Toilets in Chacala

Another Sunday morning in Chacala. The weather is beautiful. Sunny and in the mid-8o’s. There's still fewer motor home parked alot the beach than other years. And the ones that are here are the smaller types. At least most of them are smaller. One is parked crossways, taking up four places usually used by camping Mexican families. another on BC pulled into the large empty palm grove, and formed a corral with their rigs. Making it impossible for the only other rig in the whole area to hook up and move out. Strange days.

When I got home last night I found that my landlady had rented her downstairs room to a large family. 8 people. Four adults. Four kids. From Guadalajara. I don’t know where they all slept, because that room has only two beds, a single and a double (called matrimonio here).There was a third bed, but the repo guys came a few days ago and took back a new bed. The driver told me the whole truck was full of stuff being repossessed in Chacala that day.

I keep asking Dona Lupe to tell people she rents to that the toilet flapper needs to closed by hand after each flush. Otherwise the entire tinaco (water storage on the roof) will be emptied in about two hours. She doesn’t remember, and doesn’t want to fix the flapper. I have paid for four new flappers over three stays here, and my sort-of-landlord ruins it every time he gets drunk. Luckily that’s only once a month of so.

Anyway, I keep a close watch on the toilet that serves the two units downstairs, to make sure the flapper is closed. It's my own fault that there are renter's more often now, since I put a sign up in front of the house that says "Se Renta" and "Rooms for Rent". No good deed goes unpunished, I guess. Anyway, Dona Lupe is happy with the renters. A;though the past family here skipped out without paying for their second night. My experience is that some men, particular drunk ones, do not want advice about toilets from a woman. Oh well.Usually I catch the new renters when they arrive, and show them about the flapper, and there’s no problem. But the people last night arrived about two hours before I got home. They had already drained the system. I tried to talk to the adult male in the party, but he was too drunk to make much sense. He insisted that the toilet was fine. But the toilet was already unflushable (no water in the system) and had been used anyway. I found a bucket and filled it with water and flushed it. One of the women came out, and I showed her where the garbage can filled with water was, so they could flush during the night. She got it and we laughed about the man.