We have been living on this beach since Jan 7 and have to say its pretty surreal to look out the window and see it everyday! The worse part about it was the sickness that royally kicked us in the ass for the first 5 days and then just wouldn’t leave us alone for 3 weeks….both of us had ongoing sinus and cough…..Mine lasted at least 15 days before I noticed a change. Todd has had long covid since Oct, but whatever this new sickness is just exacerbated Todd’s sinuses, cough and a plugged ear…it wasn’t a fun time for him. We put Todd on a 14 day stint of amoxycillin since the plugged ear indicated he must have a bacterial infection… and he was happy to report after 7 days, saw some positive results. Todd found a generic ketchup bottle looking container and filled it with saline water to use as a netty pot. Its insane how many times a day we both used that thing AND the amount of green guck coming out of us! So the first 3 weeks in La Penita resulted in minimal adventures.

We did see whales quite often from our patio or front window; One day there was a whale right in our little bay, probably 100 feet off shore…..that was cool! Every other day we saw whales out there … the binoculars got very good use! (Note: I changed the video links to  open in a new window so you don’t have to always press the back arrow to return to the page. I’m not super techy so don’t judge me on how slow i was to figure that one out!) random-la-penita.html

We have become acclimatized to the temperature…it was inevitable! In the am, the bus temperature is anywhere from 19-22C and Todd puts the baseboard heater on! We no longer turn the A/C on until the interior temperature is a minimum of 25C, even then we turn it off when it gets to 23.5C, otherwise we are putting our hoodies on!

At Valentine Pig roast party at the park. Photo courtesy of Mavis

We have managed to squeeze a couple of park activities into the schedule – this place has so much going on, on a daily / weekly  / monthly basis its crazy! We have also done a couple of short trips to walk the beaches, in Lo de Marcos and Los Ayala – both gorgeous little beach/fishing towns….hopefully they don’t turn into a Bucerias or Suyalita and overrun with tourists.

At times when we aren’t touring around, we walk to town about every second day to pickup fruits and vegetables. Here is a great example of what it like to walk to town here and it happens to us daily (this video is not us, turn up the volume though – its at the top of the video): https://www.facebook.com/reel/1708656703025986  And at least twice a week we are taking our bikes out for a ride. The salty air is taking its toll on the equipment ….the bikes need to be washed weekly and oiled. The car is looking more rusty….Todd heard/found a hole in the muffler that had to be welded – check out the fix we got for her: Trixie-at-the-shop.html  And Trixie just sounded off the other day. A bit of investigation determined that a bearing was failing….so we ordered a new AC compressor for the car from Amazon; should be back up and running in a couple days. When you don’t have access to a car…its bike or walking. We could take the bus or taxi, but we don’t have any pressing places to go…

The first weekend in February, friends from BC came down for a vacay and visit. We met them 5 years ago while RV’ing in Baja and have kept in touch ever since! We headed into PV to pick them up on Saturday morning….it was about an hour into the drive when I realized we changed time zones 20 minutes south and they had expected us to have picked them up an hour ago! Oops! They had smiles on their faces when we picked them up anyway….A pitstop at Costco and we were back on the new toll highway back to La Penita. It was a good thing they came down after our sicknesses were pretty much over…we were looking forward to getting out and about finally being able to check out the area! They booked a suite at a local hotel and I gave Wendy the overview of the shop locations (shrimp, produce, meat) along with the weekly activities (like the Thursday Market). We also finally figured out the live music situation here….every restaurant/bar has their own facebook page you can follow OR you can download the GuayabitosLife app and it lists everything in one place. There is A LOT of live music down here.

We took our first adventure to Isla de Coral – which was a short boat ride across the Guayabitos bay. There is no boat marina in Guayabitos; you walk to the beach and go find someone that looks like they have a boat going over to the island. Isla de Coral is also a snorkel destination – one of the few in Mexico. We didn’t bring our gear over with us just because we would have coughing fits and didn’t want to cough while snorkeling! It was a great little day trip; departed around 10:30 and back around 3:30. Luckily we knew to bring our own snacks and drinks….if we did it again OR are recommending the daytrip to anyone else….I would probably bring your own lunch…the restaurant wasn’t the best. Here is the proof;Isla-de-coral.html

One Friday night we headed down to see some live music at Rosa’s beach bar…a country music artist from Regina was doing a 1 man show on the beach at sunset. It was a good time! Also went into Bucerias for a day – mainly to find a foreign exchange place and a bank machine that would distribute more than $500 peso’s at a time. A short walk on the beach, lunch in town and grocery top up at the Pelican groceria – we think is the best Mexican grocery store. The other day we went to checkout San Pancho – wow what a little gem this place is; the town had such a cool charm to it…and the beach was stunning! Spent the day at the beach at a rented table with food and drink whenever we needed it.

I haven’t chatted food in a while but I became slightly obsessed with chilaquiles (pronounced “cheela – keelies”) when we first got here. It’s a breakfast food and every place does it different; sometimes served with/without beans, red taco chips or strips, divorced eggs or chicken along with red and/or green sauce. We went to at least 3 or 4 different restaurants to try them out…..and then I started making fake Canadian chilaquiles. Mine are basically buttery scrambled eggs with green onion, on top of cheese nachos, then all topped with red or green sauce – which I have now nicknamed egg nachos! It probably sounds gross but we bought red and green sauce and realized we could do this….so we do…and honestly it is so frickin’ good!

One of the many crazy things in Mexico is the pop-up restaurants that happen in the streets – basically people cooking in their kitchen and setting up a couple tables and you eat in the street. In our little town there is a perogy place, Turkish kabob place, a rib place just to name a few. Not to mention the smoothie / juice lady where we buy our fresh OJ for mimosas’s.  Les and Wendy’s hotel was just around the corner from the Rib guy – so we reserved a table for Wed night at RESTAURANT LAS KORITAS. We didn’t know if they had more on the menu than just ribs, but they certainly did; the men had rib’s and the ladies had rellenos de camarón (shrimp stuffed peppers). It was all very delicious! (Note: I’m saving all my food pics and will do one big food video at the end of the trip, same with sunsets). But here is a video of some of the fun we had: All-the-places.html

After two weeks at their hotel, we moved Les and Wendy to a beach hotel in Guayabitos….closer to the action. We rode our bikes over on the Tuesday for a pool party. Spent the afternoon chatting, hanging by the pool and talking to random strangers…which has turned into an almost daily event down here. So many Canadians doing the same thing (living, RV’ing, vacationing, etc) you can’t help but strike up a conversation with everyone. You never know how the day will end up, but many times you meet some cool people. It was a fun afternoon chatting with the worldly, ever-charismatic Casey and his two kids Greta and Will. Although we managed to bike back to La Penita before dark…..we pit-stopped at the taqueria for dinner and a few groceries before we did the final stretch back to the park….in the dark – this was surprisingly easier to navigate than anticipated.

Our car part arrived yesterday, Todd has installed it already and we are ready to take the Chilliwackian’s to the airport tomorrow and maybe a Costco pitstop to round out the day.

Here’s where we’ve been if you need to see it in a map.