This is a guest post by Mr. Snacks.
Over the last several weeks, I’ve noticed that I’m struggling to explain to friends and family about our time here in Mexico. I feel like I can sometimes unintentionally make it sound overly mundane and tedious, while others it sounds like I’m reading a page out of a travel magazine.
The challenge is that it’s very different to live someplace for 3 months compared to visiting on a two week (or less) vacation. Not surprisingly, the majority of our friends and family hear we are in Mexico and immediately conjure images of us sitting on the beach sipping margaritas at a swanky resort. When I tell those people (proudly) that last week I spent an entire day running around to get my SUP paddle repaired (successfully), they probably think I’ve lost it.
As with many things, the truth is somewhere in between the extremes, but overall it has been an amazing adventure and a place I’m going to be very sad for us to leave. With that in mind, I thought the best way to explain what our lives have been like is to look at a sample week to give an overview of our lives in La Paz so our friends can make-up their own minds about how it sounds.
Monday
Due to Mrs. Snack’s injury, we get up by 7:30 on Monday, Wednesdays and Fridays to take her to her physical therapy appointment from 8:30 to around 9:30. While she’s at PT, I generally park nearby and hang out in our RV to drink my coffee while I read, do my Spanish homework, watch something I’ve downloaded on my iPad, or occasionally walk to a nearby grocery store if there is something we need.
When we get home, I go for a run along the coast, or do a TRX workout in the back yard, followed by a shower. On this particular day, no-go on the shower: we’re out of water in the cistern as happens on occasion. A quick text to the landlord and someone is on their way… eventually.
In the meantime, I cleanup myself as best as I can and make a simple lunch of quesadillas (made with fresh tortillas and Oaxaca cheese) and a salad (made with fresh local vegetables), before we head a few blocks away to our favorite coffee shop to read, work on blog posts, etc. Eventually, around 4:30 someone arrives to fill the water and I finally get to shower before we make dinner at home of homemade tamales from a woman who sells them down the street.
Tuesday
Since we don’t have a PT appointment to go to, I decide to get up and go for a Stand-up Paddle (SUP) in the morning before the wind comes up in the afternoon. It’s a gorgeous morning and the water in the bay is like glass. Best of all, I get to spend 45 minutes paddling along in the middle of a pod of dolphins that live in the bay. At one point I’m completely surrounded and even look down to see one swimming along underneath me – yes, this is a full on “holy crap, this is amazing!!!” moment.
Afterward, I head home, make Mrs. Snacks very jealous telling her the tale of my new dolphin friends, and to make her feel better we head out for lobster tacos at a place on the water (yes, they are as amazing as they sound – see this post). Then, we head home for our twice per week Spanish classes with a local instructor (held over Zoom, of course, due to Covid).
Wednesday
Since you can’t drink water from the tap, we regularly need to get drinking water delivered. Previously, we’ve done this through our landlord and suspected we were paying “gringo pricing” as a result (to be fair, “gringo pricing” is still only $2 US for 5 gallons of water, but we figure we should try and pay local prices, if we can). Mrs. Snacks requests a delivery from a local water company and is told it will be here today so we wait, and wait…and wait, and it never arrives.
Finally, desperate for water, we go to a convenience store a block away, only to be told that they’ll take one of our empties in exchange, but not the other one because it’s from a different water company, and therefore would need to pay a $4 US deposit to get a second bottle (not to mention, having to also take home the empty one we have). We take one 5 gallon container, but at this point, I’ve completely lost patience, and the next time I’ll text the landlord and happily pay $2 US to not have to think about it again. (Right before we left, we found a nearby place we could have used that would have only cost $.50 – c’est la vie.)
I go for a mountain bike ride around 5PM on a trail about a mile away from our house. I rode the loop twice in about an hour (and got a top 10 on Strava!), stopped off at the stand by the trail head for a fresh coconut, opened while you wait by a woman with a machete, which I took across the street to watch the sunset before heading home for dinner and Netflix.
Thursday
Today, we get up and take the RV to a beach about 20 minutes away. Even with her injury, I can back up to the water and Mrs. Snacks can sit on the couch in the back and read in the midst of the spectacular scenery, while I go for a SUP, a run, or just lounge with her. Today, near the end of a (sadly, dolphin-free) lovely hour-long SUP along the coast, the handle on my paddle broke sending me flying into the water and struggling to make it the last ½ mile back to where I started.
Shit.
In the US, this would be a simple matter of calling and ordering a replacement part under warranty. In Mexico that isn’t quite as easy, especially since we are leaving next week and don’t have time to get anything shipped from the US – I guess that’s tomorrow’s project if I don’t want to “have a SUP without a paddle” until we get home in May.
Spanish class in the afternoon, dinner at home, and a nice walk along the boardwalk (something Mrs. Snacks recently has been allowed to do) in the evening.
Friday
After texting with a local SUP guide I used a few weeks ago for a recommendation, I head to a SUP shop he recommended that opens at 9. My Spanish has gotten decent while we’ve been here, but trying to explain that my paddle broke and asking he can fix it in Spanish still takes a lot of thought and hand gestures. As it turns out, after 5 minutes of explaining it in Spanish, he tells me he was letting me practice my Spanish but that he speaks English. <Insert GIF of me slapping my forehead here>. He can’t fix my paddle, doesn’t have spare parts for it and can only sell me a new one for $150 US – no way, that’s much too expensive for a short-term solution.
He suggests I try a place a few blocks away that repairs fishing rods and might be able to help. I walk there at around 9:30, only to find that they don’t open until 10 and decide to kill 30 minutes, rather than having to cross town again later, but at 10:20, they still aren’t open. 20 minutes later the owner finally arrives and opens up (welcome to “Mexico Standard Time”), takes a look and says, no problem, you can pick it up this afternoon. Then I walk to meet Mrs Snacks at the coffee shop for a cold brew.
Later, I bike over to pick-up my paddle. While I would have been happy with a kludgy fix that would last until I got home, it turns out that the guy used part of a carbon fiber fishing rod to reinforce the core of my paddle and then epoxied it back together – I’m willing to bet it is stronger than it was originally with barely any additional weight. Oh, and he charged me $5. So yes, sometimes in Mexico you can spend most of a day trying to get a paddle fixed but it’s hard to argue with the results.
Every day brings its own unique adventures – both amazing and frustrating — but overall, the daily adventures, incredible food and getting to feel like a part of the La Paz community has been one of our best travel experiences yet.