Hola everybody:

Once again hope you're all well. Everybody who is in teaching must be looking forward to the Christmas break so the countdown is on. If you're in retail that's another story altogether so I hope the season is good.
Yes we will be leaving Melaque very soon but unlike Leaving Las Vegas we will leave with our livers intact although there has been a bit of beer drinking going on. Beer is still really cheap in Mexico. You can still get a beer for 10 to 12 pesos which is about 1 dollar. At the store we bought 8 beers of a new label for $6.00 so that was quite a bargain. Not to be outdone I did have the odd Pina Colada and Margarita as well. Although alcoholic beverages are generally cheap the price of food has risen considerably in Mexico. We did cook in our unit for a while but it's almost as expensive as going out and I couldn't find all the right ingredients so it was testing my culinary skills and becoming a pain. We have stuck to having breakfast instead which means we don't have to rush out and look for coffee. Most of the people in our unit have coffee outside on the stoop and shoot the breeze. We have been really lucky. The people there are really nice and fun, very laid back. Most will be staying in Melaque for months. One couple, from Quesnel, will be in Mexico for 6 months, it's their first time trying this out. It's unbelievable how many people from B.C. are here. Many come with R.V´s, huge ones, Quebec and Ontario also come with gigantic R.V's. It's hard to understand how they negotiate all those Mexican topes but they seem to do just fine. We've never seen a license plate from the Maritimes. Maritimes don't seem to have any bucks to travel. It's an assumption that I'm prepared to make.

Our time here has been mostly spent doing beach things. We drove to a couple of other beaches. One is called Tenacatita and the conditions there are quite lovely with crystal clear water, white sand and relatively small waves with hardly a person in sight. The expected tourists are just not showing up and it's really hurting a lot of the businesses here who rely so heavily on all those tourist dollars. Another beach we visited is called Playa de Cocodrillos. There is a lagoon as you approach the beach filled with, apparently, hundreds of crocodiles. We saw quite a few munching on big pieces of fish. There was a huge crocodile sunning herself by the shore. A person there told us that she was the mother of all the crocodiles in the lagoon. She did seem ancient and tired from all her labours. She had growths on her head which looked like hard calcium deposits and she could no longer see. Her age was estimated at around 100 but it's not a verifiable fact so to be taken with a grain of salt. The beach itself was lovely and, once again, mostly empty. It was many kilometres long. We wallked for about 6 kilometres and could have walked much further. There were many beautiful houses, on the beach and in the hills. They all belonged to gringos. Many Canadians have second homes in this area.

The other day we were in town eating ice cream opposite the local school. I'm always fascinated with what they do in schools wherever I travel. In French it's called ¨deformation professionelle¨. For those of you who don't speak French I will let you puzzle that one out. In any case it was the almost switch over time from morning classes to afternoon ones and the whole school was busy cleaning. They were sweeping, mopping, emptying out the garbage and generally doing all that our CUPE workers do. Public schools are perenially short of funds so parents routinely paint and repair what needs repairing to keep the schools going. We are very lucky indeed in Canada as much as like to bitch about the school system it still functions relatively well. Traveling does give you those kinds of perspectives which doesn't mean that I wouldn't keep fighting for our system to get even better. There is always room for improvement. Sunday we will be driving towards Puerto Vallarta and staying one night in the town of Guyabitos another Canadian hangout where we have never been. Then we will be driving back to Mazatlan where we hope to take the ferry, possibly Wednesday if there is room, to La Paz in Baja. The weather has been beautiful, generally sunny and hot every day so no complaints there. I went to the CBC website and found out that the governor general has allowed for Parliament to be suspended till January. Feel free to give me your perspective on that one, I have ideas of my own of course. That´s it for now. Hasta luego,

Josiane