Dear Diary,
so sorry, I've been away for 2 days. And to catch you up--
On the seventh day Rod rested (not). Actually, I worked my bunnies off Sunday beginning at 7:30 a.m. until 5 p.m. nonstop. I had left that one last day just to finish packing up the house and cleaning it for my expected new tenants. Well, let me tell ya........
It's the little stuff that takes time. Already the furniture and furnishings were either sold off or put in my storage unit in the carport. I spent a couple of hours sealing grout in the newly tiled second bedroom. There's a fun way to kill a morning! And bagging up clothes, boxing up food in the kitchen to take to Jeanne, emptying the bathroom. But by five o'clock, the thing was done. Nothing, really zero, left in the house. I loaded up the car with my traveling bags for Mexico and a few things to leave at Jeanne's and headed over to her house to spend the night. Our last supper, so to speak, was at a BBQ rib joint. I figured that I won't see too many of those bad boys in Mexico.
And at 5 a.m.--yes, five DOES have an a.m......I never would have guessed--we were up to get ready to go to the bus station. Jeanne drove me down and at 6:45 I was off to the races! A long day, but happily uneventful. It was a luxury coach that made stops only in Nogales for customs and in Hermosillo. After my Sunday penance, I slept a lot.
We pulled into the Guaymas station around 4:30 yesterday afternoon. From there I caught a local bus that took me the 20 minutes over to San Carlos. Actually, I was quite proud of myself for doing that. A cab would have been MUCH more convenient, but schlepping my big duffle, a backpack, and a plastic bag onto the city bus was a tenth the cost.
I spent the night at a not-so-glamorous joint called Totonaka RV park. Yep, sort of the armpit of San Carlos, I'd say. I had a tiny little room in which I had to do battle killing a half dozen or so spiders and mosquitoes before going to bed. And the toilet...kind of a I-Love-Lucy sort of affair. It would have been funny if it was someone ELSE's problem. To put it delicately, the damn thing doesn't flush. You just don't realize how handy flushing is! And every time I went to use the plunger, water squirted out of a crack in the side of the bowl. Yuck! Suppose that all comes with the $25 price tag, huh? Lot's of Canadian RVers here, though. Plenty of Manitoba and Alberta license plates on the big rigs. Heck, winter starts in August in that part of Canada, eh?
This morning I walked along the shore road (they call these "malecon") to the little downtown strip of San Carlos. A Mexican woman was walking in the opposite direction and remarked, "Tan rapido," which means "so fast!" Yep, I've got to get rid of the Chicago walk and dial back down the Type A personality. There's a reason things are slower in the south. Once I've learned that lesson, I'll do much better. Along the walk, I passed an office with the sign: "Hambone Insurance." Now, would you buy insurance from a HAMBONE? And then, even worse (I swear it's true): I passed a little outdoor taco stand whose name was: Restaurante Los Ases." Do you translate that: "The Ases"? Maybe a misspelling? The place smelled bad, anyway.
For the life of me, I can see why gringos come here. There are hardly any services and the beach is rocky. I'm checking out this morning and heading back to Guaymas....at least it's a real town and there will be things to see and do.
