The Hurricane of Craziness!

WOW!  What a crazy first few days here in Cozumel Mexico!

We really didn’t know what to expect when we first landed here.  We had so many questions running thru our minds:  Can we walk all our luggage to the apartment from airport?, What will the apartment be like?, How will we get around the island?, Where can we buy all things to furnish our apartment? , Would we die from the heat?(very high probability)  Our heads were spinning!

Since everything we owned were in suitcases we couldn’t really get a lot of pictures for our first post.  So we’ll try and paint the best “word pictures” we can.

Sunday:   At a hotel in San Francisco our alarms scream at 3:00am.  BRU-TAL.  Nobody should have ANY reason to be up this early!  But if you need to catch a 6:00am flight its not optional.  And thanks to a very friendly Lyft driver, we had a our ride to the airport.
Nothing to comment on at the airport except for two important events.
1.   All our bags were under 50lbs.  We checked two bags each.  This is notable because       the airline in Des Moines, Iowa made us open all our bags and move stuff around in front of 30-40 other people because we were 1.5lb over.  We learned and adapted!  PHEW!

2.  This has not been settled between us, but, ONE of us was pretty sure we saw Rob Kardashian catching a flight to LA.  We didn’t want to get super creepy and try and take a picture.  But it REEEEEEEEALY looked like him.  Sad there is no way to confirm or deny this rumor but it will give us something to argue about when we are bored.

 

The flights went well.  Sadly there was a medical emergency on the flight from Dallas to Cozumel.  It was a little scary as they started asking for doctors.  Once we landed everyone remained seated while the emergency crew came and treated the person.   We felt really bad for them, what a way to start your vacation!  I hope that everyone ended up OK.

 

After a long wait for our bags and meeting a drug sniffing dog and its handler that will soon be our neighbors, we set out for our new apartment.

Here is map of the distance we had to walk.  It wasn’t too bad, but the heat and humidity made it worse.  Along with the plethora of luggage that contained most of our worldly possessions.

Our landlords were waiting for us when we arrived.  Their names are Silvia & Renan.  Some of the nicest people you could ever meet.  They made us feel right at home.  Well, if your home is a small, white, nearly empty cement box.  While the apartment was larger that we had anticipated, it was a little hard to wrap our minds around having NOTHING in the way of furniture, plates, silverware, food, pans, or gas to cook with.  (more on getting gas later).

 

Once Silvia & Renan gave us the run down of how things work, and a few items they needed to do such as a new faucet in the bathroom sink, light above the sink, and painting the entire apartment (Brandi’s choice for color, yay for Brandi), we had to get to work filling the space.  First we met one of our neighbors named Carina.  She gave us the box of stuff the previous tenants had saved for us.  It contained all kinds of great goodies and champagne!  Our favorite of all the items was the DSL modem so we could have INTERNET!

 

 

We caught a cab (costs about 40 pesos to get around town) to one of the local stores named Chedraui.  We picked up sheets, towels, and some tortillas, granola bars, Coffee, cheese, and hash brown patties(random).  We ate at a nice restaurant named Jeanies and headed home.
Our first night was a little rough.  The previous tenants said they loved the bed, since it was “firm”.  I don’t think that was the correct term to describe it.  Maybe, granite, steel, or concrete slab would be more appropriate.  AND it was a full size mattress.  So that is taking some adjustment.

 

Monday:  After the granola bar brunch we unpacked our luggage which felt really good.  Starting to feel like home.  Next we went to Same Club and purchased a Futon, shelving unit, and a TV.  Then walked to the store next door which was kinda like the Mexican Walmart, and picked up tons more stuff such as pots, pans, silverware, and all the things you need at home.  We went back to the apartment to wait for the delivery from Sams at 5:00pm.  We ran into Carina again, who greeted us with Pan (mexican pastries) she had purchased for us from the Pan man who rides his bike down the street clapping (to let you know he’s in the neighborhood) and she laughed when I said it will be delivered at 5:00.  She reminded me we live in Mexico now, and I should of also confirmed the day, month and year.  Haha. Lesson learned!  So 5:00 didn’t happen, but about 7:30 they showed up, soon after our tenant left with the maintenance man to give us a new faucet and light in the bathroom.  It felt great to setup this stuff too!  We were pretty hungry by now and quickly realized that we had no way to cook anything we bought.  Brandi was very inventive and made a basic quesadilla using a toaster.  Yes, I said a toaster.  Worked pretty well for the hash brown patties too!

 

Tuesday:   I haven’t mentioned yet how HOT it is here.  We are really having to adapt to this heat.  Usual in the 90s with humidity in the 80% range.  Brandi took a shower and adjusted the shower head only to have it fall off in her hand.  There was nothing we could do about it at the moment and we had a pending brunch date so Brandi took a shower with what we can liken to a cold garden hose shooting out of the pipe.

Silvia and Renan fixed it, so we were quickly back to taking cold showers.

After that we had our brunch date with another new neighbor who goes to the english congregation named Morgan, he has been here for 11 years.  He took us to a place called Mission which is well known for good breakfast in his Vocho  (VW Bug). 76 pesos gets you coffee, juice, and anything off the breakfast menu.  We talked for a very long time with Morgan.  He gave us a great amount of helpful info that will help us make the needed adjustments.  It was a great reminder of how different things really are here.  His best advice was to practice our Fruitage of the Spirit to deal with the new culture as it is very different than ours.  After we ate, he took us to see how to pay the internet bill and to setup a new cell phone.  I really can’t explain how much we appreciated all his help!

Upon return to our apartment we decided to try out getting our gas tank filled.  Here in Cozumel, everyone only has tanks filled with gas to use for cooking, no direct piping to every home.  The tanks are pretty large.  Ours was a 30lb tank, and its on the 2nd floor.  What do we do?  Zeta Man to the rescue!  Every day the Zeta Gas man drives thru the neighborhood with his lil’ jingle playing thru loud speakers.  You have go out and catch him.  He’ll go into your place, disconnect the empty tank throw it on his shoulder and swap with a new one from his truck.  Pretty awesome for around 400 pesos (or $20 usd)!
The only downside is the the song they play.  It REALLY sticks in your head!

Here is a video we took of the truck, unfortunately it turned before it came into view, but you get the idea….

 

(that is the view right outside our apartment door)

He was super nice and my favorite part was his parking break.  Every time he got out, he had to search for a rock on the side of the road to put under his tire.  He said one day he was talking to a lady and forgot about it, and it took off down the road!  You’d think an emergency brake on a truck filled with gas bottles would be a necessity!

There are many other services or goods offered that can be recognized by the sounds they make.  We hope to have more about this in future blogs.

Well that brings you up-to-date!  We’ll try and post more soon.  And once we get our nicer equipment unpacked and ready to use,  we should have better quality images and videos to display.

 

Blog Credits:: Author- Johnathan Paxton; Photography- Brandi Paxton; Videography- Brandi Paxton; Blog Name – Marvin & Emily Loya; Music- Zeta man