Things still haven’t really slowed down. I get the feeling that they never will. Yesterday, I finally got to use the internet again and headed over to one of the Lagunes to see the crocodiles. We were all amused by the baby crocs, which were only 5 days old. Apparently, the crocs here don’t eat people, like the ones in Australia. It seemed like they were also having some sort of a town meeting there. I didn’t mean to disturb, so I felt somewhat bad, but as soon as we put on our floating vests and started to head towards the boats, it started to rain, and started to rain bad. Fiona and Bjorn had a good time talking with the little kids. Fiona had fun putting lipgloss on the girls. Bill and I waited in the car for about 60-90 minutes, and we headed back to the hotel. The drive back down the hill was interesting: it was muddy and watery everywhere, so once we got moving, we didn’t want to stop, so we went reverse for about 300 meters. Within an hour, the rain stopped, but the Lagune was gonna be closed for rest of the day. We came back, and chilled out at the beach for the most part, and talked about our plans.
Today was one of my busier days. Most of the other days were busy doing one or two things, driving or helping out with the missions, and so on. But today, I did all sorts of things. I headed over to Puerto Escondido at 8:30, got there by 9:30, and checked my car in. I went to the bank to get $180 exchanged for Bill and Teresa at the local HSBC office. The line was way too long, so after having waited about 30 minutes while the line virtually did not move, I told the lady behind me that I will be back. I used the payphone outside to call my credit card company toll free. I was able to then finally get access to my bank account online. It turns out that they locked me out because of possible fradulent charges. So I told them, no, I’m traveling, and later, I talked to the balance tranfer guy to see how much money I can transfer over to my bank. I had a 0% APR until July 8th, and 9.99% thereafter. But the guy, Patrick, says, I’m looking at your account right now, let me go talk to my manager. Comes back and says I can offer you 1% APR till March, since you haven’t taken advantage of the introductory rates yet. So I’m like, perfect, let me do that. I tranfered over $5000 to my Bank of America account, with $4.10 in interest per month. Pretty awesome.
I then went to the laundry room, checked in my laundry for them to do. It cost me 39 Pesos ($3.50 or so) to do about 5 kilograms worth of laundry. I went back to the bank, and the lady that was behind me at the time happened to be the next person to be called up. I asked her if it’s ok to cut back in line, and she let me in. I was going to give her 20-30 pesos, but she smiled and politely refused.
I ate some ok pork and chicken tacos and used the internet for an hour and headed over to the mechanic shop. He said that they’re getting the parts and will need me to come back at 5. So I hiked down the hills, for about 25-30 minutes, down to the beach. I spent the couple hours just chilling at Playa Angelito, and hiked back, got my laudry. I went to the mechanic shop at 4:30, at which point they were just getting done. The guy said a lot of things I didn’t really understand. He showed me a picture of the parts he put on, drew a cross that may have resembled the U-Joint, said something is difficult, and said it’s 850 pesos. I hope it’s nothing serious, because at the time I was overjoyed that it was so cheap ($80 or so). Now, I wish I asked him to write down what he meant, but the noise is no longer there and the car seems to run just fine right now.
I came back, and they had some special buy one get one free at the local El Mazunte bar that the Italian lady and her Mexican boyfriend opened up 5 days ago. So Bjorn and I got Pina Colatas. And she wasn’t kidding when she said her boyfriend makes some good ones. They were the best ones I’ve tasted. Then we headed over to La Isla to see Alfonso and he cooked for us again for some 45 pesos, this time I had some of the best Tuna fish I’ve ever had. The night before, he had some shrimp cooked for us, and I just mauled it all. It’s gotta be the best damn shrimp I’ve had, too.
Tonight, the beach is lighting up every second or so with lighting that’s passing through the clouds. Fiona and I are leaving tomorrow for San Cristobal at 8:30, hopefully make it within 9 hours. I sure hope nothing’s wrong with the car, or this just may be the shortest ride yet.