Pérula Photographed

Clothes stall outside the campground on the main drag: 

Anti-Rusty squad on patrol. I bend down to pick up a stone and they run. Actual Mexicans throw the stones to keep the dogs away. 

I’ve counted up to 20 boats in the anchorage. You hardly ever see sailors on deck or getting in the water. 

Fresh coconuts to drink: 

For sale if you dare: 

Alain washing his Honda 500. A really nice guy who loaned me an extension cord to reach the nearest  positive outlet. He likes to practice chi’s English which he had to learn when he ran a furniture factory in Quebec. He’s retired and is thinking his bike may be too big for him. No comment from me…

Coastal views from the RV park: 

I like to walk the main drag at night looking for patches of light. I also take food to some dogs who don’t look well cared for at a house up the street. 

One well cared for idle dog:

Banana trees just like Key West: 

A two second exposure with my camera balanced on the sea wall: 

My Electrical Nightmare

I should never have trusted the outlet. My meter told me it had an open ground but when it appeared okay I plugged in and that set off a whole chain of screw ups. Oh and the power cord over the entrance to the trailer park could be considered another hint. 

And yet when finally Yolanda the park manager found a properly grounded outlet we have been fine. It was a long journey though. And everyone joined in looking for a solution. 

There were some good things about it. My knowledge of technical French improved by leaps and bounds. Alain told Hydro Québec Bob, a former utility lineman about my problem when my onboard shore power charger refused to accept the 110 volt input. Bob’s English is zero so that alone encouraged me to think electrical in French…

GANNET2 has a GoPower Lithium

System, 600 amps of batteries, 400 watts of solar on the roof and a 3,000 watt inverter/charger which runs our 110 volt appliances and takes campground plug ins and uses 110 volts to charge the battery bank. We don’t actually run anything off 110 volts, we use it to charge the batteries only.  We do fine plugging in to a household 15 amp plug! 

Except after we had the messed up electrical plug the charger stopped charging. Shit I thought, we’ve blown a switch. Bob helped look for and check the inline 40 amp fuse which miraculously was intact. The transfer switch, which opens and closes the charger must have burned to a crisp.  I got depressed thinking we might have to return to the US.  GANNET2 depends on the inverter and this close to Arizona we had no choice but to get things right before plunging deep into no RV territory south of Mexico. I was seriously pissed off at myself. The 12 volt system worked as I showed Bob. 

Cogitating did no good. Alain loaned us a lamp, the Québécois in the park commiserated and we went to bed. In the morning I called Go Power in British Columbia expecting nothing but I spoke immediately to a live tech and he walked me through possibilities. A hard reset was in order. The RV park consensus was this would do no good.

I unplugged the shorepower and detached the twelve volt negative from the batteries. GANNET2 went completely dead. Layne set her stop watch to one hour and forbid me to reconnect one second earlier than 60 minutes later! 

The vegetable truck comes by twice a week which was a nice distraction.  Yoghurt and strawberries for dessert that night for us. Yvonne was looking pleased with her find whatever it was. 

The reconnection of the batteries to the charger worked. Nothing was broken but the settings were all wrong. It took me two days of fiddling with input numbers and float numbers and equalization numbers to get close. Alain loaned me an extension cord to set up a long term connection to the good outlet, Hydro Québec Bob smiles and waves when I walk past his RV to the beach. I made a second call to Go Power. I watched some YouTube Go Power videos and sucked up my daily two gigabytes of LTE signal from Verizon. But I think I’ve got it right at last.

I used the settings in the video which were much higher than I thought was right for lithium batteries but so far the charging is going fine and we’ve run the a/c and cooked and all seems well. I think I’ve learned a lot about the system which is all to the good and I have a suspicion we are using it a lot more efficiently than we were which I hope means less wear and tear on the inverter (a $2000 box not easily obtained in South America even at twice the price) and I’m thinking we may get better use out of our battery bank too.

Out of adversity may come a few positive outcomes. In this case we may have also have avoided a pre afire return to the States to fix my thoughtlessness. And Go Power equipment looks tough from here with good technical support at the end of a phone call. 

As we like to say it seems okay. For now…

Go Power Lithium 110 volt charging for their Sun Power batteries. 

Absorb 14.4 volts 

Float.  14.1 volts 

Equalization 12.6 volts. 

Seems high but here’s hoping! 

Update: Go Power thinks the solar panel controller is over reading the voltage but everything is now working. We’ll change that panel when we get a visitor from the states  but until then our shore power system is working. And I know a lot more than I did. 

Milking The Goat

Here’s how it works. You are walking down the street to go to breakfast at the community center, which is the gringo hangout in downtown Punta Pérula. They make donations to the local schools which is nice but it’s also nice sometimes to spend an hour away in a familiar culture.

And then there was the goat. The sign above says this way to goat milk and they weren’t kidding. 

You can lambast me for seeking a little piece of North America in Mexico but I’m open to new experiences too. I’ll bet you anything you want you’ve never seen this set up before. Come to that neither had I. This is Mexico, one handful at a time. 

Fresh goat milk on demand, with flavors you choose.  Layne rejected the addition of moonshine but she did choose chocolate and a touch of marzipan. It was warm and delicious.

The community center breakfast was classic North American and I enjoyed a croissant for the first time in a while.

We hung out with a couple of women who came in from the morning pickleball game in the town square. The conversation meandered around the world as we shared stories from the road. One woman sailed with her husband to the Mediterranean down the Suez Canal to the Seychelles. She her husband and their child ended up in East Africa where he settled down to a job with the United Nations. Their two year sail led to a twelve year working commitment.  It was a good breakfast. 

Rusty had a bit of a dog gauntlet to run to get back to GANNET2 but Layne and I bent down and picked up stones, the universal Mexican gesture to tell a dog to back off. 

Rusty checking the way ahead:

Mexico runs on small motorcycles generally around 150cc and used like little workhorses. 

Our neighbor across the way had been getting ready to go north to the US on his eventual way back to Québec. 

His planned exit from the campground drew attention from his Canadian neighbors and Yolanda the park manager and her parrot. 

Rusty got his share of attention as always. He may end up speaking French. 

It will be our turn next Monday we think. Well, that’s the plan today. 

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.