Reaching Civilization after being Gone Awhile

Later on I’ll write a little more about the BLA village, but our first stop there was a quick one because we just wanted to resupply before heading up to La Gringa for the full moon party.  So, I thought this would be a good representative example to share of what it’s like when we reach civilization and try to do a quick turnaround back out to the land of no stores and no internet.-We arrived just before noon, and our first shore excursion was in the afternoon, and it was primarily a scouting and emergency fresh items excursion.  I photocopied the map of the town from the guidebook so I could carry it around, and we (along with Lady Carolina) walked around visiting the various tiendas.  We were looking for things like who had non-refrigerated eggs, who had a good meat counter, who had what in terms of fresh veggies, and when the next shipment was due to arrive.  We also found out where we could have laundry done by asking someone in the Yellow store who took us to Lulu’s house next door.  She agreed to do our laundry and turn it around in a day if we brought it the next morning.  Kyle was with us to help us solidify that transaction in Spanish.  We also found out where we could dump trash, and where there were a couple of internet “cafes.”  The next morning we found out there was a morning VHF cruisers net run by Pit on Karma Seas, and he told us where we could get propane.

Our second shore excursion was for getting as many things done as possible.  We do things in a strategic order considering we have to haul everything around in our camping backpacks.  We dropped off laundry, and we were a little challenged negotiating a price.  Lulu wanted to charge by the item, which if added up would have been outrageously expensive.  So, Steve offered 200 pesos (each), which she accepted, but which I thought was pretty low balled and was surprised she didn’t counter back.  Next we hit the internet “cafe” across from the yellow store.  Cafe is in quotes because it was no cafe at all.  It was actually a toy store with a couple of computers plugged in.  They let us connect our computers directly since they didn’t have wifi.  We quickly took care of banking and any other vital internet business.  Next, we hit the yellow store and did provisioning of nonperishables.  Sufficiently loaded up we headed back to the boat.

The next excursion was that same day, and it was to get propane.  It turns out they only had the capability to gravity feed our tanks or we could purchase a full tank and leave a deposit for the tank, and we opted to do the latter.  It was a larger tank than ours, but luckily it still fit in our compartment, and it ended up lasting us the entire rest of the summer.  And Andres at the propane place was kind enough to give us a ride back to the beach.  Yet another shore trip that afternoon was simply to pick up laundry.

Our final trip was the next day to provision for perishables, since a fresh shipment had arrived.  And since each store had a slightly different variety, we had to hit multiple stores to round out our purchases.  We were very happy to find the nice meat counter at Mochtazuma, the grapes at Isla, and the nice large garlic at Gueillermo’s.  We never did find unrefrigerated eggs.  I guess they are catering more to the gringos here than expected.