We were invited to go on a beach day with some park friends on a Friday.  We convoyed down the highway to a town called Los Lomas and then headed straight west towards the beach. Another typical secondary desert/dust/cobblestone road where 4-wheel drive was an asset! We arrived at a small parking lot and a gate. A Mexican man greeted us at the door, and we were allowed to walk on a designated path through a fancy exclusive resort to the beach. We weren’t allowed to stop and look at the resort or take pictures….we were only allowed to walk to the beach! Our group found the perfect spot to hang for the day and we basically had the entire beach to ourselves. Kerry went on a recognisance mission over the rocks to make sure we could all walk over to the next beach, as it was reported to be very hazardous! We all trekked over the rocks to checkout the next beach and some even tried the therapeutic mud from the mud cave. All in all, the day was fantastic; a beach BBQ where food was cooked, snacks and drinks consumed, conversations had, and pictures were taken! Private-beach-day.html

The next day we had planned an overnight trip up to Tepic (pronounced “te-pique”) – which is the state capital of Nayarit. We opted to take the road less travelled instead of the toll road cause it was very twisty. We pit-stopped in Las Varas for gas at the Pemex station. As we were getting gas, a farmer pulled in driving his 1960’s Ford F 100 (not a typo, I meant 100 and not 150). As he was being filled up with gas, two random guys in motorcycles also getting gas, checked his tire pressure for him and filled a bit of air in his tires! What? Wow….another way that people just respect elders in this culture…It was very cool to see. We carried on through Las Varas along the agriculture highway where, on this day, we realized how many people we actually tip or donate too in a day (between $5-$20 pesos per person). While driving we tipped / donated to all these people:

• Gas station attendant – its just what you do
• Wheelbarrow gravel maintenance guy – he was a buff guy with a shovel and a wheelbarrow full of gravel filling potholes on the road.
• Blue tope painter guy – he was a guy with a can of blue paint, painting the tope’s (speed bumps) on the main road/highway in the town of El Llano so you can see them better
• Bomberos – firefighters need to raise money for new equipment or training; they stand in uniform in between multiple tope’s hoping you will donate to them

Just after El Llano, we took a right at the T intersection and headed up highway 76. This was a crazy twisty road that Todd really wanted to go on (way more turns than the Hana highway). We navigated up and through the town of Jalcocotan – which we nicknamed Banana city. There were so many banana orchards (is that what its called? Or a banana farm? Not sure) and so many packing houses in this area it was VERY cool for food safety Jill to see! This road was pretty fun and eventually we arrived in Tepic. A couple of pitstops at major grocery chains to find a few things on the list before we headed to centro to find a place to stay. Mid-day on a Saturday is a crazy time in any centro….alot of markets and shopping, cars and people going everywhere. We found a place to park overnight and gave him the keys to Trixie.….if you are at all familiar with parking lots in Mexico they aren’t always easy and what you think. This one was a gated and cement fenced lot that fits 3 cars deep of 4 rows wide. So when you drop your car off with the keys, it gets parked in front of other cars and then when people come to get their car, they move your car to a new place in another row and just keep moving it around as needed. Another reason why we drive a shitty car down here….no one will want to steel Trixie and if she gets dented or damaged…oh well! We picked her up the next day and she was still intact and relatively dent free!

We took our suitcase and cooler with us as we walked the 2 blocks back to the hotel to check in. Our room was the second floor and overlooked a busy area of centro and it was cool to watch the goings on from above.  A walk to the indoor market where we had a delicious lunch and then went walking around to check out the city. Unfortunately, the cathedral was under repair so we couldn’t go in but then Todd decided to get a haircut that also included his nose hair, eyebrows and a shoulder massage…all for $21. He also had a very successful shopping experience at a store where he found 6 shirts for under $100, he is now very fashionable to say the least! Happy hour back at hotel while we googled where to eat dinner. Headed out around 6 to Emiliano Comida y Vino (Emiles Food and Wine) for dinner. They found room for us without a reservation and this place did not disappoint! They had English speaking wait staff and they were all very good; anytime we come across people that speak English, Todd always compliments them on their skills. We ordered a bottle of wine from El Cielo winery (A place we wine tasted at in the Baja in 2020!) The server let us go into the wine cellar and see what they had….when Todd picked up a bottle of wine from the shelf, 6 bottles proceeded to fall off the shelves and onto the floor! EEK! Luckily none of the bottles broke and the waiter was pretty chill about it. The food was absolutely delicious!

Our way back home we walked back through centro and it was completely empty, which we both thought was very odd for a big city. As we walked around the block, we saw broken glass and police boarding up windows….WTF just happened? Then saw that the construction fence surrounding the cathedral was covered in posters and graffiti. We quickly scurried back to the hotel thinking this is not a good sign, let’s get the hell outta here! Woke up the next day and went to get a coffee at the cafe down the street when Todd found an English speaking Mexican showing video’s of the protest that happened last night! Apparently being international women’s day….some few thousand women paraded down the street to the cathedral in protest of women’s rights, gender violence and the lack of response from the authorities to gender violence ….and during the protest, threw bricks through store windows and painted graffiti on buildings along the way…..how did we not even hear any of this at the restaurant 3 blocks away?! By 10 am the next morning you would never know this protest happened (aside from some posters on wall) …..all graffiti had been painted over already – we saw a few painters painting the final strokes on the Government palace when we walked by. After breakfast and a quick trip to the Chedraui (grocery store) we headed back to the park via highway 200 down through the city of Compostela winding through sugar cane fields for miles.Tepic-trip.html

A few days later Todd and I remembered that we hadn’t ventured out to the petroglyphs yet, so we headed up highway 200 to go check them out. Another crazy secondary road through farm fields where we saw orchards of oranges, banana’s, pineapples and guanabana. Finally reaching a parking lot at the end of the road. There was 1 other car there …so not a huge tourist attraction! We got on the trail, found a few signs and then we were flagged down by a Spanish speaking abuelo (grandpa) who could tour us through the petroglyphs for $50 pesos each! Since we had been unsuccessful at finding any on our own, we figured this is a fairly cheap option. Of course google translate stopped working….but with my minimal duolingo Spanish, I could kinda make out every 40^th word he was saying! This was all very cool and luckily there were also sign’s posted throughout the trail that we could read. Eventually we ended up at the end of the trail with our feet in a cool pool of water. A-day-in-the-life.html

A view from the park palapa down to “our” beach

It’s now mid-March and we have seen the park thinning out, at least 1/3 of the snowbirds are gone. We went out one night, only to come back to the park to see a tour bus had pulled in and a tent city being erected on the north side of the park! Turns out it was a bus full of architect students arriving for the long weekend. Their project, while here, is to design an RV park! Some of them even participated in park events like burger and dance night on the Sunday.

Speaking of going out one night….Todd’s aunt Laurel and her husband Gary (from Sask) made a reservation at Bromelia Restaurante; the location of this no building / open air restaurant, is in the middle of a pineapple field under a ficus tree. The term “bromelia” is the scientific word for a flowering plant (or pineapple). The kitchen is basically a few tables surrounding a round firepit with a grate; they also had a wood fired pizza oven. The food coming out of the kitchen was pretty amazing! I have pretty much no photographic evidence of the meal here due to limited light available to take a picture that would turn out – I tried a few times on different settings but nothing worked out. This was the first and only time we drove at night down here in La Penita.

Todd was talking to the neighbor the next day about going for one last beach outing with the group. He planted the seed and 2 days later we had a group of about 12 heading down to Playa Punta Raza! It was a beautiful day at the beach! The day was topped off with Burger night up at the pool; we had yet to attend a burger night because I am gluten free and wouldn’t be able to eat anything on the menu. However, we were told that we can bring our own food up and eat with everyone and then join in on the dance party fun! So it only took us 8 weeks to figure that out…we were a little late to the party! Todd may have coerced the uni students to come over and dance with all the retirees….apparently this was the longest burger night dance party in history….11 pm!

We have officially been gone from Canada for 4 months today (Mar 17). Our current location in La Penita is the longest we have EVER parked Ruby in once place on a winter getaway tour; we have been here for 70 days and still have another 20 days to go! This week we look forward to some new scenery as we head out on a 12 day road trip in the car to exciting destinations.