Our lazy life at La Penita

Well, we have been here one month and the time has just flown by. We start most days at 5:30 ( yes, AM) so we can join the 6:30 walking group. We do a brisk 5 km. ( feels much longer)  thru dusty neighborhoods, cobblestone streets, up "heart attack hill", out past pineapple fields, banana plantations & plenty of dogs. Unfortunately walking any later is just too hot. It has become a necessary part of our day to offset the eating & the happy hours.

pineapples

The rest of our day consists of eating, of course, birdwatching from our site, reading, playing Skip Bo, household chores & any outings to the market, walking in to town & day trips to explore the area. We landed on a wonderfully friendly "street", great folks & a very handy Happy Hour table, just 50 ft. from our door. We take in several park activities - Taco Tuesday with free margaritas,  pickleball (lots of fun), outdoor movie nights now showing the Academy award nominees, beer can races, hamburger nights & the odd bingo. We did not think that this scheduled routine would suit us but we are actually really enjoying it. There are a lot of restaurants close by, we have tried a few, taxi rides cost $2-$3.50. We have driven into Puerto Vallarta a couple of times, we have gotten new glasses at Costco for half the price of Canada. Only been out in the kayak once, our beach is too rough to launch so it involves driving several miles north. I had a haircut & a pedicure here sitting looking out over the ocean, both for $20!

pale-billed woodpecker

my view during haircut

Happy Hour spot

beer can racers

We have done 2 escorted tours, first to San Blas where we took a jungle boat ride at La Tovara thru the mangroves to a spring. We saw 8-10 crocodiles, lots of birds, a couple turtles & iguanas. Also on the tour was an old fort, stops for fresh banana bread, unique fruits (jack, guanabana, starfruit, guava) & tequila candy, then a stop to watch brick making by hand. Lunch on the beach as well.
The second tour was a bird watching tour to San Pancho, had to get up at 4:30 for this one! Our guide spotted dozens of bird species & could differentiate their songs. Of course I overdo it with the photos & have to spend ages deleting & cropping. We also drove to a nearby crocodile refuge where we got to hold young crocs.

iguana seen from our RV site

white ibis

Great Blue Heron

young crocodiles

golden cheeked woodpecker

streaked back oriole

white collared seed-eater

There is an unusual clinic here this weekend - Cancer de Mama - where approx. 450 Mexican women come here to this RV park to be fitted for prosthetic bras after having breast cancer surgery. The bras, wigs, scarves, clothing are all donated & brought down from Canada & the US. The organizers are here in the park but lots of volunteers are from the surrounding area, I have signed up to be a fitter & Robin will be put to work chopping vegetables for the cooks who prepare soup for all. Sounds like a busy 3 days, but a very worthwhile event.

We now have a shiny newer looking RV - we were approached by Mexican auto painters who offered to repaint all our decals, the entire lower section of the RV & the door & sand, wax & polish the white parts. All for less than $1700, comparable cost in the US was $15,000 or more. It took one week, done in our site while we continued to live in it. Quite amazing to see & looks sooo much better!

before

before, door yellowed

during, decals removed

during, newspapers to protect

new, improved, shiny!

new, improved!

We plan to stay here for February as well, we are planning a drive to Guadalajara which is about 4 hours away. It is the second largest city in Mexico, lots of colonial architecture, great markets & then a tour of a tequila making operation in the town of Tequila.

As usual, here it is 3:00, time for a shower before happy hour & dinner in town, where did the day go?

Mazatlan to La Penita

We have happily settled into an RV park in La Penita, about 70 km. north of Puerto Vallarta where we plan to spend a month or two. We of course made a few stops to sight-see along the way.

Celestino Gasca had a small park right on the water, in a tiny fishing village, run by a friendly Mexican couple. We stayed a week, spend hours wandering the beach picking agates & pretty stones & watching pelicans. We visited Playa Las Labradoras, an area  of volcanic rocks along a 1000 ft stretch of seashore that have hundreds of petroglyphs carved into them - very unique. The family running the park had a posada (party) while we were there, that the RVers were invited to, complete with delicious Mexican food, a pinata, Karaoke & dancing. The concrete wall along the park is home to 3 iguanas, posing occasionally for photos. Robin continues to entertain with his "booze birdhouse" & the Fireball whiskey.

Strange Karaoke machine

We headed further south to Mazatlan, spent a week & tried to see all the sights. Of course it was crazy busy everywhere as it was Christmas. The park was not as friendly as some but we were included in a Christmas dinner potluck. We took the public buses into Old Mazatlan," very pricey" - at $0.80, only got lost & ended up in a barrio once! We checked out  the huge public market, complete with pigs heads & yellow chickens (apparently they are fed marigold flowers to make them yellow). You can find everything there, including excellent meals for under $3.00 , but this was the one place that we worried we might get sick. We visited the beautiful old cathedral, restored squares & streets with colorful buildings, & saw the "shrimp ladies" (many stalls selling all sizes of shrimp & other seafood.) We watched the cliff divers, road our bikes up & down the malecon & then for good measure climbed up to the world's second highest light-house (tallest is in Gibraltar). Great views of Mazatlan from the top, 135m. above sea level, but a tad warm.

typical narrow streets

beach seller

beach across from RV park, Mazatlan

Las Jaibas RV, Mazatlan

view from the lighthouse

cliff divers, on the left

cliff diver on his way down

shrimp lady

We are seeing a lot of new birds, colorful & unusual - the magnificent frigate bird, the most striking being the black-fronted magpie-jay, 24-30 inches in length & the Vermilion flycatcher.

magnificent frigatebirds

Vermilion flycatcher

Magpie-jay

We drove down to La Penita passing mango orchards & cropland, mainly corn, some sugar cane. Saw fields being plowed with horses a couple of times! We are now definitely in the tropics, everything is lush & green. Strange sights along the roadway - people selling dried shrimp, complete with heads - supposedly you pull off the head & eat the rest - Robin has enjoyed them. The roads were quite good, but we are now down to narrow 2 lane & windy. We met many trucks piled very high with sugar cane, our average speed for the last 100 km or so was 25-30km/hr.

The RV park we are in is tiered on a hillside above the ocean, we have a good sea view & it's a 2-3 min. walk to the beach. We are paying $20/day for full hook-ups, sites are a bit small but we have no neighbor on one side. Lots of new birds to watch & we can see whales spouting out in the ocean. The park has an activity schedule - everything from 3 kinds of morning exercises, biking group, pool volleyball, darts, hamburger night, taco Tuesday, (complete with free Margaritas), Happy Appy nights, movie nights, pickleball (not sure what that is), line dancing, bingo, etc, etc.! Just crazy! The people are very friendly, mainly Canadians, but the park has been full to bursting over the holidays with Mexican tenters. Should quiet down a bit now.
It's hot & humid, nighttime lows of 19-21, highs near 25-30 but feels hotter. Unfortunately the power here does not allow for A/C use!
The town of La Penita Jaltemba & the neighboring town of Rincon de Guayabitos have weekly markets, loads of restaurants & shops that carry pretty much anything you might need. A fruit & veggie truck comes to the park twice per week, also a bakery truck! There are iguanas living in the trees, they sometimes fall into the pool & they tell us that there are 18 ft crocodiles living in a nearby swamp!

I spent a lot of time searching for Canada chairs & here they are in Mexico!

We figure that we can stay entertained here & we definitely are liking the weather. Living the dream, taking it easy!