Following the large curry of the night before, the kitchen still contained a lot of half full pots and pans. We had decided to have round two of curry tonight, and I wasn’t convinced even that would make a dent in it. I decided to try and make the leftovers of Jen’s dish into some couscous cakes, so that it we could freeze it and focus on trying to eat the rest without wasting anything. While I made a production line of couscous cakes, Rob appeared with a new piñata. The girls had been so sad at the empty version from the night before that he had bought them another one, and this time filled it with sweets.
Before too long everyone had arrived, and curry night take two was in full swing. We still didn’t manage to finish it all, and it looked like we might be eating curry for breakfast the next day too. The good thing about that of course, is that curry just tastes better the longer you leave it.
Full from our meal, the kids set about beating the next piñata up which didn’t put up nearly so much of a fight as the last one did. We decided to round the night off with a film and ended up watching Alice in Wonderland, the illegal version. This is like back in the good old days when you spent 3 days downloading a film off Limewire to either discover it was something completely different than what you wanted or that it was a terrible copy and you could see people getting up to go to the loo as they walked past the camera. This was the latter, but we persevered through the numerous toilet breaks of our ghost audience, and the rather over the top contrast levels of the picture quality.
It appears to be getting colder here at night, rather than warmer. Maybe I’m just acclimatising as I remember spending nights sleeping in the pop-top and being to hot to sleep at 22C. Now I find myself sitting on the balcony under a blanket at the same temperature.
No doubt though, that the weather may soon start making a turn for the worse. August and September here are hurricane season, and while I have no intention of still being on Baja at that point, this is the same person who had no intention of being in Baja in May. Who knows what will happen in these unprecedented times. All we know for now is that the border is closed until the 20th of May, and that the lockdown is extended until the 30th. There is little to do but wait.
Aimee continues to hobble around, cone bobbing along and occasionally getting stuck on the floor, forcing an involuntary nosedive. She is permanently angry. Normally when pick her up she will purr, this had changed to her either biting or swiping at your face. Hopefully, not a permanent change, as one of the things we worry about is that being attacked will change her personality.
The next date of note was a week later, on Thursday. This marked two weeks since Aimee’s operation and it was time to get her stitches taken out. We had messaged the vet in advance and arranged a time, as she was not open properly due to this being the supposed ‘peak’ of Covid-19 in the area.
So at 11am, we pulled up outside, this time an easier process as the road blockades were gone meaning we didn’t have to do a massive detour around the town. We were both rather excited about being able to take her cone off. It was understandably something that she hated and seemed to be making her very miserable. We had taken it off for short periods before, where she frantically cleaned herself and seemed a lot happier. However, you had to watch her constantly as she kept trying to lick her stitches and we didn’t want to risk any more damage. Hoping that this might make Aimee a bit more Aimee again, we handed her across in her bag and waited outside for her to be returned to us.
We didn’t have long to wait until she was brought back out, stitches and cone free. We let her out to have the full fun of the camper, but she seemed a bit quiet and instead sat next to us in the front. It was still nice to see her looking a bit more normal, now the only give away is the fact that she has random shaved patches all over her.
As we had Ruby out and about for the first time in two weeks, we had decided to drive down to Costco in Cabo San Lucas, and restock on a few items. The breaking news here in Baja is that we have run out of beer. Factories were previously shut down as non-essential business, and it has taken this amount of time for supermarkets to run out of stock. Hoping that Costco might still have some beer, as well as some other necessary supplies, we had decided to take the trip. I also wanted to give Ruby a proper run, as the engine hadn’t been turned on for a while, let alone got properlyhot.
Cabo is around a 45-minute drive from where we are in Pescadero, so we set off midday. The roads are still quite empty, but without the sign of much police or military presence. The workers seemed to be using this rather good opportunity to resurface large parts of the infamously bad roads here, with big stretch of tarmac a shiny new black.
Arriving at Costco, I was the nominated one to go in as it’s my membership card. Equipped with my mask, I went and joined the queue. Each person had his or her ID checked, before being handed a disinfected trolley to use. Everyone wore a mask, not like Todos Santos where the only people wearing masks are the ‘tourists’. With a few requests from friends in the way of purchases, and the novelty of being allowed out, I allowed myself a good wander up and down each aisle. For once, I bought things in bulk that we couldn’t normally. Having space in our rental property meant that it was possible to stock up on a few bits, not normally an option in Ruby.
I had been allowed to purchase a single crate of beer, with strict rules in place. The beer aisle had it’s own personal security, preventing more than 5 people at a time in the aisle, as well as limits on purchases. A very big trolley load later, I was back at the van. We drove down the short way to Walmart, just because we might as well, and Lee went inside. Walmart in Baja is a disappointing experience where you get excited that you might be able to buy things like you can the US stores, only to find that you still really can’t.
Still, we were well stocked and had finally treated ourselves to buying a bottle of 400 Conejos tequila, especially as it was on offer. We made the boring and nondescript drive back up north, which has never been so enjoyable. I miss driving Ruby so much and we both longed to get back on the road. Part of me just wanted to keep driving and try and hide in the middle of the desert somewhere, but we still needed to give Aimee some more time to recover and we had just paid for two more weeks rent on the casita. Sense won out and we drove home with a cone free cat.
The first couple of weeks in our casita had been enjoyable. While we do not have a budget for accommodation, we are spending nothing on petrol so overall we are slowly getting our credit card bill back down to where it should be. At least we are stuck somewhere cheap! It’s also a nice luxury to have Wi-Fi, although it isn’t the best and seems to be getting worse. Maybe the rest of Todos Santos has now decided to obey the ‘quedarse en casa’ mandate. It was also good to have a hot shower on demand, even if it was a little pathetic, and being able to spread out in a full size double bed was also not without its benefits. Our main expense was probably buying beer, since the lack of cheap and cheerful beer, visits to refill the growler at the brewery had become something of a regular occurrence and this was a bit pricier than regular beer. It’s still cheap though, here you can buy 4 pints (a growler) of 13% craft beer for £14. You certainly can’t do that in England.
There are however, an increasing number of things I do not enjoy about the casita. It seems like a clear message telling us to leave. The Wi-Fi is mostly unusable, Lee has blown through an entire months worth of data in two weeks as we try and do our YouTube channel. The shower is also colder and more pathetic every time I use it. It’s now at the point where I have to lean on the wall so that the trickle of water from the shower head doesn’t miss me completely. One thing is a constant, and that is the noisy nights. Now interspersed with the odd local party, the dogs bark relentlessly for large portions of the night, and if that doesn’t get you, the neighbouring chicken farm certainly will at about 3am. The residential cats have a tendency to piss on everything or eat it, which is also a bit smelly and a bit annoying. A shame, because they are nice cats, but have just never been treated as proper pets and therefore aren’t really domesticated.
A welcome break came around three weeks into our month at the casita. Rob and Jen had dropped round on Mother’s Day to show us the latest addition to their family, Cali the kitten. Aimee watches from the shadows, a little of unsure of what to do with this new addition to the kitchen.
They had then left to go for a walk down to La Poza. Meaning the lake, in Spanish, La Poza is a located right along the back of the beach. A beautiful lake surrounded by greenery and birds. On their return they came and collected the kitten, which had fallen asleep on me, and told us it was a lovely place to go. We agreed to walk down a check it out with them and enjoy the sunset the next day.
Jen arrived with two bottles of wine, and I decided that I should definitely finish making us food before we left. This took a little longer than I thought, and meant we were in a bit of a race against time to make it to the beach for sunset. The walk is about 25 minutes, taking us out of town a way that we hadn’t been before. We walked through what looked like some of the poorer areas of town, before getting to a place with a nice view out across the palms and to the sea. Here, as was to be expected was gringo land. Large, nicely built, new homes overlooked the sea from their comfortable acreages. Not that you can blame them, if I had the money I can think of worse places to live.
We continued on and met Rob and the girls towards the end of the road. He had come to offer us a lift in case we missed the sunset, but I was so enjoying walking somewhere new I didn’t want to miss any of it. Besides, we were nearly there. From the end of the road a small track runs up between some rather nice houses.
Leaving the the houses behind, the track turns into a small path which gets progressively smaller as it passes across a scrubby hillside towards the ocean.
Soon La Poza comes into view, and it’s really quiet pretty.
A few minutes later and you’re on the beach.
Having spent a day cooped up inside on what I think I can safely say was the first day I had really experienced cabin fever, this was perfect. It was a shame we hadn’t got there a bit earlier, and a couple of other locals were also enjoying a glimpse of freedom. We sat on big waves on the sea’s edge which the hugh waves of the pacific crashed next to us. It was hazy, a mist hung in the air down the coast and the tide was coming in. Every now and again a particularly big waved splashed me.
It was so good to be out again, that we sat and drank a bottle of wine until it was so dark we had to use our phone torches to retrace our steps back to the car. Jen was up for walking back while drinking the other bottle of wine, but I’m literally incapable of walking and drinking at the same time so in the interests of not pouring wine all over myself, we decided to drink it back at the casita. We were a few too many to fit in Rob’s truck though, so me and Lee sat on the back and road Mexican style back to our home.
Another bottle of wine later, Jen declared the next night as game night. Having plenty of time in quarantine we have been having regular games of Catan and I’ve also learnt how to play Risk.
The Kombi Chronicles 