On Thursday, when I went grocery shopping, the music was the usual, Shakira and something I didn’t recognize, but then someone stopped the cd they were playing over the intercom, and put in Creedence Clearwater Revival and then John Mayer. I sang along the whole time like a big dork.
This weekend, we took the kids camping at a beach about 40 minutes south of here. The water was SOOO cold. But the kids loved it anyway. I got in, and tried surfing twice, but decided the shore was much more comfortable.
In the end, it got so windy we did food preparation inside the back of the Expedition. And we still had lots of sand in our Ceviche! (tomato, cucumber, tuna, onion, lime- hands down my favorite thing that we eat.) While we were camping, these people noticed how many kids we had and offered to cook us a spaghetti dinner. They were road tripping in their RVs and were Canadian and it was so generous of them!!! …Tani made us catfish in red thai curry the day after we got back from the beach. I’m so spoiled, and David cooked some fresh fish he had caught…
I was going to sleep far away from everyone on the beach, to get away from any potential noise (the little kids got up EARLY!!), but then realized that people drive FAST on the beach, and may run me over in the middle of the night if I’m not near a car or other big thing. The moon didn’t rise for a couple hours after the sunset, and the stars were stinkin’ bright, while we enjoyed the dwindling fire and good conversation. I meant to watch the sunrise, but slept right through it.
If you’ve seen Hitchcock’s The Birds, you might have been terrified at the beach. All these birds descended on the water to eat right where we were camping. It was nuts. Pelicans and some smaller type of bird. It was the most birds I have seen in my life.
I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve taken public transportation with my body half hanging out of the bus (in Chile, NOT here in Mexico- we live in the boonies, nor in Costa Rica- I was a taxi girl there.) Sometimes, if you were lucky, it just meant standing in the aisle. Here, I finally saw my first school bus that had school kids on it, and not field workers, or that wasn’t a public transportation bus, and it was YELLOW! Not purple, or blue and white, or green…YELLOW! And, it seemed to me that they’ve taught manners at a young age. There were too many children on the bus, with the boys standing in the aisle, while the girls occupied all the seats. Not only are they teaching manners at a young age, but also low expectations of public transportation! Yay!
Coming home from the beach was a tumbleweed (3 feet high!) that rolled around like two people fighting without any consideration for the things in their path. It was like all those times in elementary gym with the gigantic ball coming at you while you were paralyzed. Except I slowed down and swerved a little bit, and we were ok.
Topes (speed bumps) are another road hazard and sometimes there is just as little notice as an unmarked moving target. Like those little old ladies carrying the grocery bags on the firing range that happen to have a semi automatic in their free hand, these topes are just as tricky! Sometimes they are well marked, with several warning signs, and paint on the asphalt. This paint can vary in color and pattern, unreliable. Sometimes there are no warning signs and all of a sudden you feel every piece of your car jump out of alignment and right back in again. There are no regulations (that I know of) for topes, and often you’ll find that people make their own wherever they want (you to slow down!). Since there are no regulations you can’t always know that 10 mph will get you over without a chiropractor’s appt later. It could be 5 mph or even less. They can be rocks across the road, or a ditch purposefully dug out on either side of the rock hill build across the road (car goes down, up, then down again). Sometimes it’s a little sand hill that they remake every week. The worst place for topes though is by the military base. They did a nice job with them, placing them far apart, and then closer as you get closer to the big one. They also painted yellow in front of each tope to highlight the topes. If you haven’t heard the song “Rompe” by Daddy Yankee, it has this up and down beat, which I realized, is the exact beat you feel going over 30 topes in a row. They definitely must have a lot of topes on his island.
In 6 weeks, I'll be able to enjoy marked speed bumps for a little bit. :) Let's schedule something.
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