Windy Week in Xpu-Ha

Weather has been warm and windy and the tides have been high for the whole week. It has slowed down my kayaking although I did mange a few surfing days.

Last  year when Claude and Mags were here they generously provided us with free transportation everywhere. We went to get bottled water, take and pick-up laundry, go grocery shopping, go out for dinner.

This year there are not a lot of cars to haul around everyone in our campground. So we get rides here and there, friends offer to drop off laundry or pick up some groceries. But we only made it out one time to eat at Pizza Leos, our old favorite Friday night out in Chemuyil, a small friendly town about 8 mi away.

A few days ago we needed to do some serious shopping for some meat and fish, so we hitched a ride to Playa with Sigrid. She dropped us off and was spending her day visiting the immigration office as well as shopping.

We shopped at two grocery stores, jumped onto a collectivo to get to Sam’s Club and another big grocery chain, Soriano, We took another short ride back to catch the Playa - Tulum, collectivo to get us back to Xpu-Ha. There is about a half mile walk from the highway back to our camper and believe it or not Sigrid was pulling in the driveway and we got to ride back to camp with her. We bought enough main course provisions to last use for three weeks.

This Friday, Elaine lent me her truck to we could drive to Chemuyil for Pizza night. After eating we always take a walk around town to see what is going on. On our walk I spotted some action at the end of one of the streets.  Off we went to check it out.   It turned out to be a state sponsored recycling program.

People were lined up for blocks with all kinds of trash.

At the end of the line they were weighing the different kinds of trash with fish scales hung from a basketball hoop.

 

Brenda talked to a few people and found out that the folks bring in their recyclables, sorted into plastics, paper, metal and others, and they are weighed. They are given points corresponding to the weight and type of recyclable.

Brenda also provided me with all these pictures from her blog. As usual I forgot my camera.

They then trade those points for food. See the second sign.

They then step over to this table to trade their points for food and staple items.

This is really a great program that teaches the people, and especially the children that everything has value and it is better to recycle and not dump your trash along the Mexican roads or dumps.

We decided that we should also be recycling in our campground and are now going to try to bring in all our Aluminum cans to give to some kid in town the next time to go to Chemuyil.

Two of the Sprinters left on Saturday and by Sunday morning they all were gone. I think their next destination is Belize, then Guatemala, however they alter their plans as they go along. They eventually want to ship their vans from Panama to South America and continue their journey to Tierra del Fuego at the tip of the continent. One of their blogs http://longroadstt.wordpress.com/

Sunday afternoon Doug & Marsha showed up again to stay for one more night, they had driven back to Puerto Morelos to pick up a repaired surfboard.  They are trying to contact their friends to get back together tomorrow. Plans for them the STT group seems to be to camp at Paella Fish Camp south of Tulum for another week.

Monday Morning does not seem as windy, so hopefully the big WIDE beaches will return. The water has been coming all the way up to our Jon & Peg coral display. It washed it out a couple of days in a row.