Month: January 2015

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Out and About In Mazatlán

I covered a lot of ground today!

Even though I had work to do today, I took the afternoon off to visit my friend Dale who has moved to the Mar Rosa trailer park in the Golden Zone. I left around 11:45, took the panga, and walked to the Malecón to catch a bus.

En route, I passed a licuado (milkshake) bar that also did fresh juices, so I stopped and bought a ‘small’ grapefruit juice. I think it had the juice of four whole grapefruits in it! It was really hot, I’d been walking for more than a mile, and the water I’d brought wasn’t cutting it. The juice did the trick!

A bus zoomed by me just as I arrived at Camarón Sabalo, the boulevard that parallels the Malecón, so I walked a few blocks to the first dedicated bus stop with shade and a bench to wait for the next one. It was a very long wait, more than 15 minutes, which surprised me.

After that, it was stop and go all the way to the RV park. I thought it was further past my cousin’s hotel than it was, so I would have missed it had a bunch of people not gotten off there, too. Not that it would have been a huge deal to miss it since I did see the sign for it as we passed, so I could have had the driver stop as soon as it was safe to do so and doubled back on foot.

Mar Rosa is a pretty nice RV park with a good location. It has high walls, so it’s not as noisy as you’d expect. The caveat is that it is super tight to navigate. It’s really a small rig park, although some bigger rigs wiggle their way in.

Dale's full-time home!

Dale’s full-time home!

What a gorgeous rig!

What a gorgeous rig!

This is the kind of RV I'm thinking of moving to, a rugged camper van that could handle rough roads.

This is the kind of RV I’m thinking of moving to, a rugged camper van that could handle rough roads.

Dale wanted to have lunch and suggested a nearby restaurant with cheap, basic, good food, which sounded fine to me. I am not going to name the restaurant because I want to share something funny and don’t want to get them into trouble. You see, they served us beer, but billed us for chocolate milks, which tells me they were not licensed…

And this what they served us for 30 pesos each:

This cup held TWO 355mL beers.

This cup held TWO 355mL beers.

It’s a good thing Pacific is a fairly low alcohol content beer or we would have fallen asleep!

I ordered their 30 peso hamburger and was served a cheeseburger (not complaining). That burger was SO GOOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I like hamburgers with seasoning in the patty and this one had plenty of flavour. The bun was also good and there was no pickle relish, but there were sweet pickles, and they had mustard. The Golden Zone still isn’t a place I’d want to stay, but it’s getting more and more worthy of a visit. 🙂

Meh fries and a burger worth going all the way to the Golden Zone for!!!

Meh fries and a burger worth going all the way to the Golden Zone for!!! I’ll skip the fries next time.

After lunch, we walked down to Rico’s Cafe so I could get coffee. I never did get used to the Looney Bean stuff, finding it too weak for my tastes. I bought a full pound of Rico’s Veracruz beans, coarse ground, for an absurd 128 pesos. I used to pay almost $20 per HALF pound of beans when I lived in Gatineau.

Then, Dale and I went back to Mar Rosa so I could see the beach. It is quite different from our Isla beach, especially in the sand. I think the difference is that we’re rather sheltered and this is more open ocean.

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The sand was black. Very curious.

The sand was black. Very curious.

I got in plenty of cuddle time with her Boys:

Chester, who is about seven, and very affectionate. He's always glad to see me. I just called his name and he posed for me.

Chester, who is about seven, and very affectionate. He’s always glad to see me. I just called his name and he posed for me.

Beamer (as in the car) is about twelve. He also turned his head when I called him.

Beamer (as in the car) is about twelve. He also turned his head when I called him.

Chester found shade under my legs, LOL. He's licking my ankles in this shot!

Chester found shade under my dress, LOL! He’s licking my ankles in this shot!

Dale offered to drive me back to the panga! Wow, what a treat! She’s been driving around and is comfortable going to certain places. I told her I wanted to hit the Ley and she said that was fine or she could take me to Mega or Walmart if I preferred. I accepted that offer and we headed off to Soriana. I’ve never been to a Mega, but I know that Soriana’s prices are better, and I prefer to support a Mexican company. Getting to Soriana was very easy since it’s on Rafael Buelna, which terminates at Camarón Sabalo, and more of a detour than Mega, but on the way to Walmart.

I didn’t have much money for groceries and hadn’t brought cloth bags or ice packs, so I wasn’t tempted to get a ton of stuff, but I did look at the offerings, marveling at seeing things like HUMMUS. Dale found my shock at the low prices hilarious. For example, 18 pesos for a giant box of peppermint tea?! I came home with it!

Navigating a Mexican grocery store now comes more naturally than the first time I tried it seven years ago in Tijuana. I remember being in the Gigante, famished, and wanting to buy some pan dulce, but not understanding how the process worked and being too overwhelmed to ask.

To buy baked goods in Mexico, you need to grab a tray and tongs. You then select what you want and bring the tray to a weigh station where it will be bagged and priced. Baked goods are so cheap that you will be tempted to get one of everything, but remember that they don’t use preservatives, so your goodies will only be good for a few days!

All I bought today were four rolls, but it was hard not to walk out with some pan chocolate (chocolate croissants)! 🙂

When we had come into the store, I took the sales flier, just like I would get in a CDN or US grocery store, and saw that the big Lala yoghurts were half price. So I headed to the dairy section next and got the last mango one!

I picked up a few more things, including Post-It notes from their office supply section because I way under packed my office! Unfortunately, they were out of paper clips. Dale was amused that I completely blanked out on the English word for those. I have no idea of the Spanish word either. I just knew I wanted trombones…

I came out of there loaded down with toilet paper, cheese, yoghurt, bacon, fresh bread, butter, and a few other goodies for 274 pesos. I continue to find prices here absurd. 🙂

And speaking of butter, I really do think I’ve solved the Mexican butter issue. As long as you buy it ‘sin sal’ (no salt), you will get butter like back home, not the movie popcorn tasting stuff!

Now comes a good example of what makes Dale and me such a strong team. I knew what road to take to get to the embarcadero, but not how to get to the road. Dale knew how to get to this road, but did not know it would take us to the embarcadero! So between the two of us, we made it to the panga easily. It’s wonderful to know my way around now!

My bags were awkward for the walk home when I arrived on Isla and I was really glad to get in. I really do want to do a big Soriana trip next week and while I had planned on a pulmonía ride to the panga on the Maz side, I think I will add one on this side, too. Yes, I could take my truck to the embarcadero, but getting it out of this yard is such a pain that I’d rather pay the 30 or so pesos instead!

Well, I’d better get to work. Going to be another late night, but I then I can sleep in tomorrow. I have work through the weekend, but they won’t be long days. I put in a lot of extra hours this week because I was paid bonus money, which really made taking the workload worth my time!

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The Call of the Tacos

I’m in the middle of a huge litigation trial where, for the next couple of days, I can take as much work as I can handle. I’m motivated to stay busy because the beginning of the month was so slow. Thankfully, the work is easy, so it goes quickly.

I did two hours this morning to meet an 8AM deadline, had a short pause for breakfast, took an hour and half to do an urgent request for another client, and then continued with the trial. By 1:00, I was where I expected I would be by 5:00. Great, I was going to finish early!

Not quite.

It’s sunny. I’m near the beach. I’m in Mexico. I spent 18 months in a Saskatchewan backwater (beloved backwater, to be fair), cooped up in a tiny RV, working to make a winter like this possible and to invest in my property. There were few outings. It’s going to be the same way when I get back home in a few months. I don’t care how busy and broke I am, I am not spending my first Mexican winter cooped up so I can finish work ‘early’ and miss the sun!

So I headed out to the El Velero (sailboat) restaurant to enjoy the relative quiet of the mid-week beach. I ordered a Pacifico and perused the menu, opting for chicken tacos. The server asked if I wanted ‘dorados o suaves’? I knew that dorados means fried, so I assumed suave would be non-fried since it means soft and went for that option. Next, I was asked if I wanted flour or corn tortillas and I picked the latter. The server grinned and said, “Ah, you want real Mexican tacos!” So I’m assuming that real Mexico tacos are made with soft corn tortillas. 🙂

I’d brought along my Spanish Reader’s Digest magazine to read since I knew there would be a wait for the food and couldn’t help chuckling out loud at some of the jokes. My word of the day is ‘pozo’, well (as in the kind from which you draw water), from a story about a heroic rescue of a boy from one.

The food came on a platter and was crazy generous, with four tacos, lettuce, onions, refried beans, rice, and sides of super spicy hot sauce and fresh pico de gallo. But since the tortillas weren’t fried and there was no cheese or sour cream like you’d get NOB, it really wasn’t that caloric of a lunch and was probably on the healthy end of the food scale. I ate all the pico de gallo and am I’m happy to say that I am definitely getting used to cilantro!

My beer came with lime wedges, which I gobbled up. I refused more from one server, but another server brought me another plate of them. I must have had six whole limes with my lunch. I am not going to get scurvy here!

Replete, I paid the 90 peso (plus 15 peso tip) cuenta and headed home. On the way, I heard a voice yell, ¡Mira, señora, mira! I turned to see a little girl of about eight and another of about six on a trampoline. They gave me a five minute acrobatics show, took a bow as I clapped, and then headed into their house. Imagine missing that!

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Nom Nom Nom

I’ve stopped buying meat to make at home, opting instead to eat vegetarian when I cook and spend the money I would have on meat on meaty meals out. I’m so out of practice at cooking meat that I really don’t do it as well as the pros do and restaurant meals in Mexico, if you know where to eat, are cheaper than anything I could make at home anyway.

So all that to say that I went to Miguel’s tonight to get a chorreada, a pork and cheese concoction over a thick crispy tortilla, to go. I would have had pictures except that Contessa and Colin were there and invited me to sit and since I was going to end up eating there and worked up an appetite waiting to order since they were slammed, I added a shrimp burrito to my order. 🙂 The meal came with salad and these really tasty whole grilled green and white onions that were absolutely divine (I’m a fan of onions).

Dinner came to a grand total of 60 pesos with a tip, or about 5CAD. Absurd in a great way. I’m going to have a hard time justifying eating a 15CAD restaurant meal when I get back to Canada, knowing just how far that money would go in Mexico next winter!

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Trader Joe’s Response To My Claim of Bad Almond Butter

Trader Joe, or, rather, a third party somehow affiliated with them, responded to my email about their bad almond butter.

I am not impressed:

Good Evening Ms. Crothers,

Thank you for notifying us of you concern “It appears that this batch of almond butter should have unfortunately been included in your recent almond butter recall.  I came down with a case of mild food poisoning on January 12th and through a process of elimination have determined its the almond butter”.

[Pause here to state that my email was very long and detailed exactly how I determined that it was the almond butter and what my symptoms were.]

During production of our products we collect samples for microbiological testing, which are tested by an external third party laboratory.  The microbiological results for the date code provided are within specification.

Please contact me if you have any questions.

Regards,

*** / Corporate QA Coordinator

GOLDEN BOY FOODS

Wow. Talk about a dismissive email! Who taught the QA Coordinator how to write customer response letters?! There’s no apology and no attempt at making resolution, not even a coupon for my trouble. I took the time to write them and shared personal information because I felt there was a possible public health risk. I haven’t shopped much at Trader Joe’s (rarely in an area that has one), but this sort of response guarantees that I won’t be setting foot in one of their stores again.

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More Thoughts About Mazatlán

I remember doing some research about Maz this past summer and getting a figure of over 1 million for its population. I have no idea what I was looking at. The population of the city is about 440,000 and if you add in the metro area, it’s still less than half a million. That puts it at twice the size of Regina, but fully half the size of Calgary.

In terms of actual landmass, the city feels very compact. I’ve covered most of the core of the city. It’s a very easy city to get around in, thanks to great public transportation and high walkability, so you can quickly and cheaply find yourself from one end to the other. I would do very well here without a vehicle. In fact, I am toying with the idea of flying to Maz next year since I really do not miss driving this winter.

I’m already playing the ‘could I live here?’ game that I played through my travels in the U.S. and Canada. I do intend to live in Mexico for a few years if I can get a long term residency visa, so I think that getting a start on answering that question is worthwhile. It certainly paid off in Canada because it enabled me to buy property smartly.

I know myself really well now, know what is important to me in a long term home and what is a trade off I’m willing to make. Maz has a lot going for it, being a so evocative of the central core of Ottawa, which I still maintain is the perfect Canadian city for me except for one key detail. I’ll get into that in a moment. If I were to choose Maz as a permanent residence, I’d probably want to live on Isla to continue getting the best of both worlds.

But Maz has one big ugly issue that would make it utterly unsuitable for me as a permanent residence: its climate. I can hear all of you say WHAT?! Maz has a humid tropical climate. I do not ever again want to live long term in a humid climate. Humidity makes the cold colder and the heat hotter. You also have to deal with food spoilage, mould, odours, condensation, rust and a host of other issues. I cannot believe how much of my stuff, including bags in storage, the top and sides of my fridge, clothes hanging in the closet, and even computer parts are getting fuzzy with mould! Soon as I get half a day off, I really need to empty everything out of the closets and cabinets to make sure I’m on top of the mould issue.

I didn’t buy property in the back end of nowhere Saskatchewan just because it was cheap or because I had easy access to a lovely city (which I don’t…). I bought property there because of a generally dry and sunny climate, year round. As it turned out, my biggest priority wasn’t being able to walk to a bar or coffee shop or a movie theatre or a good grocery store, but to be in a climate that doesn’t make me want to curl up in a ball and sob three quarters of the year and keep me glued to an AC vent the rest of the time. Climate came first, cost of living second, and everything else was negotiable. That was as shocking revelation.

I love Maz very much and look forward to returning next year, but after that, I’m going to seek a different location to try to find that magical combination of hot and dry winter weather. Being near the ocean isn’t important to me (rather obvious if you look on a map where Haven is located, about as far away from an ocean in all directions as is possible anywhere in North America!), so I wouldn’t mind venturing further inland, although I will have to watch the elevation!