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.