How did you spend your Valentines Day?

Valentines Day in Mexico is much the same as in the US, however, when you live aboard a boat full time it has a few differences. It’s very hard to sneak away and get your spouse something as she is always with me. Next every square inch of our 30x15 boat is already filled with stuff and she doesn’t need anything else. Now, I can hear the girls now… jewelry doesn’t take up much space…….. however, Linda doesn’t wear jewelry.

So we mutually decided on a nice dinner, steak and prawns. We also had some business to take care of so we loaded the laptop into the waterproof backpack then into the dinghy and into town to shop and do our internet chores.

We stopped at the carniceria (butcher shop) I asked the butcher for Filet Mignon in my bad Spanish, he smiled and said “se”, he then pulled out a 4 lb filet. I told him I wanted two small steaks, he smiled and told me I had to buy the whole thing, I declined.

After a few more sentences of my bad Spanish he showed me a hunk of beef I’m not sure what part of the animal it was but he cut me a huge steak out of it. The meat was frozen and he put it in a plastic bag which I dropped into the backpack.

Off we went to the internet to take care of a couple of emails, as always these things take longer than planned. What we thought was going to be a couple of minutes turned into a couple of hours. However, we completed our business and started to pack away the laptop, Linda reached into the backpack and removed the meat bag as I turned toward her she was unaware that the meat had thawed and blood was dripping everywhere! It looked like Lizzy Borden had visited the internet café we had blood everywhere! It took us about 10 minutes to clean the place up. The clerk was very happy to see us leave.

Well, with that little incident behind us we continued on to pick up some fresh prawns.

I had seen a couple guys selling flowers alongside the road and being the romantic I am I strolled over and asked him how much the flowers were.

Now after a month of Spanish class you would think that was an easy question, well my Spanish is better but my hearing is worse. I thought the guy said 2 for 50 pesos, what he said was 12 for 50 pesos. So I pointed to the white the red and the purple thinking I would get 6 total. When he bundled up the first dozen of purple I thought this is going to cost me a fortune. Sensing I didn’t understand he smiled and asked “is that enough”, “se” was my response, he got 50 pesos, Linda got flowers and I got major brownie points.

While walking back to the boat we passed a cigar store, now this is a real artesian his family has been making cigars in this little store for three generations, he had leaf right there. With some encouragement from my wife I bought a nice robusto for after dinner. I couldn’t resist. (I think she wants the insurance money).

We returned to the boat and were promptly met by friends who wanted to know where we had been. One of the things about cruising is there is always a party on some boat. Imagine stuffing a dozen of your close friends cheek to cheek in a 6x6 cockpit, then happily stuffing your face with appetizers and consuming several very potent cocktails and everyone talking very loudly at the same time. That’s the standard party.

Well tonight it would be different……..

Apparently it was one of the guy’s birthdays and he thought he should treat himself. We’re all anchored in the lagoon at Barra de Navidad where there is a very swanky resort. (Checkout the Grandbay resort on the net for pics) Rooms start at $400 a night. Apparently everyone was at the top pool already and had been wondering where we were. Well not to miss a party we changed into our swimsuits and headed for the resort, the small marina they have is very spendy, last week a large boat jammed the entrance almost closed, they had a dinghy larger than our boat. They also had a ten million dollar helicopter on the aft deck.

So we strolled into the place liked we owned it, there was the group lounging around the pool sucking down cocktails. Now I said they were at the top pool, they have several pools connected by water slides all surrounded by palm trees and lush plants it’s a very tropical looking place.

However when our group arrived it might have changed a little, imagine a bunch of old guys after a cocktail or two pushing little kids out of the way so we could ride the water slides. Very uncivilized, but it sure was fun……

We then moved the party to the room which was on the top floor of the resort, to say this was the plushest hotel we had been in would be putting it mildly. Our party had gone from being jammed cheek to cheek to sprawling out on large couches, room service that delivered appetizers (we did bring our own booze though, those drinks are expensive).

I noticed Linda’s eyes had a glaze to them and she was staring at the bathroom, a bathtub something she hadn’t been in in a while. The party was going well people were spread all over the room, out on the balcony and one still drooling in the bathroom…..

A bottle of very nice champagne was opened (Perrier Jouet) and the birthday toast was made, and then the whole gang went down to the restaurant for dinner. Linda & I decided to pass on the restaurant and go back to the boat for the surf and turf, the steak had been marinating all day in teriyaki. We did the shrimp scampi style then served them on a bed of salad. Linda smelled her flowers and I smoked my cigar quite an enjoyable evening, it would have very easy to go to bed and call it quits.

However, I had promised my wife music and possibly some dancing. So it’s now 2200 we hop into the dinghy in the dark and head for town about a 10 minute dinghy ride. We arrive at the same time as the rest of the group although it’s size had been cut in half. Seems after paying all that money for a room they wanted to use it and without the rest of us there (we know when we’re not wanted).

Six of us find a table at the Sands hotel, the band has just taken a break but hey it’s two for one cocktail’s, so when in the tropics drink something tropical. I order a Pina Colada, Linda orders mineral water. The waiter of course brings me two drinks (it’s two for one) and the conversation starts. Now we like to people watch like a lot of folks and commenting on them sometimes can be cruel but fun. Our latest victim is a mid forties women who has what looks like a rats nest in her hair but I think she teased it like that, a raspberry colored tee shirt with a rope tied around her ample waist followed by velvet purple very short hot pants, at first I thought she had painted her legs pink and white but it turned out to be tights. As if she knew we were talking about her she strolled over to our table with a hat and asked for a tip it seems she was the lead singer of the band. We explained we had just got here and hadn’t heard any music yet; she smiled and said she would return. Well, the music started and she had a pretty good voice something like a cross between Tina Turner and Janis Joplin.

The drinks flowed and everyone was on the dance floor, now this was an older crowd average age 60 so the dancing was not sedate but not wild. John & Gaye decided to call it a night as it was midnight so we were down to four. The singer broke into a song and Ken hops up and does some funky squat dance over to the dance floor, no one else is up he continues dancing with himself and pointing at the singer, I assumed his wife Dottie would get up and dance with him. She looked over and said he does this every now and again, Ken is now getting wild on the dance floor and the crowd is cheering, a woman leaps out of the crowd with a grin on her face and a look in her eye of “I’m taking you home with me!” She begins to dance with Ken. From the table we can see Ken pointing wildly and without being able to hear I know he’s telling her ”that’s my wife and friends over there” and “I’m not single”, she’s trying to climb on him on the dance floor, the song ends and Ken runs for his seat.

It’s 0100 and the music ends we each climb into our dinghy and head for the boats, just a short distance later we pass a disco that’s rocking, Ken swerves his dinghy in to see what’s going on, the next thing I know we’re all walking thru the door, it’s a 40 peso cover charge and the music is so loud you can’t hear yourself think. Now, the average age of this crowd is 25, they’re all leaping about on the dance floor that has strobe lights, black lights and fake smoke being blown on the dance floor. Ken screams in my ear “come on lets show them how it’s done”. It’s amazing how good you think you are after some drinks. Now Mexican discos are a little different, it’s a live band and they have a tuba!! they’re playing what sounds like polka music on crack, the kids are wrapped around each other and hopping in place. We follow suit and dance until about 0230 (my left hip hurts so bad this morning and I don’t know why, thank God for Advil it’s the old guys drug of choice). We leave the disco and stroll thru the small town stopping at yet another bar where we can hear people laughing, thankfully the bartender tells us we missed last call. We dinghy back to the boats and like small children do donuts around a friends boat to wake them up at almost 3am, we giggle driving off to our own boat with out looking back thinking they won’t know it us.

Hope you all had fun on your Valentines Day.

Love to all Rob & Linda