Delfinerio, San Carlos

While we were in San Carlos, we decided to visit the Dolphin centre, El Delfinario. When we were here this past March, it was closed for renovations. Here are a few photos from our visit to the Delfinerio in San Carlos, Sonara, Mexico on November 12th.

Seals with trainers.  The seal on the left is 15 yrs old while the seal on the right is 3 yrs old.

Vic holds the bar as the seal leaps to touch the ball. Vic gets wet.

2 of the 6 dolphins appearing in the show.

The trainer indicating one of the ways he check the dolphin's health.

Credit to both the trainer and the dolphin for the balancing act!

Dolphin greeting us at the underwater portal after the show.

Sample of the topiary decorating the grounds of the Delfinario.

Creepy Crawlies

I thought you may be interested in some of the critters we see in Mexico. Today, I have two kinds of bugs that you don't see every day and usually have to go exploring to find them.

On our way down our route from Mazatlan to LDM (short for Lo de Marcos), we stopped to fill up with propane at the propane depot a few klicks south of Las Varas, and about twenty minutes north of LDM. While filling the rig's tank we noticed this GIANT black beetle.

Wow! It is big. Crawling on a curb.

Yes, it is alive! About 3-4" long.

It seems they are attracted by the lights at night and stick around during the day. They are quite slow and cumbersome. I wonder how well they fly. There were some smaller versions of these, about 3/4" long, but looked much the same.

And now for the fun part....

Mexico is home to several species of scorpions, which normally are not a big problem to us. There are some deadly species and about 1000 people in Mexico die each year. Usually these are the very young or the elderly. When they do sting, the sting packs a big wallop, depending on the species. Our friend Eric just got stung a couple of days ago, on his finger after picking up a towel off a drying rack. It hurt something fierce.

I had bought a small LED blacklight off eBay (5 bucks!) in September and offered to come and hunt for the critters after dinner last night. Using the blacklight, the scorpions glow a bright fluorescent green and are easy to find in the dark.

Scorpion glowing in the dark under the glow of the blacklight.

Using my needle-nose pliers. I could pick them out of the undergrowth and easily pinch their heads to kill them. These were anywhere from 2.5" to about 0.5" in length...nothing too big. In about a half hour, I had nabbed 12 of the critters and one had escaped to claws of death by slinking away under a rock. The picture below is what was left of the twelve creepie crawlies.

There are two species here. The tan coloured ones with the dark bars across the body are "bark" scorpions. They are the ones with the biggest ouch around here. The "bark" scorpion is what stung Eric.

Close-up of the business end of the scorpion.

Thankfully, all these critters were from another campground where Eric is staying. There were a few people very happy to see me with all the dead scorpions and thanked me for checking around their rigs. I didn't find any close to people's rigs. All theses were from a small hillside along the south side of the campground.

We found only a single scorpion in our campground and will go out somewhat regularly to hunt for more stragglers and new arrivals.

If you are interested in buying one of these lights, they are available on eBay, and are shipped direct from Hong Kong. I paid US$4.99, including shipping. eBay 12 LED Blacklight. If the link no longer works, you can do a search on eBay. The vendor is/was cwtco. Shipping took only a couple of weeks.

Settled in Lo de Marcos for the winter

We left Mazatlan on Thursday, November 17th at 7:45 am, driving the "libre" (free) highway south rather than the "cuota" (toll) road. We drove to San Blas and followed the road along the coast.  A comfortable drive with no mountains to go over.  Going this route saved us $1000 pesos ($77 CAD) in toll charges.

After stops for lunch and to fill our propane tanks, we arrived in Lo de Marcos about 3:30 in the afternoon.  We spent the rest of Thursday and all Friday setting up our site -- putting up our satellite for TV reception, putting out the awning, side curtains for the patio, patio rug and furniture.   We hung 2 hummingbird feeders and have about 4 varieties of hummingbirds coming to feed.  

The weather here is warm -- 30C in the daytime and 22C at night.  The Pacific Ocean is warm -- Vic took our pool thermometer with us yesterday when we went for a swim.  85F! We get wet but don't cool off but it is relaxing to float in the water.

We travelled 3,529 miles from our home in Thornhill, ON to Lo de Marcos.
We spent

$1600 for gasoline for the RV (lowest price in US we paid was $3.04 per gallon in Lubbock TX)
$193 in tolls
$179 in campground fees

Our monthly fee for our site here in Lo de Marcos is $5,000 pesos ($385 CAD) per month.

Aw....it is so nice to be in the land where the butter doesn't get hard overnight. 79F at 4 pm -- lovely! We spent two nights in San Carlos at our favorite campground,Totonaka. We ate a nice dinner across the street at Charlies Rock, right on the shore. On Saturday we drove with our friends to the Delfinario to see a 30 minute sea lion show and a 30 minute Dolfin show -- all for the price of 50 pesos each for seniors! (less than $4).

On Sunday, we hit the road again for a shorter drive to Los Mochis, about half way to Mazatlan. It was the first time we've ever driven in rain in Mexico.  Our tow cars were covered in mud by the time we arrived in Los Mochis! We made sure that the bikes were locked to the carrier on the car and the alarm was set. Stories abound of bikes stolen during the night at this campground. We awoke after a not so quiet night with the rain bouncing on the roof. Bikes were still there but the campground was a bit of a quagmire. We exited OK and were back on the road again by 8:30 AM.

Next stop...Mazatlan and the San Fernando campground. We booked in for a two night stay and got settled in. The day was overcast but 76F (24C) at 2 pm and very muggy.  Supper was at the Fat Fish restaurant for their famous ribs. A nice spot to hit once or twice a year.

This morning we took a long walk on the beach and returned a little sweaty. Nice huh? A Mexicano came by offering to do our travel buddy's windshield cover. Mike couldn't resist the very competitive price and we both locked in for another day so the work can be done tomorrow. For a little over $400 the windshield cover, wiper covers and mirror covers will be provided. That compares to over $600 for a quotation he had in the US. Alas not as good as we got in Alamo Texas. It now looks like a very good deal at US$250.

Thurs Nov 10 Tucson AZ

We spent Mon morning Nov 7th in El Paso busy with the installation of 4 new rear tires.  We checked a couple of RV service places in Anthony TX to address the wiring that had been ripped out when our tire blew but all were too busy for the rest of the week.  We stopped at an O'Reilly's to pick up wiring for DIY.  We traveled on to Deming NM to stay a couple of nights at the LoW-HI Rv Ranch.  Nice place, great people but the temperature was below 0 both nights.  Vic had a chance to re-do the wiring for the pump for our water system and the control for our front furnace.

Wed Nov 9th we drove to Tucson to meet up with our friends for our journey south.  We are staying at Lazy Days in Tucson for two nights.  Beautiful facility.  Each site has a citrus tree (ours is grapefruit) and a patio table with 4 chairs.

We spent a half hour last night enjoying a swim in the heated pool (85F) and soaking in the hot tub (103F).  The temperature overnight was 10C -- the warmest night of our trip so far.

You can see by the palms in the photos above that today is a very windy day here.

Tomorrow we will cross the border at Nogales to head for our first stop at San Carlos in Mexico.

Mon morning Nov 7 in El Paso TX

We have travelled 2,127 miles since leaving home.

We departed from La Porte on Thurs Nov 3rd in rainy cool weather .  A good day to drive.  We stopped west of St. Louis MO at Meramec Valley RV park to plug in to some electricity and warm up for the night. It was a damp 43F

On Friday we started out on Hwy 44 for Oklahoma City .  We passed through Lebanon MO with the familiar fields of Tracker boats we had seen in the spring.  By the time we passed through Tulsa OK, the trees were all green with very few that had lost their leaves.  It was a balmy 74F when we stopped at 4:30 pm on the east side of Oklahoma City at Oak Glen Rv park! Our neighbours in the next site were from Mississauga, ON! We don't see many RVs from Ontario on this route.

Saturday  was a very windy day.  The winds were so high the tractor trailers in front of us were dog tracking by about 10 inches.  We had to stop to install a locking pin in the roller for our slide cover as it was unfurling in the wind.  Very stressful drive. 50 mph winds broadside.  It was no wonder we saw ads on the billboards for RV parks with "storm shelters"! We drove Hwy 40 to Amarillo TX, then headed south on Hwy 27 to Lubbock TX.  A warm 78F at 6 pm -- this is much better!  We went out to a restaurant called Casa Ole for a great meal of chicken and beef fajitas plus 2 margaritas!  Total bill $30.05! 

Sunday we headed south from Lubbock on Hwy 62, passing through Carlsbad on our way to El Paso.  Lots of cotton fields, peanut fields and oil rigs.  The sky was so clear we spotted the Guadalupe Mountains when we were about 50 miles away.  Just south of Carlsbad we started spotting different varieties of cacti in the fields.  Unfortunately we blew a tire about 45 miles outside of El Paso in mid afternoon so we have a short delay in our trip while we get a replacement and repair some electric wiring the blowout shredded.Thanks to the Good Sam Club Roadside Service plan we were provided support on a highway out in the middle of nowhere. Luckily enough we had one bar on the cel phone to get through to their hotline with many drops while trying to place a service call. We stayed at a Walmart parking lot last night in El Paso and were able to pick up wireless internet.  Bonus!

 Now we're off to shop for a new tire!

Mexico Part 3

We are on the road again for another trip to Mexico...our third trip if you have lost count.

We left home after dishing out goodies to the Halloween kiddies and spent the night in London at the Flying J. We woke to a very foggy morning and slow driving towards Sarnia. Highway construction had a good portion of  the route down  to one lane. We broke out of the fog and into two lanes about half way. It took about 55 minutes to get through the border log jam.

We are now in La Porte Indiana at my brother's house and the motorhome is at the transmission shop to repair the repair work done in April. After the transmission rebuild, we found out that although everything was shifting just fine, we could not manually shift into second gear for engine braking (needed on big hills). It should be done later today. We could be on the road again tomorrow or wait another day.


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