SHOULD I STAY OR SHOULD I GO?

May 11, 2020

Path to the Beach

I wanted to run but needed to buy fruit so I packed my wallet and hand sanitizer into my grocery bag and set off to walk around the marina and back past the grocery store. I got an earlier start than usual. Even if I had been willing to run with my bag, I would have arrived at the store before then opened at 8:00. Looking for something new to photograph, I took a slightly different route to the marina. I accidentally discovered a path to the beach when I ventured off the street to photograph a floodlit palm tree. It was still dark when I got there. I walked a short distance along the shore to the breakwater and then resumed my normal path.

Pre-Dawn Beach

Mario's was Closed

Despite trying to go slowly, I still arrived at the grocery stores before they were open. I considered waiting, but figured I could get what I needed at my neighborhood convenience store. Lately, I had avoided that shop because it was small and usually busy. I put on my mask and went in. They didn't have everything I wanted, but I managed to get a pineapple, bananas, tomatoes, limes, and flour. That would hold me until my next shopping trip in a few days. The store had installed a glass partition between the customers and the cashier. I was glad to see that they were taking social distancing seriously. The supermarkets had done that, also, and the bagger had been wearing both a mask and a face shield.

Before I showered, I chiseled the scale off another section of tile in my bathroom. Directly under the shower head, the going was slow. It took me an hour to clean one column of tiles. I couldn't muster the enthusiasm to tackle a second column. I spent the remainder of the morning practicing the guitar.

After lunch, I sat down to polish my nails and work on my blog. The hardest part about doing my own nails was that it took so long for them to dry. The salon used a gel polish that dried in one minute under UV light. The standard polish took quite a long time and I was constantly damaging it.

While I was writing, I received an invitation to sail to Ensenada with the boat on which my friend, Leslie, was crewing. I hadn't planned to leave until June, but it was an attractive proposition. I had no idea how much it would cost me to fly and it was likely that any reservation I made would be canceled or changed. I did not relish having to make connections in Mexcico City or Los Angeles with the possibility of having to spend a night in a hotel on the way. On the other hand, I knew nothing about the skipper and very little about the boat other than that it was a sixty foot ketch. I needed to think about it.

The Doorway to Summer

I spent most of the afternoon completing a blog post. People kept interrupting me and I found myself getting uncharacteristically annoyed. I needed to talk to the skipper of the ketch, but didn't want to do it when I was in a grouchy mood. When I finally finished the blog post, I made cheese and crackers and poured myself a glass of wine. When two-thirds of it was gone, my attitude was sufficiently adjusted to talk to Jack, the owner of Magic Carpet.

We had a nice chat and agreed that I would come to the boat for dinner later in the week. They also proposed inviting my friends, John and Elinore. My first reaction was that this was a rebellious idea. An actual grouping of five people on a sixty foot boat! It also sounded heavenly.

Attitutude corrected, I spent a pleasant evening pursuing the usual activities. I realized that reaching the peak of infection didn't mean than numbers would necessarily go down any time soon. It just meant that numbers would stop climbing. In theory, we had reached the point where recoveries would balance new infections. It still seemed like a crap shoot.

May 12, 2020

Stranded Panga

The days continued to get longer and the sun was rising earlier. I had been unable to run in the hills in the dark because the road was very rocky and uneven. Now, by the time I made a loop around through Matlali Hills and back to the road, it was light enough to see. Towards the end of my run, it grew foggy, something I had never before seen in La Cruz.  The humidity of suumer was coming.

Foggy Morning in the Hills

I ran close to five miles and then came home and swept the front patio. I was beginning to understand my mother's obsession with keeping the house clean when I was a child. As a housewife, she had nothing else to do. I was playing house a lot during this quarantine.

Shower Tile Before and After

 After sweeping, I returned to cleaning my shower. There was a narrow row of tiles at the very bottom that I thought were a different type of tile. I actually thought they were stone or stoneware. However, I saw a tiny section that looked like the other white tile. I started chipping away at it and, lo and behold, there was the same kind of tile under a thick layer of lime.

Loaf or Brick?

I worked on the shower until I had completed my column of tile for the day, ate breakfast, and then practiced the guitar. By the time that was done, I was ready for a nap. I ate lunch, instead, and then dug out the bread machine and experimented with making French bread. While that was processing (a nearly four hour process,) I wrote and sketched possible shapes for the double necked guitar that Matt wanted to make for me. We were trying to make it as small as possible so that it would not be too heavy. With two necks, the necessary width made it tough to come up with a proportional shape without adding a lot of extra length.

The bread rose well the first time, but did not rise much after the machine punched it down. The resulting loaf was tasty, but very dense and nothing like French bread.

Dinner was the chicken wings adobo that I bought from the local butcher. They were twice as big as the ones I got at the grocery store and very meaty. I cracked a bottle of red wine since it looked like I would be leaving soon and wouldn't run out.

I practiced, again, after dinner and then watched a little Netflix before dinner. Monday had been a bad day for deaths in Mexico. Three hundred and fifty three people had died that day, although only two in Nayarit.

May 13, 2020

The radio woke me up about 1:00 in the morning. Someone was distraught and hailing Magic Carpet, the boat on which I was considering heading north. That caught my attention, but I couldn't really tell what was happening. Usually, when someone hails in the middle of the night, either a boat has dragged anchor or there is an attempted theft happening. Neither seemed to be the case. Radio chatter woke me several more times, but I didn't learn what was happening until later. The cat from Zero had gone overboard, possibly in pursuit of flying fish, and there were several dinghies out looking for her. She was located at 3:30 in the morning, calmly grooming herself on the breakwater, 450 meters away, wondering what took her people so long to get there.

Cloudy Morning on the Beach

Despite my lack of sleep, I got up at 6:00 to walk at the marina. It was a cloudy morning and the sun was nearly up by the time I got there. If I stayed, I would soon have to rise earlier to beat the heat. I cut through town on my way home and met my friend, Lynne, bringing in her garbage cans as I passed by. We chatted for a good twenty minutes. It was very nice to see her.

After my walk, I scraped another column of tile in the shower. The walls were nearly complete and the worst was behind me. The floor would be a different matter. I wanted to finish before leaving.

After breakfast, I lay down for a nap, but Zero hailed someone on the radio every time I dropped off. By 13:00, I gave up and got up to eat lunch. Then I practiced for an hour.

I spent the rest of the afternoon refining the colors on my painting, finally arriving at a satisfactory palette. I painted the edges of the canvas black, in lieu of a frame, and hung it on a screw inserted in an existing hole in the wall. Hanging a picture on a masonry wall required an electric drill, which we did not possess.

Completed Painting

By the time I finished that project, it was dinnertime. I ate the remainder of the chicken wings and bread with some frozen mixed vegetables for dinner. Then I practiced the guitar for over an hour, texted a bit and sat down to write before relaxing with an episode of Netflix. The day had flown by.

May 14, 2020

Sunrise Horizon

Day 58 of quarantine was just another day. I got up to exercise even though I had been up late the night before. I walked through the hills to the ridge and down to the highway and then ran the two miles down the highway back to town. The gate was open, so I didn't have to squeeze myself through the narrow gap. One of the roadside fruit stands was open. There were a lot of trucks heading south on the highway, making it uncomfortable to run there. I would not be running on that highway in the future.

Fruit Stand Was Reopened

It was a normal day of scraping the shower and practicing the guitar. I took a long nap in the afternoon and then baked another loaf of bread. I tried using the dough setting on the bread machine and it rose nicely but, when I went to switch it to bake, it stirred the dough once, causing it to fall. It never rose again, so I ended up with a loaf identical to my first attempt.

I had forgotten to thaw the chili for dinner, so I heated a can of lentil soup and had that with bread and some watermelon salad. I would have forgotten to listen to Cheko's Thursday night concert if Matt hadn't reminded me. By the time that was over and I had done the dishes and practiced again, it was bedtime. I watched an episode of Netflix and went to bed by midnight.

Beach in Daylight

May 15, 2020

Magic Carpet, the boat on which I was considering sailing home, was due at the dock for a bottom cleaning at 9:00. I was supposed to meet them to check out the boat and meet the skipper. I decided to walk later than usual so that I didn't need to make two trips to the marina. I left the house at 8:00 and took a couple of turns around the marina before they arrived.

Magic Carpet

After touring the boat and deciding that I was going to go with them, Leslie and I set off to the wholesale produce market to provision. It was a long walk over cobblestones and dirt roads, dragging a flimsy hand truck. The market wasn't as well stocked as usual, but had everything we needed. Customers were no longer allowed into the cold rooms. Employees brought us anything we needed from there. We bought five dozen eggs and filled a large plastic bin and my backpack with fruits and vegetables. Then we began the tedious process of dragging everything back to the boat. The hand truck was much harder to maneuver when laden. It was nearly noon by this point and quite warm out. We took turns dragging the hand truck and eventually made it to the relatively smooth pavement of Calle Langosta. From there, it was all downhill to the boat.

We unloaded our booty and then set off to the grocery store for another five dozen eggs, boxes of milk, lunchmeat, canned goods, cream cheese, beverages, and yogurt. I had hoped to continue home from there but there was no way that Leslie could transport all the groceries back to the boat without breaking the eggs. I helped her rattle the cart two blocks over cobblestones to the entrance of the marina and get all the goods safely aboard. Then I made a break for home. By the time I walked back, it was nearly 13:00 and I hadn't had breakfast. I stopped at the Oxxo near my house for an ice cream bar so I wouldn't perish from hunger.

Lime on the Shower Floor

I was behind schedule, so launched into doing laundry as soon as I got home. Once the washer was going, I attacked the tile on the floor of the shower and managed to remove the lime scale from three rows of tile. It was looking unlikely that I would be able to complete the project before leaving unless we were delayed. We were hoping to leave in three days.

After such a long time of very routine days, it felt very strange to have a day so busy. It felt very out of control. It was 17:30 by the time I had hung out the last load of laundry and sat down to practice the guitar. Realizing I was never going to fit in two practice sessions, I practiced until after 19:00 before breaking for a dinner of leftover chili and homemade bread. Then it was time to update my corona virus statistics for the day and work on my blog.

Mexico now had over 45,000 confirmed cases and 4,767 deaths. California had 76,618 confirmed cases and 3,136 deaths. Solano County, where I live in California, had more cases than the entire state of Nayarit, with 410 cases vs 287 in Nayarit. If I had not had repsonsibilities that needed attention, I would have preferred to remain in La Cruz.

May 16, 2020

I got up to take what I thought would be my last run in La Cruz for the year. After walking thirteen kilometers the day before, I didn't want to overdo it, so I only ran about two miles through the town and up the old road to Punta Mita before turning back.

Darkened Calle Coral

Sunrise Over La Cruz

Dawn on La Puente

I had reached the point where I was starting to do things for the last time before leaving and it made me sad. I swept the front patio and the sidewalk for the last time before listening to the net and saying goodbye to the fleet. Then I chipped some more lime off the shower floor. I realized that, at some point, there must not have been a shower curtain in that bathroom and the side of the toilet facing the shower was also coated with scale. I scraped and scrubbed most of that off, too, before I got so stiff I had to pack it in for the day.

After breakfast, I practiced the guitar a little and then took a nap. I had planned to pack but, by the time I woke up, I had messages from Leslie about our dinner plans and barely had time to practice a little and change clothes before it was time to leave. Leslie and I had been apprehensive about having dinner with Jack's friends because some of them had just arrived and we didn't know them. It seemed too risky. She and I decided to have dinner with our friends, John and Elinore, instead. We ordered pizza and salad from Casa Hule and had a lovely dinner in the cockpit of their boat. We even had margaritas. I shared some of my coroncello after dinner. It was the most fun I had had since we got back from Zihuatanejo.

After Jack picked Leslie up to take her back to the boat, Elinore and I went out to feed the cats on the breakwater. They must have been hungry because they were all waiting for us. They were so cute. I had been told that there was a golden cat who was friendly and I had looked for him, earlier, when I thought I was going to be alone in the house for a couple of months. I never found him and then Cherie ended up coming back, so I stopped looking. I finally found him. He was quite friendly and even liked to be picked up. He followed us when we walked further up the malecon to feed the second group of cats. I was sorry that I hadn't met him earlier.

St. Elinore of the Food Dish with Her Charges

I had a nice walk back home. Two of the Dock 4 cats greeted me and followed me all the way to the plaza. They had never been so friendly. They must have been hungry. There weren't a lot of people on the street, but people were out in their yards or on their stoops, enjoying the beautiful evening. Red Chairs was selling tacos to go and the taco vendor by the bus stop was open. I realized that I hadn't been out in the evening for two months.

I was disappointed to learn that Jack had invited another couple to join us for the trip north. They were strangers who had been sheltering in Cancun and would have to fly to join us. I seriously considered backing out. We had been so careful for so long and didn't want to risk getting ill in remote Baja. After getting a little bit more information about them from Leslie and discussing the situation with her, we decided we could manage. We would barricade ourselves in the forward cabins and keep them in the aft suite. We would not take watches with them and would bring plenty of cleaning supplies, eating and storing our food in our cabins, if necessary. We weren't sure why they wanted to come, since they weren't U.S. citizens and were unlikely to be admitted. We encouraged Jack to discuss that with them. It wouldn't be a problem for Leslie or me, but Jack would be responsible for them if they got trapped in Ensenada. We really hoped they would change their minds about coming.

May 17, 2020

I slept in until 9:00 and then got up to chip scale off the shower floor for an hour before I took a shower. Then I made pancakes for breakfast.

I practiced for an hour and then began the process of packing. I didn't want to leave, so it was hard to make myself pack. I put all the things I might use on the boat into one duffle bag and packed the more civilized clothes I was taking home into my carry on bag. I sorted through all my food and loaded snack foods into a grocery bag with my cleaning supplies and hand sanitizer.

Since I never knew exactly who might be staying in our house over the summer, I needed to pack all the things I was leaving behind, as well. I loaded all my belongings into three plastic bins. This also protected things from roof leaks and insects.

Our neighbor, Reynaldo, came over to invite us to come over for lunch. We didn't have a lot of time, but Cherie and I stopped in for a while to taste their wonderful ceviche. Our neighbors were fishermen and were having trouble selling their fish because of the lockdown. It was nice getting to know them. Our neighbor was a widower and he lived with his son, nephew, and a Guatemalan friend that he also called his son. They spent a lot of time cooking and drinking in the shade of their palm thatched shelter. They had music blaring most of the time. The father and son argued over what style of music to play. We preferred the son's rock and roll.

After lunch, I finished packing. Then our neighbors dragged Cherie, John, and me back over there to help them eat grilled fish. The fish was really tasty. Reynaldo was pretty drunk by that point and he decided we should dance. We danced while his “sons” watched and laughed. He swore he was going to track down whomever had stolen my bicycle.

John and Cherie Dancing with Reynaldo

It was nice getting to know our neighbors and learn something about them. However, I had things to do before I left and Reynaldo was getting a bit too friendly for comfort, so I said goodnight. Cherie and John stayed for a while longer. Before they left, they were invited back for breakfast. We had been adopted.

I practiced for another hour and then wrote before going to bed. Our two additional crew members had unfortunately arrived. The boat would be coming to the fuel dock in the morning and I needed to meet them to load my luggage aboard.

CORONA VIRUS LIMBO IN LA CRUZ

May 4, 2020

Early Morning Marina

I started my week with a couple of laps around the marina. I had contemplated going to the supermarket, but ended up making do with as much as I could drag home from the butcher and Mario's grocery. I got chicken and hamburger, eggs, milk, butter, and produce. Soon, I would need to run out for orange juice and mineral water. I might eventually make a trip to the wholesale produce market. I could only carry so much at one time. The biggest problem with shopping locally wasn't that I couldn't get food. The problem was the absence of other products like batteries and tinfoil, a replacement for the step stool I had broken while painting, and disinfecting wipes which at least one of the supermarkets had finally begun to carry.

Palm Reflections at Dawn

The net was over quickly and, after a shower and breakfast, I spent the rest of the morning scrubbing the floor and scraping a lifetime of paint drips off the tile. Living on a dirt road with the windows open all the time, our floors got very dusty. No amount of sweeping could remove it all. Any liquid dripped on the floor resulted in muddy spots. I hadn't washed the floor in over a month and it showed. Because of the omnipresent dust, mopping did little good. The water turned filthy immediately and then the mop just spread the dirt around. The only way to get the floor clean was to wash it with a cloth and rinse the cloth in the sink every few square feet. That way, the wash water stayed clean.

I relaxed for a bit and scrolled through Facebook when I was done. Then I practiced the guitar and ate lunch before settling down to write. I spent most of the afternoon working on my blog. Once that was done, I made chicken curry for dinner. It was a nice change to eat something fresh after having eaten whatever was left in the larder for the previous few days. It was finally time to try the liqueur I had made from tequila and limes. It was good and tasted more like limoncello than I had expected it to taste. I called it “coroncello.” Limoncello is best kept in the freezer, but this froze when I left it there overnight. I had to take it out again, which was a shame because it tasted great chilled.

I watched some Netflix and practiced the guitar, again, before bed and then chatted with Matt a bit. The two hour time difference put us out of sync and often resulted in my staying up too late to chat. The alarm still went off at 6:00, no matter what time I went to bed, because I needed to exercise before the sun came up.

May 5, 2020

Landscaping Near El Tizate

Cinco de Mayo is not generally celebrated in Mexico, so it was just another day. Day 48 of captivity. I wouldn't say that I was staying in because I was afraid or even because I had been told to do so, but more as an experiment to see how I handled it. It was interesting to see all the changes in how things got done. More and more of the musicians around town were publishing videos and appearing in livestreams. The creative milieu of La Cruz lived on in isolation.

Beach Access in Bucerias

I ran to Los Amores in Bucerias and back. I saw a couple of other runners out in the cool morning. I explored some of the streets below the lateral on the north side of Bucerias. It was very quiet. Most of the condos were empty.

I practiced the guitar after breakfast, pondered Facebook for an hour or two and chatted with friends until lunchtime. After lunch, I sat down to write.

I spent the majority of the afternoon watching Netflix while taking in a blouse that was too large. When that project was done, I worked on my painting a little bit and then ate dinner and practiced the guitar some more.

New corona virus statistics for the day showed a big drop in new cases (down to 1,120 from a peak of 1,515 on Friday) but the most deaths, so far, at 236. Nayarit was still holding fairly steady with small numbers, mostly in Tepic, but there had been five more deaths since Sunday for a total of seventeen in the state. The experts were saying that the curve had leveled off, but I was afraid to believe in that too strongly. Only time would tell.

May 6, 2020

Day 50 of quarantine. Wednesday marked the beginning of the eighth week. I desperately needed a change. The beaches were closed, but I walked down the highway to La Manzanilla and then back to the marina via the beach before taking one turn around the marina and then stopping at Mario's for mineral water, orange juice, and bananas on my way home. The beach was deserted and the town quiet. It was a little longer walk than usual, about five miles, but I still got back in time for the net.

Coconut on La Manzanilla Beach

Road to La Manzanilla Beach

I dived right into guitar practice after breakfast. I was using an application called Yousician that forced me to play sorts of music I would never normally choose. It challenged me to use techniques that I had always avoided. Sometimes, this made my left hand hurt, but it seemed to be getting stronger. I was forcing myself to use my semi-useless little finger when suggested. I had trigger finger in my pinky and sometimes it just refused to respond to commands. I figured if Django Reinhart could play with two marginally useless fingers, I could get by with one. I wasn't performing, due to social distancing, so was using the time to improve my technique, rather than learn new repetoire.

I had no sooner lain down for a nap than my friend, Don, called. He had been in La Cruz for a week or so but was due to leave for Guaymas the following day. I wished him fair winds. No one knew how arriving boats would be received in Baja. Some anchorages were closed and others seemed to change daily. Even his destination was uncertain as it was unclear whether or not the marina would be allowed to remain open.  I contemplated going along, but didn't want to get stuck in Guaymas if we couldn't get across the border.  I wasn't ready to leave.

I was awake after that conversation, so texted with Matt for a bit and then ate lunch. I wrote for a short while after lunch and then settled down for another practice session. The day passed quickly without doing much of anything. It was so easy to get sucked into the internet, play games, or chat with friends. I finally did take a two hour nap just before dinner.

I ate the last of the chicken curry for dinner and then watched a movie. That was only the second actual movie I had watched since the quarantine began. Even with nowhere to go, sitting still for two hours seemed like a waste of time.

Hard as I tried to go to bed at 11:00, the two hour time difference between Mexico and California always seemed to result in someone wanting to chat about the time I wanted to sleep. It was a good thing I was able to nap in the afternoon when I didn't get enough sleep. It was after midnight before I was able to get to sleep.

Despite numbers of new cases having been down for the previous five days, Wednesday saw the highest number of new cases yet at 1,609. The expected peak was approaching and I wondered if that, too, would turn out to be wishful thinking. Nayarit remained fairly free of virus cases, which was reassuring as we waited to see if restrictions would be eased on May 18^th or not.

May 7, 2020

Shower Tile Before & After

I didn't get up to run at 6:00. I was tired and sore and rolled over and went back to sleep until nearly 8:00. After breakfast and the net, I decided to wipe down the walls of my shower and chip off the paint drips. In doing so, I realized that there was a lifetime of soap scum and lime scale on those tiles that none of our housekeepers had ever been able to remove using normal methods. I resorted to scraping it off with a putty knife. This worked fine, but was strenuous and time consuming. I labored over it until noon and only managed to clean about forty percent of it.

I broke for lunch at noon and texted with Matt and a girlfriend in California while I ate. Then I practiced for an hour and swept the rear and side patios. No matter how often I swept, there were always more leaves, flowers,and dust. It made us look like lazy housekeepers and was discouraging. No sweeping job stayed clean long enough to finish. The rain of debris was constant. After sweeping, I baked a pan of cornbread and then sat down to write. Later, I returned to scraping limescale off my shower walls. It was such a hot and sweaty job that I had to give up after cleaning just one row of (large) tiles.

About 17:00, I realized that I had intended to make chili for dinner. There was no way the beans would be soft enough to eat by dinnertime, but I started the chili and made tacos out of part of the hamburger I had thawed for the chili. When the chili was done, I put part of it in the refrigerator and froze the rest so that I didn't need to eat chili for days. Our freezer worked fine, but our refrigerator was no longer keeping things cold. Something needed to be done. I suspected defrosting was the answer, but hadn't felt like devoting the time to do it.

I spent a long time chatting with Matt after dinner and then practiced the guitar just before bed. I made sure to get to bed well before midnight so I would feel like getting up to run the next day.

May 8, 2020

Beach at Dawn

I got up and went for a run around the marina. I felt a little sluggish, but convinced myself to run the full seven kilometers. When I got back, I was already hot and sweaty, so I cleaned another row of tile in my shower before bathing. Then it was laundry time.

I hadn't really realized how much I missed human interaction until I noticed that I had spent the rest of the morning just hanging out with Cherie and John when they came home.

La Cruz Breakwater

John hypothesized that the reason our refrigerator wasn't cold was that the ducts that transferred cold air from the freezer to the refrigerator were clogged with ice. After he and Cherie left to go shopping, I loaded all the items from the freezer into a cooler and set about defrosting the freezer. While all the visible ice was melting, I cleaned the freezer. Then I removed the back panel and discovered quite a bit more ice on the coils and encasing the thermostat. I thought that might have been the problem until I stuck my finger up the ducts and encountered a solid wall of ice.

Ice on the Coils

I unplugged the refrigerator and left it to sit with the freezer door open. When all the ice in the freezer compartment had melted, the ducts were still solid ice. I filled coffee cups with boiling water and positioned them directly under the ducts. After about forty-five minutes of that, the ducts were ice free. I plugged the fridge back in and hoped. After an hour, the freezer was cold enough to return our food. The refrigerator section took longer but, after a couple of hours, items in the back were actually cold. All my effort had paid off.

I practiced the guitar, made myself a cold nonalcoholic michelada, and sat down to write. I wrote until dinner, when I had some of the chili I had made the night before. The mango and jicama salad I had made had already gone moldy, thanks to the non-functional refrigerator. Fortunately, the chili was okay.

After dinner, I returned to practicing the guitar.  I texted a bit, did some more writing, and settled down to watch an hour of Netflix before bed. Corona virus cases in Mexico had reached 31,522 with 3,160 deaths but there were rumors that there were actually as many as three times as many deaths as reported in Mexico City. California had twice as many cases, roughly the same number of new cases for the day, but fewer deaths. Nearly half the deaths in California were of Latinos, leading me to believe that it was lifestyle and culture, not the health care system, that led to a higher death rate in Mexico.

May 9, 2020

Saturday was the day I planned to make a big expedition to the supermarket in Bucerias. It was about four miles one way. I left before it got light and arrived about 8:00. There were not a lot of people in the store. I had made the trip because I needed some items I couldn't find in La Cruz. Unfortunately, because the small businesses had complained that it was unfair that they had been forced to close while the big stores were allowed to sell the same products, all the product categories deemed “non-essential” were now cordoned off.

Empty Bucerias

The elastic in two out of three of my pairs of running shorts had given up the ghost and I desperately needed replacements. I was not allowed to buy clothing. Linens, electronics, alcohol, and furniture were also off limits. It was possible to buy kitchen implements, air conditioners, and toys, but not makeup or nail polish. Since I couldn't go to the nail salon, I had been doing my own nails in an attempt to keep them long enough to play the guitar. I was not supposed to be able to buy nail polish remover. I lost it at the nail polish remover. I reached through the caution tape and dropped a bottle in my cart. The cashier rung it up without comment. A friend had done the same with lip balm.

View Towards La Cruz

I didn't want to buy much because I had to carry it four miles back to La Cruz, but I did pick up a few light, non-perishable food items, like rice cakes, that I couldn't obtain in the village. I started my trek back just before 9:00. It was already warm. Bucerias suddenly seemed like a big city after six weeks confined to La Cruz. There were few people on the streets, but it seemed quite busy after the ghost town that La Cruz had become. There was a lot of traffic and the noise was deafening.

I stopped at a corner coffee stand just before I left downtown Bucerias and bought a frappucino. It was the first coffee I had had in two months. I savored the coffee but was surprised at how delightful it was to talk to the smiling young man who made it for me. I hadn't spoken to a stranger in weeks. His cheerful attitude made my morning.

It was after 10:00 by the time I reached my house. I was already hot and sweaty, so took the opportunity to work on scraping the lime scale off my shower walls before taking my daily shower. I had purchased some metal scrubbers after failing to find any sort of cleaning product that would remove hard water deposits. Dry, they worked very well to polish soap scum off the tiles with only a thin coating. In the areas closer to the shower head, I had to return to the putty knife. In the worst areas, the scale came off in flakes.

I had always assumed that the floor tiles under the shower head, which were stained with rust, had been scrubbed so much that they had lost their finish. Upon closer inspection, I realized that they were just crusted with about an eighth of an inch of rust-stained lime. I dug at it with a corner of the putty knife and managed to burrow through to the actual tile. It was a project for another day, but it seemed like, one day, my shower would be pristine again.

It was nearly noon before I was finally dressed and ready for breakfast. Breakfast ran into lunch as I looked for something to eat that had not gone off in the warm refrigerator. I had brought home rice cakes, but all my spreadable cheeses were moldy. I had to settle for peanut butter on pan tostado.

After lunch, I played with my phone and chatted with Cherie while a couple of hours fled by. Then I sat down to write. I wrote for a while, practiced the guitar and wasted more time with my phone. There was leftover chili and cornbread for dinner and then I watched some Netflix, read, and went to sleep reasonably early.

May 10, 2020

Mangoes from Neighboring Tree

I woke up with cramps in my legs and ankles a few times during the night as a result of my long walk the previous morning. I got up, drank electrolytes, and went back to sleep, but was still grateful to be able to sleep in on Sunday morning. When I finally did get up, my first task was to scrape the lime scale off another section of shower wall. I had worked my way up to the area close to the shower head and the deposits were so thick that I could chisel the material off in flakes. It was actually easier to remove where it was thickest. The deposits were so rust-stained that it was quite easy to see which areas were clean.

Cherie and John borrowed a pole from the neighbors and picked a basket of mangoes from the tree behind our wall.  They weren't ripe yet, but seemed to be mature enough to ripen eventually.

I had intended to go out to buy fruit, but somehow never got around to it. I spent a very lazy day, doing little but text with Matt and practice the guitar. Finally, around 17:00, I drank a diet coke (blissfully cold thanks to our now functional refrigerator) to wake up. Then I wrote a bit and sat down for another practice session when Cherie and John went out.

Dinner was tacos made from leftover hamburger. All my salsa had gone bad when the refrigerator wasn't working, but I still had beans, cheese, and Huichol hot sauce to add. I read and watched Netflix after dinner. Despite the afternoon caffeine, I was still sleepy and went to bed by 23:00.

Nayarit had declared that restrictions would not be eased before the end of May.  Mexico ended the week with 35,022 cases and 3,465 deaths.  We might have reached the peak, but we certainly had not started down the back side of the curve yet.

WAITING FOR THE PEAK

April 27, 2020

Dawn in the Darkened Hills

Day 41 of quarantine. I got up and went walking in the hills. The air smelled fresh and the cool breeze felt delicious on my skin. I wished I could include that feeling in my photographs somehow. It was getting harder and harder to capture images that were both beautiful and novel when my world was limited to an area with a five kilometer diameter, much of which was water.

Road to Matlali Hills

For the first time, I met two other people walking for exercise. Cabin fever was spreading faster than the corona virus. Continuing my explorations, I hung a left at the barking roof dogs and walked through a neighborhood of ranchettes until I arrived at the road to Matlali Hills, which I followed to the highway. I ran the last kilometer home because I had gone a bit out of my way and wanted to return before the net began.

After breakfast, I started priming the wall. The ladder was barely tall enough and didn't have a paint shelf. I had to balance the paint can on the top, stretch as far as I could possibly reach, and pray I didn't fall or spill the paint. Fortunately, I succeeded in painting the top half of the wall without incident. By 11:00, it was too hot to work in the sun. I retreated inside to work on my blog and practice the guitar.

Primed Wall

Cherie came back and worked on finding a way to get home to Canada. The cheapest flight available in May cost four times what she normally paid. She booked a flight for June first. Other Canadian friends managed to fly to Dallas, but missed their onward connection. They were allowed to leave the airport proper to spend the night in an airport hotel, something Canadians I knew had been worried would not be allowed.

I stayed indoors until about 4:00 and then went out to finish priming the wall. I had been a little worried that I didn't have enough primer, but there was plenty.

Dinner was leftover enchiladas and then I watched a little Netflix, practiced the guitar, and returned to working on my blog. The day's corona virus statistics were again promising. Another day had passed with only 850 or so new cases in Mexico. Deaths were also down. Back in California, the lockdown had been extended through May. I would not be leaving La Cruz before sometime in June.

April 28, 2020

Pre-Dawn Neighborhood

Day 42. Tuesday marked a full six weeks of sheltering in place. I awoke from a dream of releasing baby turtles. It seemed like an auspicious beginning for the day. I got up and took my usual walk around the marina. Prior to the quarantine, I had always avoided taking pictures in the dark. Recently. However, the darkness had become just another tool and I was enjoying working with it. Someone would turn on a light and, suddenly, a new image would appear. Looking at the same scenery again and again forced me to look harder and see new details.

Cheerful Entrance

I spent the rest of the morning painting the first coat of color on the patio wall. It now matched the wall along the street and looked nice. There were so many pipes protruding from the ground near the wall that I couldn't get a ladder close to much of it. I had to paint it with a brush because previous experience had shown that using a roller just peeled off the previous coat and made a mess. Without a roller, I couldn't use an extension, so I attached the brush to the end of a stirring stick with rubber bands and used that as an extension. It was crude, but functional.  By 12:30, I was ready for lunch, guitar practice, and writing.

Spotlit Agave

I managed to dash up the street in time to catch the tamale man who always seems to skip our block. I got two pork ones and two chicken ones for a total of forty pesos (less than $2.) That was good for two dinners and the first meal I had not cooked myself in over a month.

I started transferring a drawing I had made several years before to canvas. It got too dark to see before I got very far, but I did get the grid drawn.

The evening's corona virus statistics were not encouraging. We were back up over 1,200 new cases for the day with 135 additional deaths. If cases were peaking, it was not going to be a smooth curve.

April 29, 2020

Day 43. I just couldn't make myself leave the house to run but I still got up early. I got my morning routine over before the net so that I could start painting immediately thereafter. I had the second coat of paint on the patio wall by 11:00. This was a good thing because it was already hot. I washed my brush, put the tools away, and retreated into the house.

Freshly Painted Wall

I ate lunch, practiced the guitar, and watched some Netflix. Then I baked a batch of cornbread. My phone, while working fine during actual calls, had no sound while playing music or videos and I couldn't hear callers on Messenger. I must have spent an hour trying to figure it out. I asked Matt to call me so that I could verify that voice calls were still working and we ended up talking for and hour and a half.

I finally ended the call because I wanted to work on my painting. I got about half of the design penciled in before I lost the light. Then I made a watermelon, tomato, and feta cheese salad and ate it with the last of the leftover enchiladas.

After dinner, I practiced some more and then sat down to write. New cases for the day were back down to 1,047, but the day saw the most deaths, so far, with 163. Deaths always lagged diagnoses, so the number of deaths was not inconsistent with new cases having peaked, but it was still too soon to tell.

April 30, 2020

The Entrance to Alamar Before Dawn

Day 44. I hadn't had enough sleep but I still got up to run, knowing that I could always nap later. I got off to a slow start, walking at first, but started running when I took the turnoff for Punta Mita. It was earlier and darker than it usually was when I ran that way. The pavement seemed to be exhaling heat even before the sun rose.

Sun Rising in the East

Real del Mar

I went through my usual morning routine. Then I sat down to write.

After writing, it was time to practice the guitar before taking a nap. I slept for a good two hours. Then I shook myself awake, got up, and made lunch. When lunch was over, I pulled out the painting I was working on and completed sketching in the scene. Then I started the actual painting. I worked on it until after 20:00 when I suddenly realized it was time for Cheko's live stream. I put my art supplies away and heated up the last of the tamales for dinner while I listened to Cheko. Then it was time for more guitar practice before sitting down to write, again, before bed.

The Beginning of My Painting

It had been a bad day for corona virus cases in Mexico. There were 1,425 new cases, a new record high. It no longer seemed like cases had peaked. The original estimate of the second week of May now looked more likely to be the peak.

Deaths were fortunately down from the previous day, but most deaths didn't occur until the second week after symptoms began. Those numbers would likely climb, also. The death rate in Mexico was high, likely due to the elevated incidence of obesity, diabetes, and hypertension and low rate of testing. Even the state of Nayarit was up to 63 confirmed cases and twelve deaths. Recovery seemed to be taking a long time. Only two patients were listed as recovered in the state.

May 1, 2020

Malecon at First Light

Day 45. I started my day with the usual 4.4 mile walk around the marina. I took a different route on my way home and passed a lot with a herd of goats in it. They all ran bleating up to the fence and climbed over each other to get to me. They must have been very hungry.

Hermana

Sunrise Over the Fairway

It was a usual day. I did laundry, swept the patio, and practiced the guitar. I was running low on groceries,but seemed to have a lot of breakfast food. I had breakfast, again, for lunch. 

Friendly Goats

I spent most of the afternoon working on my painting. I didn't like some of the colors I had chosen and needed to paint over them. I had hoped to finish the painting, but it would take at least another day.

Dinner was a tuna kebab with a small potato and salad. The tuna was the last protein I had in the freezer. I could get by for a few more days on pasta and canned goods, but it was time for a grocery run. I was running low on lettuce, which was hard to get in town.

After dinner, I mended a net bag while listening to a podcast and then chatted with Matt while trying to write, a somewhat confusing multitasking process. New corona virus cases were up to 1,515 in the country of Mexico and an accumulated total of 96 for the state of Nayarit. The local food pantry had delivered care packages to 350 needy families. Volunteers had purchased two tons of beans.

May 2, 2020

Neighborhood Chapel

It was Saturday. Day 46. Not that Saturday was different from any other day in quarantine. Not that the days didn't run together in La Cruz under normal circumstances. Usually, the only thing that marked a Saturday was that there might be a good band playing at the Treehouse Bar that night. Under quarantine, I looked forward to Tatewari's live stream that evening. The April 27^th show that I had planned for Matt and I to attend together had been canceled. Now, we would watch them on the internet from two time zones apart.

Lichen on a Post

Dating someone new was always delicate. Doing it while locked down in separate countries was a strange, virtual experience. We lived alone and had more interaction with each other than with anyone else. It felt both oddly intimate and frustratingly distant. I couldn't know if the relationship would survive actual contact but I was glad for his virtual company during this time when life had been put on pause.

I didn't want to get up. It felt like a nerve was pinched in my hip. It was already 72 degrees when I got up and I was slow getting started. I decided to take a walk in the hills, but made it a bit shorter than usual so that I could still return before the net. It was a mundane walk. The fierce guard dog that usually threatened to take my head off seemed to be getting used to me. He still barked, but he was no longer snarling and wagged his tail when I took his picture. A little further down the road, a friendly border collie barreled into me in an attempt to keep his two companions away from me. He always protected me from the other dogs on that property. A litter of black and white puppies frolicked in the driveway across the road. One of German shepherds that usually loudly protested my passing from the roof ignored me completely as I passed him sitting outside the gate. The scenery might have been dull but the dogs were always interesting.

Fierce Guard Dog

Back at Casa Bliss, I listened to the net, made French toast out of stale oatmeal bread, and sat down to write after breakfast. I practiced the guitar and tried, without success, to convince myself to work on my painting. I read and chatted with friends instead. By 15:00, I couldn't keep my eyes open and I took a two-hour nap.

When I woke up, Cherie, who was not a fan of masks, was wearing one in the house. Apparently, she had come down with a sore throat and tightness in her chest. She was doing her best to isolate herself upstairs, but we still had to share a kitchen. This set off a storm of feelings. It was, of course, the very thing I had worried about whenever she was here because she had been out and about so much more than I had, including a trip into Jalisco to go to Costco. On the other hand, I truly doubted that she had contracted the corona virus. There were so few active cases in our area that it was highly unlikely that she had encountered one. I knew she felt bad about it. Still, I now felt obligated to stay at home until we had a better handle on the progression of her symptoms. I had planned to go to the supermarket on Monday, but now felt a responsibility to stay in until we determined that Cherie only had a cold.

I had purchased a thermometer for just such a scenario and Cherie took her temperature. It was slightly below normal, which was reassuring. She wasn't coughing, also a good sign. I had ordered N95 masks from Amazon the day before after my original order from Claroshop had failed to ship for two weeks. They were due to arrive on Tuesday. I resolved to wait at least until I received the masks before venturing out.

It occurred to me that this was a good reason to order groceries for delivery and I spent a good hour while Cherie was in the kitchen putting together my order from La Comer. They had all kinds of things that I had been unable to find locally, including Lysol wipes which even they hadn't carried the month before. I was quite excited about my order until I discovered that they would not deliver to our location. I was a little crushed by that. My meager dinner of a tuna brochette and a quesadilla did little to cheer me up.

Tatewari was streaming live from the roof of the Groove House Studio at 20:00 and that had a more positive effect on my mood. Matt and I watched it together, from afar. He was getting to see most of the bands I had planned to take him to see over the internet. After the show, I finished a blog post and then watched a little Netflix before bed. I never did get to my painting, but I let that be OK.

May 3, 2020

Sunday, day 47. I never managed to sleep in as long as I wanted to on Sunday morning, but I lounged in bed, looking at Facebook and dozing, until 9:30. Sunday was a day I combed out and rebraided my two-foot long pigtail. That always took some time. When Cherie was clear of the kitchen, I came out and made pancakes, washing my hands after I touched anything. I knew she had wiped things down, but couldn't be sure she had gotten everything like the lighter for the stove. I normally put the dry dishes away first thing in the morning but, this day, I left them in the rack. I knew she had touched those.

Cheesy N95 Mask

I practiced the guitar after breakfast and then sat down to write. Someone rang the doorbell. It was my Amazon delivery with the masks, two days early. That was a very pleasant surprise after the poor performance of my first order from Claroshop. The masks were N95 material, but small and completely unshaped. They came with a tiny length of elastic that wasn't even tied in a knot. I was rather disappointed, but also happy to see that, whatever their shortcomings, they did fasten around the head and not over the ears. They would stay on and not give me a headache.

I baked another loaf of soda bread in the afternoon and did some more work on my painting. It would have been finished except that I didn't like one of the colors I had used in the sky. I wanted to go back over it with something less purple.

I ate the last tuna brochette with soda bread and canned tortilla soup for dinner. The Campbell's tortilla soup was a disappointment. There wasn't a shred of chicken in it. It was more like chile broth than anything else. I had the last little bit of ice cream for dessert. I was going to have to do without it going forward. I had only gained a couple of pounds,but my weight was headed in the wrong direction.

As of Sunday night, the official total of corona virus cases in Mexico to date was 23,471. Nayarit had seen 115 cases. There were only four active cases in our county. Small as these numbers seemed in comparison to the tally in the United States, it was clear that new cases had not peaked. The new estimate was for additional cases to peak on May 6^th. I wasn't holding my breath.