Week 7 - Lo de Marcos

This week started off early...7:00 AM on Monday morning to send our friend’s Deb and Clarkette off. Sad to see them leave but excited that they are on the road again. They will be traveling up the coast to cross the border at Nogales.

Clarkette needs to be back in Washington to see her granddaughter graduate from high school. I’m super happy that they are going back to in person graduations after so long in lockdown. We will definitely see these fun ladies again!

We had a few other highlights that I’ll talk about below. I did want to say a bit about why I started this blog. I love stories. I love writing them and I especially love hearing them. I was hoping to meet some folks that would share their stories with me. I wrote a book a few years ago with mine and my friends’ short stories.

I felt so accomplished for first writing my stories down but mostly because 22 of my friends gave me their stories. I was filled with so much Love. I printed 150 copies. I gave my friends books and sold the other at the Friday night market in my town, Rohnert Park, California. That was a blast too. I donated all the profits to my 2 favorite homeless programs in Sonoma County, C.O.T.S and The Living Room. I have enough stories again to fill another book...someday...I’ll print it. What I would like now from my readers, cause I know I have a few regular ones, are YOUR Stories! If you have a favorite or many favorite stories of your travels, however that may look, send them to me at tellrhondayourstory@gmail.com. I will put one story on my blog each week. It should be fabulous fun!!! Please Please…...play my Game!

Exercise time...that’s been a featured highlight for 3 weeks now. I did one on demand yoga class with Lifted. This week my ass was dragging. I was feeling old and tired. We did some walking up my hills to the bird watching spots. We rode the bikes around town too. I got another big day of exercising when we cleaned the Airstream but I’ll talk more about that later. I’d say I needed to recover a bit…..like I said...I felt OLD.

We found a bunch of fleas on Gypsy. We called around to find a Vet that had flea medicine. We had to drive 2 towns over to Sayulita but they had the kind I wanted. I was a bit surprised that it was just as expensive as it is in the States. It didn’t matter, we needed it. We kept the cat out of the trailer for a day or so. Well….that didn’t help. By Friday, we both had badly flea bitten legs that I was taking Benadryl for. So Saturday we spent 5 hours both of us cleaning the trailer top to bottom. We vacuumed 6 times. I used a pine cleaner to wash every surface and the ceiling. We washed all of our bedding, towels and clothing.

We kept Gypsy out of the trailer all together. Larry found a Youtube video on how to make a flea trap. Interesting little contraption but it’s working! You use water and dish soap on a plate with a lamp leaning over it. The heat draws the fleas and they fall in the soapy dish. We got the majority with vacuuming and cleaning but we have caught a couple of dozen of these fellows so far. I think we should have it under control in a week. It was the craziest thing ever! We stopped getting bit the night we cleaned. The 5 hours of cleaning I am calling an additional day of exercise!

I found out about a great place to watch birds from a facebook friend/photographer Ric Chamblee. He says he likes Vallarta Botanical Gardens and he also will guide you through the gardens to help you identify birds. Larry and I thought we’d go there and do it without a guide. We’ve been having tons of luck birding on our own. I had seen that they had Military Macaws on their property and I was super excited to try and photograph them. We watched them fly over while we were in Catemaco last year but never got close enough to get a picture. The Macaws were my first priority. We had to drive 2 hours south through Puerto Vallarta to find the place. We arrived right at 9am when they opened. While

we were paying, I could already hear the Macaws squawking. We were directed to the church to see them as they have man made nesting boxes high in a pine tree. I loved the church area of the garden and Larry was able to get some pretty good pictures with his awesome camera. I did get some nice photos of the gardens and flowers. We found a trail that took us to the river. On the way down, we saw a rock iguana…..with his mouth threatening us! Larry went off to take shots of vultures when I discovered a Squirrel Cuckoo. Yeah me! They have some great trails in the gardens and some of the most amazing flowers, trees and plants that I’ve ever seen. It was a great deal too. Only $10 per person. We also saw lots of hummingbirds. One that is rare too. A hermit hummingbird that has a long white tail with a long curved bill. I got some blurry pics of him. Those buggers are fast! I would highly recommend this place. We found out that you can come 2 times in a week when we paid. I think we will be back.

We left the gardens at 2pm. We thought we might squeeze a short 4 mile hike in on the way home. It was at the beach right down the hill, Boca de Tomatlan. We found the trail on Alltrails. It takes you through the village and around the cliffs and hills to another beach, Las Animas. Well, the hike started out great. I loved walking through the village but as we walked out of the bay, it started getting blistering hot! I was getting tired quickly and I could not believe all the high rise stairs. At one point, we thought we were lost...or at least not on the right trail. I made a decision to go back before we both got grumpy. It was beautiful and I’d go back again to try it again but very early in the morning because of the heat and humidity. We did see a record amount of iguanas and other lizards. Chasing the lizards took my mind off the pain for a bit. Thank goodness!

There are 6 people at El Caracol that work here. One that we see and talk to everyday is Luis. He is the groundskeeper. He’s always busy doing something around here but he likes to say Hi and visit a bit each day. His english is pretty good but we often run out of things to talk about. He watched us chase lizards around here and probably thinks we are crazy. He told us that Sunday was his last day of work. He is going back to college in Tepic because it finally opened back up. Luis is studying Robotics, electronics, computers and electricity. His degree will be in Mechatronics Engineering and he graduates next April. He’s been doing his classes online like so many others right now. Sunday was definitely one of my favorite days. I wrote out a thank you card for Luis (I translated it to Spanish) and gave him a tip. When we were riding our bikes out of the park, Larry found a nice medium size green iguana to catch. Luis watched us. We called him over to hold it. He immediately said no...but I insisted. He did a great job of being brave and I took his picture. He also wanted a picture of us together with the lizard. I bet he can’t wait to tell his friends about our craziness.

We ended our afternoon at the baseball field on the north end of town. We saw on Facebook that the number 1 team was playing the number 2 team. We thought it would be fun to watch. We enjoyed the game but mostly watching the people was the best. I just get great joy out of seeing folks having fun, being happy, laughing and living their best lives…...anywhere we may travel!

I know that there will be tons of photos with this story. If you ever see a picture that you want more information about or a little story behind the pic, please reach out and ask. I’d like this blog to be more interactive…..That’s where you come into play….email me at tellrhondayourstory@gamil.com