It has happened. The inevitable has happened. I've finally reached maximum NOPE status and I'm thiiiiiiiis close to packing my bags and high-tailing it out of Mexico and heading for less terrifying climates. To say I am ready for winter is the world's biggest understatement. I need all of the creepy crawlies to go back to hell where they came from!!!
Yesterday, while simply moving a chair out of my way, I found this DEMON MONSTER underneath and I gasped loud enough for the neighbors to hear before screaming bloody murder for Ty. He found me shaking and pointing aggressively at the floor....
Granted, this killer beast was dead when I found it... (Ortho Home Defense perimeter spray is the only way I can sleep at night) but that didn't stop me from shrieking and standing on furniture so as not to be on the same surface as it. That's normal, right? If I had seen that thing ALIVE and crawling across the floor, for sure I woulda given myself a heart attack from all of the screaming and hyperventilating. I'm getting woozy just thinking about it. And if this is the shriveled up version of it...how big was it before??? I can't even.
"WHAT THE HELL IS THAT THING???" A quick Google search (which is never a good idea) of "giant spider with tiny pinchers" informed us that this thing of my future nightmares, isn't a spider....in fact, it is a "tailless whip scorpion." OH, AWESOME. OF COURSE THERE IS A SCORPION THAT LOOKS LIKE A SPIDER. Kill me. This is the part where I spent a solid 15 minutes jumping frantically around our living room because I felt like things were crawling on me, which led to me jumping in the pool to calm my itchy skin and then dry-heaving every time I thought about the fact that I just found a giant scorpion-spider hybrid with legs eight feet long.
And, just two weeks ago, I found a "normal" scorpion munching on a cockroach and I thought THAT was the grossest thing I had seen so far. I thought for sure that couldn't be topped. That had to be the highest level of grossness, right? Even after alllllll of the things I wrote about in my last post about my disgusting encounters with creatures from the underworld...I thought I was done being out-noped. But, NOOOOOPE.
In case you're wondering, these toddler-sized scream-inducers are not poisonous or harmful to humans according to this blog post I read (aka skimmed through while not looking directly at the photos, because, gross.) So that means their sole purpose is to haunt your dreams. Have fun trying to sleep tonight. You're welcome.
And because misery loves company....heeeeeeere you go.
Ty and I vacationed in La Cruz three years in a row before we (he) decided we were gonna move here permanently... It was a cold Seattle night on the couch and he had had a few beers when he saw his friend post a room for rent on Facebook in Nicaragua. From that moment on, there was no changing his mind... "Life's too short, we're doing it wrong," became his mantra and within 7 months, everything we owned was sold and we were on the road headed south.
Living in paradise and visiting paradise are two very different experiences. Yes, I get to look at this view everyday... No, I never have to set an alarm clock. Yes, it's awesome having my unstressed, always-happy husband back. But... I miss the excitement of getting to plan a vacation somewhere so different from where I live. I miss getting to research hotels and drool over photos of places I wanna visit. I miss counting down the days until you get to ditch the dreary rain and head for warmer climates. I miss falling in love with a tiny town (La Cruz) and being absolutely giddy to return the following year.
But planning a vacation when you live in paradise, also feels kinda silly. Like...where are we gonna go? Let's go to Hawaii and pay triple what we do here? Are we gonna shell out a bazillion dollars to visit Europe? (The cheapest airfare I found from Vallarta to Paris would set us back $6,800.) Since we live in a "special" place, are we gonna go on vacation to a "normal" place...like, Ohio? I'm sure you feel really sorry for us, right??
Another reason why I'm feeling mopey...is because as people who operate a beachfront hotel in the Bay, we don't get to celebrate the holidays. High season here is from about November to April and the holidays are the busiest time, tourist-wise. Jardin is 100% filled to capacity during Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years. So, that means we'll be super busy working instead of celebrating. And to add insult to injury, we'll be working while watching all of our guests have the time of their lives. That's a bittersweet feeling for yours truly. I had thought before we moved here that we would for sure adopt some new holiday traditions, but I never thought the tradition would be to skip them entirely. Wah, waaaaah....
Every time I talk to an excited guest about planning their vacation at the hotel, I'm happy for them...but a little bummed for myself. I miss being the super excited guest!! I miss having something to plan and look forward to. I miss going shopping for cute vacation outfits and getting pre-vacay pedicures. (I'm very aware of how whiney this whole post is, but I'm okay with it.)
Sooooo, after my most recent stint of feeling super sorry for myself, I mighta convinced Ty that we should get outta here before all the hotel madness starts. And it only took a minimal amount of threatening to cry over not getting to have Christmas for him to agree! Haha. So, we're officially going on vacation in between Thanksgiving and Christmas and calling it our holiday celebration! (I also had to agree not to ask for a single thing until my birthday next summer, but we'll see about that.)
Flying somewhere was going to be too expensive for an impromptu trip (we looked at going to Belize since it's not too far from here, but it would involve a 15-hour layover in Houston both ways and cost a thousand bucks per person. So stupid.) So, we decided to pick somewhere a little closer and to make the 11-hour drive down to Zihuatanejo (zee-whot-uh-nay-ho) simply because we've never been there (and Shawshank Redemption is one of my favorite movies. Duh.) We rented a fully-equipped Casita just a few blocks from famous Playa la Ropa for 7 glorious nights.
(Google photo)
Technically, this will be our first true (relaxing) vacation since visiting Nicaragua almost two years ago. Finally, we get to be the ones playing tourists again instead of hosts. We get to sleep in an air-conditioned room without worrying about the electric bill. We get to explore new restaurants instead of asking each other what boring thing we should make for dinner. We get to relax on the beach instead of making yet another trip to Costco for toilet paper and laundry detergent. I get to lounge by the pool and read a book instead of being glued to a computer all day. Yippeeeee!!!
Okay, speaking of worky things... I gotta go finish painting the bathroom in Casa Palapa in the sweltering heat, so I'm off!!
Well, I've been home from my month of Spanish immersion school for a couple of weeks...and it's HOT. Like, every minute of every day is spent sweating, complaining about sweating, sitting directly in front of a fan and mopping up my greasy face. Sexy. It's still in the 80s as per usual, but the "feels like" temps have been over a hundred a few times this past week and 90% humidity. Kill me.
All my friends back home are posting pictures of golden foliage and fall boots and talking about pumpkin-flavored coffee, while Ty and I are jumping in the pool naked and dragging Bloo in with us even though he hates it. We're still getting the occasional thunderstorm and when we do, it feels like (very brief) glorious relief. We're all miserable and ready for winter.
Speaking of thunder storms... Tropical Storm Pilar created a few hiccups in my travel plans coming back from San Miguel a couple weekends ago! Ty drove me to school, but I had booked a flight to get home because it was super cheap. But turns out Pilar planned to hit Puerto Vallarta the same night my flight was scheduled to land. I had been hearing the wind and flood warnings in the Bay and I got really nervous about my flight being cancelled because I would be stranded in the Leon airport alone overnight, or have to scramble to find a hotel or some other terrible adulty things I didn't wanna deal with in the middle of crisis mode. But more importantly, I was super homesick and just wanted to get home to my family.
My one-hour flight from BJX to PVR departed 20 minutes late and almost immediately after we were airborne the crew announced that the Vallarta airport was CLOSED. Um, say what meow? A few minutes later they announced that the airport had instructed them to remain in a "holding pattern" and not to approach the storm. Awesome. So we slowed down and killed time by swerving back and forth over inland Mexico for over an hour unsure if we were going to make it to Vallarta. Finally, we hear, "We've been cleared for landing" and I was immediately relieved only to hear, "Nevermind, we have to return to Leon," like 2 minutes later. I might have actually cried at that point, but you can't prove it.
Meanwhile, Ty was sitting in the airport parking lot for 90 minutes (with Bloo and Luna) in pouring rain and flooding waters waiting for me because my flight wasn't being updated online. He had no idea that my flight was delayed or where I was. It wasn't until my plane got sent BACK to Leon and we landed that I got his umpteen text messages and I was finally able to tell him I wasn't coming. I was a bit of a hot mess, to say the least. And to top it all off, my phone was nearly dead (and there were no outlets on the little commuter plane) so I wouldn't be able to update him (or my panicked mother) either. Double hot mess.
Not gonna lie, he's cute when he's worried. And yes, he really does call me "friend" as if it's my real name. Ha.
Long story, short... We sat on the runway for another 45 minutes waiting for new information and then they decided to reattempt the flight to Vallarta for the second time three hours after the original departure time. I've never been so happy for a plane to land. I was off the plane and out of the airport in 10 minutes (hooray for domestic flights!) and grabbed the first cab I saw... I didn't even haggle with him, I woulda payed double.
When we got near Mega in Bucerias the highway was totally and completed flooded for hundreds of yards (at least a foot of rushing water) and I started panicking when I realized Ty had to drive through the same flood to get home. But in true Mexican style, the taxi driver just put on his emergency flashers and drove right through the "river." I've also never been so happy for a taxi to arrive at my front door. I was finally home!!! Four hours late, but I made it. It was late and the gate was locked (Ty didn't think I was gonna make it back that night) and I rang the doorbell about 30 times and woke up all the neighborhood dogs, including ours. Sorry, not sorry.
Not much else is new with us... We've been busy working on maintenance and upgrades around the hotel to get ready for high season while the place is empty. I've given myself, Ty and the staff lists of to-dos to get done before guests start arriving next month, so everyone is busy working on crossing things off (apparently "go golfing 3-4 times per week" was on Ty's list though...hmm.) I've been super busy revamping all of our photos, website, booking profiles, social media, etc. I need to step away from the computer though, because it seems we ONLY get reservations when we're not working. Like, I've spent probably 50 hours on the computer this past week, and then as soon as we got to a sports bar yesterday to watch football, ding ding! New reservation for January. Go figure.
Looking ahead at our calendar kinda makes my head woozy though. It's gonna be a whirlwind. Since we reopened the hotel so late in the season last winter, it was really more like a "soft opening" and all of our reservations were kinda last-minute...so this upcoming winter will be our first full tourist season. There will be a lot of crazy days with all hands on deck...like, a family of 15 people checking out the same day 18 new guests are checking in. (Ty will probably try to convince me to let him go golfing that day.) Fun times!
Well, that's all the super-interesting updates I have for now... We're taking the dogs for a car ride so we can all sit in front of some air conditioning for a while. It's okay to be jealous.
