Hola, a todos! I was gonna say Happy New Year, but my calendar tells me it's almost APRIL already?! How did that happen? I mean... It's normal for me not to know what day it is, but I should probably be better about knowing what month it is, I suppose. Not to sound like a cliche, but where does the time go?? This spring marks our THIRD year living in Nayarit, Mexico as full-time residents. Our Temporary Residency Visas are still valid for another year, and when they're due again, it's more than likely we'll be applying for permanent residency...and eventually citizenship. Because let's face it - we're never moving back to the U.S. But that's a topic for another post!
Proof that we're alive and well...
I've mentioned before that I've felt less inspired to write these past several months, because sights and experiences that once seemed "shocking" have become the (almost) mundane. A guy and his wife riding a motorcycle on the highway with a tiny infant smashed between them? That's just called a Mexican car seat. Having to scoop an iguana out of the pool after he dived in to escape a pack of dogs? That's just a typical doggy play date at your girlfriend's house any random afternoon.... And I mean... no one wants to read about how we spend most evenings on the couch watching Netflix movies with Spanish subtitles, am I right?
Don't worry - no iguanas were harmed in the making of this post...
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I have 3 blog posts in draft form right now, that I'll definitely finish soon-ish now that tourist season is winding down, but here are some blog titles that you have to look forward to in the near future:
- "Oh, the Irony"
- "Fat & (Un)Happy: 3 Years of Vacation Mode"
- "Questions I Will Probably Never Find the Answers To"
You're on the edge of your seat, I can tell!
While I'm still kicking those posts around in my noggin, I thought I should just update all my wonderful readers about what has been going on in our very exciting, glamorous lives these past months. (Said with as much sarcasm as humanly possible.)
Let's recap... If you remember, we were let go last summer from the beachfront hotel we were managing and then we sort of haphazardly bounced around for a few months not sure of what to do next. We landed a few small rental management gigs right away, but the biggest priority was finding somewhere to live before Ty got any funny ideas about living in our van. (And don't think he wouldn't!)
We found a little house in La Cruz that would accept our 100-pound fur ball, so we signed a year lease and moved in at the end of September. We've been in our little home for six months now, and we're enjoying it for the most part. We still hope to eventually find a place of our own, but for now, we aren't homeless or living out of suitcases, so I won't complain (about that.)
We had a bit of a hurricane scare in October with Hurricane Willa, which led to lots of concerned texts and calls from family and friends up north. Ironically, we're way less afraid of hurricane warnings than we are of just regular ol' summer thunderstorms. Big storms hundreds of miles off the coast usually just create "bitchin" waves for the local surfers to chase and lots and lots of gray, soggy rain. Supposedly, Vallarta is more "protected" by the geography of Banderas Bay than the rest of Mexico's western coastline, so thankfully, it was anti-climactic for us. Unfortunately, I can't say the same for our neighbors to the north in Northern Nayarit and Southern Sinaloa where Willa made landfall as a Category 3 though. 😔
The storms that are actually scary in our area happen on a random Wednesday in September when there are TORRENTIAL downpours, dangerous flash floods, lightning-fried transformers and power outages, and hours and hours of bone-rattling thunder so unfathomably LOUD that you are forced to rethink what you've considered "loud" up until that point in your life. Yeah. During hurricane warnings we snuggle up on the couch and make cozy comfort foods and watch movies - during big ass thunderstorms we cling to each other for dear life!
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Over Thanksgiving week, several of our friends from Portland came down to visit us and we all celebrated "Friendsgiving" together. Nothing says Turkey Day quite like zip-lining, golfing, sailing, waterfalls, pool parties and lots of late, craaaaaazy nights, am I right??
And we were fortunate to have a professional photographer in our crew, because apparently I didn't take a single photo. Ooops. Thanks for capturing the memories, Jenna!
Sailing trip to Yelapa with our buddy Captain Mike on Red Dolphin Cruises
Yelapa Waterfall
The girls and Schiffer zip-lining in Higuera Blanca...
Pool shenanigans....
Just a little man-tub love in a giant mermaid... nothing to see here.
Dinner on the beach... Mezzogiorno in Bucerias
The rest of the holidays were uneventful in comparison... When you work in the hospitality industry in a coastal tourist town, you don't really get to celebrate Christmas or New Year totally obligation-free. We went to dinner at a friend's house on Christmas Day, but my phone rang off the hook because someone was looking for a last-minute room and I ended up having to go home for a while to take care of it. We had dinner with friends on New Year's Eve also and watched the firework show at the La Cruz Marina, but promptly went home at 12:01 a.m. because we had 3 "turnovers" the following day. (Guests checking out the same day new guests are arriving.) So, the holidays were hectic, but alright.
Since January, we've been busy with hotel things - I'll save you the boring details - but after we get through Semana Santa (Holy Week/Easter) in a few weeks, things will quiet down a lot for us. By far, February is always the busiest and most popular month for tourism and this past February felt like the whole Bay exploded with people. There were lost-looking folks in floppy hats as far as the eye could see! We had rolling brown outs, internet outages, gas and propane shortages (both for home use and at gas stations) and ATMs and banks all over town were running out of cash. It was nuts! The socially anxious little turtle in me pretty much wanted to hide inside and wait for winter to be over...
This past week has been a bit of an anomaly for us... We had some free time available, so we decided to "play tourist in our own town," as I like to call it. One day we made the hour-long walk via the beach to Bucerias to have lunch and to shop at the souvenir market, just for something different to do. And like everyone else there, I bought a hat, sunglasses, a fan and paid too much for a bottle of tequila. Haha. And then last weekend, we joined our good friends in Puerto Vallarta and stayed downtown for a few nights celebrating a birthday... We danced, we shopped, we swam...and we para-sailed!!
Ty and I on Playa de Los Muertos (in said hat and sunglasses I just bought)...
The birthday crew doing some people-watching and pre-partying at the "Redneck Bar"...
Ty coming in for a landing!
I was the only one who took their phone up... The view wasn't terrible.
If you didn't take a selfie, did it really happen?
And then we came home on Tuesday sunburned, exhausted, ready to eat some vegetables and go to bed at a reasonable hour, so I'd say our "tourist week" was a success.
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This upcoming summer will be our fourth in Nayarit and even though I always dread the soul-crushing humidity and blood-thirsty mosquitoes, the slowness and "empty" feeling of town has become really refreshing after a whirlwind tourist season. All of the snowbirds and part-timers will go back to the U.S. or Canada in April and the Bay empties out as quickly as it filled up in November...and it kinda feels like a big sigh of relief. It's like throwing a huge, wild, rockin' party at your house that goes well into the night, and when your guests finally leave at 4:00 in the morning, you say... "That was a lot of fun; let's not do it again any time soon." High Season is always exciting while it's happening, but Low Season has a lot going for it too, just in a less hurried/exhausting way.... (Check back with me in October when I'm GRUMPY AS HELL, covered in bug bites and cursing Mexico summers - my "vibes" might be just a tad different by then.)
In July, we have a trip to Portland and Seattle planned to visit family and friends, as per usual, so Ty doesn't miss his beloved yearly boys' golf trip to Central Oregon. This'll be our third trip home, but I always hesitate to call it a "vacation"... Everyone we'd like to see while we're in town, still needs to work and run errands and deal with kid stuff and responsibilities, so Ty and I are often the only ones on "stay-up-late-and-make-bad-decisions mode" when we go home to visit. Trying to make plans is usually us saying, "Let's get dinner on Tuesday!"...and then so-and-so saying it'll be too hard with rush hour traffic and they have to get up early the next morning, and it just doesn't happen. Womp womp.
A similar thing happens when people come to visit us in Mexico too, though. They're ready to live it up on an all-day excursion sin niños o trabajo (and we wanna join them!), but we usually have to plan around rental responsibilities because we're not completely free of adulting (yet.)
Speaking of vacations... I took it upon myself and booked Ty and I a week-long stay in Tulum in early December!!! I wrote a really whiny post a while back, entitled, "I Need a Vacation from my Vacation" about how we don't go on "real" vacations since moving to Mexico (yes, I realize how obnoxious I sound right now), and the same kind of feeling has been bumming me out lately...
No matter how much we love living in La Cruz, I think it's natural to want to visit places you don't see everyday... When you're just living your normal life, any place can lose its luster. We pay bills, we go to Costco, run errands, go to appointments, walk the dog, argue about who's turn it is to put away the clean laundry, and ask each other, "What should we make for dinner?" just like the rest of the world.
So, while pouting about all of the above one night, I happened to look up domestic flights departing out of Puerto Vallarta and found out we can fly to Cancun for a whopping 45 bucks each way, which includes luggage. Say what??? I couldn't have whipped my credit card out any faster and then very excitedly asked Ty if we can plan a trip to Mexico's other coast in the fall. He gave me his signature stern, we'll-have-to-talk-about-it-look, at a feeble attempt to make me think he was going to put up a fuss about it. But I've known Ty for 13 years and in Swedish Dolphin speak, that looks always means, "Do whatever you want, babe. But I'm gonna pretend to say no first because I like to tease you incessantly."
I booked flights and then I spent the next two days researching hotels and must-dos in Tulum. We're going to visit ancient ruins, snorkel in underground caves (cenotes), rent a canopy bed on the beach, and eat and drink too much...and I have 8 months to look forward to every minute of it.
(Google Photo of the Ruins of Tulum)
WOW. This post turned into a way longer blabber-fest than intended. If you made it this far, congratulations. Or, I'm sorry. I'm not sure which. Well, we're off to walk Bloo and make something boring and healthy for dinner... Don't be too jealous of our Sunday Funday!
