El Corsario Campground

We got up and had breakfast, and went to take the dogs on the beach. Apparently Mel overdid it playing on the beach the day before, because he could barely move. He had to be dragged out to do his business, and then he spent most of the day on the bed giving us dirty looks. This didn’t prevent us from taking the Jacks for a two-hour walk on the beach, which all of us thoroughly enjoyed since it was nice to be stretching our legs rather than sitting in the truck. Lou has turned into a champion body surfer, and we were amazed at how quickly he got the hang of the surf, and really seemed to like it. He would trot out through the shallow water of the outgoing waves, jump any small waves that were coming in, and when a wave too big to jump approached, he would turn tail and start swimming, letting the wave pick him up and carry him to shore. He’d land, shake off, turn around, and do it again. Nock didn’t quite get it; she’d follow him, but she wouldn’t turn around when a bigger wave came, so it would get her in the face, then she’d stand there shaking her ears until another came and got her, then she’d just turn around and run for shore. She ended up standing where the waves were always shallow and barking at Lou, and at Tom who was farther out doing the same thing as Lou in deeper water. I was a little chilly, so I stayed with Nock and just got my ankles wet.





On our walk, we watched a boatload of fishermen land their boat on the beach, and start throwing out sharks which were all about 3 to 4 feet long. When we got back, we looked up “shark” in our Spanish/English dictionary, found that it is “tiburon,” so we went back into town to a different pescaderia, asked for it, and got it. We also went to the “minisuper” for cereal and juice. I was looking at the Quaker Oats and noticed fresh packaged oats on the shelf below. I picked a package up, turned it over and saw a hole, then checked the shelf and found mouse poop. I bought the Quaker Oats in an intact package. We stopped at the produce stand again, then went to the tortilleria and got a big stack of tortillas for about 40 cents. Then we went to the mean stand for beef and got a couple of steaks sliced off a hunk of cow to throw in the fridge so we wouldn’t have to stop for a day or two for groceries.

We went back to the campground and repacked the clothes that had dumped the day before, which was a good opportunity to reorganize, again. We think we’re finally done with the cold weather clothes, although we each kept out a couple of pairs of long pants and a few long sleeved shirts. The rest went in bags and got stuffed in the truck rather than in the camper. We took another walk on the beach, had a fish, tortilla, and guacamole dinner with Pete, and hit the hay after hot showers in the very nice campground bathhouse. We were amazed that they had hot showers, since there were only four other campers. One was a couple from Alberta, who had a rig very similar to ours. They said they’d toured Mexico this way before, and that it really helped to “fly below the radar.” The water may have been heated because there were a couple of parties of people who lived about two hours away, who just came for the day to enjoy the beach and the pool.

We found that Mel is a big attraction, and opens doors for us to talk to lots of people. We had a very lively conversation with some of the party people, about dogs, places to visit around there, and life in general. We are amazed at how well we can communicate with people who don’t speak any more English than we do Spanish, as long as everybody is willing to take the time and try to figure out how to understand and be understood. It was funny because one of my only problems with camper life is that it’s pretty hairy between me and the three dogs, and one of the women we were talking to asked that exact question, and we all had a good laugh. They asked why we neutered a beautiful dog like Mel, and I pantomimed lifting my leg and peeing on a pole, and they all immediately understood and laughed. I’m much less frustrated than I thought I would be communicating with people who only speak other languages. We also had a good talk about what to do in the area with the campground owner, who actually spoke very good English. He sat with us and our map, pointed out towns of interest, and explained why they’re interesting. Most of that area is visited only by Mexicans, which actually makes it a great vacation spot. The beaches aren’t spotless and white, but they’re clean, and you can walk for miles and not see anybody. You can also walk in and out of the shops in the open air market and not see another American, just people who live there out doing their Saturday errands.