Beach Time

We don't often sit on the beach, but we do go look at it occasionally. Today we took the bus to Sayulita, a neighbouring town 15 kms from us. It is known as an old hippie town....I look at it as where old hippies go to relive the 60s and 70s. Not very successfully either! Might be time to accept the fact that they are too old to skateboard down the main drag. The long greasy hair is not pretty either!

Now that my rant is over...Sayulita is a short distance from Puerto Vallarta so the town swells with many day-trippers checking out the famous surfing waters. We talked to one shop owner and she said many of the homes are owned by Mexicans from Guadalajara and this is their weekend to come check their rentals. Another reason why the beaches are overcrowded.

I have been here before with friends, but this was a first for Fred and he was not thrilled.

Dusty Days

We have been in San Pancho twenty five days today and have driven the car twice. We walk or take the bus whenever we want to go some place and like I mentioned before, the car sits right beside the main drag and gathers dust! And gathers more dust! And leaves! And bird droppings!

The Mexicans have been loving the car, writing in the dust and today we found that they even put it up for sale. They wanted 10, 500 Pesos or about $725 Cdn!

Moving Day # 1

We knew when we booked this two bedroom apartment last summer that we left the booking too late. The result of this is that we have to move to a one bedroom in the same complex for ten days.

After the Christmas break we move back to this apartment for another three weeks...complicated but entirely our own fault.

The problem is that we have so much stuff that it will take us a couple of hours to make the transfer and we have to go up another 18 steps with each and every load!

Why do we have so much stuff?  A lot of it was food left from San Carlos that we couldn't leave there because of putting the house up for sale, some stuff is going to be left in Puerto Aventuras and some is for our use here [Shaw Direct/Bose/Sirius etc]. We travel around too much!!

Learning a New Sport

Yesterday afternoon we walked to La Patrona Polo Grounds here in San Pancho to watch a polo tournament. It was the 10th anniversary celebration so there were many invited guests along with the few of us who just wandered in.

In no way were we treated any differently than the ultra rich guests, other than they had reserved seating....very impressed with that. The lady with the cap is just getting ready to throw the ball to start the game.

The game is usually played on the two large sodded fields but because of the rain the tournament was moved to the sand field to protect the horses. They were worried about the horses slipping on the turf and injuring themselves.

We had a wonderful time watching and learning and sipping on free Stella beer. Trust Fred to find the free stuff!  

We were going to walk back this afternoon [Sunday] for the finals, but the rains have started again and it is quite the chore to get there without walking through huge water beds. Yesterday some guy in a truck gave us a ride through the worst of the water and for that we were grateful.

Life in the Slow Lane

Since we are new to San Pancho we don't have many friends to keep us busy and right now that is okay. When we get bored it may be a different story.

We are doing some hiking in the morning and pilate routines after, plus every third day we are on the golf course. It seems that the days go by pretty quickly even without the constant socializing of Lo de Marcos.

The most annoying thing we can say about San Pancho is the dust on the car. We are parked right beside the main road into the town and as a result our car is the dirtiest I have ever seen...we had it washed on Thursday morning and by the same evening it was filthy. The dust settles on it, the leaves fall on it and the birds poop on it....even Mr. Clean has given up trying to make it look presentable. Which might be a good thing....we rarely drive the car so it looks much like it belongs in Mexico and who breaks into a Mexican car when there are shiny new American cars coming in everyday!

Our Favourite

We wanted to get started with our golfing so we went to the course two days ago and found it locked up. We parked in front hoping that they were just late in opening. A car form the Yukon pulled up, a kid came and opened the gates...we snuck through the gates right behind him keeping our fingers crossed that they wouldn't kick us out.

Karen, the woman who runs the course, was excited to see us and gave us her phone number to call whenever we wanted to go for a round. She said the course isn't busy right now so they keep it locked up....I can't see the reasoning behind that, but this is their course and we will do whatever it takes to get on and play.

There were five golfers when we went out so we had a private golf course all to our own! We played pretty well considering we had only swung our clubs once in San Carlos. The course is in pretty good shape and with the trees growing rapidly, the greens are getting harder to find all the time.

When we were finished we put our clubs in storage and had to be escorted to the gate to be let out. Strange procedure, but typically Mexican!

Getting Settled

We left San Carlos on Monday November 27th and finally arrived in San Pancho on December 1st [with a few stops in between].

Our apartment is up 18 stairs...I know because I count them every time I climb them, so unloading the car took a bit of effort. We just threw everything in the second bedroom and worked our way into organization from there.

It took a couple of days but we are finally comfortable and we think we know where everything is most of the time.

We took the time to hit the beach on Sunday and it was very busy with families enjoying the day. Usually we don't see this many people on the beach in San Pancho so it was a bit of a surprise.