Igor is back on the road!

Yesterday's job was to get Igor fired up and see if we could move him out of the mud.

He hadn't been running since we arrived here at the beginning of May. So almost six full months.

Day of the Dead is coming...

We hopped on the ATV and headed into town to do our weekly fruits and veggies shopping at the Sunday market.

When we arrived, we went for a walk to the central plaza and found that they have a big stage set up.

Now... how do we get it home?

Late morning, we hopped on the ATV and drove in to the big Chedraui super store in Valle. We needed to pick up a few groceries, but we also wanted to have a look at a few washing machines that they had on sale.

There is a washing machine here at the marina, but we always have to ask our host if we can use it, and it really doesn't work the best. So we wanted one of our own.

Very strange...

The title of yesterday's post was "A lot of packages showing up today!"

And, how many packages showed up? Zero.

A lot of packages showing up today!

We had done some looking around town for beds and bedding, but it ended up there was a lot more selection and better pricing buying through Amazon Mexico. 

So we ended up ordering a bunch of stuff, most of which will be delivered today.

A little more work than expected

We were talking this morning and realized that we've been here for two weeks already. But we disagree on how much we've got done. Ruth feels like we haven't done very much, but I think we're doing okay considering it's only been two weeks!

And we're in no real rush. We have no time deadlines other than making sure the spare bedroom is finished for when my sister arrives mid December. 

First Spanish lesson!

When we started coming to Mexico in 2007, we didn't really know any Spanish. Ruth had taken some basic Spanish in high school, but her French was better than her Spanish.

Over the years, our Spanish is much improved... we can communicate what we need to, and we can ask questions and normally understand the answers. And we know a lot of words, but putting them into the correct sentence structure is difficult.

Lots of photos yesterday!

We were headed into town for our first ride on the ATV. Sunday is market day in Valle, so we go in to pick up our weekly supply of fruits and veggies.

But since we have the ATV, and that gives us a little more flexibility, Ruth suggested we do the short hike up to La Peña... the high rocks we can see in the distance directly opposite our balcony.

We picked up a couple of new brain buckets

We needed to go into Valle de Bravo Saturday morning. First of all, to buy motorcycle helmets, but we also wanted to look around some shops that may not be open on Sunday morning. We'll go in again today, but today (because we now have helmets) we can drive the ATV into town for our weekly supply of fruits and veggies at the Sunday market.

We need to buy motorcycle helmets!

The other day we went and wandered around the nearby town of El Arco. This is located only less than one mile from our house and we can walk there in 15 minutes. It's the place we go to get anything we need last minute, but the shopping is actually better in Valle de Bravo (simply "Valle" as the locals say).

We've been there many times, but never for the sole purpose of seeing what other shops are there.

We bought an ATV!

Some people have questioned why we are having to put so much money into a place that we are renting. And there are several reasons, so I wanted to take this opportunity to clarify.

First of all, outside of expat or tourist areas, a local Mexican house or apartment is usually a bare-bones space with plumbing and electricity... that's it. 

Tourism in Puglia: Different experiences for your days of rest

Travelling to Puglia means entering a different Italy—slower, brighter—where the landscape blends with everyday life. In this southern region, time seems to stand still among olive groves, endless coastlines, and towns that preserve an identity shaped by centuries of history. What appears on a map as the “heel” of the Italian boot is, in reality, a mosaic of sensations, aromas, and faces that linger in memory.

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.

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.

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...

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. 

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?

Just an update...

We've been meeting with friends the last few days. And lots more of that to come over the next three weeks. And yes, it's only three weeks until we fly to Mexico City!

We spent some time with my older sister on Saturday. She was in a car accident on Friday, and I thought I might be able to help a little bit given that I spent twenty years in the collision repair business.

We know so many people around the world

We always come back to the Ottawa area in September. It's definitely the best time of year here in our opinion. The kids are back in school, the weather is still nice, and the bugs are usually gone.

And sure enough, this year has been perfect in that regard. the kids are definitely back in school, the weather has been great, and we haven't seen a mosquito since we got here!

We've been here for two weeks already!

Well, apparently there's not a lot of interest in gold and silver around here! That's okay though... it proves my thesis that we are only in the third inning and not many people are paying attention yet.

We've just been relaxing here at the house for the most part. Ruth is spending a lot of time sorting through and scanning old slide photographs that were her fathers.

Investing in gold and silver miners

As I mentioned yesterday, we have been invested in gold and silver mining stocks for several years. This has paid off substantially, yet I think the really big gains are yet to come.

Studying past bull and bear market cycles in the precious metals shows that we are maybe in the bottom of the third inning... gold and silver have been rising nicely and now outperforming the stock market, but the general public are only just starting to notice. 

Gold and silver

There's sometimes not much to talk about when we're sitting in Ottawa for six weeks. So don't expect daily updates during this time period. 

Also, I'm sure most of you have noticed that there is some kind of glitch occurring with this blog and you're often getting an error message. 

If it's not fresh, it's free

We did our weekly grocery shopping yesterday. It's a fairly stressful thing for us! Even though we know to expect it, we're still getting sticker shock every time we come back to Canada. 

So on Thursday evenings, the local store flyers are issued. Some are done online, but we can still pick up the paper versions down at the mailbox at the corner. Ruth prefers the old style paper one rather than the online one.

Race Day!

One of the things that we had planned for Cameron was to take him to the big indoor go karting track across the river in Quebec. I've known of this place for several years and have always wanted to go myself.

So, we had an early lunch and then headed off across the border.

Humane society and fishing

Monday morning we went and met for coffee with Mary and Blair, a retired Ottawa couple who are now living in their Airstream trailer, however have booked this winter at an Airbnb in Mexico.

They've been reading this blog for a while now, and wanted to meet up. And we like to meet our readers!

It's a bit frustrating...

When we were in Mexico in April, I tried to buy new shock absorbers for Igor. I'm pretty fussy about what brand of shocks I wanted though. There is a Bilstein model that's specifically made for the Econoline E350 chassis, and that's what I wanted.

But I couldn't seem to find them available in Mexico. I even tried to order them in from Amazon U.S., but there was some kind of shipping problem that wouldn't allow them across the border.

August Expenses - Another expensive month

We spent the first 15 days of the month of August on a cruise ship going from Southampton, England to Greenland with stops in Ireland and Iceland.

While the cruise ship trip was inexpensive by cruise ship standards, it still added quite a lot to the monthly expenses.

We thought they lost Cameron's bag!

Lindsey drove us to Halifax Airport yesterday morning and we got there with lots of time to spare for our 12:35pm flight to Ottawa.

Oh, yesterday I said that it cost $322 CAD ($234 USD) per person for the two hour flight. And while that was true, we didn't pay a dime!

Heading back to Ottawa

Well that went by quickly! Here we are on August 28th already, and we have tickets on Porter Airlines to fly to Ottawa this afternoon.

And we're taking grandson Cameron (14) with us for a week with Grandma and Grandpa.

Splashifax Water Park

We always give experience gifts to the grandkids for their birthdays, and granddaughter Sadie has her 12th birthday coming up this Friday. Unfortunately, we have to fly to Ottawa on Thursday so we took Sadie and her friend Violet to her birthday outing yesterday.

She chose to go to Splashifax Water Park.

We ended up getting a decent rain

Probably not enough to remove the hiking restrictions here in Nova Scotia, but better than nothing. We've only got another two days here, so it really doesn't matter much to us anymore.

Yesterday afternoon, we went to Blue Beach. It's not a swimming beach, it's a beach where they have found a lot of fossils over the years.

Big forest fire

There's a massive forest fire burning about 75 kms (47 miles) west of here. Nova Scotia doesn't normally have a problem with forest fires, but this summer has been particularly dry. They've even had some evacuations called.

Yesterday, there was a big cloud of smoke coming through the Annapolis Valley...

A good day for ice cream!

Saturday was another beautiful day here in Nova Scotia's Annapolis Valley.

Ruth and I went for an 8 km (5 mile) walk from the house into the nearby town of Wolfville. 

Valle de Bravo water levels

We will arrive back in Mexico on October 8th, just over six weeks from now.

So I was thinking about the lake at Valle de Bravo, which is the place where we will be renting a house when we return. When we left there in early May, the water level was really low.

It's all totally free!

Yesterday was another beautiful day.

Lindsey took us to Aylesford Lake Beach. It's a municipal park with a nice sandy beach, and kayak rentals. And the cost? Amazingly, it's all totally free!

That's a great workout!

Yesterday, we took Lindsey and the family to the OnTree Adventure Park. It's a really fun family activity center with zip lines and obstacle courses that run through the tree tops in the forest.

We had been there three years ago, but Lindsey had been working at the time, so she wasn't able to make it. But the rest of us had such a good time, we wanted to return... with Lindsey!