of lunches and the lack of a louse

The other day, Jamie, the girls and I spent a good part of the day making sure various employees of various businesses in Playa del Carmen were actually taking their lunch break. I had hoped to get the part we ordered for the van eons ago, pick up our re-filled fire extinguishers (from two different places), and see a man about an alternator. Rest assured, the Ford guy, the fire extinguisher guy (at both places), the alternator guy were all taking their alloted lunches and each and every one of them had *just* left for lunch each time we showed up. Really, we SHOULD know better.

We did, finally, get the alternator fixed. It had a number of bad diodes, the voltage regulator had sizzled its way to crispy crunchyness and the mechanic took it upon himself to replace (and charge us, natch) the tensioner thingamadoodle! While we haven’t had oodles of work done in Mexico, we have had the alternator fixed, the alternator fixed, the suspension on the trailer re-created from bare metal, pieces of the ignition harness replaced and the alternator fixed (yes, three times) and not once has a mechanic taken it upon himself to replace a part. We’ve always been asked and the repair has almost always been a repair and not a replace. But Jamie had mentioned that we really needed to replace this one tensioner so it worked out. Our last alternator job lasted over 2 years so lets hope we get good mileage out of this one.

We are still louse free and I’m so thankful to have missed that particular bus I can’t tell (but I obviously am). We have no way to wash in hot water and the washing would have been astronomical. Not to mention the creepy crawly feeling I got whenever I thought of the minute beings. I was SURE I was infested after my sister told me her family was (and they slept in our beds) as each time I thought about the buggers I was itching. But I finally got a flea comb (not so easy down here) and checked everyone’s heads and we are louse-free!

It is heating up here on the Caribbean and it feels like summer is here. The only reason I hesitate to announce summer is that I know it will get much hotter. Right now we’re ok being outside in the sun at all hours of the day and I remember to last summer and know that there were days that were much more comfortable when we layed about in hammocks or in the shade of a coconut tree from 1-5pm and did just about nothing. So while Accuweather tells me that we’re hitting the low 100’sF/38C on a regular basis, the real summer weather of 40+C and 110F is to come.

We had thought we would head back to California this summer but the cost of diesel is really making us give that plan serious pause. We’re thinking of just hitting the highlands of Mexico and probably southern Texas and New Mexico, but I need to run the numbers first. Hopefully we’ll get some summer visitors and won’t need to travel far, though the highlands of Mexico will be lovely this summer. So we’ll see.

Summer veggie prices were not an anomaly last year; tomatoes, avocados, and white onions are at their highest during the summer (matching last summer’s prices) and I can’t figure out why those typical summer foods get so pricey in the summer here. Mangoes are at peak season and I am imagining the roads between the Pacific Coast and Tepic are FULL of kilos of mangoes going for 5 pesos/kilo. Luckilly we can get yellow onions for 1/2 the price of white, but I’ve become so accostomed to white onions that the yellow seem so strange.

We have our change of time tonight and it can’t come soon enough for me. Ever since the US changed time I’ve been missing my Prarie Home Companion dose and have to play catch-up on Sunday. I’m used to it being a 1 hour difference to PHC and ever since the US changed it has been 2, but I never can remember that until I tune in, only to catch the last 15 minutes of the 2 hour show. Foiled again, but not any longer!

Tomorrow we hope to take a Sunday drive to Punta Allen and see what there is to see.