The First Few Days In Melaque

Dec. 27, 2019 - The morning started out a bit cloudy and the humidity was very noticeable. Linda did her run and I stayed around the apartment enjoying my coffee. Our casa is becoming a lot more user-friendly. This morning we met the owner of the complex and found out that the gentleman that we had been dealing with is no longer our manager.

My little devil selfie from my walk around the town.

The owner, Juan Carlos, had moved into the lower level apartments. I think he stays in one of the units and his daughter is going to reside in the other.

This new arrangement has taken place in typical Mexican fashion. We are just peripheral to the transactions and don't need to know what was taking place. Linda feels a bit bad because she has been sending emails requesting information on how to get things fixed, to the previous manager. He has vaguely answered, but never mentioned that he no longer represented Juan Carlos. Now we know who is in charge and things are getting taken off our TO-DO list.

(Since the writing of these first few paragraphs, our original manager, Rogelio, visited us last night, Jan. 1, 2020. He is now managing a complex over in Barra, but will still be our contact when Juan Carlos is not in town. It was his choice to take on that new position because it separates him from the owner's father which makes his job less stressful. Juan Carlos is the son of the original owner who Rogelio works for. It's very complicated.)

New Year's Eve dinner with Jacquie and Grant.

Juan Carlos is very nice. He said that he works for Hewlett Packard but I could not understand what he does exactly. He said that he represents the company when it deals with other countries. I imagine that sooner or later we will have to pay the rent that we owe on the apartment. Again, typical Mexican fashion. We are more concerned about payment than they are.

Mid-morning I went out and did some shopping. Linda gave me a little list and some pesos and sent me out the door. She walked over to Las Palmas and watched folks play volleyball.

I walked the streets of the town meeting locals and greeting them, enjoying their smiles. The town is filling up and we are looking forward to the new year.

Looking toward Chicken Beach on New Year's Eve.

Our Christmas was very low key. We had dinner with Larry and Maggie at a relatively new pizza place and enjoyed their pepperoni pizza immensely. We will probably make the eatery a weekly stop during our stay in Mexico.

Las Palmas beach bonfire.

Jan. 2, 2020 -  Last night it rained most of the night. The clouds came in during the late afternoon and the downpour started about 6:00 PM. Earlier in the evening I hooked our computer up to the large flat-screen TV in the apartment and discovered that we could watch NetFlix over the internet. I had been surfing FaceBook earlier and noticed a couple posts mentioning a show that had just come out for viewing on this channel. We didn't know anything about the documentary except that it had caused several of our friends to binge the entire show in one sitting. With the downpour of rain, we settled in and started watching. Wow, three hours later we had completed our binge and were sitting shaking our heads. The show was very disturbing but was so well put together that once we started we couldn't stop. Good thing it was just three hours long, or we would have probably still been watching it. If you are interested in the name of the show, leave a message or PM me and I will fill you in. The title of the show contains words that I prefer not being in the blog.

Night shot from our rooftop.

The New Year came in with a bang down here. We went out to dinner with Jacquie and Grant and then walked over to Las Palmas for their annual beach bonfire. We all hung around for a while and then walked back to our casa and up onto the rooftop seating area to watch the new year arrive. Both Linda and I were tired so at about 11:00 PM we went down and went to bed. At midnight everything broke loose. The New Year was welcomed in with more loud explosions than we had heard in a long time. Linda and I agreed to try and make 2020 another wonderful year together.

Worst fireworks photo ever.

This morning the two of us walked down to the autobus terminal and chose our seats on the bus we will be using to travel to Puerto Vallarta in two weeks. Between now and then I plan to go fishing with Barry Urquhart. The calendar is starting to fill and our Mexico adventure continues to fill our lives. I'll try to keep the blog up to date, so take care and we hope you have a happy start to 2020.