillas. 

Italika is the biggest manufacturer of motorcycles you’ll see in Mexico. Most are utility bikes around 150cc selling for $1000 to $2000 US depending on their utilitarian level. This one is the Italika 150 Cruiser and I think it’s gorgeous. I told Layne if she decides to settle in Mexico, which I’m not keen on, this will be the price she has to pay. She’s off motorcycles so I think I’ve check mated her. 

He was grumpy about going into town and only picked up the pace when we set our sights on home. 

I wanted to check out the Oxxo and I couldn’t find anyone selling fresh flour tortillas so I got a packet of packaged manufactured ones. And I had to stand in line. 

And so back to home. And now we’ve plugged into the shore power we have used some air conditioning in the middle of the day. So decadent. 

Camp Life

I woke up around three thirty in the morning and nature was calling with some urgency. Layne, who never sleeps very well was as usual breathing fit to wake the dead. There was one thing for it, the emergency exit to avoid crawling over her and waking her up. I pushed the back doors open as quietly as possible and crept out barefoot and without my glasses, relying on memory to find the loo.

The light was off so I turned it on and reached to pull back the curtain. We stared at each other: he from the bowl where he had been sitting silently in the dark, me blinking owlishly trying to apologize and explain I was blind as a bat as though that might help.

After I had recoiled and found a spot to myself I heard him ask: “Do you need paper?” Shit and damnation. “Thank you very much” I replied to the discreet hand pushed through the curtain, the hand  bearing the blessed roll. 

Later as we were walking up the beach to the campground I heard a voice from a small group of weekend tent campers: “My friend do you need toilet paper” and in cut the bevy of girls started laughing as he relayed the story of my gringo incompetence. Everyone knows in Mexico you bring your own bog roll. Well, I replied he was sitting in the loo in the dark which was enough to trip me up. We must be brothers in the bathroom. Then he posed for the photo among much hilarity.

Life in camp has settled down to exercise early before it gets too hot. Imagine that: too hot in February. Then a swim and this morning the ocean was flat and glassy, the sand on the floor clearly visible as though we were in a swimming pool. Yesterday it was windy and the waves were impudent, slapping me in the face when I wasn’t looking. I wasn’t surprised yesterday we were alone in the water but today was perfect and there were no swimmers. 

I think Baja disappointed us because there aren’t that many swimming beaches. The waters are shallow and as often as not we found rocky approaches to the water. We aren’t terribly interested in staring at the water now that we have all the time in the world. We like to swim, take the time to shower and then maybe stroll into town. 

There is some American/Canadian breakfast weekdays, a form of fund raising for worthy local causes but on our trek to locate the community center we failed do we stopped for a plate of mediocre chilaquiles in town. 

Scrambled eggs, strips of tortilla cooked in a red sauce and a side of beans. It needed hot sauce. Our neighbors were busy waiting for their breakfasts. 

Punta Pérula is a tourist town so eating out can be uncertain and we don’t eat out often. Layne has a vegetable tofu curry scramble ready in the fridge ready to eat tonight. It was already scheduled for demolition but we got an invitation to dinner up the beach. 

Dogs welcome but the chaos I anticipated on the busiest day of the week persuaded me to leave the boy at home. He wasn’t grateful but I think it was best as the place was packed. 

Rock salt, chilis, lime and slices of cucumber offered where in the United States you might get chips and salsa when you sit down. Surprisingly delicious. 

We were convinced to try barbecued shrimp on a stick and they were excellent. I have developed a taste for the slightly perfumed coconut rice.  And potato salad? Mexico never ceases to surprise. 

A moment of drama when mom’s three year old wandered off and half the restaurant hot up to look for her. She was wandering up the beach alone. 

An Italian couple who return like swallows to the trailer park every year were getting ready to leave their apartment and their departure was the reason for the dinner. I got to chatting with them and they told me they travel and key for their lives  she by painting and he by tattooing. In Italy they live in Genoa with no great enthusiasm so they spend winters seeing the world. An interesting variation on using YouTube to generate income. 

Sunday evening on the beach at Punta Pérula, Jalisco. 

Monkey business: 

Tour boat: 

Mexicans come Saturday and Sunday and set up tents for their weekend away. They are tough as it’s hot by day and cold by night. 

Playa Punta Pérula

When I think about it an RV park in Mexico can feel a lot like some of the diplomatic compounds I’ve seen in various embassies in foreign parts. Of course there is no diplomatic immunity here but the rules of RV park life in Mexico differ a good deal from those in the States. Imagine that! And also from daily life in the Mexico that  surrounds each park. 

Our spot in Punta Pérula is perfect for us, small but private and close to the impeccably clean showers and toilets. We have access to water and electricity (though our 30 amp outlet may need a service if my ground reader was correct) and a sewer dump is also at each site so you can park here all winter for $18 a night $15 per night per week or $330 a month in US dollars with a small surcharge to plug in. This place is packed with Canadians and one couple from Michigan though Debbie did point out she lived for years in Port St Lucie and one RV is from California. Of the Canadians two RVs are from British Columbia while the rest are from Québec. French is spoken here. 

There are some RVers and Overlanders who categorically refuse for reasons of principle of economy to ever stay in a paid campground, but we are pensioned old farts so we can afford to lay and there are frequently times when it’s easiest to pay. The big draw here for us is the swimming beach. We are in the water twice a day for an hour each time. It’s lovely once you work your way past the modest surf. 

I freely admit we were looking forward to wild camping at Tenacatita but after we got over our disappointment at not making the steep and torn up entrance track in our Promaster we knuckled down and recalled what a pleasant place this had been last year for the three nights we stayed. 

And let’s face it having hot running water, trash collection, on site water refills and neighbors who, once they learned I can mangle French opened up to us without fear of looking stupid mangling their English, well I say what’s not to like?

I love listening to the Québécois chatting, soaking up the sun, reveling I’m not being in a snowdrift. They live large in the tropics. 

There are other dogs in the park but Rusty has the run of the  place so far as he bothers no one, doesn’t bark and when feeling threatened by the crowds of dogs or humans retreats politely to the comfort of his home. He’s entirely happy and I don’t have to bother with leashes. Twice a day he wants to go for a walk when he drops his eggs far from the compound and I promptly pick them up a la gringo so no one has to be annoyed by him. It is a very civilized arrangement. He also keeps getting stopped by nice French ladies who crowd him and let him and he sits there preening and lets them make a fuss of him. 

He’s not keen on walking into town thanks to his fear of dog gangs. But the beach? There he can’t be ambushed so he has become a beach lover. And it’s not a bad place for that. Take your chair of your hammock and hang in the shade provided by the campground owner Sonora Yolanda. On weekends tents sprout like magic under the awnings and the place fills with Mexican campers enjoying the facilities. The cove here is totally laid back - in three languages! 

We aren’t going to do much for the next week or so. When we do leave, and we are in no hurry, we’ll drive two hours south to Manzanillo for an oil change and a tire rotation and alignment. Then we want to drive inland to meet some friends we encountered on the road last year. They have settled in a campground near Lake Chapala where more Americans and Canadians have settled than s us here else in Mexico. That will be a new experience for us. Our friends are from Lichtenstein and got jobs at an RV park run by a Swiss owner ( Switzerland and Lichtenstein ate next door) so I’m looking forward to their perspective. 

Meanwhile we sleep without air conditioning, we lounge and drive through our kindle libraries, we walk a reluctant dog into town and we swim. This is one of those pauses on the road that need to be fully embraced because it won’t always be this luxurious or easy. I do know that.