Lago Avandaro at dusk near Valle de Bravo, Mexico.
Where are Kevin and Ruth now? Valle de Bravo, Mexico.
Where are Kevin and Ruth going next? Not sure yet!

Sunday, October 12, 2025

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.

Saturday, October 11, 2025

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.

Friday, October 10, 2025

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.

Thursday, October 9, 2025

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!

Wednesday, October 8, 2025

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.

Tuesday, October 7, 2025

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!

Monday, October 6, 2025

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.

Saturday, October 4, 2025

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...

Friday, October 3, 2025

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).

Thursday, October 2, 2025

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.

Wednesday, October 1, 2025

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.

Tuesday, September 30, 2025

Ruth's weekend while I was away...

So, I took off on Thursday afternoon to spend the weekend away with the boys. Ruth was looking forward to seeing some of the girls she worked with 35 years ago when she was a hair stylist at First Choice Haircutters.

They got together Thursday evening for dinner.

Monday, September 29, 2025

Update on my condition, and weekend away with the boys...

I went away for my annual guys weekend on Thursday afternoon. 

Of course the major concern was my medical condition, but we decided that if I'm going to feel like crap, I might as well feel like crap up at the cottage visiting with my long time friends. So first things first, an update on my progress in that regard...

Tuesday, September 23, 2025

No, everything is not entirely okay.

Regular readers will know that I had a "medical emergency" on our flight a month ago from London to Barcelona.

I had passed out on that flight, and taken to hospital when we landed. All of my tests were fine, and they didn't tell us that anything positive came back that would have given us any indication as to what caused it. 

Monday, September 22, 2025

Shopping for a new car

In the last post, I had mentioned that I thought my sisters car was going to be a write off, and that turned out to be true.

So now it was time for her to go shopping. The only question was... how much would the insurance give her for her old car?