Ixtapa
February 18th, 2009
Folks, we are now in Ixtapa at the Playa Linda Trailer Park. We will hang here for a couple days to un-tope and re-pack and take a break from driving with the crazy Mexicanos ! Leaving Puerto we stopped at Roca Blanca a pretty little beach about an hour north of Puerto. We again meet up with our neighbours Frank and Sue from Perth, have a great lunch then back on the road to Acapulco. We get as far as Marquilla where we find a great spot on the beach at Sarita’s palapa restaurant. Have a great swim, fish diner and quiet night but are awakened early by thousands of birds singing. Pack up and back on the road taking the road through Diamante into Acapulco. There’s lots of road construction around Acapulco so this was supposed to be the better way. The road is rough as the pavement has numerous pot holes along with the topes. Gotta be careful ! We see the Vanagons being used as Collectivo buses are still running. Many of them just as we saw three years ago so they must know how to keep them running. All are painted white and there are round and square headlight models, and even some with the CARAT alloy wheels ! By 11 we are in the Wal Mart and shopping then off to all the other stores around and Costco in search of a new camera and aux battery for the van. No luck with the camera, they are all over priced so the accountant say no camera until we get to California ! The battery, Costco wants to keep for eight hours to check it, so we decide to buy a new one and come back in the morning to either get a refund or an extra battery to carry along. We go back to the beaches at Diamante and find a Palapa restaurant where we can spend the night on the beach and had a great shrimp dinner on the beach. Back to Costco Tuesday morning to check on the battery, it’s defective BUT they are not willing to honour the warranty without approval or billing proof from the San Antonio Costco where we bought it. We did not have the bill nor could they make contact with San Antonio so we were given a note that they took in the defective battery and we are supposed to be reimbursed when we get to a Costco in the USA, We shall see ! Anyways, we got a new aux battery and it is working perfectly. While in the Costco I see a set of Michelin Agilis 81 tires in the 14×185 size for the Westys that are supposed to be impossible to find, well here they are right on the shelf and only 1,230.00 Pesos. While cruising the stores for a camera we were in an ELECTRA where they also sell the ITALIKA motorcycles from Korea and we see the first ever 650 water cooled V-Twin cafe racer type motorcycle, only 80,000.00 Pesos, that’s about $7000 CND ! I want to buy it, Rita say no ! So after all the shopping and loading up on bargains at the Wal Mart and Costco we got back on the road North. Fighting our way trough early morning traffic in Acapulco, dodging the thousands of white and blue VW Beetles, getting stopped once by the Touristicas for stopping on a crosswalk, we make it to Pie de la Questa for lunch time. Driving all the way to the end between the beach and the laguna as ALL our maps GPS and paper show there is a connection back onto the Mex 200 north, NOT !!!! Map error ! So, lunch by the laguna where it meets the ocean, turn around and 30 km back to Pie de la Questa where we get back on the Mex 200 north towards Zihauteno, our destination for the night. Some 40 km from Pie de la Ques, at Penjamo, we come upon hammock heaven. Vito had told us about this place, so we were on the look out for it. Hammocks, of all sorts, sizes and colours and good hammocks to boot. And yes we bought another, a loud pink one, family size and man is it big, and for only 400 pesos, Vito was right, they are the best we’ve seen and the price is so low we did not even try to bargain for it ! So here we sit pool side at the Playa Linda Trailer Park looking out over the ocean and on the Internet, beer in hand, under a huge palapa, can it be any better ? At 140 Pesos for the night, without services, 360 Pesos with, free Internet, good but cold showers, large clean restrooms, a laundromat, nice beach, good surfing, laguna for the canoe, and a short bicycle ride to the Playa Linda pier and palapa restaurants and shopping. The place is mostly filled with big rigs from Quebec and few from the states, plus our friends we met back down the road Mike & Peter showed up today ! BUT, no camera so no pics, sorry !
Adios,
Frank, Rita & Hunter