Flight tickets bought!

Ruth went over to the bathroom here at the campground, and came back to tell me I have to take a picture of the lizard she saw because it's so tiny!

So I wandered over later and put a coin on the floor beside it so you could see just how tiny it is.

Just relaxing...

And puttering around with Igor.

When we bought Igor at the end of June last year, he was a mess. One of the things that we never got done was to shampoo the carpet in the front. I mean, these vans don't have much of a carpet up there to begin with, so it shouldn't have been a very big job.

Into the town of Etzatlan

Sunday morning we walked into town. We just have to cross the main highway, then it's about a 20 minute walk on a cycling/walking path to get to town.

We just wandered around, then found a spot to have lunch.

What's the plan?

We never left the campsite yesterday. Just a relaxing day, but we puttered around and did some cleaning. Igor was pretty dusty inside from the dirt roads we had been on.

I also adjusted some of our cupboard doors because we had two of them fly open recently.

Hiking part of the Ruta de Peregrinos in Jalisco, Mexico

After a totally silent night parked in a farmer's field, we woke up to a beautiful sunrise. It seemed like the color was going to last all day. 

By 9:00am we were ready to set out hiking. We wanted to do a difficult section of the Ruta del Peregrino (The Pilgrims Trail), a religious route running between the towns of Ameca and Talpa de Allende.

The gate was closed, but we went in anyhow.

Had a quiet sleep by the river. Got packed up around 10:00am and drove the short distance into the town of Talpa de Allende where we easily found a parking space for Igor.

Talpa de Allende is the end destination of a pilgrimage route that begins in Ameca. Pilgrims travel the challenging 117 km (73 mile) route to arrive at the church in Talpa to see the Virgen del Rosario de Talpa who apparently grants miracles.

Parked by the river in Talpa de Allende

The last time we did this route in March of 2016, I did a blog post titled "Next time we'll do this in a week instead of a day". I was referencing the fact that we drove all the way from Etzatlan to Puerto Vallarta on this same route in one day.

And here we are, doing exactly that!

Knock, knock, knock by the military

We left San Sebastien just before 10:00am, but we weren't going very far. We had read about the nearby La Hermita waterfall, and it looked different, we just weren't sure if there was going to be much water at this time of year!

We were surprised to find one other car parked up at the trailhead to the waterfall. On a Tuesday morning, we figured it would be pretty quiet.

If you don't like creepy crawlies...

Then it's probably not a good idea to visit the Santa Gertrudis mine in San Sebastien.

We were originally planning to do a long 22 km hike up to La Bufa... but I found out that the route uses the same path that the ATV's do... so it's not a true hiking trail. So we changed our plan to do a much shorter 7 km walk to the Santa Gertrudis mine... an old silver mine that dates to the 1800's.

Heading into the mountains

First though, I need to tell you the end of our Starlink story. I had mentioned yesterday that their support people were slow getting back to me, but once they did, the guy was absolutely fantastic. He spoke perfect English. He cancelled our Canadian contract, refunded the amount paid, and set up my email address to be able to easily start a Mexican contract. Once that was done, I still had a few glitches trying to get it paid with our Canadian credit card, but eventually our Wise debit card came though with the approved payment. 

The same guy was readily available until I got everything sorted. 

Time to hit the road!

This post coming to you via Starlink internet! No, we haven't worked out all the financial details yet, but the system is working as it should. The internet is fast enough, but their customer support is very slow! Anyhow, the main thing for now is that the system is working perfectly.

Saturday was our last day here in Puerto Vallarta.

What a circus!

We went to the circus a week ago, but now we are experiencing another one!

Yesterday was the day to activate our new Starlink Mini because our cellular internet plan runs out today at midnight. 

The price of eggs

We puttered around for the morning, then after lunch we walked inland to the Pitillal neighborhood to the laptop repair shop we had stopped in at the day before.

We got the data transferred to Ruth's new laptop, and ended up leaving the old one with him to see if the screen problem can actually be repaired rather than replacing the screen.

Extended our portable solar panel

We went for a walk yesterday. We had seen a pathway that led alongside a river here in Puerto Vallarta, and coincidentally it led by a store where I had been told I could buy the cable for our portable solar panel.

So we went there, and then continued on to a laptop repair place.

Apparently laptops only last two and a half years

Ruth had been having problems with her laptop the last couple of weeks. The screen would only come on after playing with the angle a little bit, and she would have to turn it off and turn it back on several times.

Mine had exactly the same issue last November, and I ended up buying a new one then.