The new TV's have arrived. Just in time for the game!

We had to hang out here at the house all day waiting for our two new televisions to arrive. One for our room, and one for the room downstairs.

Because they are "high value" items, Amazon Mexico issues a code to the buyer that you have to give to the driver when your package arrives, so you have to be there when it does.

More progress on our house

Regular readers might remember Fernando and Yesie and their 6 year old daughter Aminah. We had bumped into them last year when we heard them speaking English in a local grocery store, and that sparked a conversation.

The first of many great sunsets

I spent most of the morning on the laptop. Actually, when you count the Blue Jays game later on, I actually spent most of the day on the laptop!

But in the morning, I was shopping online. We knew that we were going to have to spend some money to fix this place up the way we want, and also to fix it up enough that someone might want to rent the spare bedroom and bathroom on a short term basis (Airbnb). I originally figured we might have to spend between $5,000 to $10,000 CAD ($3,500 to $7,000 USD).

Well that was a fun surprise!

Sundays are our favorite day here at Valle de Bravo. Why? Because it's market day!

We are located about 6 kms from the center of town. Normally we wouldn't mind walking one way, but the road is busy and much of it has no sidewalk. We've done it once in a past year, but it's really not the best for walking.

It's going to take some effort to get Igor moved!

We've had a lot of rain here since we arrived, but some parts of the neighboring state of Veracruz have been hit really hard. Reports say they got 21" of rain between October 6-9 and there have been landslides and flooding.

The bright side is that our lake is filling up quickly and it might even reach capacity by the end of the month. It hasn't been this full for over four years.

The water keeps rising!

We woke up to a beautiful day yesterday morning. That's normally the way the weather works here during rainy season. It's nice in the morning, then the clouds and showers move in around noon hour. Temperature is about 23C (73F) during the day, and 13C (56F) overnight. 

So, since it was so nice in the morning, we decided we had better tackle the ant problem in our campervan Igor.

More about our new home...

We think this house was built around 2018. But we don't think anybody has lived in it on a consistent basis since then! It was always the owners intention to rent it out on a short term basis, but he never advertised it properly and so the only time it was rented was by word of mouth. So it sat empty most of the time.

And, It was never properly furnished or outfitted for being lived in. We knew we were going to have to spend some money getting it to that point, which is one of the reasons we were able to secure such a good deal.

Arrived at our new home

Our flight from Toronto to Mexico City went well. AeroMexico is well known for its on-time performance, and we departed the gate a minute or two early, and arrived ten minutes early.

As has been every past experience entering Mexico, we were welcomed at immigration with a smile and stamped in with a six month visitors permit. And then we were pulled over by customs for a closer inspection!

We are off to Mexico!

Well, the Blue Jays lost last night, but we get another chance at it again this evening. At this point, part of me wants the Yankees to win again tonight to make it a nail biter do or die back in Toronto for game 5. It would be nice for them to win at home! 

Writing this from the premium lounge at Toronto airport.

Starting our 19th year

It was October 2007 when we closed the sale of our house, moved into our motorhome Sherman, and took off into a different lifestyle traveling Canada, the U.S., and Mexico by RV.

Wow... 18 years ago!

Two more sleeps

Well, anybody who cares already knows that the Toronto Blue Jays have won the first two games of a five game series against the New York Yankees. 

What a great couple of games for Blue Jays fans. Not so much for Yankees fans.

Friends and family photos

We've been doing some more visiting with friends and family during out last week here in Canada.

But first, a little update on my medical problem...

Go Blue Jays!

I'm a big Blue Jays baseball fan. This season, they won their division for the first time since 2015, and had their best regular season win-loss record since their back to back World Series wins in 1992 and 1993.

Last night, the New York Yankees won the wild card series, so Boston is done for the year and the Blue Jays will play a five game series against the Yankees starting tomorrow (Saturday).

September Expenses... not bad!

We had a budget of $1,800 CAD ($1,290 USD) for the month of September, but I knew that was an ambitious target. Sure enough, we exceeded it by quite a bit. 

We ended up spending $2,289 CAD ($1,641 USD) which at first glance seems really good right? But considering we were house sitting for the entire month it's actually higher than we expected.

What are our winter plans?

One week from today, we fly to Mexico!

You can't fly direct to Mexico City from Ottawa, so we have no choice but to connect somewhere. This is where the choices got interesting.