Went back to Playa Balandra today with the intention of hiking. It’s ringed by some high ridges and you can see some trails running up there, so it seemed like a perfect opportunity to get some exercise for me and for Sasha. As it turned out, she wasn’t that enthusiastic about the steep, rugged parts–I guess she just can’t do that much anymore–but she came alive again once we got back down to the beach.
The views were, in fact, beautiful. I only just touched the beginning of what looks like a good network of trails along the ridgelines, partly because Sasha was flagging and partly because I was only the second car in the parking lot and in spite of myself I was a little worried about leaving the car without more people around it. The more times I do that and nothing bad happens, the bolder I’ll get (until, God forbid, something bad does happen), but today I was walking the line between caution and trust.
From the top, I did spot Mushroom Rock (I actually could see it the first time I came out, it was just blending in to its background) and, in the distance, Playa El Tecolote. Watched a couple of sailboats motoring out the channel. I’m assuming they were headed around to Los Frailes and thence to Puerto Vallarta or Mazatlan, but really, I have no idea. After checking out the ridges, we went down to the beach and over to Mushroom Rock, then back along the beach. I picked up a couple of what I think are juvenile conch shells along the way. Probably totally ho-hum to anyone that lives near a beach, but a novelty for me!
Going to set the alarm tomorrow and go out to El Tecolote to see, if not the sunrise, the afterglow of it. Then make myself go to the Club Cruceros coffee so I can maybe meet a couple of people and also check on my membership application. Then, if Sasha isn’t feeling better, a visit to the vet. Then if there’s time, I might drive down to Todos Santos. I’d been thinking I would be passing that way when I went to pick up Betsy or Banks, but I checked today and SJD is in San José del Cabo, not Cabo San Lucas, so it’s not on the way. I have to be back by four to meet my new landlord to get the key to my new apartment. (Even if I do manage to buy a boat here pretty soon, there will be a period of rehabilitation before I can move aboard.)
I managed to forget my debit card in the ATM at Chedraui earlier in the week, and didn’t notice it was missing for several days. Fortunately, there were no fraudulent charges, but now it will take a couple of weeks to get a replacement. Again fortunately, I have another debit card from another bank, so it’s not much of a hardship. Then today I went to another ATM to withdraw some money for rent, and when I got there and looked in my wallet, both my other debit card and my credit card were gone. Needless to say, I was floored. I mean, would someone lift my wallet, take the plastic and leave the cash, and then put the wallet back in my pocket? Well, no. After a moment I remembered that I’d removed both cards from my wallet before my evening walk a few nights ago as a precaution, since I was down to one debit card. Whew!
Having said that, I feel I have to add that since being in Mexico, I have felt just as safe–safer, actually–than I ever did in Chico or Iowa City. I just don’t want to get down to zero debit cards.
Oh yeah, one more story. Having lost the debit card, I was at a bit of a loss about how to come up with the chunk of change for first month’s rent and security deposit. On the Yahoo La Paz Gringos group, someone had mentioned Xoom.com, a subsidiary of PayPal that specializes in transferring money from the US to recipients in other countries. Since I do not want to show up empty-handed tomorrow when I get the key to my apartment, I decided to test it out. So I sent $100 to myself. An hour later, I was at Walmart, trying to collect. Martin was paged immediately, no doubt for his command of English. It took a while, but I suspect it would have taken as long or longer anywhere, since the holdup seemed to be that the woman behind the counter had never handled one of these transactions before. The most fun part was when another clerk disappeared with my passport for ten minutes to make a copy of it. I was never actually worried about it, honest, but I had to keep listening to that internal script about not handing your passport over to a Walmart employee in a strange country. Of course, it came back safe and sound, but I felt like Lawrence of Arabia there for a little bit.