We drove west and south from Hatch to Benson and down through the beautiful valleys around Patagonia to Rio Rico where we got an incredible deal at an old resort there. We ordered in and spent the evening on our balcony with Boo, resting up and practicing our Spanish to speak to the Mexicans at the border.
We were supposed to cross at Mariposa but couldn't find the cut-off so, ended up going right into downtown Nogales, which is pretty seedy and had detours everywhere. The border guards took one look at our thoroughly packed car, and decided not to hassle us by going through our stuff. Luckily, an angel in disguise saw our confusion at the detours, and asked us to follow him through town to the super highway. He had a nice smile and an engaging manner so we decided to trust him. We made it to the other side of town where the signs clearly marked the way to Hermosillo and south. (Most of the early pictures here are on my cell phone. I will add them if I can ever figure out how to do that!)
The rest of the trip was a breeze. Everyone drives at least 20 mph over the speed limit so, even though we were delayed at the Visa station (where we, of course, got in the slow lane), we were in San Carlos in time to pick up our keys at Remax by 4.
Our sweet friend, Rachelle, met us at Remax and drove us to the condo at Villas Bahia. It is everything we had hoped it would be! It is spacious and comfortable and has incredibly beautiful views of the bay and the Tetakawis-the famous mountains ringing the bay which were named for a goat's teats!!! You can see why…….
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| This is the western view from our balcony |
It is difficult to describe San Carlos, but I will try to give you a feel of the place. It is almost a suburb of the port city of Guaymas, which is a city of about 130,000. It is not really a resort or a destination in the manner of places like Mazatlan or Acapulco or even of Cabo San Lucas. It is more like a small ex-pat community-where people from Canada and the states come for many months at a time. Mexicans come on weekends or for a week or two at a time on holiday.
The homes on the hillsides look like something you might find on a Greek island-they are large and appear to hang out over the water like ships. Many are for sale. The economy here is very repressed so the Mexicans are very happy to have us here.
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| Our eastern view |
Our friends live on top of the hill in a gorgeous home overlooking the sea (on the other side of the hill above) which is selling for $660,000, but no one is buying now, so Rachelle and Gary, who live here year round, are renting it for $1,000/month! The house would go for several million in Boulder-it is not selling here. Because we are only renting for 3 months, our place is the same price--still an incredible deal!
We have spent our first few days, getting our feet wet. Literally wet when the washing machine leaked about 2 inches of water on the floor throughout half the condo the first day! Several lighting fixtures didn't work because they couldn't find the type of bulb required, they say. The dishwasher works but the dishes come out with streaks on everything because the water is so hard and even using the recommended Lemon-Shine doesn't help. The ice maker doesn't work but we can buy ice. We now have Internet and Vonage phone service but that took awhile. We are calling these little inconveniences "the chihuahua factor" and are accepting easily that this is the way things are--it is all part of the experience!
We hope to be completely on Mexican time soon……and I'll post a few more pictures soon.
You are living the life Mexico way of style and it looks as if Boo is going to apply for dual citizenship.
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