house? pretty much check. car? check. surfboard? check. now that the holy trinity is more or less sorted, we have finally started (resumed?) our lives as beach bums. we haven’t done much work on the house at all, but we sure have been doing some serious work on our tans. the surf has been small to non-existent so instead we have been lounging around and catching some waves on our boogie board instead. actually, nayou has been doing most of the catching. brenda and i have been doing the ooh-ing and aah-ing. we finally captured some of the boogie magic on video to share with the world in all its glory:
there was also an unfortunate incident with my board shorts which nayou dutifully immortalised with his digital camera.
in other news, we’ve started the sweet/sad friendship cycle of the transient wanderers with two really cool ladies from england – lucy and liz. we met them a couple of weeks ago and have been doing lots of hanging out since. they are leaving next week which is super sad, but it sure has been nice having partners in crime! oh, and nayou took this photo:
so yes, its good to be back in hardcore chill mode. the days are already all melding together, and i have trouble remembering what day of the week it is lately 🙂
its hard to think that we’ve already been in sayulita for three weeks already! in many ways it feels like our time here is just starting now. our first week was a bit stressful because there was a mix up with our accommodation. originally we had secured a place for a month through a friend of ours. he was moving out of his place so we were taking over. our friend had told his landlord manuel that a couple with a young child would be moving in. through just sheer coincidence, the day before we arrived another young couple with a child spoke with manuel and paid a deposit to rent his place for a few months. of course manuel thought the couple was us, so he promised it to them. so when we arrived, all travel weary and ready to relax, we found that we needed to find another place to live within a week. oops.
at least for that first week we were able to enjoy an outdoor kitchen and dining room 🙂
of course as luck would have it february is the busiest month in sayulita so finding accommodation is not an easy task. we got our hustle on the mexican way and drove around asking people if they knew of any places that were available. we managed to find a couple of leads but nothing really jumped out at us. this was even after raising the amount of rent we were willing to pay by a considerable margin. the good news was that at least we weren’t going to be homeless. the bad news would be that we would have to live in a sub-par place for a month and then move again in march.
six days before we had to move out, manuel spoke with us and told us that he owned the house across the street from where we were staying. he offered to show it to us so of course we said yes. he took us across the road and my instant reaction was “uh uh, no way”. while the place definitely had potential, it hadn’t been lived in for over a year and needed a lot of work. still, both brenda and i thought it could be a nice two bedroom with some work. plus it had a big garden out the back which was cool too. manuel knew it was a ramshackle place and offered to rent it to us for very cheap.
after we saw the house we went to play at the beach. we were discussing our various housing options and brenda hit upon the bright idea of offering to fix up manuel’s house in exchange for rent. initially i was against it but after thinking about the fun things we could do with the place the idea slowly grew on me. when we floated to idea to manuel he was all for it. so over those next six days we had the painters, the carpenters, the plumbers and the electricians in, plus the telmex people to hook up internet. it was nothing short of a miracle to see all of these people come in and get their jobs done in such a short amount of time! not only that but we got ourselves a king size mattress delivered the day we moved in! i’m still on awe over how much sleeping space we have. its so luxurious!
so our days since we moved into the house has usually consisted of some beach time followed by some serious home improvement time. we’ve become very familiar with the layout of our closest home depot and also made many trips to (and i hate to say it) walmart and costco to get the essentials. its been a LOT of work, but also super fun. and the best part is that the house is starting to look really homey 🙂
here is our messy kitchen. hopefully it won’t be this was for much longer!
we had a custom wood base made for a day bed we’re putting in. we painted it ourselves and are currently in the process of getting the top cushion made for us. i can’t wait until we can chillax properly on this thing. its going to be so awesome!
there has been a fair amount of this going on. nayou has been a good help (when he wants to be) with all of this.
this is the current state of our bedroom. brenda put some curtains in and it really made the whole room so much cosier.
in between all of this madness we have also managed to get some other things done too! i’ve started teaching yoga twice a week at paraiso yoga and brenda has started a green juice bar at the weekly farmers market. the market used to be this half-assed thing when we were here before but now its a big proper event with lots of amazing stalls. last friday was her second time doing it and she has already been chosen as the star stall in the market’s newsletter!
we’ve been going to the beach every day. nayou is an absolute rockstar in the ocean, jumping over and around waves like nobody’s business. i bought him a boogie board the other day and he has been catching waves too! its nice to go during low tide as the waves are very gentle but still have enough boost to carry him long distances. i keep on forgetting to bring the camera to the beach but one of these days i’ll get some footage of him doing his thing.
instead, here is a short clip of the nayoubizzle and his friend juan antonio having a water fight outside our house. nayou and juan antonio used to play together when we lived here three years ago. they were reunited today after all this time and picked up right where they left off. nayou started picking up some spanish words pretty quickly too so hopefully this will be the beginning of something regular.
aaaand, finally some random photos from brenda’s hipstamatic because they’re purrrty.
this one was taken at burrito revolucion’s new location. its not as nice as the previous digs, but their burritos are still the best in the world!
hola hola nuestros amigos! its been a long time, but we’re back. i wonder if anyone’s still actually reading this creaky old blog anymore, but i’m going to start posting again anyway. after an amazing, busy, family-and-friend filled six weeks in various and sundry locales we are back in sayulita for another round of beach bumming. much has happened since we left africa, but i’m going to save that for another post which may or may not happen. i may just have to upload some photos and let them speak for themselves.
we’ve been in sayulita for five days now and are starting to get back into the groove of things. nayou is super happy to be back at the beach, and we have been gorging ourselves on watermelon, mangoes and guacamole. we are going to be moving into our proper home next friday which is exciting. there is a whole story behind our accommodations which i will also save for another post, which will definitely happen. in the meantime, here are some photos (pitifully few, i know) we have taken since we arrived.
there are not a lot of japanese people in mexico. or at least around sayulita. in the nine months that we have been here, i have only met one other person from japan! that all changed when we went up to san blas and had the good fortune of meeting kazu and hiro. these guys are sponsoredsurfers travelling from california down to panama with the intent of catching as many waves as possible on the way. i hit it off with them immediately and invited them to come and stay with us in sayulita. a couple of days later they showed up and we have spent the last week hanging out.
having visitors is always cool because i get to see sayulita through a fresh set of eyes. i was once again reminded of how special it is, and how lucky we are to have spent time in a place like this. i hope that we can come back soon, permanently or otherwise!
hiro brought his water-proof digital camera and snapped these photos of us surfing. brenda and i have been talking about photographing each other in the water for months, so it was like a dream come true. i think the photo of brenda captures everything that is cool about surfing. just look at the smile on her face!
i enjoyed hanging out with hiro and kazu a lot. i haven’t really had a chance to hang with guys much out here for one reason or another, so having some “man time” was very refreshing. plus being able to speak japanese was cool too!
we introduced them to guacamole and they shared their stash of quality japanese rice. these guys have been hauling a 5kg (11lb) bag of rice from japan with them along with their backpacks and surfboards. now thats dedication.
hiro and kazu both hail from osaka, although hiro now lives in miyazaki. hiro’s descriptions and photos of miyazaki have made us very keen to go and visit. it more or less sounds like a japanese version of sayulita, complete with tropical weather, nice surf and plenty of nature. apparently you can make a good living there teaching english too! it has got brenda and i thinking and scheming…
as usual there was lots of hanging out at the beach. we had an even balance of great surf days and mellow rest days.
staying sober was not necessarily our forte.
staying clothed is definitely not nayou’s forte. this kid can barely keep his shirt on for the five minute drive to the beach. and we’ve given up on pants at this point.
kazu and hiro left this morning to continue their trek south. even though we’ve only known each other for a short (but intense) while, i know that we are going to be hanging out with these two sometime, someplace in the future.
their departure also marks the end of our stay in sayulita. from here on out we are going to be running errands and getting rid of our stuff in preparation for ours. only ten more days to go. eek!
while we were in san blas i had the good fortune of meeting two very cool japanese guys – kazu and hiro – who are travelling through mexico. we hit it off instantly and i ended up inviting them to come and stay with us in sayulita. they arrived almost a week ago and have been staying with us since. however, our adventures with them is for another post.
i wanted to share this set of photos that hiro took. they were taken in front of a bare wall of the sayulita recycling center. ever since brenda first laid eyes on this wall she has been wanting to beautify it, so she made this crazy cool fish out of old wood and bottle caps. the story of the fish is also something that she will share in another post.
we don’t have very many family photos so having an extra person as a shutterbug is so nice. especially when that person has a great eye like hiro does!
the next town up from sayulita is a sleepy place called san francisco. to avoid confusion, everyone refers to it as san pancho. its a really cute bohemian sort of a place, complete with a montessori school, a polo field and a museum promoting recycling. nice beach too!
approximately once a month there is a lucha libre in the main plaza of san pancho. i have been chomping at the bit to go for many, many months now but for one reason or another it never worked out. so when i heard that there was another one happening last week i had to go.
omar, one of the neighbourhood gang, is also a big lucha libre fan and he was all psyched up for it the day before. he came over wearing his mask and even gave his old one to nayou!
we are getting a lot of mileage out of the mask. nayou likes to terrorise everyone with his fierceness.
we arrived early so nayou would have a chance to see some of it, but he was more interested in the guy selling time on his trampoline.
this guy also had what might be the world’s most precarious merry-go-round. would you put your child on this thing?
brenda took our little boy home early and i stayed on with a group of crazy québécois that we met in sayulita. this is vincent, who is one of the most energetic people i have ever met. he is, in both looks and behaviour, what i imagine a young anthony keidis was like back in the day.
the fights themselves were everything i imagined them to be, but better. there was a total of three fights, all fought by the same four guys (just different costumes). their level of fitness and agility was a true marvel, and even though they fake and/or exaggerate the pain they are feeling, you know that a lot of it is real. especially when they start wrestling out of the ring on the concrete. sometimes one will jump off the ropes onto another fighter outside the ring (usually for saying unspeakable things about his mother). watching them tumble onto the cold hard pavement was enough to make everyone wince.
in between fights it was a free-for-all, with all the kids getting up and emulating what they just saw.
these two very drunk masked girls from the audience jumped in as well and were subsequently forced into a real match by everyone.
all the wrestlers and emcees had the dirtiest mouths imaginable, much to the delight of all the ten year old boys in the audience (and me). none of the adults seemed to mind, so perhaps the wrestling matches are the one exception where you can run your mouth off without getting into trouble? there was also a lot of slapstick humour, usually involving genitalia in the face. of course we all thought it was hilarious.
the costumes were pretty special too.
the lucha libre did not let me down. i am so glad i went and am bummed that i’m probably not going to get a chance to go again before we leave!
as usual we’ve been slack with our blog updates. there are a bunch of photos that i have been meaning to post for a while but haven’t had the chance to, so this will be the post where you get to see them all!
nayou is at the stage now where he is dirty all the time. we have to bathe him twice a day – once for each time he goes to sleep – and change his clothes just as often. i remember stories of my aunt adele hosing her two kids off in the backyard when they needed a clean. usually these stories were related with a touch of mock horror, but now i can totally relate. in fact, we are proudly following in her footsteps! usually when we come home for his afternoon nap, we let him loose on the front porch with the hose. i like to think it fosters independence 😉
it used to be that we would head down to the beach after nayou’s nap, but these days we usually end up hanging out at home with the neighbourhood kids. this group are a serious godsend as they entertain each other for hours. watching them play and take care of each other is so cool. nayou is slowly getting better at the whole sharing thing, and i’m sure that he is learning a lot from these kids.
these two pics were taken by ximena, the older girl in the photos above. for some reason i find them hilarious and totally adorable. nayou is using crying as a tool to try and get his way, which is what is happening here. when that lower lip starts jutting out, beware!
a couple more random shots:
oh yeah and we went on another one of darrien’s awesome cruises a few weeks ago.
and brenda took nayou to visit the land that we were (and kind of still are) interested in buying for our earthship. our boy got into the spirit of things in full expedition gear. note the bag of toys in his hand. we can’t leave the house without some sort of container stuffed full of his things. they don’t have to necessarily be toys – occasionally we’ll leave with a handful of his underwear too.
check out his big bag in this photo (if you can take your eyes off his golden mullet):
nayou still can’t swim yet, but he is very comfortable in the waves even when they break over his head. he’s kind of into surfboards, but mostly he likes to splash around in places where his feet can barely touch the sand.
on monday we are headed off to san blas with some friends for a couple of days. our friend risa is from there and so we’re going to get a taste of the local life up there. not to mention the surf!
