Coco Beach

 If you can drive or take a taxi up to highway 200 and then follow it southeast you will come to an intersection just past El Aguacate. At that crossroads, you follow a paved road in the direction of the ocean and after crossing several washouts, the road turns and parallels the beach.  This area is called Coco Beach and that is where we took a taxi so that we could meet some friends and enjoy lunch at Restaurant Palma Negra.

Linda and I shared a taxi with Grant and Jacquie. Barry drove adding Jill, Iris, David and Judy to the lunch-table group.

We explored the property and then enjoyed a wonderful lunch in a beautiful setting. Hope you enjoy the photos we captured while there.

The pool and fun area.

Future cabins for rentals.

Coco Beach, looking west.

Looking east. No shade anywhere.

Nice beach, but very hot.

The Days Go By

From what we hear, the weather conditions back home have dropped into the Artic freeze zone and life up there has come to a crawl. -17 degrees Fahrenheit has been recorded in Post Falls and neighboring cities have had far lower reports. This made me worry a bit and so I contacted my brother, Dale, and he was gracious enough to bundle up and go visit our house. This was Linda’s  brother's week to visit her mom, but the storms and driving conditions postphoned his visit. 

Dale drove out and checked everything and all was well. We are racking up the IOUs this winter, but it is so nice to have Dale and several other friends as a safety net at our little home.

A week ago, Teri and Bill Burch arrived from Coeur d'Alene and they are settling into the third appartment at our compound. It has been fun talking and playing cards each afternoon. We also enjoy teaching them the tips and tricks needed to be comfortable for a long-term stay in Melaque. You know, where to buy food, how to get drinking water, where to shop, how to run the cute little washing machine that is used by the residents of out apartments. The list goes on. We kind of feel like Mr. Myiagi teaching Daniel LaRusso in the Karate Kid.  Wipe on, wipe off, the top of the washing maching. Those kind of tips needed to survive.

Days go on and we are enjoying every moment. Linda started taking photos of things she sees on her walks each morning. We use them in her mom's weekly newsletter.  I will be using them in this blog because I have been very lazy and haven't taken any photos.

I am a bit of a odd duck to live with. Linda is a saint and she can handle my many little things that make me who I am. One of our growing concerns in getting older is my noticable hearing loss. We have been talking about this and as soon as we get home, I will probably be going in to get tested. Until then we just have to try to speek louder and try not to laugh too much about what I am hearing. For example, Linda and I were climbing down from the rooftop palapa and she got on the metal stairs. Looking down, she said, "Look at it, it's shaking" referring to the stairway moving from her body being on it. What I heard was, "Look at the chicken" and so I stood there scanning the ground for a stray bird that had entered the compound without authorization. Once I figured out what Linda had said we laughed and continued our day.  Another example happened at the pool during pool volleyball. Linda and I were sitting and talking. She touched her noise and asked me, "Do you see anything in my nose?" What I heard was, "We're going to Yves and Manon's!"  This was a bit out of the blue and all I could think of was that Linda had talked  to one of the volleyball players, Yves, and made  arraingments to visit their apartment. Then I noticed Linda rubbing her nose and looking at me and relized just what she had really said. I could not stop laughing. Oh my, I am sure I will be reporting more of these incidents until we get the old ears checked.

Linda loves this happy little shrimp!

Sunrise over the laguna.

The building continues!

One bucket of concrete at a time.

14 Days From Home

After We First Arrived

Today marks two weeks from when we left Post Falls for our stay in the warmer climates of Mexico. We have settled in and have grown acclimatized. The weather started out very hot and humid for the first ten days or so, but yesterday there was a change and the area has cooled off to a comfortable temperature range. 

Our little casa is growing on us. The place will never be our favorite, but it will fill our needs for this stay. The lack of a swimming pool has been huge. We compensate by playing pool volleyball every day.  Give us another week and maybe our hands and arms will stop being sore from the beating they take while playing.

The daily schedule includes Linda walking every morning followed by breakfast and a bit of house cleaning. We play volleyball at 11 AM and then return to have lunch. The afternoon usually includes a nap, cards, reading and relaxing. When it was hot we sat up under the rooftop palapa and tried to cool down. At about 5 PM we get some food by either going out or fixing something ourselves. After dinner, we take a walk and settle in to watch some Netflix.

The people we have met over the years who annually travel to Melaque are mostly back and hanging out in the warmth. We have had dinner with Grant and Jacque whom we have traveled with several times. We spent some great time hearing about their travels to Europe and elsewhere. Larry and Maggie, our trip leaders on our adventure driving down to Melaque, accompanied us to dinner on Christmas Eve. Another set of good friends, Jill and Barry, had us over to their place to play cards one afternoon.  We have traveled in our campers together with them visiting Yellowstone and other places in the states. 

Our ocean view from roof top.

Nacho, the local iguana.

The new malecon near the free campground.

Another malecon view.

The disco is gone!

Downtown road construction.

Almost complete!

Several Weeks Later

There is nothing significant about today's date, January 12th. We have been in Mexico 32 days now and have established a daily rhythm. We wake, walk, eat, play pool volleyball, shop, read, rinse and repeat. Some days we add some spice to the day by shopping for supplies, playing cards or going out for meals, but most of the time we sway to the beat of our Melaque music.

The daily patterns of life are what have caused me to not post as regularly as I have in the past. This time down, even the photo opportunities have been very ordinary. Another small reason for the lack of enthusiasm for posting is the rather large mistake I made by not bringing my laptop down from home when we traveled. I weighed the weight factor of carrying the laptop with the ease of packing our tablet and decided not carry the computer. Little did I realize that typing on the tablet keyboard would be such a change for me. The tablet's operating system is also different, so I have been struggling with photo imports and their placement into the blog, and this has caused me some angst. I now think I have everything smoothed out on the writing and publishing side of the blog, but now the internet at our casa has been down for the past three days. Mexico has stepped in and I will have to travel to another part of town to upload the content to the blog site. Hang in there my friends, we will “endeavor to persevere” and get this blog caught up to speed.

Yesterday, 30 gringos enjoyed a wonderful breakfast at the Red Lobster, then loaded into a city bus and had a dusty ride out to Antonio's banana plantation where we spent the day swimming and playing games in the shade of the mango trees.

The afternoon was filled with laughter, music and getting to know each other as more than “Volleyball Dean and Linda”.

Photos From Our Time Here

Early morning sun.

The art in the plaza. 

Sunrise on the beach.

Sunsets are always beautiful.

Dirty white rabbit.

He didn't like his photo taken.

Return of Nacho.

New years eve fireworks.

On the banana plantation bus.

A toad in the water.

My three walking companions.