Tuesday morning saw Aimee complete unfazed by her operation the day before. The vet here hadn’t bothered to give us any aftercare advice, we asked if she should have a cone to stop her licking it and he shrugged. “You bandage it, if you need. It’s no big deal.”
Our English vets were a little more overbearing when we had had our two boys done. The list of instructions was quite large. Don’t let them jump up, don’t let them out for three days, don’t let them lick the wound etc. etc. Trying to keep our big ginger tom inside would have definitely been fighting a losing battle, and we were always surprised by just how quickly they bounced back.
Aimee was no exception, the following morning she howled and scratched at the door to be let out, and while we initially kept her on her lead, she wasn’t impressed with that either. So we let her off and watched her bound, at full tilt into the nearest bush. It wasn’t long before she emerged with another mouse to torture, and spent a large part of the day releasing it to run for cover before catching it again. She seemed fine.
Our battered surfboard that Danny had found us, still didn’t have a leash and as inexperienced surfers, neither of us fancied surfing without one. There was a small surf shop on the beach and Lee had asked if we could buy a leash, while he didn’t have one there, the owner said he’d get us one. Lee is a little more relaxed about money sometimes when it comes to things like this. As much as the Mexicans are nice people, a lot of them won’t hesitate to make a quick buck of a stupid tourist. So when someone offers to do me a favour, I like to agree the price first. Needless to say, he hadn’t done this so when the guy came around with the leash later one we didn’t really know what he wanted. Having never bought one or any kind of surfing paraphernalia, we had no idea how much one costs. We asked how much he wanted and he shrugged, “Just something.” He replied noncommittally. So we gave him about 50mxp at which point he looked at us in outrage and cried out, “It’s not enough, this cost me like 20 bucks!”
As always, we run out of money with impeccable timing, but we did still have $14 left which we gave him. Looking a little disgruntled, he left. I then looked it up on Amazon where you can buy the same one for $12, so it didn’t look like we had been ripped off too badly in the end. He returned back round to his tent where he proceeded to continue to make some vile coughing noises for the rest of the day.
We had received a message from a couple that we had met all the time ago at the van meet up on La Pastora. Rob and Jen, originally from Colorado, now rented a house out in the town. Jen had sent me a message asking if we wanted to come around for dinner, which we readily agreed too. We had picked the following evening so after another chilled out day on the beach, enjoyed the beautiful sunshine, we headed back into town that evening. The surf shop owner had come back and offered to take our rubbish away, “Just for a small fee, for fuel.” He explained. Feeling like we were making ourselves a reputation as a local ‘easy money’ source, we declined, instead taking our rubbish into town with us to get rid of it.
We stopped off at the local shop for a few things, including a bottle of wine. Can’t turn up to a dinner invitation empty handed! It was when we got back into the van and I went to load up their address that I realised the location wasn’t exact. Instead of having a pin on the map, we had just the area they lived in, San Vincent. Not having much other choice, I sent her a message and we sat in the car park and waited while the staff regarded us with mild curiosity. Time ticked on, past 6.30pm when we were supposed to be there.
All of a sudden there was a knock at the window and Rob appeared, he explained to us that his house was just across the street and we followed him over to park up. He had seen us just sitting there at the shop and must have realised we didn’t know exactly where we were going. Parking up outside, he ushered us through into their home. Jen was in mid cook looking a little panicked. She explained that she gets stressed out cooking for people, and we tried to reassure her that we are not fussy people. Their two daughters were also there and we were greeted by a very confident Sloane and a much shyer Sam.
They were both lovely hosts, pouring us a nice cold glass of white wine and pulling up two chairs whilst they finished preparing a meal. Jen was cooking avocado pasta, a favourite of the girls and a nice salad. Rob had managed to buy a loaf of bread that looked like it would actually be very nice, as normally we are nothing but disappointed by Mexican or American bread. Jen said we could also bring Aimee inside as their dog Winston had sadly passed away recently.
Before too long the meal was ready and we all dived in, I am a bit of a pasta monster so I definitely enjoyed some nice spaghetti in an avocado sauce, not something I’ve had with pasta before. The bread was also lovely, a proper home baked loaf, and a great accompaniment to a cheese, pear and lettuce salad. We chatted to the end of the evening, finally leaving them long after the kids were in bed and it had grown dark outside. They invited us around again for breakfast, and we agreed that we would come back on Friday morning to try some of Jen’s pancakes. We headed out that evening, with the remainder of the nice bread loaf to take with us.
We drove back to our little parking spot on San Pedrito, attempt to roll in on ‘stealth mode’ so as not to disturb Shane too much. Always up a lot earlier than us, he took this awesome picture of the morning sunrise.
For some time now, we have been wanting to go to Santiago and visit the hot springs and waterfalls there. Funnily enough, Rob and Jen had just been and we had seen a load of their pictures. They said that it was beautiful and also very quiet at the moment, with a lot of people staying at home right now. As we were planning to back up to go and see them again on Friday, this seemed like a good time to head over that way. I had ordered some things off Amazon which we needed to collect in La Paz en route and this seemed like a solid plan.
This meant we had one more day to spend on San Pedrito before moving on. Lee attempted surfing that morning, no excuse now as we had a board and a leash he walked down to the sea and set out into the waves. It wasn’t too long before he returned back, looking a bit tired and not all that triumphant. I now wished I’d gone and watched as he said the waves were so big he couldn’t even get out past the breakers in order to catch a wave, after 20 minutes of trying he gave up and came back. We definitely needed to head back to Cerritos if we were going to try surfing again, the waves down the rest of this coast are big fast breakers that are not for beginners.
The rest of the day was spent enjoying the sun, writing some blogs and listen for the jingle of Aimee’s bell as she darted in and out of the bushes. A beautiful relaxing beach day, we are both starting to look rather brown after all this sun.
The evening, Shane tried to make corn tortillas and cook them on his pan over the fire. After having some mixed success, we lent a hand with some regular bread flour which seemed to help them stick together a bit better. We shared a simple meal together, featuring his wraps, some tuna mayonnaise, some very large sardines, some sweetcorn, a salad and a selection of Mexican hot sauces. It just goes to show that you don’t need much in the way of cooking equipment or ingredients to make a nice meal for several people. There is something nice about the simplicity of cooking on an open fire and I’m glad we bought ourselves a cast iron pan so that we can do this now if we want to. Not only is it sometimes easier to keep all the mess outside, but it’s also free to make a fire. While our Wallas is very efficient and uses next to nothing in the way of diesel when used solely as a cooker, there is still something satisfying about getting something for free.
That evening we packed away some of the van, so we didn’t have to get up so early in the morning. It was only about a 15 minute drive to their house, but it can take us a while to pack up, especially when we’ve been settled in the same spot for a while. No doubt Aimee will do her disappearing act, right at the final moment we want to go. As predicted, we loaded the final things, shut the doors and said goodbye to Shane. Aimee who had been casually sitting on the sofa this entire time, up until the last few minutes was now gone. Already a few minutes late, we now wandered around the car park calling her and rattling a food packet. After a few minutes she reluctantly appeared. This is another issue we’re having in Mexico, it’s impossible to buy cat treats and this means we have lost one of our major tricks in getting the cat back.
All things considered we arrived a little later at their house, which was fine as breakfast was still cooking. Jen had made a stack of sweet potato pancakes and a Dutch pancake too. There was fruit, yogurt and sauces galore to accompany these. Not normally one for breakfast, I ate so much I definitely won’t be needing lunch today and I’m not even sure about dinner. Rob had to go into work, and we stayed a little longer and chatted to Jen. Soon, we decided we should get going, we had a bit of a drive today to reach La Paz. Jen loaded us up with some of the breakfast leftovers and we went out to the van. We had asked if we could also fill our water tank using their hose while we were there, which they had agreed too.
Lee went to open the sliding door to get everything ready, at which point the rear hinge came apart, causing the door to fall off at the back and snap the front roller bracket as it fell off. Needless to say, this is all quite important to the operation of the door. The bracket is a cast aluminium job, meaning it really can’t be welded and we needed a new one.
Many people had reassured us of the ease of buy parts for our van here, and we were about to find out how easy that was going to be. Jen put up a post on the local Facebook group for suggestions, and we managed to get the door shut by holding it in place. Some extra bungee cords around it for security, we set off to La Paz to try and get it fixed. A few people had suggested some scrap yards that way, and we had actually seen a bay sitting in one of them on a previous trip. There was also a VW specialist garage in the city centre too, fairly optimistic that we could find one, but thoroughly pissed off because the whole situation could have been avoided, we set off.
The Kombi Chronicles 