Arrived in Cuenca

We took the free hotel shuttle from central Guayaquil to the airport. We weren't flying anywhere, but the big Guayaquil bus station is only a fifteen minute walk from the airport.

As we were walking between the two, there was a coach bus loading outside of a tourist office and they were calling out "Cuenca!".

Guayaquil was better than expected

Despite being a "rough" city, if you stay in the main central area, Guayaquil actually has some interesting things to see. We still don't think it's worth much more than a day or two to visit, and we certainly don't see the attraction of living here. But we're glad we came to see it for ourselves.

We set out around 10:00am to do some exploring...

Guayaquil is a bit of a sketchy city

Nice to have the included breakfast at our hotel in Manta. We went out after breakfast and bought a few snacks for the bus ride to Guayaquil, then took an Uber taxi from the hotel to the Manta bus terminal.

The ride was about 7 kms (4.5 miles) and cost $3.13 USD ($4.25 CAD). 

First impressions of Ecuador - not the best

Keeping in mind that this quick Ecuador trip is mainly to reset our Mexican tourist visa, the only reason we arrived in Manta is because the flights were relatively cheap. I had done the research in advance and knew that Manta was not a place we would have planned to visit otherwise.

Welcome to Ecuador... country #74

Writing this from our hotel room in Manta, Ecuador.

So lets get you caught up on the last couple of days! We were busy with Lindsey and family on Monday, and then a travel day to Ecuador on Tuesday.

This Valentine's Day, Find the Everyday Expression of "Love" at Walmart

Valentine's Day doesn't always need grand vows. Sometimes, it's the thoughtful gestures woven into the fabric of daily life that truly touch the heart. At Walmart, you can find gifts that are both considerate and practical—using simple acts of "remembering" and "understanding" to show you care.

We are off to Mexico City... and then Ecuador

Sunday was our last full day with Lindsey and family in Valle de Brave. We still have one more day with them in Mexico City today, then Tuesday morning they head north to Canada, and we head south to Ecuador.

We had a pretty full day yesterday!

Old Navy’s Limited-Time Event: Comfortable Activewear for the Whole Family

Some Clothes Aren’t Made to Look Good in Photos—They’re Made to Take You Further

At dawn, the campsite is still wrapped in cool air. Coffee simmers quietly on the stove, steam curling upward as children spill out of the tent, already running free across the open ground. As you bend to pack your gear and stretch your body awake, one truth becomes unmistakably clear:Comfort matters more than appearance.

Well that was a good day!

Our friends Pepe and Maricruz have a house here at the marina, and they knew that we would be here with Lindsey and family. Pepe's sister has two daughters about the same age as Sadie, and they are learning English, so we all figured it was a good idea to get together.

Coincidentally, it was also my birthday.

The Salto de Chihuahua Waterfall, and millions of daddy long legs!

We relaxed around the house for the morning, and Cameron did some more fishing... very successfully! In fact, he caught dinner for all of us!

And after lunch, we drove about an hour north west of here to a beautiful waterfall. 

January Expenses

We've been busy, so I never got to this at the beginning of the month. But we all decided yesterday was a day of rest, so we just hung around here for the day, although Lindsey and family did walk into El Arco.

Anyhow, January was a fairly expensive month, but we expected it to be. We spent $4,525 CAD, ($3,314 USD).

An unexpectedly great day!

We set off around 10:30am and drove over to the big parking lot at the Chedraui grocery store where we planned on leaving Igor while we hiked up to the paragliding liftoff point in Monte Alto State Park.

Back to the butterflies

The weather hasn't been the best for the monarch butterfly viewing. We were really lucky when we went with my sister Alison in December, but this week has been cooler and more cloudy in the afternoon.

But we don't have any control over the weather, and yesterday looked like it was going to be the best day. So we set off up to the Piedra Herrada Monarch Butterfly Sanctuary.

Cameron is quite the fisherman!

Cameron has been out fishing a lot. The one time with our friends Paco and Oti in their boat, but otherwise just off the dock in front of our house.

There are often some locals who come down and fish off the same dock, and Cameron isn't shy about getting along with other people, even when there are language challenges.

Market day!

We set off just after 10:00am to head into Valle de Bravo for the weekly Sunday market.

Hike up to La Peña

We made a plan to take Lindsey and family on a short hike up to La Peña. That's the nearby hill that we see directly across from  the balcony view at our house. We've been up there several times, and it's always worth it for the beautiful views.

We all hopped in Igor just because it's more convenient. It's not always easy to find parking in town for Igor, but otherwise we'd have to get two collectivos that don't already have any passengers.

Getting settled in

Thursday we showed them around the old historic district of Mexico City. Then Ruth had booked a tour of the main post office building at 11:00am.

We wandered around some more, then had some lunch and planned on taking the 3:00pm bus back to Valle de Bravo.

They're here!

Ruth and I did the two hour bus ride from Valle de Bravo to the Poniente bus terminal at the western part of Mexico City. It was around 1:00pm when we arrived there, so lunch time. And we know of a great little food stand just down the road that does fantastic huaraches!

Slight change of plans...

But they are on their way!

Most of you know that much of Canada and the U.S. had a lot of snow and bad weather lately. Our daughter Lindsey and her family were supposed to fly out yesterday with an overnight connection in Newark, but their flight out of Halifax was cancelled!

It's almost time!

We went and bought another couple of pieces of furniture this morning. A small kitchen table, and a shelf for the entranceway.

We like the kitchen island that we had built, but we decided we like it better up against the wall. So we needed a small table, but we already had two chairs.

Finally... a fantastic Canadian cell phone plan!

As most of you know, we love a great deal. So I have to share this one with our Canadian readers.

Canada is consistently ranked as the most expensive in the world when it comes to cellular data plans. Canada's "cost per gigabyte" of data is typically seven times more expensive than Australia, 25 times more than Ireland and France, and 1,000 times more than Finland.

It's going to be a busy few days

We sat and watched the paragliders for a while before leaving yesterday morning. It sure is amazing. As you'll see from the photo below, there were about 15 of them flying around for a couple of hours!

They looked like vultures circling above the dead body!

Almost home!

At around 10am, we said goodbye to the friendly police officers who watched Igor for us while we were visiting the mine. 

Our route yesterday took us from Arcelia up into the mountains south of Valle de Bravo. It's a little busier route, especially when we got back on highway 134 that runs up to Toluca.

Luca Mining Campo Morado site visit

Anybody who follows the stock market knows that the world is a few years into a metals commodities bull market. And if history is any indication, it will continue for another four years or so.

Gold, silver, copper, and zinc are all hitting record high prices. There will be corrections along the way, but the best is yet to come.

Parked in front of the police station

Long driving day, but it was amazing. 

Almost zero traffic, and the scenery was spectacular. And I really mean almost zero traffic. I think we drove about 100 kms (62 miles) and saw perhaps 10 vehicles traveling the opposite way, and only one vehicle that passed us traveling in our direction.

Wandering around Zihuatanejo

We got Igor packed up and drove him over to the main Ixtapa hotel zone just after 9:00am to meet our long time friends Dave and Maggie. They live in Toronto and have rented a two bedroom condo for a month here in Ixtapa.

We were able to park Igor on the condo property, and they showed us around their "home" for the next month. They only arrived on Saturday.

We're just not beach people!

We've been on the coast a total of six days... but we're ready to head inland! 

Our legs are covered in bug bites. A few from mosquitoes, but mostly no-see-ums. They're the ones that bite you but the itchy bumps don't show up until two days later.

It finally arrived!

Regular readers might remember that Igor's new furnace had an issue when we returned from the high altitude at Hidalgo at the end of November. The manufacturer in Canada has been great with their after sales service, and offered to send us another unit with different software installed. The new unit arrived by FedEx in Toluca, Mexico on December 4th.

And it's been stuck there ever since!

We haven't been here since January 2012

We moved on to the city of Lazaro Cardenas (pop 200,000), but only for a stop at the Walmart store there. 

They had height barriers at all the entrances, but we managed to find parking on a side street, and were lucky that we were totally in the shade. It's hot in this area!

We ended up in a great spot!

But what a driving day we had! That section of MEX200 between Manzanillo and Lazaro Cardenas sure has a lot of curves.

We haven't done that part of the highway since 2011, and at that time we were headed in the opposite direction. It took us five hours (including a one hour stop for lunch) to do 175 kms (108 miles).

Stopped by a highway protest

We're going to be doing an operating mine site visit next week, but the dates weren't written in stone. And we were also trying to meet up with Canadian friends who will be vacationing in Ixtapa.

The mining people got back to me with a January 19th date, which wasn't ideal. We had been hoping for two days later on the 21st.

One section of the road had some magnificent views

As our regular readers know, we're not big beach people. But, we do enjoy a week, or two at the most. So yesterday we made our way down the twisty, windy highway MEX80 to the dusty beach town of Melaque/San Patricio.

We got going just before 10am, with a plan to arrive just after 12 noon.

Camping with armed guards

We headed out yesterday morning at around 10:30am. A little bit of a plate start, but we knew we were only going to be driving about three hours.

First stop was for gasoline, at 23.98 pesos ($1.86 CAD) per liter. That's the equivalent of $5.07 USD per gallon.

Avoid non essential travel!

I belong to several travel forums on the internet, and one newbie traveler posted the current travel warnings for Mexico. 

The Canadian government says that the area we are headed to is listed as "Avoid non-essential travel!"

Your safety and security could be at risk. You should think about your need to travel to this country, territory or region based on family or business requirements, knowledge of or familiarity with the region, and other factors. If you are already there, think about whether you really need to be there. If you do not need to be there, you should think about leaving.

Where to next?

We had been planning a full week here in Etzatlan, but we're thinking we're going to head out tomorrow (Monday), a day early. 

We're heading down to the coast, but we're taking a route we've never done before.

Mexico is no longer the bargain it was, but it's still far cheaper than Canada!

Our week here is going by quickly. In fact, time itself seems to be going by quickly... we're already 1/3 of the way through January!

We walked into town the last two days. Ruth's cheap phone was having charge cable connection problems, so we needed to find a cellphone repair place.

What new countries do we want to visit?

Following on yesterdays post about countries we've been to, but don't feel the need to return to, someone suggested we should list the new countries that we really want to visit.

And there are a lot of them!

Which countries would we not return to?

One of our regular readers made a comment on our facebook page yesterday... "You’ve been to many countries. Are there some to which you wouldn’t want to return?"

And there are! The question actually prodded me to update our "countries visited" list, which I hadn't done for a couple of years.

What happened to Central America?

One of our long time readers saw that we are going to Kyrgyzstan in May, and asked "What happened to Belize and continuing on to South America?

And she was right to question that! When we made our Central and South America plan, it was designed to be fluid. We don't have to be anywhere at any certain time, and we knew it was a three or four year plan.

Moving on today

We never did make it into the swimming pool! Being a Monday, they only had one pool open yesterday. And so it was quite busy, and already turning green by the time we looked at it. The regulars here say the best time to get in is right when they fill them first thing in the morning, but I'm afraid we're not in a swimming mood first thing in the morning!

Arrived at Chimulco Water Park

On Saturday we walked into the town of Valle de Juarez and got some errands done. I was able to pay our home internet bill at the local Oxxo store, then we stopped into a hairstylist for Ruth to get a haircut.

Then we went back into town in the evening and had shrimp for dinner!

Big trip plans just booked!

When we did the "stan" countries two years ago, our friends Danielle and Ron had told us about a campervan rental company in Kyrgyzstan that they had used and really enjoyed. That thought has been stuck in our minds since then. We didn't really do Kyrgyzstan the justice it deserves at the time since we had been there in November and most of the mountain accommodation had been closed.

So we wanted to go back at a better time of year!

Another fiesta!

We relaxed and hung out here at the RV park most of the day yesterday... nothing wrong with that!

But late afternoon, we were invited to another fiesta. I don't think there was any purpose behind it, just that a lot of relatives had been here over the holidays and some of them were heading home to Chicago area.

Made it to Valle de Juarez

Last we checked in, we were parked up just west of the big city of Morelia at the sandstone rock formations called Los Piloncillos. We slept well there again... total peace and quiet!

But it was chilly the next morning, so we got up and drove right away. We were taking another back road... and it was in BAD shape!

2025 Year in review

Overall, we had a great 2025! 

We started the year in Mexico, and we ended the year in Mexico. But in between we were in Spain, Scotland, England, Italy, Albania, Ireland, Greenland, Iceland, and Canada.