Bye Bye Baja

The time has come for me to head back north :-( Fortunately it started to chinook on Friday so I will be going back to plus temperatures, but the cold is still going to be a shock! I have had a fabulous time down here in Los Barriles and it has been made even better with some great friends.

The last couple of days have been what I would call lazy days, but hard days nonetheless. I don't quite understand how you retirees aren't perpetually exhausted doing nothing! The last couple of days we have stuck fairly close to home, hanging out and we are all plum tired each night! Maybe there is an upside to working!

Thursday was Brian's day and given that he has been our chauffer all week and the majority of the roads that we have been on have been crappy, he decided that we were going to stick to a beach close to home. There is an arroyo about 5 minutes from the house that we cross when going into town - 2 in fact and there is a beach at the end of it. We decided that we would hang out on the south arroyo beach. The big difference with this beach was that you could actually see people and houses from this beach - so our spoils of having a beach to ourselves was over. Mind you, you still don't see very many people.

Friday was my day and by then the winds had started to pick again in Los Barriles style, so I knew that it wasn't going to be a beach day. Earlier in the week we had been told about some hot springs up by Santiago so I decided that that would be on the agenda, but first we would spend a little time in town going through some of the shops. We went in to this one shop that sold the typical Mexican crap and came across what I call Mexican porn (will post pics when I get the chance). They were these little clay domes that kinda looked like a butter dish and when you lifted the lid, there were two little clay people engaged in various sexual positions. Little was left to the imagination! After our shopping, we drove out to Santiago which is about 20km south of Los Barriles - what a beautiful little town. It looks like there is a natural spring that runs through it, so it was nice and lush and green and CLEAN! We even saw garbage cans on the side of the streets which is rare down here. Everywhere you look, they seem to use the ditches as the recycling centre. After passing through Santiago, we carried on down a little dirt road and came to the park where the springs were. It was a $2 entry fee for each. There were some nice camping sites and even some outhouses - if I were into camping more than I am, I would consider staying here. The hot springs were great - in one pool they go up to about 95F. We probably spent about an hour there - mainly watching Gus Gus swim around and chasing fish. After the springs we came home for "happy hour on the deck". I some fresh salsa and guac and had a nice margurita.

Since it was my day and I didn't want to cook, we went out for pizza at the Greek place we tried on the first night. Great pizza, although Kim and I had a bit of a misunderstanding with our pizza - we ordered one with 4 toppings only to receive it with each topping relegated to it's own quadrant - it was still good though. We also opted to not have the cherries put on the Hawaiian pizza :-) Only down side to my day is we forgot to put the hot tub on early enough, so no hot tubbing.

Yesterday was Kimmie's day and Brian and I each made an effort to not pick on her - I have to be admit, we have picked on her a lot on this trip but it is so easy b/c she is so obsessive about the dog! Even worse than me with Horton if you can believe it! Kim decided that Saturday would be a free day. Early in the day, Brian and I noticed some people walking up the road - right away I thought that they were either Mormons or JWs, however I ruled out Mormons quickly when I couldn't see name tags through the binoculars. They spent about 20 minutes at the neighbors and then came and knocked on our gate. Brian engaged them from the deck, while Kim took pictures from in the house. After about 3 minutes of their chitchatting at a distance, Brian nicely told them that he didn't think that he would be attending their service. Now for those of you who know Brian, it would have been more in character for him to tell them to F off! We all had a lazy yet exhausting day sitting in the sun (it was windy out) but managed to get in a nice hot tub!

Every night we have been treated to an amazing moon rise over the horizon and the sky full of amazing stars - I am definitely going to miss that! I will not miss the cat that screeches every night about 4am! I will miss hearing the waves crash.

As mentioned it has been a great trip with great weather and great times. Now I am packing up and we are going to head into San Jose del Cabo and poke around and maybe do some shopping before my flight at 5:30pm. Kim and Brian are down here until the end of February, so I may be back. . . or I might head to Nigeria :-) Will keep you posted.