Homemaking

by

Hunkering Down

I have somehow managed to find myself swamped with work through the weekend. Because of this and my needing to make a withdrawal at the bank, I decided not to do any overtime today and instead go to Maz after my shift ended at 2:00, then hunker down and work for the next three days.

The nearest Scotiabank to me is the one on Ejercito Mexicano, about 1.5KM from the embarcadero. I walked there and on the way noticed several stores, even hole in the wall abarrotes, that said ‘recarga TelCel aquí’ (recharge TelCel here). I’ve been meaning to put money on my phone so I can make and receive calls, but the website has been so terribly slow that I haven’t had the patience to do so. I’d never put money on the phone from a vendor before and decided to see if that’s easier than using my credit card on the website. Is it! I gave my number to the clerk, told her I wanted to add $100 to my account, and she punched it into what I assumed is a cell phone, although it looked like a big old Nokia from 10 years ago.

After about 30 seconds, her phone dinged and I got five text messages confirming that I’d added the $100, what my rates were, special promotions, etc. Super easy! That’s all I had to do because I was going to use the money for calls and texts. If I had wanted to buy bandwidth, I would have needed to send a text message to that effect.

I just checked the text messages and one of them says that my $100 got me $100 in bonus time (saldo regalo/gift balance)!!! I can use that for calls, texts, and bandwidth at full price. Wow! I remember from last year that I pretty much spent the winter making calls on only saldo regalo, but don’t remember it being that generous.

The Amigo plan (pay-as-you-go) rates are also pretty amazing. Get this, I only pay $2 per minute… to Mexico, the U.S., and Canada. I have been staring at those numbers for the last five minutes trying to figure out what I’m reading wrong. That’s 0.16CAD per minute. There has got to be a catch. I am going to have to call someone in Canada to see if this is true! Skype is free, of course, but it’s good to know that I have the phone as a backup! I just skimmed the fine print and it looks like I can use my phone in the U.S. as though I was in Mexico, which is very interesting. I will get back to this as this plan sounds like a game changer because I could keep my TelCel account active when I’m home and use my Mexican SIM when I’m in Montana!

But I digress. From the abarrotes, I crossed the street to use the Scotiabank ATM, where I was able to take out $4,800. It came out in all $500s, plus a $200 and a $100. Ouch! I much prefer withdrawing from Santander, which gives some small bills… but I don’t miss the fee! I went into the bank and asked to change the $4,5000 worth of $500s to $100s and $50s. Not a problem. The teller ended up giving me almost all $50s! I really didn’t mind, of course, but that made for a rather impressive stack of bills!

Since the big Waldo’s is just a block or two further down the road and I needed a few things for the house, it made sense to head there next. But since I was still on the Scotiabank side, I decided to have lunch first. I knew there was a Rin Rin pizza by the big Ley (where I didn’t need anything this time), but they wanted over $30 for tiny slice with a drink. Pass! I went to the Chinese place instead and had a nice lunch for $48.

Then, I climbed up and up and up and up and up and up some more to get to the pedestrian overpass to cross Ejercito Mexicano and then came all the way back down to ground level. Whew! I still prefer that to playing frogger in front of the Scotiabank!

Waldo’s had everything on my list… and a few things that’s weren’t. For those who don’t know, Waldo’s is equivalent to a higher end dollar store in Canada and the U.S., like Dollar Tree. I especially needed some plastic containers for storing leftovers and the like since the ones I bought last year weren’t in the kitchen when I arrived.

Walking back to the embarcadero, I was struck by the fact that this was my first time walking down Gutiérrez Nájera in that direction and that everything looked so different!

There was a short wait for a lancha, but I was back on Isla in a flash.

IMG_0790

I made a quick stop for beer ($90 for seven, so $13 each, almost half the cost of getting a beer at a restaurant!) and then it was time to get home because I was ready to drop. It’s been a busy work week! I plan to get a bit of a later start tomorrow, which will probably mean 7:00 instead of 6:00. 😀

by

A Perfectly Mundane Day in Paradise

I was up and at ’em this morning because I knew I was facing a very difficult transcription job, my first one since mid-October (not counting a tiny easy one I did in Nogales). I’m officially back at work full-time! Anyway, I knew this one was going to be a bear and the best way would be to chop it up into bits and give myself good breaks.

I stopped around 9:00 to get some fruits and veggies and then I headed down the street to the butcher shop to hopefully get pork chops for dinner. They only had one, so I decided to save it for lunch another day and instead do chicken tonight, since I am insane. I have no problem buying pork from that shop because it is prepackaged and frozen. Chicken gets chopped up in front of you and the less I say about the process, the better. 🙂 I plan to do like last year and get my chicken cooked for me from the Chicken Lady on weekends, but she wasn’t working this past weekend and I wanted chicken. It was $49 for two huge chicken breasts and a good sized pork chop. I didn’t take note of the price per pound, but I did the math last year and meat is way cheaper here than what I pay in Canada, even for pork, which is a decent deal back home.

I got home and got to work on the chicken. I’m used to the orange colour of the flesh, but had a hard time getting past the odour last year, the main reason I gave up buying my own. But this chicken didn’t have that smell, yay! I chopped it up and threw it in a bowl, then doused it with some Italian dressing. I happened to have an unopened bottle left when I was packing and I use it almost exclusively as an easy chicken marinade on days when I’m not feeling too creative.

Once the chicken was in the fridge, I went back to work before changing into jeans because I was going riding at 11:00! It was just my friend Joan and I today because Janet only just arrived and Sue won’t be here till the 4th of December. Well, there was a family from Chicago, too, but our groups got separated because Joan and I are way more experienced. It was fun to catch up with Daniel and, like last year, our ride doubled as conversation lessons! We also got in two canters and got a chance to see the new pathway under construction near the beach. I’d call it a boardwalk, but it’s made of sand. 🙂 I’ll hike out there another day and get pictures.

Even though we only wanted to be out an hour, we were out almost two! Time just flies when you’re on a horse, even if your creaky body is protesting. 🙂 I cannot get jaded or blasé about how amazing it is to canter down a palm tree lined beach with a glorious tropical sun beating down at me. This is the Good Life I’ve heard so much about!

My bad knee was completely locked up by the time we returned (I have to remind Daniel to get me another saddle; I had a hard time with the stirrups on this one last year, too), so it’s a wonder it didn’t collapse when I dismounted. I should learn to dismount from the other side, even if I’ll get odd looks. But it makes no sense to drop onto that leg since it’s a recipe for getting hurt. Anyway, I was pleased by how easily I was able to mount and dismount, as it showed me that I’m in better shape than I thought I was!

I was famished by this point, so I headed home to make a quick lunch and get back to work. By 3:00ish, I only had an hourish left, so I headed to the beach for a beer, chips, and salsa. I was disappointed that my pico de gallo had no peppers in it and the server offered to either have serranos added to it or to bring me another salsa that is spicy and I could mix the two. I decided to go that route and the combination was very yummy! I can’t believe food not being spicy enough is now a problem!

While I was enjoying my snack, there was a group of drummers making music with a few gals putting on a dance performance. I left them a tip, so my break cost me all of $70 for booze, entertainment, food, and tips! I love it here! 🙂

When I got in, I made the final push on work and finished at 6:00. For dinner, I sautéd a chayote with some onion. Dang, I missed chayote! I made sure to cook the chicken well past the point I would have called it done back home and it was very tasty! I added an avocado squirted with lime juice as a side. Since dinner was so reasonable, I had a small bowl of the pineapple coconut yoghurt I also missed as dessert!

by

The Road to Paradise is Hell (or Guamúchil to Isla de la Piedra, Redux)

I had a nice evening in Guamúchil. I delayed dinner as long as I could, but by 6ish, it was time. I went down to the restaurant and ordered a Pacifico and the enchiladas mole. Like last year, the food was really delicious! They talked me into have their prune cake for dessert, too. 🙂 My food came out quickly and I made a comment to this effect. The waiter (same guy as last year!) winked and said I had the kitchen all to myself for at least another hour. That rather broke the ice and we chatted for a bit since he wasn’t busy. His children live in Seattle and he asked if I’ve ever been there because he’d been there once during the winter and the weather was horrible. I laughed and told him that Seattle has no idea what winter is really like!

After dinner, I headed back to my room to read. I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to get any rest because there was a party going on with very loud music (tons of bass, too, which makes me physically ill) and fireworks. Thankfully, by 9:00 there was just loud music with no bass and it made rather white noise that allowed me to fall asleep. I vaguely remember waking up around 11:00, but then it was 5:30, a surprisingly good night! It helped that I’d brought in my mattress topper, so I wasn’t sleep on a rock-like bed!

I Googled when sunrise was going to be to see if I was going to laze around or head out and the answer was 6:20, so I could definitely pack and start loading the truck. It was light enough out by 6:00 for me to go. I stopped at the Oxxo for coffee and, like last year, it was the worst Oxxo coffee I’ve had, as well as the cheapest (I sense a correlation). Never again am I going to that one!

Next stop was Scotiabank because I was a little tight in my cash on hand if I had any surprises like rent going up or whatever and didn’t want to chance having to rush to a bank tomorrow. The GPS took me to the bank without fuss… and which turned out to be a HSBC! Bummed that I’d have to detour to the one on Rafael Buelna in Maz, I headed back to the main road. Judging by the amount of shouts I got from a handful of pedestrians, I must have done so the wrong way down a one-way street without signage to that effect. Really, driving in Mexico is no different than driving in Quebec! Anyway, this led me to make a few extra turns and, oh, look at that, there’s a Scotiabank!

It took a bit of work to make my withdrawal because their ATMs are really fussy. You have to put your card in and take it out really fast, then put it in again, where it will lock. I was hoping to be able to take out $5,000, which was tight based on my daily limit, depending on the exchange rate. I got the very terrifying, “Your card is not compatible with our ATMs” message that I knew, thanks to knowledge gained last year, meant, “You can’t take out that much.” So I tried again for $4,000 and that worked just fine.

(Pesos, folks, pesos!)

I then headed out of Guamúchil and pointed the truck towards Culiacán on the libre. I made it to the next to last city on my itinerary in record time. I passed a Panamá bakery, so I pulled into a very tight parking lot to get some munchies. They had the almond croissants and ham and cheese sandwiches I like, so I started with those, then asked if they had anything with apples. The gal went to the kitchen and came back with a tray of apple tarts “with lots of cinnamon.” Perfect! For the first time, they offered to heat up my sandwich, but I said no thank you because I’d be eating it later.

So of course, I stopped at the next Oxxo for a much better coffee to go with my breakfast. 🙂

Having accidentally driven the cuota much of the way from Mazatlán to Culiacán last year, doing so this year wasn’t even a consideration. Yes, it’s faster, but that’s all there is to be said for it. The libre is much more scenic and there are more services. To me, it’s worth the extra time. If I was in an RV, though, I’d find the cuota worth the money to save all that stopping and going and slowing down as we go through the towns!

I thought about stopping in El Quelite, but I had no idea what sort of shape The Road would be in and didn’t want to spend a few hours doing touristy stuff and then discover that The Road would be in worse shape than last year and take hours and end up on Isla rushed and burnt out. Maybe on the way home?

It feels like I made it to Maz in record time this year, even with my stops. There was a very tiny detour around an overpass, otherwise it was very straightforward to get through town. I nixed my plans to stop at Soriana since I wasn’t hungry and decided to head straight to Isla. I made a final pit stop because you do not want to face The Road with anything sloshing around in your bladder!

There was a huge accident right at the turn off for the airport and traffic redirection appeared to be a nightmare. I told the police officer right at my exit that I was headed to my home on Isla de la Piedra and he looked very relieved that I wasn’t a tourist he’d have to reroute!

The first part of The Road was better than last year, but that’s not saying much, in that it was just as rutty, but there were fewer lakes. When I got to the end of that bit, I came upon my water guy from last year, parked while talking to someone. He recognised me and shouted, “Hola amiga! Bienvenidos!” Funny how he was the last Isla person I saw when I left in the spring!

Then, there was the very nice paved section. Then a little bit of graded gravel. Then a long section with huge rocks that haven’t been graded. My truck could barely go over some of those rock piles. It was really bad. An RV would find The Road impassable.

Since I drove The Road several times last year and know what my truck can do, I wasn’t as nervous and drove it pretty quickly, making it to Isla in exactly 30 minutes.

I checked out the house and it was obviously not ready. I went to my landlady’s place and she was so relieved to see me, saying she knew I had said I would not be calling again, but she had still expected a final check in (serves her right for being so hard to reach last year! *g*). She said she needed a couple of hours, but the house was mostly done. I told her I was in absolutely no rush and was going to visit my friends L&N who live on Goat Island. As long as I had a bed tonight, it was all good. She said absolutely! I had thought to arrive around 2:00 and it was around 12:30, so I was early and hadn’t expected the house to be ready anyway!

L&N were thankfully home, so I spent a couple of hours and had as many beers. 🙂 I gave them their purchases and they were very happy, especially to see as much cat litter as I brought them. They only arrived yesterday and, like me, are glad to have landed. They had the flights from hell from Winnipeg!

They had stuff to do, so I headed back to the house to park my truck around 3:00. The yard looked a lot neater, so I suspected I could go back to my landlady’s to get my keys. Yup! She confirmed that I have lots of gas (propane/butane) and that she’ll get my internet turned on ASAP. TelMex is apparently closed tomorrow, so it will happen Tuesday and I should be online by Wednesday…

In the meantime, I’ve discovered I have usable internet with my Wilson Sleek cradle in the truck. That means the phone has to be in the truck and then I’m limited by the computer’s distance from the phone. Ergo, I’ll be working from outside this week! That suits me just fine, it’s HOT.

Now, the house… It’s obvious that she was rushed to get it ready for me tonight in that I’m missing little things like a roll of toilet paper and towels, the washer isn’t hooked up, and the water heater wasn’t on. Absolutely no biggies.  Oh, and the fridge smelled like someone died in it, but ten minutes after putting a bowl filled with a couple of spoons of coffee in it, it was fine!

Other than that, everything was good! The house is freshly painted, there are new curtains in the kitchen (which aren’t as nice quality as what was there last year, but have a much lovelier pattern and offer more privacy), there’s a better (and nicer) bedspread in the bedroom, and…. she got me the armchair I asked for for the living room. I am SHOCKED. It’s not what I would have picked out for myself, but she did really well with my request. It has the arm rests and back support I want and a decent cushion for my butt. I wish I had a foot rest, but I can put my feet up on the couch and will pin a towel or something to the seat so I don’t get it dirty. I know I am going to spend a lot of time reading in this chair this winter!

I emptied the truck right away and set to work getting nearly everything put away! I want to wash all my kitchen stuff as everything is gritty but I promptly sorted through what was here and put away what I won’t use, then figured out where my stuff will end up. I don’t have the extra counter unit this year, so I’m glad I brought a table on which to lay out things. I may go pick up a set of plastic drawers because I really have no place to put things like dish towels or utensils. But I can at least make coffee tomorrow morning!

Tomorrow’s project will be to start setting up my office, but there’s no rush for that since I won’t be working from it for a few days. My landlady asked if I mind if she leaves both twin beds in the house and I told her it’s fine even though it will mean a more cramped office. I am going to take the liberty of doing some furniture rearranging and move one out of the way.

In between bouts of putting stuff away, I headed ‘downtown’ to see if the grocery store was open, which it wasn’t. No biggie. It should be open early tomorrow and I’ll need fresh tortillas anyway! I wasn’t planning to cook tonight, that’s for sure! I didn’t need anything badly enough to stop in at an abarrotes (convenience store), of which there were a handful open.

I headed out to Miguel’s restaurant around 6:30 and boy were they busy! Always a good sign! He and Angela greeted me warmly and took a couple of minutes for a super quick catch up. I had the shrimp burritos (surprise…) and they were as good as I remembered them! Angela asked if they were okay and I said, “With a belly full of good food, I’ll sleep well tonight!” She laughed and said that made her happy.

Like last year, I’ve come just after lots of rain, so there are huge puddles of water all around Isla. Unless I want to take a huge detour, there are two huge lakes between my house and the restaurant. I went around one to get there and around the other to get home. In the dark. With barely any lighting. I didn’t slip in the mud or fall in the water or trip on anything the way I did when I arrived last year until I got my Isla footing! It’s like I’ve never left! 🙂

It’s really good to be back! I wonder if tomorrow will be a ‘I just want to hang out at home in my PJs’ or a ‘Maz, here I come!’ day. We shall see. 😀

by

An Extremely Lazy Productive Day

I was up around 5:30 this morning because I went to bed so early. Knowing this would be my last chance for a down day until my first weekend in Mexico, I stayed in bed for nearly three hours doing some Spanish studies on my iPad. So, lazy, but productive. 🙂

When I finally got up, I did get dressed, but I very quickly wound up in my lounge chair with an exceedingly good cup of coffee and more Spanish exercises. I passed the entire morning that way, getting up only to do the work involved in getting a clean load of laundry onto the clothesline!

I’ve been working on my Spanish all summer, but I’m rather at cramming time now. We’ll see if there are any improvements when I get to the border! I use the free Duolingo app, something I wish had existed all those years ago when I was first learning the language. It allows me to do grammar drills, write (need to work on those pesky accents), repeat back, comprehend orally and in writing, and more. I can’t believe it’s free. I’ve worked through the entire program and am now working on strengthening exercises for the verbs. I wish I could find a similar application that would go from French to Spanish because the verbs would make a ton more sense that way. I keep finding myself translating from English to French to Spanish, and back again.

This afternoon, I started packing in earnest! I’ve really only got the kitchen and office to close up now, as well as add a few things to the clothing bin and pack up the suitcase for the trip down. But don’t think I’m anywhere ready to go. It will be quite a flutter of activity Wednesday and Thursday as I start to close down the property and load up the truck!

by

A Scotiabank Account Can Save International Travelers a Lot of Money

Withdrawal fees sure add up when I’m traveling outside of Canada. In addition to CIBC’s $5 charge, I have to pay the other institution money, too. I wanted to rein in that expense this year, and since there are Scotiabanks in Mexico, that was the logical place to start. As it turns out Scotiabank is part of the Global ATM Alliance network and an account with them means free withdrawals at banks all over the world, including Scotiabank in Mexico and Bank of America in the U.S.

After 25+ happy years at CIBC, I had no desire to start over with another bank, but I thought that getting a very basic Scotiabank account made sense. It would be $3.95 a month for up to 12 transactions and would mean that I would gain the following:

-up to 12 free withdrawals per month

-being able to take out smaller amounts more frequently and not having to carry a ton of cash on me

-not having my main bank card on me when out and about

Transfers between banks are now easy thanks to Interac e-transfers, so I could transfer my allowance from my CIBC account to my Scotiabank account at no cost and with no significant delay. There is also the possibility that I could link this account to my PayPal account in addition to my CIBC one, but I have to double check that.

I confirmed all of this during a chat session with a rep and then booked an appointment for 10:30 this morning to open an account at my nearest Scotiabank branch, which is in Moose Jaw (another reason I don’t want it to be my main bank!).

I convinced my neighbour Caroline to turn today into a girls’ day out. We took off around 8:30 this morning. She had errands to run around the Scotiabank, so she did that while I went in and did my thing.

Opening the account was quick and painless. The rep who assisted me did not attempt to upsell me or get me to switch from CIBC. It was strictly do what the customer, who appears very knowledgeable, wants, and absolutely nothing else. I had been told to present two pieces of ID, but ended up having to show four for some reason. Finally, I had to make a token deposit to cover at least a month’s fees. That was it!

Scotiabank isn’t super convenient in Maz, unless I can find the one that is supposed to be on Aquiles Serdán in Centró, but there is one near the big Waldo/big Ley and also, of course, by the Soriana on Rafael Buelna. So it’ll be fine. It’s not like I have to go to the back end of nowhere that I otherwise have no reason to be.

Caroline was coming into the bank as I was going out, talk about good timing! We got back in the truck, went to Kal Tire to have my truck tires re-torqued, and then headed to the north end of town. Bulk Barn was our first stop, where I loaded up on spices to take down with me.

Then, we went to Walmart, where I decided to price a burr coffee grinder so I can grind my own beans this winter. I have a grinder, but I also do spices with it and there’s starting to be cross contamination. It is also very difficult to make a coarse enough grind for a French press with that grinder. Walmart had what I wanted, Black and Decker brand, for $36.95 and I decided to get it. even though that wasn’t cheap! Well, it rang up at $16.95… I believe in karma, so I spoke up. The teller said, “Are you happy with the price that came up?” I said yes. “Then that’s the price!” WOW.

We then made a stop at Superstore, a store that just makes me cranky… I ran a couple of quick errands and then sat in my truck with my phone while Caroline stocked up for the apocalypse.

Then, it was beyond time for lunch. She was game to try DK Sushi, so we went there and both came out pretty stuffed! She had some cooked sushi as well as vegetarian, plus tempura and beef teriyaki. I had my usual spicy tuna and eel, with bites of some of her vegetarian rolls, plus dumplings. It was really nice to linger over a long meal with her and we ordered in two rounds since our first orders weren’t quite enough.

I drove us home into a slowly setting sun, helped her get all her purchases in house, then collapsed with a glass of wine and some pet cuddles before dragging myself back to my feet and heading home.

It’s been a great day! I shouldn’t have to go to town again before leaving on Friday so now I can focus on closing up the property and packing!