Day of the living gecko! - 28 December

Today was another grocery shopping day.  We really slept in, all of us - and the maid was well about her business by the time we were headed out.  Rather than walk to the Mega, eight of us took the bus.  It was an uneventful trip, but, as always, entertaining.  We always find humour in the situations we find ourselves in, but I'm sure that the locals who ride the bus with us are amused by our antics as well! 

We had lunch almost immediately upon our return, BLT sandwiches (well, back bacon, eh?), yum.  Then ran out of the bacon, had an LT sandwich.  Then ran out of lettuce, had a tomato sandwich (heh heh, just need margarine & pepper :-) ).  It's all good.

Someone mentioned the gecko in shower of the main bathroom - I didn't know there was a gecko in the bathroom!  Our little room has its own bathroom and shower, so we don't use the shower in the main bathroom.  Well, what do you know, there is indeed a gecko in there, right up in the corner!  Helen says that they will just appear sometimes, and apparently not move for days.  They are supposedly rather harmless, just an amusing fixture in this warm land.

Our pet gecko, in the shower!  He wasn't a pet for long though.

Eric headed out on his own shopping mission out to the shops down by the village square, and came back with a bottle of tequila to take back home.  He spoke to the proprietor of the tequila shop (which sells only tequila, by the way :-) ).  The best tequila that he could afford did not have a worm at the bottom, and he asked why.  Well, according to the local tequila expert, real tequila doesn't have the worm in it - it's mezcal that has the worm!  See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mezcal and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tequila .  Well, we are learning all the time, aren't we?

I went on my own little quest to the shops down by the village square.  My sandals are fine for going from the locker room to the pool back home, but they aren't great for walking the beach.  I did my round of the shops, then went into a shop that had nothing but sandals, and purchased a new pair.  Yes, I bartered.  No, it wasn't easy nor was it fun.  Eric says I paid way too much.  I'm not telling you how much.  But now I have better sandals.  They are leather, so they don't quite fit my feet yet, but they are working their way in...

Dayna went on her own little quest, but in the opposite direction.  She likes the artsy crafty stores, so she sought them out.  She purchased two drinking glasses made with pieces of recycled glass.  Apparently they are quite pretty, but hey they're already packed in bubble pack for shipping, so I won't know until we are home.

I got back, called my mom, did some E-mail and stuff, then wandered down to the pool.  Eric had been there for an hour, and the sun was sinking low, so of course he had to ridicule my late appearance at the pool - just in time to ensure that I don't tan at all today.  Hey, he forgets who gave him the "don't need SPF 150" genes, so he can sit in the sun and not burn to a crisp!  The rat.  I'm already at the point where I could sit in the sun and not burn.  Well, I would be if I wasn't using SPF 30, which Dayna purchases because she is so fair.  Tomorrow maybe I'll seek out some SPF 15 and get this tan thing under control.  Or, maybe not - a tan is not a priority for me.  I don't need to show off the fact that I've been down here.  I just like the feeling of being warm... and the sound of the ocean... and the smells... oops, some of those smells aren't so nice, nix on the smells.

While I lingered by the pool, much excitement was being had not 50 feet away in the condo, and I didn't even know about it.  Matt decided that he wanted to catch the gecko.  Well of course, the gecko didn't want to be caught.  When Matt tried to catch it, its tail came off and the gecko escaped!  The tail was stuck to the wall, wriggling away by itself, yuck!  Finally it fell down and was tossed over the balcony into the vacant, weed filled lot next door.  The gecko was also captured, and was also, um, emitted, into the lot next door.

According to Wikipedia, the ejection of tail in self-defence is called autotomy, very interesting - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gecko .

Most of this exciting episode was captured by Dave on his Creative Vado, a little HD video recorder.  So here it is:

Dinner was chicken & rice, chicken prepared by Dayna, cooked on a barbeque by Barrie.  Very nice, and with the two young boys here, very gone.  Now we're relaxing, swapping fables, and drinking wine.  And I guess, blogging...

Now Eric has put on Back to the Future.  Gotta love those three movies, at least I do!

Ahoy, there be whales at ten o'clock! - 27 December

Yes, we got up at a rather un-holiday-ish hour this morning, and were ready to depart just after 07h00.  Sure enough, shortly after that, a big van pulled up just outside the condo gate and all ten of us piled in.  I was impressed - it was fairly comfortable for such a large van.  We were delivered to the Nuevo Vallarta pier by about 07h40.  The sun was not yet up, it was still rather dark out.  And rather chilly too!  Mexico does get chilly at night, and I didn't bring a jacket nor pants.  And, just as I was warming up, it was time to load up onto the boat and get out onto the water.  Yikes, out on the water, it was even colder.  It wasn't until 10h00 that the sun got intense enough to quell the goose pimples on my arms and legs.

A beautiful pre-sunset morning in Bucerias.  On holidays, you should never be up this early, unless maybe you haven't been to sleep yet!

There we are, shivering on the boat - Barrie, Dean, Dayna, Jennifer (pointing) and Eric (facing away).  Seems as though Barrie was the best prepared out of all of us.

We pulled out from the dock at Nuevo Vallarta, and went into the marina at Puerto Vallarta to take on more passengers.  My guess is that we had about 100 persons total on the boat, a twin hull catamaran.

Whale watching must be a popular pastime, as there were three boats of our type at the Puerto Vallarta docks.  As we exited the harbour, we saw several more boats headed in the same direction, all headed for whale watching.

It turns out that the best place for whale watching is pretty much right off the shore of Bucerias, straight out from where we are staying.  We had seen the boats out there from the beach, but weren't sure what they were up to - and now we know.

I didn't get many good photos, but David did with his fancy Canon EOS camera, wow.  Most of the photos of whale watching are all his - thanks, Dave.

While going out to the whale watching area, we saw lots and lots of little jellyfish floating by the boat in the water.  What strange little creatures!

Dozens of these little jellyfish floated by the boat - the size of your thumb!

Shortly after leaving the harbour, we started spotting dolphins swimming alongside the other boats.  Then a dolphin surfaced right up in front of our boat.  It had no trouble keeping ahead of us - our boat was actually quite slow.  We saw several manta rays - Dave got an amazing picture later.

Dolphin just in front of boat #1

Dolphin just in front of boat #2

Dolphin just in front of boat #3

Manta rays alongside the boat

Up ahead, we saw a gathering of whale watching boats, and - well glory be - humpback whales!  Far off at first, later up closer.  We saw single whales cresting the water, and later a momma whale and her pup.  Wow, are they massive, hard to imagine their size!

A single whale #1

A single whale #2

Momma whale and a pup #1

Momma whale and a pup #2

It was here that we were glad that our boat was a twin hull catamaran.  There was a narrow older-style boat (I think maybe it was a "pirate tour", arrrr!) that was rocking from side to side something fierce.  It would be easy to imagine getting sea sick on that boat.  Ours, on the other hand, rocked gently to and fro, side to side, in the wake of the other boats, and in the wind and waves - just a nice, gentle, soothing motion.

Ahoy mateys, prepare to list to one side and to the other!

Generally each whale would crest once or twice, then disappear, and we were off with the pack to seek the next one.  We did this for about an hour, hopscotching back and forth in front of Bucerias, Nuevo Vallarta, and Puerto Vallarta, then started the slow trip back to the harbour.

On the way back, we saw one more whale, seeming to bid us adieu as we made our way to the marina.

The last whale #1

The last whale #2

The last whale #3

Then we saw two little fleets of manta rays swimming in formation - quite an amazing sight!  They floated right past the side of the boat.

Fleet of manta rays #1

Fleet of manta rays #2

Look closely, amazing array fleet of manta rays #3

We passed two sea turtles.  The first one turned up and dove in, as soon as it saw our boat.  The second one just floated blithely past, prompting Eric to wonder whether it was still alive...

First sea turtle #1, just before he gets nervous

First sea turtle #2, conducting his surface dive!

Second sea turtle #1, is he alive?  Eric isn't so sure!

Second sea turtle #2

All too soon we arrived back at the dock at Nuevo Vallarta, our adventure over.  It was lunchtime, so we needed to seek out some food.  Our plan was to catch the local bus out to the highway, then take another bus back to Bucerias, where Barrie and Helen know the good food spots.  Barrie got on and paid for he and Helen, paying 20 pesos for the ride, 10 pesos per person.  Dayna got on and paid for she and Eric and I, paying 18 pesos, a much better deal at 6 pesos per person.  Then, Jennifer got on, paying 45 pesos for the five of them, 9 pesos per person.  Wow, such consistency!

It turns out that the bus didn't go to the highway in Nuevo Vallarta, as we had expected.  It went all the way almost to the edge of Bucerias, then up to the highway near the Mega store (see Thursday the 23rd).  Hey, we can walk from there, so we did!  Along the way, there is a fenced off yard with a bunch of iguanas wandering about, so we snapped a few shots of them.

We had a great lunch with inexpensive cerveza (beer, which Eric tells me is the most important word to know in Spanish).  The day was hot, and the cerveza was cold, so, ahem.  After lunch, back at the condo, I crashed right out and didn't even hear the rest of the crew head down to the beach.  I awoke about two hours later, took a few minutes to shake the cobwebs out, realized I was alone, and headed down myself.  Well, most of the adults were dozing out on the beach as well!  Must have been the heat, the walk and the beer.

I was only on the beach about 20 minutes, to Helen's amusement, and it was time to come back.  Oh well, it was 17h00 and the sun was fading, and with the breeze off of the water, it was a bit chilly anyway.

We headed back to the condo.  As supper was prepared, I called my mom to see how she was doing.  She's doing well - her new medication regime is working better than any she's had for a long, long time - and that is good news.  She also tells me that back in the 'Peg, it's a little colder (hmm, a little), a bit blustery, and drifting snow - making me feel good about being down here for the holidays (sorry, mom).  Actually, this is so nice, but the one thing that would make it nicer is to bring all our loved ones down with us - maybe another year...

Supper was of course very nice, barbecqued ham steaks.  I could get used to the sun, the beer, the food, ahhh.

Dave and Jennifer and their family have headed back to the market to seek out a few items.  Eric is off to seek out a bar where he can watch Monday Night Football.  And, I am writing my happy little blog and drinking Chilean Cabernet Sauvignon, Concha y Toro, mmm.  I think I'm the winner!

Tomorrow is a slack day.  It will be back to the Mega and stock up on groceries once more - we all seem to be overachievers in the appetite department - and Eric needs new earphones for his iPod.

Audio books, argh! Or should that be patch over one eye, skull and crossbones, and arrrrrrrrrr!

The mention of Eric's iPod brings me to my pet peeve of the day.  About six weeks ago, I purchased an audio book version of Jim Collins' Good to Great, and very much enjoyed it.  I ripped it to MP3 and put it on my little Samsung U5 MP3 player, and played it in the car on the way to and from work.  Then I bought The One Minute Manager and did the same.

For a couple of days now, I've been looking around the web for deals on audio books that I could just download - I will pay for them, but I prefer just getting the MP3 over the Internet and putting them directly onto my MP3 player.  The best deal I found was a subscription based service that I've heard about, and looked at before, Audible.com.  It is advertised on some of the podcasts that I listen to on a regular basis, so it must be OK, right?

Well, I signed up for a monthly subscription, paid the first month, got my first audio book, downloaded it with anticipation, and...  what the heck is an "AA" file???  It won't play on my LINUX computer!  And now I Google the AA file format of Audible.com, and it's proprietary - only plays through iTunes and on iPods!

Audible.com uses Digital Rights Management (DRM), which restricts the distribution and use of an audio file to those devices that have paid to buy into their restrictions.  So I can't use this new audio book, curses!

I'm not sure what I'm going to do.  Part of me wants to complain, get my money back (or at least cancel the subscription), and run away to another web site that's more expensive but gives me files I can use.  The other part of me says, "oh carp (a typo but I like it), Jason has an iPod and loves it, maybe I should just buy an iPod and be done with it." 

This would mean that I would have to re-rip my whole CD collection to MP3 instead of Ogg Vorbis http://www.vorbis.com , a free encoder that I have been using until now (long story, but MP3 is not free, a licence fee is paid to the owners with every device that can play it, check out the web site for details).  The whole OGG thing runs with my slightly anti-establishment bias.  But, the iPod does not play OGG, and from what I read, never will.  Well, you can wipe your iPod and install new software that will play OGG, but then you can't play the proprietary DRM formats, kind of wiping out the benefit of switching to iPod. 

Curse these entrenched, self-serving, self interested companies that want to lock their customers in!  Even if the jail cell is very nicely furnished, it is a jail cell just the same.

Boxing Day in a Bucerias market - 26 December

Yes, today was the day to go to the market, held each Sunday morning, on the other side of the highway.  We got up, well, not early, but at least we got up (you know by now that I'm the sloth of the group), then made our way to the market.  It was basically about six blocks of streets with vendors on both sides.  The crowds apparently were small for a market Sunday, but that's just as well for out-of-towner gringos like us!

A few blocks down our street, it turns right and goes under the highway, to the market!

Of course, there were fresh vegetables and fruit there, lots of it.  Also some stands with canned goods, bagged spices, and (shudder) fresh chickens (no refrigeration, and yes we gave that a pass), clothes, shoes, TV remote controls, X-box game consoles, Spanish movies & CDs, pots & pans, and every part imaginable for gas ovens and barbeques.  In one stand, there were fresh fresh coconuts and a fellow was slicing them open with a machete.  In another across the way, there were all kinds of small tools, mostly used - wrenches, pliers, hammers, screwdrivers.  Another had all kinds of electrical wiring parts - outlets, cord ends, light fittings, switches.  The sights, sounds, and smells were amazing!  And mostly good smells, too.

We took our backpacks and purchased potatoes, tomatoes, grapefruits, oranges, bananas, watermelons, pears and apples, all very nice.  Reasonably priced too!

Also noticed - they must have pretty relaxed vehicle safety standards down here - check out this truck!

We dumped our food back at the condo, and then off to brunch at The Red Apple, a nice little restaurant on top of a building halfway toward the town square.  The logo for the restaurant is an upside down red apple, and there's a story behind it.  I'll let the story board speak for itself, below.  Brunch was quite good, by the way.  Eric especially liked his "Eggs on a Cow", ha ha - probably should have translated as "Steak and Eggs".  He says that he's going to order "Eggs on a Cow" for breakfast from now on, and see what kind of a response he gets.

Just as we were about to leave, Dave noticed the overhead wiring - yikes, you should see it - all tangled, quite a mess!  I hope these are mostly telephone and cable wires, not power wires!

Rat's nest of wires above a main street in Bucerias

We stopped by Scott's Tours http://scottsbuceriastours.com/default.aspx and signed up for a half day boat tour tomorrow to do some whale watching.  I originally wanted to try snorkeling (have never tried before) but it just doesn't fit in.  Unfortunately, we have to be at the Neuvo Vallarta dock at 08h00, so that means leaving the condo at something like 07h15, not very holiday-ish.  Eric is not amused - we are looking forward to a grumpy Eric all day - he is too much like me for his own good.  As for me, well, I won't have too much trouble with a 06h30 start, this is more like my regular schedule.

I enquired about the "canopy tour", which is tour-speak for zip-lining, and apparently there are about eight of them going all the time.  Hmm, they all start from a long ways away, would wipe out a whole 'nother day for us.  Eric and I will settle for para-sailing just off the beach, some time later in the week, that should be enough excitement for my poor heart!

We then went down to the square, where there are a bunch more market stalls, mostly selling trinkets, hats and T-Shirts.  There was a store that sold only tequila, yum - wait a second, never had tequila that I can remember - hmm, might have had a shot at the bar in the early eighties, but then again, I can fall back on the "I can't remember" thing.

Eric wanted to wander without a ten person entourage, so we headed back to the condo.

Most of the crew (sans Eric) headed down to the beach Dayna and I flopped by the pool to soak up some sun in a non-sand-filled environment.  Plus this gave me a chance to try to tan my ankles, which are white after my first day out with socks on, curses!  I did some reading (surprise surprise), this time The Speedster, the magazine of the Antique Auto Club of America, very interesting reading.

Hmm, there were pictures of the fall Hershey meet http://hersheyaaca.org/fallmeet.html in the first full week of October in Hershey, Pennsylvania.  I've wanted to get there for years!  It's huge, takes a whole week just to see all the vendors, hmm.  Anybody for going???  I had promised myself that I would go to it when I started work at Norscan and bought the de Ville, that was almost five years ago.  Might need to try a bit harder to get there this year.

I took the notebook computer down by the pool, where the signal was way, way better than in the condo, yay!  Now I'm tooling around the web looking at audio books to purchase, download and listen to.  Seems I've been caught up in a self-help/business education thing, not sure why.  It was all started with the "Good to Great" audio book I bought a few months back.  I have a bit of a commute back home, can listen to a fair amount going to & from, would be worthwhile to hear them.

Dayna and I then wandered the three blocks to the bank and got enough cash to hopefully carry us through the next few days, including paying for our tour tomorrow.  Ha ha, as Dayna's brother Dave said, Mastercard is going to wondering what happened, we haven't used our credit cards for almost a week!  Very few places accept credit cards down here, and those that do - well let's just say you probably wouldn't use your credit cards if you had the chance.

Dean under coconut tree on the way to bank

Dayna on other side of street on way back from bank

On the way to the bank, I had to walk under a coconut tree that was obviously full of coconuts, made me nervous - when we were all sitting in the palapas yesterday having lunch, Dayna saw a huge coconut fall out of a tree not 20 feet away, and we all heard it hit the ground - I have this image of emulating Sir Isaac Newton, but with a much larger bruise on the head!

I cower at the thought of one of these falling on my head!

We zipped onward to Marie Paz ("Mary paws"??) convenience store 2-1/2 blocks away to pick up toilet paper and diet cola (gotta have the necessities of life!), also decided to get some wine, ah...

I got the notebook, got up to the palapa, hooked up to the wireless, and called my mom.  Apparently, it's -13C and 50 km/hr south wind back in the 'Peg, a bit of snow and wind chill -26C.  Mom says that this morning, the snow was blowing so much that she couldn't see across the perimeter highway, and that's only a few hundred feet.  Too bad, so sad, I tried to be empathetic, but it's tough when it's +25C and sunny.  Oops, clouded over.  +25C and cloudy, sigh.

While I was up there, I could hear the boys downstairs watching the rest of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, loved that movie, still missing out.  Oh well, priorities...

And then a three man band goes by on the street.  I thought I heard a saxophone!  I guess I'm not going crazy.

Supper was great, the wine I bought was a good choice, and I drifted through the post-supper conversation.  What, I have to do the dishes!?!  Quel horreur!  Oh well, I guess I have to do the dishes some time, sigh.

Now there's a spirited game of spoons going on here at the kitchen table, but hey I have this blog to keep me busy.  Oh, Dayna has just been ejected from the game, will now settle in to do her Sudoku until the next round begins.  And so it goes...

It will be an early morning.