WEEK FOUR OF QUARANTINE

April 13 - 15, 2020

Very Low Tide in the Marina

Monday morning was an extreme low tide. I had never seen the water so low in the marina. The fishing pangas were barely afloat. I walked a couple of laps around the marina and then back through town so I could pick up some limes from the Mar y Sol grocery. The entrance to the marina was completely blocked off.

The Marina Entrance Was Completely Blocked

The limes I had purchased were for the purpose of making a liqueur out of tequila. A friend in California was making limoncello and I had jokingly said that if I wanted to make limoncello in Mexico, I would have to use limes and tequila. Then I decided to try it. I carefully peeled forty limes and then left the peels to steep in a bottle of tequila for a week. It took a long time to peel each lime. It was a perfect quarantine project. Once the limes were peeled, I juiced them and then froze the juice in ice cube trays for future use.

Tuesday, I just couldn't make myself get up. It was a wasted day.

Dawn in the Country

Wednesday, I went for a walk into the hills. I resolved to walk to the end of the road and see where it went. Eventually, I came to a closed gate. I was way out in the middle of nowhere, so decided not to trespass. No one would ever find me if I disappeared.

Without painting to do, my days were pretty dull.

Gate at the End of the Road

April 16, 2020

The Highway from Sayulita

I started the day with a 10K run up the highway towards Sayulita. It was much more deserted than the last time I had been there. There was a big sign pronouncing that the stands had been ordered closed.

While I was running, I started thinking about the Kink's song, Sunny Afternoon. When I returned, I wrote a parody of the lyrics referring to the current situation.

Sign Regarding Fruit Stands

Cherie and John returned to the La Cruz anchorage late on Thursday, but didn't come home that night.

April 17, 2020

Dock 4 Cats

I took some food to the feral cats in the marina on Friday morning. The marina had set up a disinfection station. A tent with fans blowing a disinfecting mist was located just before the marina office. Marina tenants were not required to use it, but all employees and contractors were required to be disinfected before entering the office complex or the docks.

The Marina Amphitheater in the Morning

Disinfection Station

Friday was laundry day. I had begun to look forward to doing laundry. It gave me an excuse to spend time outside in the sunshine hanging out the clothes and gathering them back in. I usually swept the patio while I was at it. It was good for a couple of hours diversion.

I spent a large portion of the morning teaching myself to play Sunny Afternoon and then recording my version.

Cherie and John came home that afternoon. It was good to see them, although anxiety producing to have people in the house whose hygiene, while I had no reason to suspect it, I could not control. I had been alone for almost a month. That was perhaps too long. They were bustling about, doing laundry and packing up the house in preparation for Cherie's imminent departure. I felt like I was in the way and mostly stayed in my room.

April 18-19, 2020

Sunrise on the Road to Punta Mita

After having spent the previous day hiding in my room, I decided a long run was in order. I set out up the new highway to Punta Mita, intending to run 10K. When I got to the turnaround point, I had reached the turnoff for Destiladeras. I knew it would end up being a long run, but decided to take the turnoff and run over the hill to the coast road and back that way. I really didn't know how far it would be, but figured I could walk, if necessary. It was nice to be out of the house.

Destiladeras

Looking Towards Cabo Corrientes

Fenced Off Surf Spot

Recognizable Landmark

I didn't see a soul as I ran up and over the hill to Destiladeras. There was a new fence around the parking lot and signs announcing that the beach was closed. As I ran along the coast towards La Cruz, I noticed that parking lots where I had seen surfers parked in previous weeks were now fenced off and closed. I hadn't been that way since before Semana Santa. They must have gotten serious about it in the interim.

I kept running and eventually began to recognize landmarks. The run ended up being 13.2km. That was the furthest I had run since shortly after I ran the Nike Half Marathon in 2015. In 2016, I tore all the tendons off the bone in my right ankle and it took me about three years to recover. I was a little sore after my run and spent the rest of the day sleeping and eating. That kept me out of the way while Cherie dashed around, doing chores and errands. They had originally planned to be home for a week to ten days, but had moved up their departure to Tuesday because there was a good weather window coming. Cherie felt very rushed.

Sunday was always a lazy day for me.  My sourdough starter had never risen enough to make bread out of it.  I thought maybe I had done something wrong.  I used it to make sourdough pancakes and started another one.  John and Cherie were busily preparing to depart.  I tried to stay out of the way.

THE GHOST OF SEMANA SANTA

The Marina Before Dawn

April 6, 2011

Semana Santa arrived and La Cruz was still a ghost town. There were no carnival rides surrounding the plaza or church ladies selling food. The tropical drink cart was nowhere to be seen. Alcohol sales had been prohibited. Roadblocks had been put up to keep vacationers away from the coast and it seemed to be working.

Sunrise Over the Bay

Malecon at Daybreak

Daylight savings time had finally come to Mexico, so it was pleasantly dark and cool for my morning walk around the marina. I walked the half mile from my house to the marina and then did two laps from the tip of one breakwater to the end of the other, for a total of nearly 4.5 miles, before heading home. It was nice not to have to rush down to the marina to catch the dawn. My first lap was actually completed in the dark.

I was craving real bread, so decided to try to make a sourdough starter. I looked up the directions online and put the ingredients together. All it required was flour and water. The yeast would come from the flour and the air.

Security Gate After Application of Paint

Security Gate Before

Later that day, I reinstalled all the chicken wire and fabric on the gates. Then I started painting the security gate on the front door. It was quite rusty and needed painting badly. It went a lot faster than the fence, having a much simpler pattern with fewer curlicues.

April 7, 2020

Neighborhood with Moon

Tuesday morning, I got adventurous and ran up the new highway that led to Punta Mita. I had never gone that way before. It was very dark and hard to see where I was putting my feet. While it was a new road and mostly smooth, they were laying some sort of cable and had dug a trench along the shoulder. I had to watch out for piles of rocks and tree branches that leaped out of nowhere. Fortunately, there wasn't much traffic, so I didn't worry about getting flattened. The shoulder was wide. I ran about 5 km until I came to the turnoff for Destiladeras and then turned back. The sun was coming up over the bay as I ran back down the hill. It seemed strange to see the condo buildings at Alamar from the back side, since I had been looking at the front for seven years.

Alamar from the Back Side

Countryside Along the Highway

Sourdough Starter

My sourdough starter had found its yeast and was starting to bubble. I fed it more flour and water and left it to stew.

I had decided that, if I was going to be stuck in my La Cruz house, it was time to get comfortable. I really needed a comfortable chair. Our couch was just a futon and the back sloped off at an awkward angle. We had no armchairs. I had looked for chairs online, but most of them were either not available for delivery to our area or came from China and were backordered at least until May. The best I could find was a large beanbag chair filled with shredded memory foam.

The Beanbag Upon Arrival

The box arrived on Tuesday. I let it sit outside in the sun for a couple of hours before bringing it in. It took a while for the chair to fluff up. It came packed in a giant plastic bag. I used that to clean up all the leaves in front of the house. It was so huge that I could barely hump it down the street to the trash collection point.

Yardwork done, I made chile rellenos for dinner. I dearly love chile rellenos, it is always a pain to roast and peel them. I have given up on ever being able to beat egg whites without an electric mixer, so my chiles are always a bit ugly. Enchilada sauce is not available in Mexico, so I had to make my own. While blenders will not beat egg whites, they do a bang up job of pureeing tomatoes and onions. The enchilada sauce turned out fine.

Roasting Chiles

Full Moon Over the Marina

I was having a pretty good day until I heard that John Prine had died from COVID-19. His was the first death that mattered to me, personally, and I took it hard. There was a beautiful, full moon that seemed to be shining just for him. I stayed up late, writing a song for him. It helped a little, but I was still sad for his loss and the loss of everything else that had evaporated when this pandemic struck.

April 8 - 10, 2020

Wednesday began with another lovely walk in the marina. The full moon was still up and made the lighting even more dramatic than usual. I went a little later so that I could stop by the grocery store on my way home to buy bananas and mineral water. It was always bananas that sent me to the store, whether I was in California or Nayarit. I put on a mask before entering the store and the cashier was wearing one, too. The other customers were not.

Birds Were Out Walking, Too

Mural Depicting the Couple Who Live There

I spent a large part of the day practicing and recording the song I had written the night before. I didn't get it perfect, but I wanted to post it while the fact of John Prine's death was still raw. From all the posts on Facebook, it seemed like a lot of people were grieving.

Marina Lights

Thursday was a lost day. Having finished painting the security gate, I decided to take a break from painting. I couldn't make myself get up to run. I did almost nothing except eat, sleep, and watch Cheko's livestream in the evening.

Extreme Low Tide in the Marina

I started Friday with another walk in the marina. The tide was exceptionally low. A couple of guys were launching a small boat from the beach. I walked back through the town to enjoy the new murals that had been painted while I was in Zihuatanejo.

Marina Palms at Dawn

Launching a Boat from the Beach

Mural on the La Cruz Inn

The citizens of La Cruz had taken it upon themselves to set up a roadblock to keep holiday revelers out of town. Everything was very, very quiet.

April 11 – 12, 2020

Deserted Highway to Bucerias

Saturday morning, I ran to Bucerias and back. Alcohol sales had been prohibited and the beer store was shuttered. I had been in Chiapas during the rioting that followed the deregulation of gasoline and I had seen Oxxos looted and closed, but I had ever seen a Modelorama closed. It was eerie.

Sunrise Over Bucerias

Shuttered Beer Store

I had intended to take the weekend off from painting, but by Saturday afternoon I was washing the window bars in preparation for painting them.

Sunday was quiet. I celebrated by painting the window bars on the front of the house. I was glad that Semana Santa was officially over without our ever having been inundated with tourists. We did have one incident over the holiday. Two wealthy women from Guadalajara who had tested positive for COVID-19 arrived at their fancy condo near Destiladeras. Authorities got wind of this and quarantined the entire complex (220 residents and employees) for fourteen days. The irresponsible parties that caused the whole situation ended up escaping by helicopter. Authorities in Nayarit were powerless to do anything about it. I was just glad they had taken their virus and gone back to Jalisco. I felt bad for everyone trapped in the quarantine who didn't have a helicopter at their disposal.

QUARANTINE ALONE IN LA CRUZ

March 30, 2020

Resort in La Cruz

Walking to Bucerias

Semana Santa (Holy Week) was approaching and bringing with it the potential for a horde of travelers from Guadalajara and Mexico City where instances of the virus were much more common. I decided to stock up on enough groceries to last me until after the revelers had moved on. I also needed to pay the electric bill. Because we don't have mail service and foreign credit cards aren't accepted for online payments, this involved a trip to the office in Bucerias. I decided to take care of both of these errands on Monday.

Urban Horse

View Towards the Sea

I didn't want to take public transportation, so decided to walk into Bucerias early Monday morning. It was an interesting walk and not nearly as far as I had feared (about 5km to the power company.) I got a chance to walk down the laterals and see all the pretty little plazas between the condos lining the beach.

The power company had a 24 hour lobby with ATM-like machines to accept payments. I took care of my bill and then my friend, Jennifer from Bucerias, picked me up and we went to the Mega to do our grocery shopping. This allowed me to buy whatever I needed without worrying about how much it weighed. I bought enough to last me at least two weeks and then Jennifer drove me back to La Cruz. This was very kind of her and was much appreciated.

Kiosk at the Power Co.

Normally, I don't worry about washing my produce any more than I would in the USA. This time, however, I dumped all the produce into a sink full of soapy water and let it soak while I either repackaged or wiped down all the dry goods and beverages. On that day, there were still fewer than a thousand confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Mexico and only 20 deaths. I was glad to be where I was while the virus played out in California.

I spent the remainder of the day sanding the worst of the rust off the fence. Finally, it was ready to paint.

March 31 – April 3, 2020

Tuesday, I ran into the hills again and then spent the day painting. It was hot and I followed the shade.

Pasture

Following the Road

New Calves

The Horse Behind Our House

Fishermen Mending Their Nets

Wednesday, I walked in the marina. The fishermen were using the downtime to mend their nets. Gradually, they reclaimed the space usually devoted to the farmers' market.

I spent another day painting the fence. In the evening, I chatted with my friend, Matt, online and we shared a glass of wine together.

Thursday and Friday, I skipped exercising so that I could paint the driveway gate while it was still cool. That part of the fence was in full sun, so I couldn't work on it once it warmed up. I had to remove all the chicken wire and fabric that kept animals and dust out of our yard. The gate looked much nicer without it, but it was necessary. In normal times, I probably would have replaced it with something nicer, but I had to way to get to Home Depot for supplies without risking my health on public transportation.

April 4 -5, 2020

Saturday, I needed to stretch my legs. Once again, I ran up the highway towards Punta Mita. It was still empty. The beaches had been closed and travelers discouraged from coming to Nayarit for the holidays. It seemed to be working.

Bare Trees Just Outside La Cruz

Looking Towards Cabo Corrientes

Empty Highway to Punta Mita

My Improvised Mask

I spent Sunday making masks from an old bra. I had begun by using one of the straps to try to make a strap with two buttons on it to hold the elastic hair bands from my folded bandana mask in place. My ears were too small to do the job. Unfortunately, the only buttons I had were not big enough to secure the elastic and the project was a failure. The cups, however, with a layer of foam sandwiched between two layers of nylon, made great masks with the addition of ties made from nylon cord.

By Sunday night, we were up to 2,143 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Mexico with 94 deaths. Thankfully, there were only a handful in the state of Nayarit where La Cruz is located. I still felt very safe, but I was prepared. No one knew what Semana Santa would bring.