Lo de Marcos

Before we left Rincon de Guayabitos we had one last walk we wanted to do up the hill behind the town of Los Ayala. So that's where today's header pic was taken. Nice view, and good exercise. Then, it was time to move on.

We squeezed our way out of the El Dorado hotel without a problem and back to the main highway. This highway, Mex 200, runs all the way down the Pacific coast right to the border with Guatemala. We only had about 15 kms (9 miles) to drive to our next destination of Lo de Marcos.

There are nine different RV parks in this town of 3,000 people. The parks are starting to fill up, and the snowbird influence here is a little too much for us. We expect that's what we're going find until we get well south of Puerto Vallarta. The parks are also very expensive, again with prices in U.S. dollars.

We parked on the side of the beach road close to town and walked along the road. Checked a couple of the RV parks, but as expected none were willing to give us a night of parking for a decent price. As we were walking along the road, we met a local and asked if he knew a spot where we could park for the night. He says, "sure, you can park in front of my house!" and we walked over with him to see if it was suitable.

Sherman, parked up in Lo de Marcos

Sure enough, it was fine...Nice and level, with lots of sun for our solar panels which is nice because the batteries were starting to get low. We offered him 100 pesos ($7.80), and he said whatever you want to pay is okay. Turns out the three houses are owned by three brothers and their families and one of the brothers came by and talked to us for about an hour. His English was about as good as our Spanish, so we managed to have quite the conversation in two languages! This kind of communication is becoming good practice for our Spanish.

After we parked up, we continued our walk on the road. At the end of the beach section of road there is a brand new RV park called "La Parota". It's actually really nicely done and if we had to choose from any of the parks here, that's the one we would pick. Ridiculously expensive though at $700 U.S. per month PLUS metered electricity! 

La Parota RV park

We walked back to town along the beach. It is a nice beach, but only the bay at the far end would be decent for swimming. Quite a steep drop off otherwise, and some fairly large waves coming in while we were there.

The beach at Lo de Marcos

We've got it figured that this area is really nice, but we will probably never return due to the gringo influence. Prices are higher, as an example there is a franchise ice cream store called "La Michoacana" that has a nice natural strawberry popsicle that we like. Normally, we pay between 10 and 12 pesos for one popsicle. Here, they are 15 pesos. Same with beer. One brand I like is normally between 70 and 75 pesos for an 8 pack. Here it, is 90 pesos. Prices are high because of the snowbirds. We are learning that we much prefer the beach areas south of Manzanillo and Acapulco.

Moving on again today! Next stop only a few miles down the road is San Pancho (also called San Fransisco).