Morning Walking Club took a slightly different route today. I would normally walk out to the beach and either turn left or right, walk until half my energy was spent, then I’d turn around and come back. But this day, I snuck into one of the other hotels instead. I just draped a towel over my wristband, cleverly concealing the different colour and had a nice walk around the facility. It was then I crafted our ultimate retirement plan. We are going to sail our boat to these areas rich with all-inclusive hotels and bring a big box full of plastic all-inclusive wristband bracelets, in a menagerie of colours. We’ll anchor our sailboat near the beach then rip the dingy into shore first thing in the morning and stash it somewhere in the bushes then find a hotel we like, strap on the appropriate coloured bracelet and go for breakfast with our fellow guests. If we like the place, we’ll stay all day, but if we don’t then we’ll just wander to the next hotel, do a quick switcheroo on the bracelet, then bam, ready for lunch. At the end of the day when we’re all drunk and stuffed we’ll just mosey on back to the dingy and ride back out to the boat, satisfied and happy and not one dollar poorer. This is how smart people retire early – watch for my next e-book “Retirement For Shady Fuckers” coming out soon.
After the morning feeding, Ana and I headed north on the street side pathway and walked a couple of miles to Bucerias. We walked one of the main streets and checked out a few shops then continued along to the main market which was a little gritty but cool. It felt a bit thrown together, but when you looked closer each of the vendor stalls were like small garages with doors that closed at night to lock everything up. As we walked around, the vendors tried selling us the local specialties like bottles of vanilla, cigars, Mexico t-shirts, sombreros, and so on but they didn’t try TOO hard, like in Asia where they will sometimes follow you down the block tugging on your shirt until you buy that counterfeit Lonely Planet guide you happened to glance at in their stall.
We found a small café restaurant where we sat down for a rather horrible coffee, but were more intrigued with the mountain bikes for rent, which we did indeed hire out for around 20 bucks for the entire day. We hopped on and rode off, enjoying the wind blowing through our hair and the supersonic speeds we were achieving. We decided to ride up this steep hill and as I tried changing gears the chain popped off so I rechained it and got my fingers and hands coated in grease. Luckily Ana has clung onto the habit of always carrying wet wipes (adopted when the kids were young but carried through to this day) and I was able to wipe myself up. Once we reached the top I tried changing gears again and the whole damn chain blew apart leaving links scattered over the broken pavement.
As I was struggling in vain to reassemble the chain a Mexican boy loaned me his Leatherman multi-tool, but even with the pliers I couldn’t get it back together again. I Freddy Flintstone’d the bike back to the shop and was somehow able to go nearly as fast as pedaling. With no replacement bikes the owner just gave us a refund and we walked back to the hotel along the beach.
The afternoon was spent hanging around the pool and the beach then around 6 we met Tony and Angela in front of our hotel and walked back to Bucerias, but this time to see how it looked at nighttime. We went to an artist collective for the weekly Art Walk and checked out some of the pieces and drank a shot of tequila with the owner which was, in my opinion, the highlight of the Art Walk as it was a rather low key affair.
Once darkness fell we walked over to a restaurant called Sabrina's – an amazing venue with incredible art showcased in the large lobby then a dining area in the back that was magical. Most of the tables were in the courtyard, open to the sky, but we sat in a covered area where the ambience was incredible, with lanterns hanging from the roof, more art decorating the walls, well dressed servers, groovy music playing in the background, and wonderful smells emanating from the nearby kitchen. We enjoyed a delicious, slow meal with our friends and the only uncomfortable part of the evening came when Ana and I walked with our empty plates back to the kitchen looking for the buffet to scoop up some more food. When they refused to give us more we showed them our bracelets, but still nothing, so that was a bit awkward, but not as awkward as when the server brought a little piece of paper over at the end of the night with some numbers written on it and a Moneris machine in her hand, then just stood there looking at us, waiting for something. Our friends explained that we had to PAY for the food, and after recovering from that shock we did find a credit card that worked and settled up, relaxing everybody in the vicinity.
We finished up the evening with a little stroll around the night market and a visit to the churro cart for dessert – delicious.
No comments:
Post a Comment