Zihuatanejo

2 14 11  As our vacation is nearing its end the senor asked me what time our flight is on Wednesday, I went on-line to check it out and our flight isn’t on Wed. it’s tomorrow, Tuesday the 15th.  I’m not sure what happened, if we wrote the wrong date down on our calendar, or if we made the mistake when booking the flight, but we are having to leave a day earlier than we wanted. Sort of made me wish I hadn’t checked and then we would have been just stuck here. We tried to change our reservation, but it was way too expensive for one day $165 per person. So we just have to suck it up and head for home.  So I did a little last-minute shopping, finally found my ice ream man that sells home-made ice cream out of a big galvanized,short, fat milk can looking thing.  He had 3 flavors, I chose lime and it was super cold and hard. We packed our “going to stay in Mexico suitcase” and will deliver it to Jorge in the morning for safe keeping until next year. We put down our deposit on our apartment reservations for next year for 6 weeks. We are going out to dinner with our neighbors tonight, will finish packing upin the morning and prepare to head home. I finished reading my 8th kindle book today, just in time to start a new soft cover book I bought here about Zihuatanejo written by a woman who has been coming to Mexico since the 60’s.  Should be interesting, but bittersweet reading as we are departing.   Tomorrow will be my last Mexican post. Signing off KO

 

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2 13 11 At the Sailfest auction we won the bid on a dinner at Amulettos, which is a very upscale restaurant and boutique hotel at the very highest point above La Ropa/Las Gatas areas.  Now I know this from having read the message board out of Zihuatanejo, but the senor isn’t fully aware of how up scale this place is. I tell him he needs to wear his white shorts vs denim shorts and his dress leather sandals and I plan to wear a dress as I frequently do evenings in Zihuatanejo.  I borrow our neighbors phone and make reservations, which are recommended,but not mandatory. So tonight is the night, we flag a cab, and arrive on time, 7:30.  Our certificate is for 1000 pesos (a little more that $100.) and the senor says for that amount we probably could have brought friends, but I know different. Of course the sun has just set and it’s just a little too late for a sunset shot which is too bad as the sky is quite pink.  We are on top of the highest hill with a path to the door to the restaurant which as we approach we find the door is closed and no door knob to turn  or handle to push.  It is a huge door and we of course question we have been let off in the wrong place.  But there is like a speaker phone with a button to push, I push and expect a voice but no all we hear is a click and after a couple of clicks we push on the huge heavy door and it opens  into a pavilion where a couple is enjoying a bottle of wine and the sunset.  We inquire as to the restaurant and they direct us down some stairs. Now my knee’s are holding up well , but the senor’s have gone kaput, both of them.  Fortunately there is a doctor appointment waiting him upon our return, but tonight these steps are a bit of a challenge for him. As we wind our way down we enter a beautiful garden courtyard  restaurant with only 4 -5 tables. The view is spectacular, Zihuananejo is lit up like a christmas tree, a few fishing boat lights can be seen as they manuever around the bay and our waiter seats us at a perfect table to take in the view..  Our menu is presented and we can choose from either a 3, 4 or 5 course selection,and all the options are listed in great detail. We choose the 3 course  selection with the senor concerned that it will be too much food as we don’t normally order appetizers and deserts.  We order our drinks and begin to study the menu, we can either order a hot appetizer or a cold   there are 5 selections in each category, and then there are the main courses, meat, fowl  or fish, with 4-5 choices in each category with all the details of sauces and method of cooking. Then the desert course lists another 4-5 deserts again with great descriptions. It takes us a good 15 minutes to read, discus and interpret all our choices  while the senor says to me don’t suck up that wine too quick as we are paying for it, suave isn’t he!  I choose a cold appetizer of stuffed tomato with some sort of cheese, lobster tails for the main course and a chocolate dish for desert, the senor has a cold clam appetizer, pigeon for main course and a raspberry desert.  All this listing of sauces, ingredients, and method of preparation is lost on the  senor,  22 years of eating in Navy galleys has not given the senor a discerning pallet, just plain food is what he really wants. And he really prefers it spelled out in plain english.  His clam appetizer baffles him as he tries to figure out where the clams are buried in it,  the pigeon main course he proclaims as good  while wondering if  any of the pigeons that roost and fly around our building are missing and how it reminds him of raising and barbaqueing  pigeons when he was a kid.  He soon discovered the things that the things he has beeen rolling around his plate are carmelized carrots and are really good, not prunes or dates which were the first guess. His raspberry  pastry is excellent. For my appetizer I choose a tomato that was stuffed with a fluffy cheese concoction and  the main course of  2 lobster tails in a great sauce which was wonderful, I did pass over both the spinach as asparagus, my desert was a warm chocolate cake with a dollop of avocado colored ice cream on it on a plate of warm orange sauce .   Normally I never eat sweets, but tonight it was a must have. All in all we had a good time, we laughed about now knowing how the other have lives and frankly we could care less.  The senor would be happier with a good hamburger and Zorro’s fish and chips suits me just fine.  Long story short, you can take the boy out of the country and feed him on Navy chow, but you can’t convince him  gourmet food is the way to go.  It was a great experience, the portions were small so 3 courses was perfect and the 3 course choice was priced at 450 pesos per person, the 4 at 550 and the 5 at 650.  So our certificate and another 20 bucks for drinks and a tip and we were out the door.  Was it fun,yes,. Will we do it again, probably not.  Signing off KO

2 12 11 

 As I walked out on my balcony I couldn’t help but see the cruise ship in the harbor.  It was huge!  Over the years I have learned that you don’t go into the myriad of little shops that cater to the tourists on cruise ship days as the prices all go up.  And yet the shop keepers complain that they don’t get much business from the cruise people and the local tourists don’t come in on those days either.  You’d think they would figure it out!  As it was cruise ship day it was a perfect day to head to the mercado and pick up what is probably the last of our grocery needs while we are here.  I find my fruit & vegetable vendor and purchase 1 avocado, then on to my egg man for 6 eggs, then to my cheese man for a couple of yards of cheese. 

Shopping here is always and adventure, so much more fun than going to the commissary.  After walking back to the apartment and putting our supplies away I decide I will take my book and head to the malecon along the water front. I love to sit at an open air restaurant, sip my drink and watch the “boat people’ hurrying around town trying to see every thing in the time they have. I set and silently gloat that I now know this town intimately and they have no clue.  I’ve been here long enough to have made friends and can greet people I know as they pass by. I really am beginning to feel like part of the “local snow bird community”. Many of the “boat people” are afraid to eat meals in town, but will drink the beer.  This particular boat is from England and convince 2 very british ladies they should try guacamole, they just can’t quite understand what the chips are if they are not potato chips and not fries what can they be?  They tried it and liked it.  Which is what everyone should do in a foreign country, try it you just might like it.

After cooking in tonight, a delicious steak for the senor, and avocado and refried beans for me I head out again to catch Josie Kuhn sing and play her guitar, just a wonderful low-key day in paradise.  Signing off KO

Once again we took the ferry to Las Gatas beach for another day of swimming, snorkeling, feasting and drinking. Arrived about noon and stayed until 5 when you have to leave the beach or get stranded.  Our friends Dwight and Lynn joined us later.  The senor opted for a butter spaghetti but I had tuna carpechio, I know it’s not spelled correctly, but it is thin strips of tuna marinated, not cooked.  It was fantastic. On the return trip off the island we had white tickets where all the mexican beach goers had yellow tickets, and all the yellow tickets got “panga’s” (boats) before we did, about 6 boats came and loaded them before us, we almost felt like the gringo’s were being discriminated against, but we figured it out they were from one of the resorts down towards Playa Linda and those tickets were for those boats hired to take them back, we finally got on our panga and brought into the pier at El Centro just about 3-4 blocks from our apartment.

After a quick shower and a short siesta our neighbors suggest fish and chips again for dinner, Doyle is having some knee difficulties and opted out but I took them up on the offer.  Zorro’s fish and chips is steadily full of happy customers as we were.  I then went on to Rafa’s bar to hear a singer I’ve been wanting to hear, and stayed for about an hour. I had planned to return to the apartment but at the gate to our stairs the clan had gathered.  A frequent and pleasant  happening!  Our apartment host Javier, our Canadian friends and neighbors, other american couple we have come to know here and their mexican landlords who own a hardware store here, a mexican gentleman singing and  his guitar had congrgated on plastic chairs spread out on the side walk and into the street and the tequila was flowing as Javier operates a liquor store under the apartments. 

 I’ve learned to sip tequila as opposed to tequila shots.  As the evening wore on dozens of other mexican friends and american/canadian visitors stopped by for some hospitality.  I find my spanish improves with tequila or at least my willingness to speak it improves.  This night, but also all over town when you meet mexicans who speak some english, they want to practice with you and you with them.  So I’m trying out my spanish with a mexican man who used to live in Tacoma, and he replies in english and some times it a little bit of both, which is called Spanglish.  All in all it’s about a 3 bottle night for this group before we bid each other Buenas Noches!  Signing off KO

2 9 11  I am prone to bug bites.  The senor and I often laugh how mosquitos prefer my soft white meat to his greasy, hard dark meat.  Well, today it sort of stopped being a laughing matter.  Something has been chewing on me for days, on my feet and lower legs and by last night my sandal straps and pant legs touching the bites were intense burning itching pain.  I decided I go to the pharmacy in the morning, because neither vinegar, alcohol or other creams were providing any relief.  Well by morning I decided to go straight to the doctor and get this taken care of right.  I  told him something was chewing on me and showed him my 26 bites and he agreed something was and still is chewing on me.  It is a skin parasite akin to scabies or chiggers that I probable picked up from the sand somewhere.  He gave me a prescription for 4 pills that I took today to kill them and some cream for the itching.  Cream provides some relieve, but they still itch horribly.  We stayed pretty close to home today as all my sandals rub the bites and make it worse. 

 We went out for fish and chips, Canadian style  at lunch.  Zorro’s bar next door to us is owned by a Canadian and he was able to get the shop across the walkway from his bar and does fish and chips there and sends drinks over from the bar.  Fish was excellent, but evidently with the humidity here gets into the potatoes and they don’t fry up crisp, they are a little rubbery.  He is contemplating going to frozen fries.  We wish him well and assume his new enterprise will do quite well.

We wanted to go to the movies tonight, Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.  I had read the book ( and the 2 sequels) but we found out the movies is in Swedish and dubbed in spanish.  Boy did that leave us out.  Anyway tomorrow is another day and we plan to go to Las Gatas beach for some snorkeling, lunch and a margarita or 2.  Signing off  KO

How disappointing, my entire text and 2 pictures failed to publish. So here goes again.  Today was my first ever deep-sea dive, I took the instruction class 2 days ago and today I did the real thing. I wore a full length dive suit, a bit of a challenge to load this old, soft body into, but I made it Then into the water to get into my diving vest with the tanks on, add weights so I’ll quit floating like a cork and we are ready to descend to the sandy bottom of the ocean in Manzanillo Cove.  We hand over hand down a line trying to clear the ear pressure as we go, I have a lot of pressure and can’t get it cleared properly so we are only going to go about 20- 25 ft.  We see 6 or more sting rays, a couple were buried in the sand and then came flying out, we see porcupine puffer fish, a beautiful black and white polka-dotted puffer fish, neon blue fish, many stripped fish, some small some large.  There are some bright blue soft squishy plants called sponges and a coral colored plant that has suction that stick to your hand when you hold it.  There are big fish, little fish and they are everywhere, it is absolutely fantastic.  As we come up I have some ear discomfort as I just can’t seem to equalize the pressure properly.  They still haven’t cleared completely, but that’s ok, it was an absolutely great adventure. 

Later that evening we went to “Frank’s” in Ixtapa for dinner, we’ve been several times in past years to have Azteca Stew and were serenaded by a 6 piece mariachi band.  Another great day in Paradise

The big screens are appearing everywhere were they weren’t before.  Small bars, large restaurants, everywhere.  The senor has scoped out his favorite bar where they will have the game on in english with full commercials.  Most of the bars have it in mexican with mexican commercials and the only english is when the ref turns his microphone on for the penalties.  I will avoid the noisy bars  as I’m not a football fan. My first choice was Casa Arcadia on the beach, I brought my kindle and ordered a drink and the next restaurant over turned up the volume on their big screen and blasted away my peace and quiet so I headed off to my favorite place, Agave, where I had vino blanco, cream of avocado soup, peace and quiet and a nice piano player in the background.  Went back to my apartment put a movie in and retired early.  Just a pleasant Sunday for me.  The senor partied quite late celebrating the Packers win as he one 1,000 pesos on the first quarter.

2 7 11 This morning we did what we refer to as our “timeshare whore’ routine.  They offer us gifts to come see their resort, they try  to sell you time share or this one refered to themselves as a club membership.  We go for the free food and gifts. Our Canadian friends, Dwight and Lynn thought it would be nice for us to do this so we could get an all day food and beverage and pool pass to Pacifica in Ixtapa with them.  It was a pretty soft sell, very little pressure, the facilities were gorgeous, but tacked high on a hill sort of above Las Gatas Beach.  I would feel stranded, really nowhere to walk to, steep hills and trails.  I just don’t do steep with my knees any more.  Nice buffet breakfast, and not an unpleasant way to spend a morning and now on Wednesday we will hob nob with all the people who are paying more money for their one week stay, that we are for a whole month. Money aside we really do like being in El Centro Zihuatanejo, it’s where the action is.  Yes on weekends it’s a little noisy at night, but not enough to disturb us, and we are still capable of doing a little disturbing of our own. We are eating in tonight, fish taco’s.  Signing off KO