Category: Travel

Today was another grocery shopping day.  We really slept in, all of us – and the maid was well about her business by the time we were headed out.  Rather than walk to the Mega, eight of us took the bus.  It was an uneventful trip, but, as always, entertaining.  We always find humour in the situations we find ourselves in, but I’m sure that the locals who ride the bus with us are amused by our antics as well! 

We had lunch almost immediately upon our return, BLT sandwiches (well, back bacon, eh?), yum.  Then ran out of the bacon, had an LT sandwich.  Then ran out of lettuce, had a tomato sandwich (heh heh, just need margarine & pepper :-) ).  It’s all good.

Someone mentioned the gecko in shower of the main bathroom – I didn’t know there was a gecko in the bathroom!  Our little room has its own bathroom and shower, so we don’t use the shower in the main bathroom.  Well, what do you know, there is indeed a gecko in there, right up in the corner!  Helen says that they will just appear sometimes, and apparently not move for days.  They are supposedly rather harmless, just an amusing fixture in this warm land.

Yes, we got up at a rather un-holiday-ish hour this morning, and were ready to depart just after 07h00.  Sure enough, shortly after that, a big van pulled up just outside the condo gate and all ten of us piled in.  I was impressed – it was fairly comfortable for such a large van.  We were delivered to the Nuevo Vallarta pier by about 07h40.  The sun was not yet up, it was still rather dark out.  And rather chilly too!  Mexico does get chilly at night, and I didn’t bring a jacket nor pants.  And, just as I was warming up, it was time to load up onto the boat and get out onto the water.  Yikes, out on the water, it was even colder.  It wasn’t until 10h00 that the sun got intense enough to quell the goose pimples on my arms and legs.

The mention of Eric’s iPod brings me to my pet peeve of the day.  About six weeks ago, I purchased an audio book version of Jim Collins’ Good to Great, and very much enjoyed it.  I ripped it to MP3 and put it on my little Samsung U5 MP3 player, and played it in the car on the way to and from work.  Then I bought The One Minute Manager and did the same.

For a couple of days now, I’ve been looking around the web for deals on audio books that I could just download – I will pay for them, but I prefer just getting the MP3 over the Internet and putting them directly onto my MP3 player.  The best deal I found was a subscription based service that I’ve heard about, and looked at before, Audible.com.  It is advertised on some of the podcasts that I listen to on a regular basis, so it must be OK, right?

Well, I signed up for a monthly subscription, paid the first month, got my first audio book, downloaded it with anticipation, and…  what the heck is an “AA” file???  It won’t play on my LINUX computer!  And now I Google the AA file format of Audible.com, and it’s proprietary – only plays through iTunes and on iPods!

Audible.com uses Digital Rights Management (DRM), which restricts the distribution and use of an audio file to those devices that have paid to buy into their restrictions.  So I can’t use this new audio book, curses!

I’m not sure what I’m going to do.  Part of me wants to complain, get my money back (or at least cancel the subscription), and run away to another web site that’s more expensive but gives me files I can use.  The other part of me says, “oh carp (a typo but I like it), Jason has an iPod and loves it, maybe I should just buy an iPod and be done with it.” 

This would mean that I would have to re-rip my whole CD collection to MP3 instead of Ogg Vorbis http://www.vorbis.com , a free encoder that I have been using until now (long story, but MP3 is not free, a licence fee is paid to the owners with every device that can play it, check out the web site for details).  The whole OGG thing runs with my slightly anti-establishment bias.  But, the iPod does not play OGG, and from what I read, never will.  Well, you can wipe your iPod and install new software that will play OGG, but then you can’t play the proprietary DRM formats, kind of wiping out the benefit of switching to iPod. 

Curse these entrenched, self-serving, self interested companies that want to lock their customers in!  Even if the jail cell is very nicely furnished, it is a jail cell just the same.

Yes, today was the day to go to the market, held each Sunday morning, on the other side of the highway.  We got up, well, not early, but at least we got up (you know by now that I’m the sloth of the group), then made our way to the market.  It was basically about six blocks of streets with vendors on both sides.  The crowds apparently were small for a market Sunday, but that’s just as well for out-of-towner gringos like us!

Honestly, I’ve been goaded into this by my extended family.  You kind of have to be here to know what I’m talking about:

• Do not buy candy out of a wheelbarrow (they do this on the beach – not a good deal!)
• Do not crash waves with your glasses on (Drew found out that sunglasses tend to disappear beneath the waves when you do this)
• Don’t collect 2s in a game of 31 when you are playing seven other people (hard to get a card before it’s covered – although this rule was just successfully broken – twice!)
• Big guys make a good pizza recommendation (last night’s topping recommendation was from an big fellow, an ex-pat Canadian who made his recommendation as Barrie was headed into buy the pizza)
• Don’t plan on a good night’s sleep on Christmas eve (and it has nothing to do with Santa) (it has everything to do with the all-night parties and the fireworks, well um, firecrackers they set off all night long)
• Avoid eggs or chicken from the convenience store (they sit out unrefrigerated, yikes)
• A Speedo swimsuit is not appropriate attire for horseback riding, even on the beach (some guy rode by wearing nothing but a Speedo and a BlackBerry, apparently Dave thought it was pretty cringe-worthy but neglected to get a picture, curses!)

Christmas in Bucerias is rather surreal.  No snow, warm temperatures, and a hot, hot sun.  I can’t say that I miss the cold and the snow in Winnipeg, but I would probably prefer 24 hours of snow and cold (like in Winnipeg) from say 14h00 on the 24th until the same time on the 25th.

Well, enough whining from me.  It was a beautiful, hot, sunny day here, as seems to be the norm.  We slept in, had a lazy morning, did some reading, and went down to the beach, ahhhh.  Well, the others went down first, and I just wanted to check my E-mail…  Yes, E-mail, eBay, the Canadian news, argh – yes the conveniences of modern communications, more of a burden really.  Before the days of the Internet, we would just lose track of happenings back home and catch up when we return.  But now, I can be more on top of Winnipeg news than someone in the ‘Peg – because I have more time to sit and hit “refresh” on http://www.cbc.ca/news and http://www.winnipegfreepress.com .  Kind of sad when you think of it.  In fact, last night at 23h00, I felt like listening to the news in the ‘Peg, so zoomed over to http://www.cjob.com and listened to the local news.  Technology!!!

Then again, I can call my mom daily using Skype or some of the other telephone programs; I can use E-mail to keep tabs on my friends and monitor their goings on; I can pay the bills that I forgot to pay last week before leaving on holidays (oops); and harass those I call my friends : “check out my blog, I’ll be calling with a verbal quiz when I get back!”

Anyway, with the my electronic media craving duly satiated, I went down and sat on the beach.  Shortly thereafter it was lunchtime, and once again we had a great meal here at the condo.

Eric had a siesta, the rest of the men went down to Scott’s Travel Co. to enquire about day trips.  There are several, perhaps dozens, of tourist information and travel arrangement shops, but most of the others are actually offices of timeshares, so we’d rather avoid those – we had a celebrated encounter with a timeshare when on a trip to Fort Lauderdale many years ago, and don’t want a repeat!

So, what are we considering?  A full day whale watching and snorkeling sight seeing boat trip for all ten of us – for us, special deal, 500 pesos each, includes lunch.  Eric and I are considering jungle canopy zip line, 1042 pesos each.  And I see something about a full day tequila tour up into the old country, sounds interesting.  We’ll see what happens – this is all new, all new to me!  Me, the risk averse, afraid-of-heights engineer, hmm.

Eric purchased a big straw hat for himself yesterday at what we call the “car of hats”.  It just happens to be two doors down from Scott’s.  The proprietor told Eric that he has 3 wives and 14 children, so couldn’t give Eric the price he wanted, he needed to eat.  Well, Eric being the hard hearted guy that he is, didn’t think the fellow looked like a Mormon, so insisted on (and got) the price he wanted.

We went to a Spanish Roman Catholic Mass at a local church just off the town square tonight.  I didn’t understand a word they said, but it was very nice just the same.  Well, I attended many Roman Catholic Masses in English in my youth, so I know the sections and responses, but it’s tough when it’s in a completely different language and spoken through a muffled sound system.

Today I spent the beginning of the day, while the others were still asleep (and for a while after they were up), working on the computer up on the palapa.  The wireless network mostly works up there.  I was able to do yesterday’s blog this way, and upload the images that wouldn’t upload last night.  It seems that the wireless is more flaky in the evening – perhaps because more people in this little complex are using it???

After breakfast, the kids went off to run up and down the sand and blow off some steam.  The maids arrived to clean up the unit, so the rest of us got kicked out.  Well, if sitting in the sun by the pool counts as being kicked out, that is.  After a time, Barrie and Helen and Dayna decided to go pick up the pastry for dessert tomorrow (what?  Christmas day already?  yikes!) and I, being lazy, stayed behind at the pool to relax and plow through some of the magazines I brought.  Nice.

The rest of the crew arrived home for lunch, chicken fajita wraps, excellent!  But left everyone wanting more, so sad.  Oh well, good chance to fill up on fruits, not a bad thing.  Well, and Eric gets a chance to down a few more beers, ha ha.

We had decided that we would have take-out pizza, something special for Christmas eve.  Yikes, hard to believe that Santa could travel to such a warm climate.  Hard to believe that it’s Christmas eve!  Everyone but Eric and I headed out to order the pizza.  Eric stayed to drink more beer and listen to his iPod (he has “both kinds of music – country and western”).  He played a couple for me, ha ha – “A Pickup Man” and “The Drinking Bone”.  My son with the cowboy boots, cowboy hat, and a case of Coronas, hard to believe!

I did a bit of E-mail, bought a Long John Baldry LP on eBay (Rock with the Best, 1981, contains When You’re Ugly Like Me (You Just Naturally Got to be Cool) ), it should arrive in Pembina in the next ten days or so.  I called my mom, she is doing well thankfully.  She and a friend will be going to the candlelight service at Charleswood United this evening.

Dayna arrived back with the crew, and while the everyone else went to the beach, she and I wandered off to the bank to use the ATM to get some more pesos.  Yikes, it is difficult to get used to the fact that they use the same “$” symbol for prices in pesos as we use for dollars, yet the peso is worth around 1/10 of a dollar.  Oh well, I like the ring of having a thousand pesos in my pocket!

After I got back, I also wandered down to the beach, while Barrie, Helen & Dayna stayed behind.

Well, let me just confirm for you that the ocean is salty, wow.  I played football pitch and catch in the water with Eric and Matt.  Apparently those two were doing it for hours, wow.  I just got a half hour in before it was time to go.  I made a few strokes in the salt water, up and down the beach a bit, then headed for shore.  I flopped on my beach towel for a bit, then wandered back for supper.

A good sleep was had by all.  Well, maybe not all – Drew had some technical issue with the bed, and I’m not sure Matt slept well out on the couch – but I slept almost a full 12 hours with only a few interruptions (middle aged bladder?  hmm).  It was probably a bit excessive, but hey, I’m on holidays!!!

Over breakfast, Eric and his younger cousins surfed the channels on the TV, but found that their ability to enjoy the squawk box (as my mother used to call it) was hampered by their inability to understand Spanish!  Oh well, there were the major U.S. networks there too, but they were showing (shudder) daytime TV.  Thankfully, they won’t be glued to the TV much during this holiday.  They can’t say that about me and the computer, I guess, so sad.

Today is grocery shopping day.  We walked the 3/4 hour from the condo in Bucerias (Condo Jacardanas, 57 Fancisco Madero) to the huge supermarket.  Along the walk, we saw a beautiful condominium complex for sale (hmm, probably out of our range), some huge time shares (apparently they shy away from that name now, it’s “partial ownership” now), and a new new private high end condominium development.  Very nice.

In the centre is a small square with a manger scene and a Christmas tree shaped poinsettia tree.  It all looked a bit weird to us – but having been in Bethlehem not two months ago, remember that Jesus was born not in the snow, but in a dry middle eastern climate, so really the dry manger scene is probably more realistic!





The supermarket is called “Mega”.  Yes, it is “mega” for sure.  It starts in the parking lot.  You can order a car wash for your vehicle while you shop.  There are several fellows wandering the parking lot with portable high pressure washers.