This was our earliest return trip to Zihua. We arrived on the 10th with 350 pounds of luggage and a couple of early objectives.
- We have a new 2 bedroom casa that we’ll be living in full-time and we needed to set it up.
- We are planning to import products into Mexico and wanted to get here well in advance of high season to get a jump on the process.
- Prepare Casa de Ali for our 2019-2020 guests
- To renew Ali’s Mexican residency
A Quick Recap:
For our new casa we needed to purchase living room furniture and beds, kitchen appliances, a washing machine, and more. We’re one month in and we feel that in another couple weeks it will be move-in ready. There isn’t an Office Depot or Staples here where you can just buy an office desk. You have to find a carpenter to make it. Same for a tv stand and king size bed frames. Nothing moves quickly in Zihua!
For Casa de Ali we have done a lot of cleaning up. We gave the entire casa a deep clean and did some re-training with our housekeeper. We touch-up painted the entire casa and foyer. We worked on the shower head in the master bath, and replaced the toilet seat in the second bath. We fixed one of our kitchen stools and repaired the microwave. We also replaced the speed controls on the bedroom and living room ceiling fans. Lastly, we put in a sliding window above the bar and purchased a washer / dryer combo. Oh ya, and we added a WiFi extender!
Our new window above the bar 
Fancy new washer / dryer combo
I brought an old Samsung phone down from the States and a Mexican friend gave me a sim card with a local phone number. At Telcel I paid 150MXN and that gives me 26 days of phone calls anywhere in North America as well as messaging.
Mexico’s Independence Day was on Monday, September 16th. We were told that there’s some good celebrating the previous night at midnight, but that’s way past our bedtime. We did go down to Centro and watched the 8am military parade.
Started my daily Spanish lessons again: 5 days a week for one hour per day costs 900MXN for the week. Ali also started going two days a week.
I was able to surf twice off of Playa La Madera in front of the casa. Up until about November the weather provides some pretty big waves for surfing. Being in the bay the waves are still probably pretty weak for “real” surfers, but it provides a nice challenge for me.
Along with the waves it rained a lot! We had several days where we received rain throughout the day. And almost every day it rained at some point during the night. Tropical Storm Narda came in the last couple days of the month. We received a good deal of rain, but outside of that it didn’t affect us at all. Again, the bay seems to protect us from most of the weather coming from the ocean.
With the rain comes the mosquitoes. They’re annoying, but we cannot be defeated. A can of “OFF” is never far away in the casa.
We watched Ad Astra (English with spanish subtitles), the Brad Pitt movie, at our local Cinemex theater. Two tickets for 52MXN each. For 52MXN we’ll watch about anything! The first week of October we were able to catch the new Joker movie, too.
One Friday night after dinner and drinks in Centro we were heading back along the malećon to the casa when we saw sea turtles lay eggs on Playa Principal in Centro and Playa La Madera in front of the casa. The marina posted guards to protect the sea turtles and eggs, and we felt fortunate to be part of a small group of people that happened to pass by and see this.
October started pretty interesting when on the 1st I received my determination letter from the IRS recognizing our new nonprofit, Global Impact Homes. In February we will be taking a group of volunteers to Peru. We’re building a classroom for a small village near Iquitos on the Amazon.
Ali is still trying to finish off her residency renewal. It’s always a process, but we think it’s almost over. She was approved to renew her temporary for three more years, and then she’ll be able to roll over into her permanent residency. Fingers crossed that she’s able to pick up her new residency card next week!
The first Saturday in October also saw the first cruise ship in Zihua in three years. More on that another time.
We’re excited to see our first guests of the season here in a couple weeks, too!