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"Life in Mexico"
Puerto Morelos Beach Easter 2014
We are currently in the calm before the storm and I am not talking about hurricane season. I am talking about Semana Santa (Easter week). Semana Santa or Pascua is possibly the most celebrated holiday in our little Mexican town of Puerto Morelos. With about eight-nine percent of Mexicans being Catholic, Semana Santa is a religious holiday, but even more important to most, it is a family holiday. Schools and businesses are often closed for up to two weeks and many Mexican families take this time to go on holiday. Here in Puerto Morelos, that means the beaches are full of people, but don’t worry, we have enough beach for everyone.
The Stations of the Cross in Puerto Morelos
Observances of Easter begin on the Thursday with a mass that mainly focuses on offerings of peace. On the morning of Good Friday, Viernes Santo, you can often see a recreation of the Via Crucis (the Way of the Cross). Since we moved here, the lot beside our house has been fortunate enough to be one of the stations of the cross. Every Good Friday we get to see the recreation of Christ carrying the cross through the streets of Puerto Morelos. This is followed by a mass. There are masses again on Saturday, to celebrate the Solemn Vigil and on Sunday, to celebrate the Domingo de Gloria.
When we first moved to Mexico thirteen years ago, there was not an Easter egg, bunny or bonnet to be found. Slowly over the years, as with Christmas and Halloween, we are seeing the U.S.A./Canadian style of holiday traditions creep into Mexican culture. Although I have still not seen a chocolate bunny here, you now see chocolate eggs and a few decorations. Here in Puerto Morelos an annual Easter Egg hunt is held in the square for the local kids courtesy of Frank Reams and some of the local ex-pats.
But the real joy for Mexicans during Semana Santa is the time they get to spend with their families. And what better place to do that, than at the beach. Families from all over the country flock to Puerto Morelos to enjoy a slice of the Caribbean.
Feliz Semana Santa a todo!
What better way to start the weekend off than with a beautiful, golden sunrise from Puerto Morelos. ENJOY!
Hope you have a wonderful weekend.
GoPro time lapse video by Robert Birce
Beautiful, graceful and deadly. The Red Lionfish (Pterois Volitans) should not be in our waters. Known for their ornate beauty and venomous spines, lionfish are native to the coral reefs of the South Pacific, not the Atlantic Ocean or the Caribbean Sea.
The introduction of this creature to our waters appears to have happened in 1992 when Hurricane Andrew destroyed an aquarium in southern Florida, releasing six lionfish into Biscayne Bay. In addition to this, it is thought that many more fish may have been released into waters off the U.S. coast by unhappy aquarium enthusiasts.
Lionfish in our area are termed an invasive species. There are two large problems with these fish, due to their venomous spines they have a lack of predictors and they are voracious eaters dinning on the smaller fish in the sea, endangering many species. They have caused such a decrease in marine life in some areas that extreme measures have been taken to try and get rid of them. One marine park in Roatan, Honduras even tried to train sharks to feed on the lionfish to try to decrease their numbers. Here in Puerto Morelos we have a rule, see a lionfish, kill a lionfish. It is the only way we can protect our reef.
Lionfish don’t interact well with people either. Their spins, although not deadly, can cause lots of nasty symptoms when touched. The good news is lionfish spines are used defensively, not offensively. If you don’t touch them, they won’t touch you. Still, these are not fun fish….unless you are eating them. They are yummy! And the best thing we can do to get rid of this invasive species is to dine on them.
On the next Salsa & Sun we will start a new feature called “Restaurant Recipes” where one of our favourite chefs will teach you how to cook lionfish.
The smart phone is part of our daily lives. Having one in Mexico makes things a lot easier. Even a simple trip to the grocery store goes more smoothly with a loaded phone in hand. Next to social media apps, these are the ones that we have found the most useful while living and traveling in Mexico.
XE Currency Converter
Cost: Free
With the constant change in the pesos to dollar exchange rate, it is nice to know what you are actually spending.
Spanish Dictionary and Translator
Cost: Fee
This app, by Curiosity Media, doesn’t have every word in it, and falls a bit short of a good old Webster, but it does the trick in a pinch. Not only does it show you the written word, it will conjugate the verb for you and play the translation so you can hear the pronunciation. The app has a few games on it to help you learn Spanish, plus a word of the day feature to remind you to keep working on your language skills.
Google Translate (World Lens)
Cost: Free
This app called “World Lens”(was owned by Quest Visual but has now been bought by Google) allows you to point the camera on your smart phone at any printed material and it will translate it for you into another language. It is best for signs or labels. It is not really meant for documents. I have the Spanish/English extension downloaded. It is not perfect, but this app has come along way. Now that Google owns them, they have been incorporated into their Google Translate app on iTunes, but it is still called “World Lens” on Google Play.
Units Plus
Cost: Free
“Units Plus Best Unit & Currency Converter” is a handy metric to imperial conversion to have. It converts meters to feet or temperatures from Celsius to Fahrenheit. This app converts length, area, volume, speed, weight, time, temperature and more. Handy for everything from cooking to renting a 200 square meter apartment. It does have a currency converter on it as well, but I personally prefer XE Currency Converter.
Skype
Cost: Free to Cheap
We no longer have a phone in our house. We rely on our cell phones for local calls, but for long distance to Canada or the USA we use Skype. Pronounced sky-pee in Spanish. Skype to Skype calls are free. Or you can use Skype to a land line or cell for only pennies a minute.
All of these apps are available for both Andriod and Apple products. What are you favourite apps? We would like to hear about them. Add them to the comments at the top of the post.
Recently we had friends staying with us that couldn’t believe how close we live to nature here in Puerto Morelos. For those of you not familiar with PoMo, we are a thin strip of land located between the Caribbean Sea and the mangrove. The mangrove or el manglar is a living, breathing, vibrant area filled with trees, plants and plenty of wildlife. Our home is only steps from the beach but it is even closer to the mangrove which gives us an amazing opportunity to see lots of birds and other animals.
The wildlife usually stays pretty close to home in the mangrove, but the other day we had a visitor in our garbage can. Now a raccoon trapped in your trash can may not be a big deal for some people, but we are a couple of city kids, so we were a little perplexed. Luckily a friend from Montreal had the stunning idea of just putting a palm branch into the trash can, so the little fellow ran up, out and back to the mangrove.
Crocodile Hanging in Puerto Morelos
The other day on a walk to our local supermarket we came across this happy fellow, sunning himself on one of the mangrove viewing points. He or she, we didn’t get close enough to find out, must be quite young as he was only about five feet long. He didn’t move a muscle, so we got a chance to take a good long look at him. Very cool. “Old school technology”as Rob calls it. When we passed back the same way about an hour later he was still in the same place still working on his tan. Our friends that had stayed with us just the week before had really wanted to see a crocodile, so this post is for them.
This is our Lady of Guadalupe who guards the front door to our home.
December 12th is the Dia de la Virgen de Guadalupe. Derived from the catholic religion, Our Lady of Guadalupe or the Virgin of Guadalupe is seen everywhere in Mexico from candles in people’s windows to statues on cabbies dashboards to full alters in front of homes. Some believe her to be a darker skinned version of the Madonna or the Virgin Mary, who was first introduced to the culture by Cortez. While other believe that she was a vision seen by a Catholic clergymen in the 16th century.
Leading up to December 12th the “Guadalupeans” show their devotions to the virgin by praying, biking, running, walking and illuminating their home alters. In central Mexico those that worship Our Lady of Guadalupe make a pilgrimage to the Basílica of Guadalupe in Mexico City. People in the Yucatan that do not have resources or time to do this so they show their devotion through long, grueling journeys.
On our most recent trip to Valladolid we saw dozens of groups of young men and a few girls biking through the city.
We then returned to Puerto Morelos to find a parade leading to our own church right past the square. On December 12th devotees will flock to churches and homes throughout the country for masses. The mass will be followed by a celebration and as always in Mexico, a large meal. The tale of Guadalupe runs deep within the Mexican culture and there have been many books written about it for children and adults alike. For the quickie version of the tale, check out Wikipedia or Smart History. They tell very two different stories.
Communication and entertainment are essential when traveling through Mexico, especially in an RV. Here are a few hints and tips to know while on the go.
Entertainment: Unless you are carrying a satellite dish (which we do not) you can pretty much forget about TV in Mexico. Your over the air signal will only pick up a few poor Spanish language signals.
We do carry a portable Sirius/XM satellite radio with us. It has been invaluable in many cases. The year that Hurricane Wilma hit we would have driven right into the eye of the storm if we had not had our radio. We also have an iPod touch which we download pod casts to help entertain us on the long drive. Plus we carry a hard drive of movies to watch in the evenings on our computer or through our TV.
Communication: Mexican cell phones are cheap and easy to get. You can buy a basic Telcel phone with $100mxp credit on it at any OXXO convenience store for about $300-$400mxp, this will allow you to talk and text.
Or you can pick up a Telcel chip for about $150mxp and put it into your unlocked North American phone. A couple of things to keep in mind when buying a phone. Your area code will be wherever you buy the phone and you eventually will need to go into a Telcel office to registrar your phone/chip with your passport to get rid of that annoying recording that you get every time you make a call.
At Telcel offices in Mexico you can also buy a USB modem (Módems USB) that holds a chip and allows you to buy data packages so that you can surf on the 3G network via your laptop. This works great if you happen to be camping in an area where there is good cell service. We have found this extremely handy and have even watched football games over our stick. We carry a smart phone that takes the same chip, so we just switch the chip between our smartphone and the USB stick as needed.
Coming up next…
Crossing the Border
There are quite a few big differences between Mexican campgrounds and your standard North American campgrounds. Camping in Mexico offers challenges you wouldn’t think of north of the border. Here are a few hints and tips that we have found helpful in our 13 years.
Water Pressure: There usually is very little water pressure in Mexican campgrounds, certainly not enough for a good shower. Our work around is to fill our tank up with water and use our own pump. Simple, but it works. This water is not potable, so be sure to stock up on bottled water.
No Air Conditioning: You know that nice big air conditioner you have on the top of your unit, get used to just looking at it in lust on those hot nights because that is all it is good for. If you were to run it at most places you may take out the power to the whole town. You may be plugged into 120 volts, but most places do not have the amperage to run your unit. We always carry two fans, one 120 volt and another 12 volt that plugs into our battery power for those inevitable nights we end up parking at a Pemex.
Electricity: Electricity is dodgy at best in most campgrounds. There are three things that we recommend carrying with you. One is an electrical meter that you can plugin inside your unit. This will show you how many volts you are at and let you know if you have enough power to run your microwave. You may find it entertaining to watch as your voltage meter drops from 120v to 106v when you hit start on your oven. Don’t even think about using your toaster at the same time as microwave, you will pop a breaker for sure!
The other thing that we have frequently run into is reverse polarity. In the past we have plugged in our trailer to find that the metal frame becomes a huge conductor giving you a shock every time you get into your trailer. A work around for this is to use your jumper cables to ground your unit by hooking them to the back bumper and a ground pole. We usually carry an electricity tester that tells us when to expect this.
The third thing we bring along is a surge protector. You can plug your entire unit into this to protect you from those inevitable spikes and brown outs in the not so stable power you can expect.
The truck and trailer are packed. We are on the road in the US, soon to cross into Mexico. We will be posting our trip whenever possible. You can look forward to seeing our trip adventures here along with details on our route. We will include gas, tolls and camping costs for you adventurers out there who want to visit Mexico by vehicle.
Check back here for our updates!
We can’t imagine what it would be like to use this wheelchair ramp in San Miguel de Allende. Who were the brilliant engineers behind this? Talk about your wild ride!
Have a safe and happy weekend.
