What a great afternoon!

The day was going along lazily, as most days seem to do here at Altarose Rancho RV Park. But we had mentioned to owner Garry that if he wanted to go for a hike at some point that we'd be wanting to go with him.

But this wasn't just a hike!

What's the rush...?

I read the other day that an RV'er drove from Puerto Vallarta to Vancouver in four days. That's about 4,400 kms (2,700 miles). How can that possibly be enjoyable? And why would you do it? I can't think of a good reason, but that's just us. I guess for some people it's all about the destination.

Having said that, in a couple of weeks we'll be doing our own marathon drive!

Hard to believe

We went for a hike yesterday in the Sierra de Vallejo mountains behind the RV park. We took the dogs with us. They love coming for a walk with us. And we like having them with us!

The area we went to is privately owned land, but it's protected under an umbrella of agencies. One of them is the "Alianza Jaguar" a group that exists for the protection of the jaguar in Mexico.

It's hard to believe that there are wild jaguars living in this tropical forest only 30 kms (18 miles) from Puerto Vallarta!

Market Day!

The weekly local market in the nearby town of Valle de Banderas takes place on a Monday, so that's where we headed yesterday to do our weekly fruit and veggie shopping. I brought our bigger backpack because it's about a 1.6 km (1 mile) walk each way.

That's a long way to have to carry a watermelon!

Visit to Bucerias

Just for something to do, we decided to take the local bus in to the town of Bucerias. We had never been there before, even though it's only about 14 kms (8.5 miles) away.

We figured there would be a bus from the local town here, and there is. But instead of going the direct and easy route there, it goes through all of the local communities and then you have to change to another bus on the main highway.

A walk around the block

It gets pretty warm here, so if you want to go for a walk or do anything at all strenuous, you're better off doing it as early in the morning as possible.

So yesterday morning, after coffee and breakfast, we set off on a walk around the block!

March Expenses

Once again, we had a month where our expenses were over $2,000. This has been a costly winter for us, despite having won the trip to Namibia! But, we considered that we may not have the chance to do that trip again so we didn’t scrimp on the expenses, within reason.

And as for March, if we remember that we started the month in Cape Town, South Africa, spent time in New York City and Cancun, Mexico, and ended up in our motorhome…we actually did really well in the expense department!

Total expenses for March 2014 came to $2,113.87.

Snake!

We had a quiet Friday, lounging around the motorhome. It wasn't without a little bit of excitement to break things up though!

I got up on Sherman's roof to give the solar panels a quick cleaning. On my way back down, I noticed a tear in the rubber roof!

We LOVE being back in the motorhome!

Just getting caught up from our two days without internet. So this is the second post today. If you missed it, here's the other one...  http://www.travelwithkevinandruth.com/2014/04/relaxing-by-lake.html 

We were up yesterday morning at a decent hour, but we had to wait for the restaurant people to come so that we could pay them for the great parking spot. Sure enough, they showed up around 9:00am as they had the day before, and we were soon on our way.

Relaxing by the Lake

(Written April 3, 8:00am)

We didn’t relax for the whole day though. We had to get out and get some exercise, so around 10:00am we headed out for a hike.

Not sure where we were heading or  where we would end up, but we had seen a dirt road on the other side of the lake and figured we would head over that way.

Tough drive, but worth it!

(Written April 2, 8:00am)

We didn’t really want to leave Delia’s Trailer Park in Etzatlan. But Sherman wanted to test out his new engine battery, so eventually we got things packed up and said goodbye to Bonnie.

Of course Sherman fired right up, and it was just after 10:00am when we pulled out.

Birthday, Battery, and Moving on...

First on the agenda...Happy Birthday to our grandson Cameron!

Yes, Cameron is an April Fool's birthday boy. Many of our regular readers will remember when we made the long cold drive up to Nova Scotia in order to be there for the big event exactly 3 years ago today.

El Amparo mine and ghost town

Our host here at Delia's Trailer Park is Bonnie. We're the only ones here just now, so she offered to take us in her Jeep up into the mountains south of Etzatlan to an old mining town. The El Amparo mine was one of the most successful silver mines in the state of Jalisco. The mine was originally started up in 1904, but had it's heyday between in the 1920's.

It's difficult to find all the information online, but it seems that the still productive mine was shut down around 1940 because of a combination of poor management and the unreasonable demands of the unionized miners.

All that remains are the ruins.

Exploring Etzatlan and a rare night out at a show!

We've been pretty much relaxing during our week here. We enjoyed our winter in Southern Africa, but we found that we didn't allow much time for simply doing nothing! So we're trying to make up for that here.

But we did feel the need to go for a hike.

No pictures to prove it!

I got ambitious yesterday and cleaned Sherman's roof. I was up there for a couple of hours, and Ruth never got a picture to prove it.

All RV'ers know that an RV rubber roof should be cleaned every three months. But I've stood on Sherman's roof in an RV park and it's pretty easy to tell that most rubber roofs hardly ever get cleaned.