rogue waves

We woke up this morning to mostly sunny skies, put on our suits and ventured down to the beach, about a 5 minute walk from our apartment. We are not actually supposed to swim in the ocean where we are. a bit further down there is a lifeguard stand that is sometimes occupied, but due to the large surf (i'm assuming caused by the rainy season) it isn't recomended that you get in the water. It WAS a great place to lay out our towels, lather in sunscreen and read some. The waves are HUGE - or can be spontaneously as we discovered when all of a sudden our nice peaceful moment found us floating on top of sand and surf. First lesson of the day.... don't trust the water line on the sand. Move back. Then move back another 12 feet because it WILL happen again. I went for a walk to find shells for my mom. I found many little yellowish fruits that might have been lemons, some old coconuts, a lime, and a few smooth rocks. (all washed away in the second rouge wave - sorry mom).
After this short excursion we dressed for town and walked out to the highway and stood there till we were picked up by a collectivo - a truck with a wooden bed covered in a blue tarp thing. We took this into town and got off at the first stop light that we came to. We went up the street looking for something to eat. The tourist guides online say not to eat from street vendors. MY question is.... what exactly IS a street vendor? The guy on the corner with the hot dog cart - yeah. got it. the little restauraunts that are randomly placed along the sides of the road behind what look like garage doors that are closed at night? Filled with folding tables, flies, and you can see the kitchen set up hot plate style in a corner... how about that? Street vendor? Restauraunt? Somehow i think it might counnt as the former. So we went right in and had ourselves a seat and had bottled water instead of tap. A misconception that i had about Mexico was that once we got here, my lack of language wouldn't be too big an issue.... that many people would know enough english and take pity on me. I don't know what i was thinking. If this assumption was true, then why to so many of our student's parents not know or understand a bit of English when their kids start school with us? Anyway, at lunch, i found myself looking at a menu again, again, only spanish, and again, not knowing what on earth i should be ordering. So we all order different things and decide to write down what we are eating, take pictures of it when it arrives and look it up afterwards. Hmmm........ I got the most unknown dish today and i don't think it had anything too foul in it. Basically it was a hodgepodge of meats stirfried with some onions and peppers - much like fajitas would be. I could recognize most of the meats... aside from an oddly died reddish orange one that tasted good.... and the hot dog pieces were a bit odd.... but it was good! We had a dish of green verde to share (another one of those things that we shouldn't eat)...... and i think we were all pleased. We walked directly to the pharmacy afterwards and purchased Bactrim, which we will continue taking daily for the remainder of our journey. Tina actually went into a doctors office to ask about such things (obviously not wanting to take my dads word on it) and left with a prescription, a bill for 400 pesos, and having paid only 100 pesos, which she said was totally worth it just for the experience of talking to doctor - who told her not to eat oysters under any condition and to bathe after she got out of the ocean because the water was dirty right now (sure this has something to do with the daily papas river that feeds into it). At the pharmacy i get my bactrim and she gets her prescription and i don't change my mind, so she does..... deciding to try the bactrim too. I looked up what she was prescribed back at the apartment and learned that it is not available nor made in the USA, is often used to treat alcholics and causes severe sickness when mixed with alchohol as it prevents the body from metabolizing it right or something. DO NOT DRINK while taking this medication under ANY situation. Kinda glad she decided not to take it.
We poked our heads in some stores looking for grass beach mats, as obviously our towels are not going to work as they become wet, encrusted, weigh 15 pounds when we are done and take over 24 hours to dry..... Then we headed to the super Che to buy groceries.... got dinner fixings, sandwhich fixings, goggles for lap swimming and got a taxi for the trip back to CasaMar. We layed around reading on our porch, cooked dinner and played skipbo. Tomorrow Denise and i are getting up early to do yoga on a terrace upstairs assuming the instructor comes... sometimes she does and sometimes she doesn't. Buenos noches!

1 comment:

  1. Angela - I must admit your posts are making me laugh out loud. Reading about your Fellowship is wonderful. Thank you for blogging!

    Perrin - Fund for Teachers

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