Saturday, November 27, 2010 – A week in San Pedro…

Saturday, November 27, 2010 –  A week  in San Pedro…

It’s a little quieter out there this morning, but then again it’s Saturday and not as many workers running by. This morning … there is no wind or breeze. Stifling. Yesterday we had gale force winds! In fact they were so strong that it got a hold of a door upstairs and kept banging it - from 2am to 6am - every minute or so we heard SLAM! SLAM! So we didn’t get much sleep. Needless to say, it didn’t take me long to get to sleep last night for sure.

But we have a coffee pot now and I’m looking forward to not chewing coffee grounds in my coffee. It tastes so good!

We have a view of some little rock walls that lines the ocean front property across the street and there are a couple of pretty good sized iguanas that reside there. We see them every morning. This morning two of them are out and they are eyeballing the bright hibiscus flowers that are hanging on the hedges that line the property on this side of the road. They apparently love to eat hibiscus flowers. The problem is that there is a lot of traffic on this road, and they could get run over or spotted and eaten, but you see them looking and assessing the situation and risk despite the dangers. One takes the chance and runs across the street quickly. OMG…he only has 3 legs – one of his arms is gone! He runs pretty good for having 3 legs!  He gets to a hibiscus bush and there is a flower that is hanging down but he can’t reach it because it’s too high up.  He climbs on the wood edging and stretches towards the flower.  Closer – but still not enough. I tell him he isn’t going to get it … it’s too high for him. He looks around a bit studying the bush, climbs down off the edging, and in a flash, he hops up on the branch that has the flower, pulling it down towards the ground. He then proceeds to hold the branch down with his one arm and body, while wiggling to the end of the branch, then grabs the flower off and lets go of the branch. Dude! That was awesome! He waddles along the hedge and snatches up a dozen or so more flowers that are on branches or have fallen on the ground. The other iguana is watching him from across the street and wants to come over so bad, but he is too afraid and only gets to the edge of the road and runs back to the wall.  Then, quicker than he came over, he scurries back across the road to his spot in the sun. Nice breakfast! That was fun to watch! I’m going to call him Trey (for his 3 legs) and keep an eye out for him!

I walk down the hall this morning and suddenly I see a big toenail lying in the middle of the floor.  I yell at Gerald for cutting his nails and not picking them up.  He didn’t do it. Now I ask you…seriously…how does a toenail that doesn’t belong to either of us get in the middle of my floor all of a sudden?  Did someone break in to the condo last night and cut his big toenail and just leave? I mean really? This stuff doesn’t fall from the sky you know. Does it? I’m going to look for a rubber chicken to sacrifice today or something, to get rid of this bad juju! (tooey, tooey, tooey, tooey)!!!   It is just me isn’t it!! Ack! 8<

I check on my laundry.  I’ve soaked my whites in a half bottle of bleach overnight with not much change.  I think Linda said that I should use some sort of rust remover or something called The Works. I gotta go look for that today. I can’t do any other laundry until I get this mess cleaned up. I just hope my clothes will hold up through this last leg! If they don’t at least my suitcases will be lighter huh? (looking on the positive side Bob!)

Don’t know what else we will do today, except go to the pool. Darn. I hate it when that happens.

So, we go to the pool for about an hour. It’s about all you can take here or you will fry like a funnel cake at the fair!

But at least I finally get to finish my Nook book “Sh*t My Dad Says” by David Halpern.  It’s a good book, funny and takes me back to days gone by. My dad was not so abrasive, but I could envision either of my grandfathers saying those things.  Do you know why old people are crotchety? Because they know more stuff than us! They don’t have time to sugar things up and speak truthfully, blunt and frank. Read it if you like funny, you’ll get a kick out of it.

Anyway, we come back from the pool and there is a paper taped to our door. What now I wonder? But it’s only from the resort about events happening this week.  One is a poker run this afternoon starting at 2pm and the run goes to 5 local restaurants up north (Aji, Lazy Croc, Legends, Coco Locos & The Palms), 2 of which have been recommended to us by others.  We’ve never done a poker run before, but we get the gist of it.  The proceeds usually help a local charity or family, and it would be something fun to do, maybe meet some people, and check out the restaurants. 

So we clean up then go into town to get some rust remover to try to save my laundry. We see Rob at the hardware store (I bet he wishes he’d never met me).  We tell him of our orange laundry dilemma, and he says they have never had that problem before. I’m thinking “Really?” then why does everyone in this building tell me of the numerous clothes they have ruined here because of it? Whatever. (By the way, Rob is not a local.  He’s a transplant.) And it suddenly dawns on me why Pam would be upset that I bought a white shower curtain to replace the mongy thing she had hanging because it will show all the stains. She absolutely knew about the water issue and conveniently left it off the 4 page list of instructions for the condo we are supposed to follow. I’m supposed to put everything back in it’s place, even if I didn’t find it there, but the guest doesn’t get the courtesy of a warning about not drinking the water, or doing laundry in it. But I digress.  

Back to the condo. I rinse the bleach from the clothes before I add the rust remover (I don’t want to make some sort of toxic explosive with the bleach and rust remover chemicals!) and let them soak again.  I’ll be lucky if I come out of this with more than 2 pieces of thread!

Registration begins at noon, but the poker run doesn’t start till 2, so we have plenty of time.  We go over to The Cantina where registration is, and meet Tammy. She is the owner (her boyfriend looks like Don Johnson).  We register, get our official 3x5 cards and have an appetizer and drinks.  They have a tex-mex menu and we have the chicken flautas. They are really good! We hang around for a while and figure we will start with the farthest restaurant first and work our way back.  There doesn’t seem to be ton’s of people – not like we see at home, but that’s ok, I don’t want to have to fight crowds.

We head down the bumpy road to the first stop – Aji (everyone pronounces it differently, but most everyone pronounces it "ah-gee".)  It is a lovely little place, with about 4 wooden casitas that you have to wind through, then through nicely groomed and sculpted gardens to get to the beach and restaurant/bar. Very romantic. The bathroom is priceless and looks like it has been built from rocks!

Gerald said the water in the toilet is brown –they must use gray (non-drinkable) water for flushing. Smart idea - just don't use it for drinking or laundry like they do here at Reef Village. The sink is outside and is made like a fountain.  How cute! 

We head back to the bar to draw our cards and get a drink. (we are going to have to pace ourselves, otherwise, we won’t last for 5 drinks!) Anyway, it’s a lovely little place and the owner is very nice.  We have a nice conversation about her place and ours, and promise to come back for dinner. We also discuss these annoying bugs and they are putting out coils because they are chewing on her daughter.  She says the no-see-ums (or sand flies) don’t like, and can’t penetrate oils.  So an oil based product is what to use for them. Which is why Avon’s Skin-so-Soft became so popular – it’s oily so they can’t get through it (except I don’t like the way it smells). Unfortunately it doesn’t work for the skeeters and you have to use the deet to keep them away. I guess that is how the natural stuff I’m using (Sand Fly Bye-Bye) works. It has essential oils, eucalyptus, coconut, and the citronella smell among other ingredients, so it works for both.  Enough of that. Now off to The Lazy Croc.

The Lacy Croc was recommended to us for great bar-b-que. We are told they are only open for a few hours a day and you have to get there early to get some – otherwise it’s gone. They also have good sides. And the best part? There are live crocs in the pond there and you sit on the deck and watch them. We are anxious to see that! We get there and are still full from our late lunch/snack at The Cantina, so I just get a water and Gerald gets a drink.  Then I see fried pickles on the menu…and I have to have some of those! They also bring us a sample of the bar-b-que pork with 3 samples of their sauce.  Man is it good!  Another place we have to come back to for sure! 

Then we spot a croc in the water just below the deck.  It’s HUGE and we think it’s fake at first and I’m leaning down under the deck rails towards it with my camera to get a close-up shot and its eye lid moves! YIKES!!!! IT’S REAL AND ALIVE!!! Gerald didn’t see the eye move, and doesn’t believe me.  I see the other eye move, he didn’t see it that time either, so he still doesn’t believe me. Eventually it takes off in the water, and he sees it swim across the pond…ok…he believes me now (but did think it may have been on a cable or something)! The owners have 2 dogs and I wonder how they keep the crocs from eating them! But they have a palm-trunk fence that’s a couple fee high, so the crocs can’t come up and the dogs will stay on land. Hope it works, although we heard later that one of the dogs is slow and got a little too close to the water and a croc got him. Right there in front of a bunch of little kids! Horrific! Luckily it was the croc with the bum jaw (!) and the dog got away! I would have just passed out or panicked and tried to help the dog like the Crocodile Hunter and gotten myself in deep trouble like a ding-dong! Phew…glad it didn’t happen while I was there! 

We see the owner opening up a bottle of baby oil. He mixes it with a little bit of Off with deet. Of course, that would work! My mom said vanilla keeps the skeeters away too. Wonder if you could mix baby oil with vanilla? (We used to mix baby-oil and iodine to stain our skin when I was a teenager, sort of like a fake bake. Speaking of fake back, Gerald and I wonder if the water will turn our skin orange like it did our clothes? Won’t have to worry about sun damage then…but I may come home with Lucille Ball hair!)  

(I think Gerald wrote this...) 

 We eat our fried pickles and drink our drinks, then off to the next stop…Legends.

Legends is a probably a hangout for the younger crowd I’ve surmised.  I think this is where the fighting and ruckus was coming from our first night here. They are supposed to have famously good burgers (I’m skeptical since the beef, as a general rule, is not so good here in the Caribbean), but it is some place we have wanted to try. We actually did try last Sunday, but it was closed. Anyway, we are still buzzed from our other drinks and stuffed from the food we have eaten so far, so we just go in and get our card and leave. We see an older guy in there who is about 3 sheets to the wind. We saw him at The Palapa Bar earlier in the week and he was 3 sheets to the wind then too.  He actually grabbed this Rastafarian’s long dreadlocks (they were past his knees) and was making some comments to him and then touched his face.  Were I Mr. Rasta – I would have whipped the sh*t out of him with my dreadlocks for being so rude as to grab my hair and touch my face without asking or permission, but Mr. Rasta was far too polite. Anyway, he was being just as rude and obnoxious this time by using foul language and talking disgusting about someone that we had just met. He may have been right about her, who knows (and I don’t care), but he was flinging the F bomb all over the place, and other derogatory words, about this gal. Dude, you don’t even know me? Wait till you get to know a person before you start acting like a pig. And what if I had been a good friend, relative or really liked the gal? We think that she probably kicked him out of her bar for being a drunken twit and he is mad at her for that. Anyway, it was another reason to get the heck out of there without a drink or food. Next stop…Coco Locos.

(This little boy is waiting for his mommy and dady to come out of Legends)

Coco Locos we’ve been to. It’s a cute little bar and we have met some very nice, friendly and helpful people there. It will definitely be a place we continue to frequent. It’s a little after 4, and there is a crowd at the bar. It’s apparently about the time when the regulars are there. We also see a couple people from the poker run. We say hi to Linda and Chuck, who we met before, and are introduced to Joy, who lives in the unit below us.  (We’ve heard that Joy has a set of keys to our unit. We’ve actually heard that lots of people have a set of keys to our unit. Which makes us feel real secure. The instruction “booklet” grills us about how important it is not to lose our keys. Why? There are 50 sets running around this island. Maybe the gas station attendant at the south end of town doesn’t need a set? I digress again.) Anyway, we have a drink, talk with Linda a bit, draw our cards and head to The Palms at Reef Village where the run is supposed to end at 5pm (we thought).

We are quick-stepping it back to Reef Village because we thought you had to get your last card and turn it in there by 5 pm.  But we were apparently wrong.  Only 2 other people were there before us.  The rest didn’t show until 6. We could have stayed at Coco Locos longer. There was also supposed to be music and bar-b-que between 5 and 7.  But the music didn’t start until 6 either.  We waited around because there was a raffle we had entered, and we wanted to see who won.  The people we talked to, along with us, didn’t have good cards at all. Ace with king high was about it. But, some gal came in later with 2 pair, and she took the prize (not sure how much, but I think it was a portion of the proceeds.)  We order a bar-b-que chicken and split it and wait for the raffle – which doesn’t happen until 7. But, as it turns out, was to our advantage because Gerald’s name was drawn and we won a dinner for 2 at Aji!  YAY!  I guess the run was worth it after all! But it’s almost 8 pm and getting to be our bedtime so it’s time to head back!

It was a pretty good day.  The poker run was a good idea. And even though I didn’t get all the stain and color out of our clothes, they are a little better, but they are only good for rags or wearing around the house, can’t use them for good anymore. Now we will have to incur the added expense of taking our laundry to a service – which is exactly what I wanted to avoid and why one of the requirements was a washer and dryer.  But I didn’t want to wash my clothes in mud - I guess you need to be specific when asking those questions. Live and learn. And I have learned that I don’t ever want to stay at Reef Village again and I would not recommend it to anyone else. I would also go a step further and say don’t rent this unit. The owner and caretaker’s reaction has been less than caring or forthcoming about the important issues – like having clean sheets and usable water – not to mention the smaller issues of no privacy, disgustingly dirty appliances, and slimy shower.

But…I will say again…tomorrow is another day Scarlet. I will only focus on the good that has happened today and not dwell on the bad (if nothing for my own sanity). Till tomorrow…