Juncalito Beach II

It’s Saturday, not sure of the date, maybe February 24th? We are camped on Juncalito Beach, a little south of Lareto. There’s a little island out in the bay we want to kayak to, but the wind came up this morning, so it’s a no-go, at least for today and probably not for a few days. The wind on these beaches seems to come in 3-day spurts. There are about 20 RVs camped here, most of whom have been here for several months or more. The couple next to us came down at Thanksgiving. They have a big 5th wheel, a little red rubber boat like the one we used to have, and two huge Golden retrievers named Keeley and Gunnar. There are no services at all on this particular beach—no sewer, water, or electricity—but the people who stay here hae it down to a science. Most of the have an array of solar panels to charge up their batteries for electricity, as well as large holding tanks for water and sewer. Some have elaborate (and expensive!) reverse osmosis systems to process bad water, even sea water, into drinking water. There is a “real” campground a mile or to away, not on the beach, where you can go are dump your black water tanks and fill up with water for about $7, so a lot of folks do that every couple of weeks. The RV a couple of sites down from us have a satellite system and internet service. For $15 a month, they will route your laptop into their system so you don’t have to go into town to connect. We gave them a couple of bucks to cover the time we’re here, so I’m typing this as I watch the waves on the beach out of the front window and the hummingbirds at my feeder out the back. Not long after we arrived here yesterday and got set up, a young woman drove down the beach in a battered pick-up with her little boy and girl She was taking orders for her homemade tamales, to be delivered hot and fresh “Domingo tardes” (Sunday afternoon). The price was 8 pesos (about 80 cents) apiece. We ordered 3 chicken and 3 beef, so there’s Sunday dinner.

We will probably head to Lareto on Monday or Tuesday. I’m hoping to dive either there or Mulage. My dive in La Paz didn’t work out. The evening before I was to dive, I came down with a head cold, including a badly plugged ear. You can’t dive with a plugged ear—it’s not only very painful, you can burst an eardrum—so I had to cancel. It’s almost better now, so I ought to be good to go in a couple of days.