Moving on the Chacala Beach

I am moving my stuff to a different ramada space for two weeks of Semana Santa. My landladie's family built it for me (in that I will be the first person to camp under it). It’s kind of away from the regular camping area. I like either is to protect me from the hoards of tourists coming fo Semana Santa or so they can have their family members stay in my old spot, or because they can rent my space for more by the night. Or some other reason. I usually feel like I am just guessing about what is really going on. I try to just go with the flow and it usually works out okay.

This morning one of the adult sons, Gecko (that’s not right but something like that) has been wheel barrowing beach sand to my new space so I will have a nice sandy floor instead of a weedy, chicken scratch area.

My space is now right near the big cage where they keep about 20 beautiful birds (parakeets or canaries or some kind of little colorful birds) that sing all day. It’s not my favorite location in the world because it’s right in the middle of where the family walks and hangs clothes to dry etc, but it is near the beach and the waves won’t be quite so loud, and the palm tree shade is good. And really, there aren’t a lot of options for cheap housing/locations during Semana Santa.

My summer house-sitting house won’t be available for a couple of more weeks, so this is fine for now. Two of the little neighbor boys just left after drawing for a couple hours. They were actually coping labels and magazine headlines in color, with crayon, in Spanish and English. Nice writing but kind of an odd activity. A nice American woman left a very large set of crayons for the kids to use and they were very excited to see them. Laid all the colors out on the table and divided them into color groups, etc.

I am writing this post from my tent with the “windows” unzipped, just looking at the ocean thru the screens. Perfectly beautiful view and a nice sunny day. Hot.

Susana and Berta and I might drive down to the botanical garden/nursery/restaurant on Friday. It’s about an hour south of PV, and I have been excited to go every since I heard about it. If it doesn’t work out to go with Susana I am going to go on Tuesday by myself. It sounds easy on the bus, but it would be fun to go with other people, so we’ll see.

I am finally getting the zipper sewn in for the bottom of my tent door. I have to replace that zipper too because I can’t get my bed out of the tent unless I can open the door all the way. Its hard to be bent over sitting on the ground sewing the zipper in, but I can’t see any other way to do it. Except to pay someone to do it. But I am on a tight budget right now because I was thinking I would be house sitting most of April and wouldn’t be paying rent for most of this month. Oh well. I still love being on the beach, so it’s okay.

One of the local builders who occasionally gives me rides into Las Varas, and who likes to show me around his current construction projects showed me his latest effort this morning. It’s for all the people during Semana Santa. A set of five very nice showers and two toilets. They are set up behind one of the little shacky stores on the beach road. Right near Fonda Lupita’s. You walk thru the cuesto into the “back yard” to the showers. They are concrete block, large stalls with nice opaque plastic divider walls and real doors that shut. They are very light and clean looking. I might try one out soon. No heated water but the big black water storage tank (tinacho) is right in the sun so the water will probably be okay.

It’s 10 pesos, almost a dollar for a shower. First he told me the showers use “Ciel” water , which is water bottled by Coke in five gallons jugs and which cost 10 pesos. But that was a joke. He clarified to me that the water was “dulce”, rather than ocean water. At first I thought the toilets had real toilet seats (hurrah!!!) but no, just plain toilets. Disappointing. I always keep my eyes out for toilets with toilet seats. Not something I ever worried about before I came to Mexico.