Mazatlan

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Public Toilets in Mexico

I am surprised by how easy it is to find a bathroom in Mexico when you need one. I’ve seen everything from dedicated rest areas to people actually giving access to their own personal bathroom in their home! Look for a sign that says baño or servicios. I have yet to come across a Pemex gas station that doesn’t have a public bathroom

Bathrooms are often a little worn and grotty but still clean. I have yet to find a Mexican bathroom that is as scary as some bathrooms I’ve encountered in the US and Canada. Sometimes, there will be an attendant and you will need to pay a token amount to this person (usually 5 pesos), who will give you a few squares of toilet paper and possibly paper towels.

Of particular interest to ladies, often toilets do not have seats. I think this is because seats and toilets are sold separately in Mexico (don’t quote me on this, but I’m sure I read it in someone’s blog about building a home in Mexico). Today, both the bathroom at Pemex and at Soriana were luxurious — free to use and stocked with toilet paper, paper towels, and hand soap, but they had no seats. You can’t have everything, right?!

Ladies will also want to carry tissues and sanitizer in their purse, or, even better, wet wipes, as sometimes there is no toilet paper and/or water and soap to wash your hands. Always check the stall before sitting/squatting to make sure there is paper. Sometimes, as I learned at Ley this week and Soriana today, the paper dispenser is actually by the door (either inside or out!) and you have to grab some on the way in!

If there is a bin by the toilet, you need to put the paper in there, not into the bowl (ie. do not flush it). Please, please, please, cover your paper if it is messy. I really wish I didn’t have to say this…

Mazatlán Centro Histórico bathroom tip: pay admission at the Museo Arqueológico (less than 30 pesos and free on Sundays!) on Sixto Osuna (just past Plazuela Machado en route to Olas Altas). They have super clean newly renovated bathrooms with toilet paper, paper towels, water, hand soap, AND SEATS.

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Today Was an Expensive Bust

I was up early to get L&N’s friend to the airport and was on the road heading to Maz by about 8:15. I had planned to spend part of the day at village called El Quelite a little north of Maz, but made an irreversible and expensive mistake: I got on the cuota (toll road) instead of the libre (free road). It doesn’t matter that it took me ages to realise that I wouldn’t be able to access the town from the cuota, I still ended up having to practically go halfway to Culiacán before I could turn around. This meant I had to go through the toll booth in both directions, which cost 109 pesos EACH WAY!!! 🙁

The Pole Palace night club sounds like a very classy establishment.

The Pole Palace night club sounds like a very classy establishment.

Mexican open top double decker bus... Yes, those are people poking out of the top of it!

Mexican open top double decker bus… Yes, those are people poking out of the top of it!

When I was finally able to turn around, it was at an oasis along the barren road, a Pemex/OXXO combo, where I was very glad to have access to a bathroom (which had paper, water, and soap, but no toilet seat) and to be able to get a coffee (which tasted not great; I’ve been so spoiled by Rico’s!).

Turning around, I thought I could salvage the day by visiting some petroglyphs L&N had mentioned and the access road for which I had passed on the way north, but this being the first day of spring, there were massive crowds. I was almost 5KM down the dirt track to the location when a cop signaled for me to pull over. I did so and he spoke very quickly to me.

I said, ¿Mande? and he looked at a loss for words and managed to get out in English that he doesn’t speak English. I shook my head and said that if he spoke slowly and used simple words I would understand. He tried again and I repeated what I had understood: I had to go to the end of the road, go around the parking lot, come back up the track, and park at the head of a long queue of cars. The cop grinned and said exactly.

So that’s what I did and let’s just say I had no desire to park almost 6KM from the entrance and hike down to something I had no details about when it was obviously a special day and people were heading out for the whole of it, with parasols and coolers.

I made it back to the cuota and drove straight to the Soriana off Mex-15 that I went to in December. I actually wanted to check out Mega, but did not have the energy at this point to brave the traffic down Rafael Buelna.

Soriana didn’t have much or, rather, I’m not in the mood to cook, so I pretty much just stocked up on paper goods, crackers, sliced ham, and kielbasa. Something told me to check my email before going into the store and I had a tiny order from Contessa, that I was able to fill. I am always glad to do that for people! When I would do my supply runs to  Whitehorse, I would often have full huge lists of shopping for people, hundreds of dollars’ worth… and I would have the favour returned when others did their supply runs.

I dropped Contessa’s things off and got in around 2:30. I had a beer while I read a bit, then I decided I was hungry and moved my reading to the El Velero restaurant where I made the mistake of filling up on chips (damn their awesome pico de gallo!) and limonda, not leaving me much room for my chicken tacos. So I brought most of the tacos home and will have a nice breakfast tomorrow.

Not counting any expenditures from Soriana onward, my day cost me about 500 pesos in tolls and fuel with absolutely nothing to show for it. Very disappointing. If I wasn’t driving such a gas guzzler, I would have enjoyed the drive, something I haven’t done much this winter, but all I could focus on was the gas gauge needle dipping lower and lower and lower. If El  Quelite had had anything really remarkable to see, I might have made a point to find my way to the libre and gone there after all, but there was really nothing that spectacular to see to justify the extra mileage.

I wish I had a navigator.  You can’t drive and navigate here, it’s too dangerous. A navigator would have been looking at the map for me and telling me to stay in the left lane while I worked at avoiding getting into an accident.

To be honest, I wish I had done what I wanted to do today: come home from the airport and go back to bed with a book. 🙁

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Mutual Trust

My landlady and her husband just left from fixing my toilet. Well, he fixed it and she and I gabbed. She was quite impressed by my report about the Road and was devastated to see the state of the ceiling in the bathroom. I’d told her that rain came in and caused the paint to start flaking, but the impact of this didn’t hit her till she saw the damage.

My relation with my dueña has been very good. We don’t have any sort of written agreement, but with a bit of give and take on both sides, this business relationship works. She trusts me that the rent will show up at some point and I trust that repairs will be done in a timely manner. She pays the gas and power bills to make sure service isn’t cut off and I don’t balk and reimburse her as soon as I can. And, of course, she got internet in and handles all inquiries related to that while I do my best to keep her house clean and neat and alert her of problems.

Unfortunately, the yardmate situation has been terrible. I like the house, the location, the price, and get along well with my landlady, but I’ll confess that there have been many times since the yardmate arrived in December that I have thought of moving because of her. She is also the reason I hesitated in committing to the idea of coming back to this house, with the fear that the yardmate had the same thought.

But I’ve heard through the grapevine that the yardmate is going to look for other accommodation if she comes back to Isla next year and this makes me very happy. I’ve decided not to say much more about the yardmate because I don’t want to sink to her level.

I want to come back to this house because it works for me, the kinks with the landlady are worked out, and I’ll know I’ll have good internet within a few days of arrival. It just doesn’t seem worth my time to look for a more architecturally interesting building, something cheaper, or even something quieter.

I’ve been a homeowner for more than half of my adult life and I have to say that there are real perks to being a tenant — like not having to fix your own leaky toilet. 😀

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The Cut and Paste Holiday

My current seasonal project involves typing up testimonies. I get a written copy of them and sometimes the stars align so that not only does the testifier read his/her testimony straight through, but the PDF is also OCRable, enabling me to cut and paste it into my document. This cuts down on my work load immensely and sometimes, like today, makes it possible to transcribe quite a bit of audio in a very short amount of time.

By noonish, I’d done two loads of laundry, Skyped my mother to wish her a happy birthday, cleaned the house, and done enough work to make for a large, but manageable load tomorrow thanks to the magic of cut and paste. I decided to take advantage of this and head to Centro, wanting to take full advantage of my last precious days in Mexico this spring.

Before going to the panga, I stopped at my landlady’s to pay the remainder of the tab for the electricity and also to tell her and her husband this, in Spanish:

“I’m having the same problem with my toilet as last time, that the water in the tank gets too high and the water gets all over the floor. I shut the water to the toilet and will be home tomorrow and all next week if you (to her husband) can come fix it. Oh, and by the way, here’s the 240 pesos for the light bill and when you’re over at the house fixing my toilet, can you please cut the palm frond over the clothesline?”

The pair of them looked at each other, burst out laughing, and clapped! When she could catch her breath, my landlady said that she was amazed by how my Spanish has improved since we spoke on the phone last fall and promised to get everything fixed for me and thanked me for making good on the light bill.

So off I went to Maz, taking Constitución since I wanted to have lunch on Olas Altas, unless Beach Burger at Plazuela Machado was (finally) open.

I found Maz's red light district. I am not being facetious. The picture of a scantily clad woman on the door and the men coming in and out of said door pretty much confirm it...

I found Maz’s red light district. I am not being facetious. The picture of a scantily clad woman on the door and the men coming in and out of said door pretty much confirm it…

I watched a man paint this proper, non-scary accessible entrance.

I watched a man paint this proper, non-scary accessible entrance.

Plazuela Machado

Plazuela Machado

Plazuela Machado

Plazuela Machado

This couple was wearing a pair of earbuds each and dancing!

This couple was wearing a pair of earbuds each and dancing!

Beach Burger was open! YAY! I keep hearing that they have the best burger in town and I wanted to know if that was true, especially now that I have a few comparison points.

I ordered a Tecate and a burger, making a point to tell the server NO MAYO. Mayo comes on just about anything with bred in Mexico and if you don’t specifically refuse it, your food will come slathered with it. I once made the mistake of asking if a sandwich came with anything and was told just lettuce, tomato, and onion… and it was drenched in mayo.

My meal took forever to arrive, close to if not a little more than an hour! I had my phone and caught up on some FaceBooking and reading. The server came by several times to give me an estimate on how much longer I’d have to wait (very accurate, might I add) and I decided, what the heck, and had a second beer!

When the burger arrived, it was beautiful:

INCREDIBLE burger. The fries weren't worth mentioning, beyond the reasonable portion.

INCREDIBLE burger. The fries weren’t worth mentioning, beyond the reasonable portion.

And it was delicious. I don’t think it’s possible to compare great burgers because they’re all unique. A burger, I think, is either good or not. This one was good. The bun was toasty, the meat fresh, generous, and seasoned with Montreal steak spice, which I adore. There was lettuce, tomato, onion, cheese, ketchup, and the mustard I’d asked for. At 70 pesos, it’s definitely pricier than the 30-peso burger I like in the Golden Zone, but it’s a heck of a lot closer. This was definitely a burger worth the wait!

The same super hot pickles that I get at Miguel's here on Isla. I actually ate the carrot.

The same super hot pickles that I get at Miguel’s here on Isla. I actually ate the carrot.

I like that I always know what my tab is going to be because taxes are included. Burger, 70MXN and 2x20MXN for the beer

I like that I always know what my tab is going to be because taxes are included. Burger, 70MXN and 2x20MXN for the beer

Workers were installing bollards to prevent people from driving down Constitución along Plazuela Machado.

Workers were installing bollards to prevent people from driving down Constitución along Plazuela Machado.

I then got some garrafa de nieve to cleanse my palate and tried jamaica (hibiscus) for the first and last time. Like the agua fresca, it was pretty flavourless. But they had guava again, which I haven’t had since the first time I had some!

The Mercado was next since I had to get an earring fixed. For someone who doesn’t wear a lot of jewellery, that’s a lot of jewellery fixing for me in one week! Unbelievably, one of the posts from the pair of earrings I bought at Yellowstone snapped right off! The jewellery repair guy did a good job on it, but unfortunately washed most of the patina off the leaf after, so now I have a super shiny leaf and a dark leaf. Hopefully, the patina won’t take too long to come back. The guy actually tried to give me back the 10 pesos I overpaid earlier this week, but I insisted that he keep it and I paid the full 40 pesos for this repair as well.

I finished up in the area by doing a Waldo’s and veggie run, then headed to Ley. On the way there, I came across a vendor selling 10-peso earrings and I picked up a pair with small seashells. I didn’t negotiate a lower price; that would have been ridiculous. I’m glad to be rebuilding my earring collection. 🙂

Ley has put my favourite yoghurt on sale before, but today it was especially cheap, only 15 pesos for the big size!!! I picked up two, one pineapple coconut and also the one with raisins, just to try something new.

At the panga, I was about to go down the ramp when a man called up to me to wait a minute. He was promptly berated by a woman behind me for telling me this in Spanish and that he was lucky I understood him. He retorted that he’s heard me speak loads of Spanish and to stop assuming that all Gringos don’t speak Spanish, it would get her in trouble! This rather made a linguistic bookend to my afternoon!

But the linguistic amusement doesn’t end there. I chatted in English with a couple on the panga when I heard a couple behind me discuss in québécois how much they loved my dress (the purple one I got in December). I turned and said, “Ben, merci. Je l’aime aussi!” (Gee, I love it, too!) The look on their face was priceless.

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No Go to Durango

Well, it looks like I am canceling my trip to Durango because of… snow. I am getting reports of bad road conditions, delays, and chilly temperatures there. Doesn’t sound like much fun to me! I’ll be hitting the road in about five weeks so I’m actually not sure that a long road trip this weekend sounds like much fun anyway.

I have advised my clients that I am taking the three days off and, of course, the trip is budgeted for. So I’m still taking the weekend off for a staycation.

I’m doing an airport run on Saturday and from there will continue on to a small town out of Mazatlán for a change of scenery. I’ve narrowed it down to two possibilities. That will let my truck stretch her legs (tires, I guess) and alert me to any potential issues before I take off next month.

Sunday, I think I will bus it to the far end of the Golden Zone and walk back until I drop, then take a pulmonía to the panga from wherever that is.

Monday could be a chore and relax day at home, and would mean not having to cancel riding!

I’m not disappointed. There’s so much around here for me to see and I really don’t want to run into snow! 😀