It’s overcast this morning and quite blustery with rain showers off to the west over the ocean. The big birds that we think are frigate birds are soaring on the air currents, so lovely to watch until they hit a headwind and then have to flap their wings not so gracefully and drop down to another level.
Recap: Late Thanksgiving Day, the two new guests showed up: Brian and Sue from Colorado. Brian is a self-described ski bum who said he took a semester off from college 25 years ago to go skiing and never went back. He does ski patrol and avalanche control in the ski season and finish carpentry in the off season. He has a 2 year-old golden retriever named Ruby that he’s training for snow rescue. Sue is an ER nurse in Denver, lives in Boulder, but spends most of her time at Brian’s A-Frame in Dillon an hour and a half away. She’s traveled all over the world, including Patagonia and Nepal, Japan and New Zealand. Both are very interesting people and very comfortable palapa-mates. Fortunately, they’re also dog-lovers.
Yesterday (Friday), we had breakfast and bird-watched as usual, then took a hike through the jungle to the beach to the south of us. The jungle hike was longer than the one to the north beach and was just a path carved out of the trees, with some rough dirt steps axed out in some places. In other places, it was pretty slippy and slidey going downhill. The beach was longer than the other one, another cove with a wide beach between rocky cliffs. This beach was completely deserted, although there was a house just a ways up but no sign of life. The dogs romped in the surf, chasing the ball. Daisy seems to have gotten over her reluctance to get completely wet. And again, as soon as we got down to the beach, she rolled and rolled in the sand like a pig in mud. Why? She wouldn’t tell us. There are very strong undercurrents, evidenced by the way the wet beach was deeply carved, so we stayed in the shallows, keeping the dogs from getting beyond the wave breaks. It was a beautiful day, not a cloud in the sky, very pleasant temperature—probably upper 70s to 80.
Then lunch, reading, swimming in the pool. We had to hose off the dogs and both of them had burrs from something they’d gotten entangled with in the jungle. Bob very patiently brushed out huge tangles in Daisy’s ears; then she promptly threw up. We don’t know if she drank seawater or ate something on the beach or in the jungle, but she seemed to be fine after that. Bob took Brian and Sue into San Pancho (about 3 miles) for some food supplies, then he came back. They stayed on and wandered around town, taking a taxi back here. They scored some fresh fish, mahi-mahi, so we had a great dinner of risotto, mesquite-grilled fish, and salad.
Today our plans are similar to the previous days: eat, read, swim, take the dogs to the beach. Today I think we’re going to take the car and explore some other beaches instead of hiking through the jungle. I think the overcast will clear off later, but if it doesn’t, that’s ok, too.
Time for breakfast
Saturday evening
Because it was so overcast and blustery, we took out books back to our palapa and read into the early afternoon. Brian and Sue found a puzzle challenge and followed it to the finish. Bob and I finished our respective books within minutes of each other and decided to take the dogs for a drive in search of a good beach that didn’t take them through the jungle. We drove north to Lo de Barca, a very quiet town, no particular beaches caught our attention. Then we drove south to Sayulita just south of San Pancho. We saw more gringo tourists there but the streets were all one-way and difficult to navigate and Bob was getting tired of fighting the narrow streets and just wanted to find a beach so we headed back to San Pancho, drove through town and north back toward our place. We stopped and parked along the street and went through an access to the wide, long beach. It turned out that the beach stretched all the way back to the main part of town, maybe a mile or more. We walked the beach that far and then had a drink at an outdoor bar on the beach. While we were there, another couple, also from Colorado, stopped to talk to us and joined us for a drink. Then we walked back along the beach to where we’d left the car.
Meanwhile, we were joined by a great dog we named Pancho who followed us all the way back. Bob wouldn’t let me take him with us. Now we’re cooking dinner with Brian and Sue—mostly they’re cooking and I’m writing and listening to Norah Jones. We’re having steak, shrimp, grilled vegetables, and baked potatoes. The weather cleared up a bit mid-afternoon to allow a nice sunset. It’s still breezy which is very nice.
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