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. 

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.