Hola. Wednesday we saw the sun!! It has been cloudy here for the past few days, so it was great to see the sun and that meant…laps in the pool!!
For those that do not know, I am a Pisces who does not like swimming. I am not afraid of the water, but it does not excite me. I love water sports, just not the swimming!! As a youngster, M&D had sailboats and the rule was that you needed to know how to swim before you could go sailing. I failed Beginners swim lessons 8 times. I am told that once, M&D saw me doing the strokes with my arms, but actually walking in the pool!!
But it is all about motivation and the carrot was a snorkel, mask and swim fins if I could pass….and ta-da…I passed. Knowing that the cardio is limited at the gym, it might be all about laps, so today at Super Che, we bought swim goggles and broke them in at the pool. Broke in means 6 laps of this small pool and then sitting on the beach chair and soaking up some rays!!
We had no luck with the quest for a table for Bex’s animation set up (Mac and Wacom), so we have re-arranged the condo’s living room until we can go to a bigger town and find what we need. We saw the wood workers had come to town so we went looking at their goods. The first guy had a nice living room suite but we need a mesa (table).
This is what we saw when we drove further along the road:
And here is the comparison shopper at her best:
No luck and they did not seem interested in taking our order and making one and bringing it to us in a week when they return. Oh well.
Rick was back at 5pm with Sergio the refrigerator tech. He took off the panel in the freezer and found the fan not blowing so we were getting cold (but not freezing) off the condenser in the freezer, but none of that cold air was making it to the lower part of the refrigerator. Fifteen minutes later it is blowing cold air. We took Sergio back to his shop and Rick paid the bill. $50 pesos for the house call….$4 Cdn.
Sergio’s shop is near Ernesto’s show room. Ernesto is an architect who does some funky work. He is married to a Montreal’er and we have previously discussed working on the Casa de Dos Conjeos. My point? I asked Rick if he knew Ernesto and of course he did. Small town this Huatulco!!
As of 630pm, the freezer seems to be fine and we are waiting for some cooling action in the fridge. Nothing we can do and Rick has been great, even assuring us a new fridge if this one does not work, but a bit of argh as we are scrambling to keep things food safe by using both the freezer (at 2 degrees) and the portable cooler we had been using in the car (and thank goodness bought the 120 V adaptor!!).
Time for dinner…more pollo and papas. I did not get a chance to go back to the pollo store and ask my questions…will add that to the to-do list which also includes:
-oil change at Nissan
-Spanish lessons
-Bank of Nova Scotia to enquire about my lost PIN and inactive account (I think there might be $30,000 pesos in the account)
Will update you all more later. You might have noticed the blog sub-title is now about the adventure of living in Huatulco and I hope I am not boring you to death. If you have any specific questions or comments, feel free to leave them in the comments section, or drop me an email.
Saludos
Thursday September 30, 2010
Buenos tardes!! Good afternoon. It is 115pm and we are updating the blog before we make the walk to the internet. We will also be stopping in the “plastics” store to see if we can find a few misc items we need.
Great news is that the fridge is working fine!!! And if it breaks again, I know where to find Sergio. We also had our Dutch neighbor say hi and ask if she can stop by tonite for the formal introductions. I think she was caught off guard as I said tot ziens (?) as she walked back to her condo.
Watched another dvd last night and slept like a baby. The heat does that to you. Dinner was great…65 pesos for a whole chicken and it was as good as 65 pesos for ½ at the local rotizarrio…but it is nice to meet the locals.
Hit the gym this morning and 1130am is the time to go!! I was “solo” and I asked Rosa Maria why and she told me that it is busy in the morning and then again around 5pm. I guess some people have to work? Lol In between sets we had some great English/Spanish lessons as I am getting used to weights in kilos vs libra and she wanted to know if we were here on vacation or escaping the frio (cold). We also talked about a certain exercise I was doing and she mentioned “plantos” (??) and asked what that muscle was in English. I said “bum” and “glutes” and then proceeded to explain that donde gymnasio, they were glutes, but if 3 bonita senoritas walked by, you could say “nice bum”...in jest. We had a big laugh over that and then I was on my way.
But before I could go, one more English lesson. I say gracias (for the lesson), she says de nada, she says thank you and did not know what the English response was…she wrote it down!!
On the 10 minute walk home, I passed the Fonatur construction team working on all the pot holes. At this intersection, they were actually removing all the asphalt and pouring new cement. I watched 2 guys working this home made concrete saw and was amazed. I MUST bring my camera every where!!
It looked like an old snow blower engine, with two fan belts attached to a drive shaft that was powering the saw blade. On top of the contraption was ½ of a 45 gallon drum. I waited until they were done and then asked if there was agua in the drum and he said “si, disco caliente”. I had figured it was water, but this gave me a chance to talk some more Spanish and the guys looked proud to explain their machine.
Fonatur is part of the Mexican government that is in charge of tourism. They were in charge of making Cancun what it is today as well as Ixtapa/Zihuat. Twenty years ago they wanted to increase tourism here and they built the roads, airport, hospitals and other infrastructure…and then ran out of pesos. They upkeep the city and do a great job at it….for Mexican standards. Someday a new road will connect Huatulco to the main city of Oaxaca (in the state of Oaxaca…kinda like NY NY) and then the expectation is of major tourism from both locals (wanting to get from the interior to the coast) and out of country peeps (who want to see what the old school Mexico looks like).
As I got 1 block from the condo, I was asked if I needed a taxi (tons of taxis and they look at all gringos and ask) but my response was to point at the condos and say “mi casa” and the guy looking surprised, said ok.
So far…a great day!! Bex has also mentioned that she found some cable channels on the TV. Into our fourth day and we had not even had the desire to look yet!! Now NFL Sunday is coming up….might need to check out the ONE sports bar in town…The Tipsy Blowfish, in Tangolunda (10 minute drive from our condo and about 10 minutes further to our playa…beach).
We are headed to Rick and Heidi’s at 5pm for a cerveza and agua con gas for Bex. I have offered to drive him to the airport on Saturday…an arrangement that occurs between peeps living here. It costs about $15 Cdn to get to the airport via taxi, but at the airport they only have private companies allowed for pick ups, and it is $50 US into town. Many people walk 10 minutes out of the airport to Hwy 200 and catch a local taxi to save the $35.
That is all for today!!
Hasta
Bex and Bubba
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