So yesterday morning, we hopped into the collectivo and first made our way to the beach.
The collectivo picks us up right at Alfredo's mother Sylvia's house. It's a pickup truck that has a special covered box on it with benches. It costs 8 pesos (68 cents) to take the collectivo all the way into town, or for any distance along the way.
It's actually gone up in price quite a bit. I think it was 6 pesos last time we were here, but the price of gas has continued to rise in Mexico so of course that's reflected in the price of transportation.
Ruth, and the back of the collectivo.
Ruth and the front of the collectivo.
We got off at the turn to Playa Zicatela and walked down. The sun has returned, and boy is it hot. Really need to stay in the shade when the sun is out! We made our way down to Alfredo's uncles place where he owns a hostel and restaurant on the beach. We've been here before, and have even parked the motorhome here a couple of times.
We each had a big glass of fresh squeezed orange juice.
And we sat and enjoyed the view for a while.
We're actually looking for somewhere to stay next week. We enjoy staying with our friends in La Barra, but it's not ideal. There are seven of us sleeping in the one room that contains 4 beds. Alfredo, Mary, and their children Nataly (6) and Gael (2 1/2). Also, Mary's sister is staying in one curtained off corner of the room. So, it's a little crowded for us. We knew this going into it and figured we were good for a week or so but we need a little more privacy than that. In all honesty, we're missing our motorhome!!
Anyhow, we knew that Alfredo's uncle would give us a room for a great price, but we're not sure we want to stay there either. Seems the quality and care of the place has gone down, and now we think it's a little expensive for what you get.
We hopped on the local bus to get from Playa Zicatela into Puerto Escondido.
We wandered the central area, and stopped into a busy restaurant for some lunch. We had chicken empanadas and I had a beer and Ruth had a pineapple juice. Total price for the two of us was 90 pesos ($7.65).
Then we checked out a couple of other hotels. We found one hostel that was quite nice. Decent cooking facilities, a nice swimming pool, walking distance to both the beach downtown, and a nice private room. If we stay for eight nights we can get it for 350 pesos ($29.75) per night. We'll check out a couple of other places today, but I think it's going to be tough to beat that one.
We met Mary when she finished work and we went to a computer repair place to see if they could salvage anything of the hard drive from our old laptop. Long story short, it's not looking good. The entire partition seems to be blank. Haven't given up all hope yet, but I'm pretty much resigned to the fact that the files and photos are gone. We've still got most of them because the pics have been posted to this blog along the way. But there are quite a few files that I would have liked to have saved. Not a disaster...we'll move on.
They've been doing a lot of cooking for us, so we wanted to supply some food. We bought two whole roast chickens. They come complete with salsa, rice, onions, peppers, and tortillas for 60 pesos ($5.10) each! Then we bought the making for a salad, and a half of a flan for dessert. We fed ten people for under $20. Not bad!
The roast chicken guy!
If the pix on the hard drive are valuable, there are plenty of places in the US that can salvage that data for a fee.
ReplyDeleteWe have a hard drive reader back at the motorhome so Kevin will wait and try out that route first. He also knows of a few other things that he will also try, if that doesn't work then he will try seeing if someone else can retrieve the info.
DeleteWe carry a 750G back-up drive with us everywhere. Not much bigger than my cell phone. Just checked your Amazon site and there is a WD back-up drive with 1TB for $69 plus a handy carrying case for an additional $6. I just will not travel without mine. The data and pictures are just too important. I even store them in separate spots for security. Good luck!!
ReplyDeleteAlternatively, newer laptops often come with SD card slots. Simply perform an incremental backup of important user directories onto a $15 32GB microSD card, every time the laptop boots.
DeleteAll the photos are copied on to my computer except for the ones from Oct. 30 until Nov. 9th so it's not a total lose. We also try to backup the photos very regularly and also have copies of all the old ones on disks back at the motorhome. I am kicking myself because I even thought of downloading the photos the night before to my computer and I didn't! ;-(
DeleteQuite a bargain, for everyone but the chicken... :cD
ReplyDeleteYep that's right, the poor chickens!
DeleteBack in a country with decent prices even gas compared to other places.
ReplyDeleteYes, the prices are pretty good for most things. Not looking forward to filling up the motorhome this year though!
DeleteGreat deal on the chicken! Also a strong second motion on the backup... we have a small one not much larger than my cell phone and it's perfect for "just in case"
ReplyDeleteAs we mentioned we did have a back up but it wasn't on an external hard drive, it was my computer, the issue is that we hadn't backed up the pictures from Oct. 30th until Nov. 10th, those are the only pictures we are missing and some files. Even having an external drive it only insures your files are kept if you remember to do it everyday because it is only as good as the last time that you back up and our problem was that we were just so busy that we just didn't get around to doing it right away and we really should have. We will definitely be looking into something like an external hard drive in the future or some kind of memory card.
DeleteMy kind of prices! I have not slept seven in a room since the "pit" on the training ship-then I think it was over 20. Not sure I could do that again:(
ReplyDeleteIt's been almost two years since we last slept with that many people and we mentioned then that we wouldn't do it again but we have, actually twice in the last month. Once when we did the TempleStay and then here. Mary and Alfredo would have been disappointed if we hadn't stayed with them but we also told them that we were spending one week with them and one week in a hotel because we knew that two weeks would be a long time without sometime to ourselves.
DeleteLove the chicken dinners there when we were in Mexico, great deals to be had. Good luck with you computer.
ReplyDeleteYes, the chicken dinners are a great deal in most locations that we have stayed in but we have seen some that have been pretty pricey and they are generally in the tourist areas!
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