Calderitas

Sunday January 11…9:30pm

We were packed up and ready to go by 8am. We were a little concerned about paying our bill.

We had stayed for 8 nights, and the agreement we had made with the owner, Chileo, was for an unserviced site for 120 pesos ($10.92 CAN, $9.25 US) per night. But the owner was hardly ever around, and nobody came to collect money on a daily basis. I had spoken to Chileo on Friday, and said that we would be leaving on Sunday, and would he be around so that we could pay him. We had heard stories of other people who were told a certain amount and then it went up when they went to leave. We used the dump station, and were ready to go. We went asking for Chileo, but were told that we were to see Victor to give him the money. We did, and that was okay. But when we got to the gate, they wouldn’t open the gate until they confirmed we had paid. They tried to tell us that we hadn’t paid enough, and we told them about our agreement with Chileo. They finally got hold of him by cell phone and he said that we were fine. But it was frustrating, and we’ve heard where others have just paid the larger amount and avoided any confrontation. I guess they had to do something, because we were blocking the single lane entrance road, so nobody was coming or going until we resolved the situation!

We stopped and bought a little gas…enough that we could make it to Chetumal with no problem.

Then, we were looking for a beach nearby where the turtles come to nest. It’s on a protected bay and is a state run nature park. We had heard you could overnight there, but when we found it, there were no pets allowed. Whiskey would have been okay, so long as she stayed in the motorhome and we only took her for a walk on the entrance road. They wanted 100 pesos each motorhome to stay overnight. S&G wanted to stay the night, but Ruth and I decided we would pass, and check out a beach further down where we hoped to camp for free. So we drove on, knowing that S&G would meet us at Kathe’s place near Chetumal in a few days.

We made it to Playa Soliman a few more km’s down the highway. Ruth and I had been taken to this beach as part of a day tour we did when we were here six years ago. But the hurricanes that went through in 2005 and 2007 had done a lot of damage and the restaurant here that used to allow camping had closed down and moved to the highway. The beach area is still used by the tour company, but they have security that will not allow parking.

So we decided to continue on to Kathe’s place near Chetumal. We had been introduced to Kathe over the internet by Lee, the lady we stayed with in Mazatlan last year. Kathe has a large property on the Bay north of Chetumal near the Belize border. She said she had a beautiful spot where we could park the motorhome and stay for as long as we like. She also has a duplex on the property and she lives in one side, and rents the other side out.

www.maricasa.com

So we ended up driving about 300 km’s (186 miles) today. The roads were in pretty good shape, and there was a lot of sections that had been recently repaved, so we arrived at about 3pm, despite our many stops at the beginning of the day.

Kathe was right, it is a beautiful property here. We are set up on a lush grass section, only a few feet from the bay. Kathe is herself an RV’er, so has set up a section where any of her Rving friends could come and visit for a while. She has a dog, Pas, who is about 2 years old, and loves to play. She’s really taken to Whiskey, but Whiskey doesn’t want to have anything to do with Pas. It’s kind of funny, except that Pas is pretty rough with Whiskey. Not in a bad way, she’s just wants to play. She sits on the mat by our door with this “Can Whiskey come out and play?” look on her face!

Early to bed tonight…it’s very quiet and peaceful here, so we’re pretty sure we’ll get a good nigths sleep.

Total nights sleeping in a motorhome…445

January Fuel $ 45.50 CAN

January Grocery $ 92.01 CAN

January Overnight costs $ 87.36 CAN