Sunny, Hot & Windy Today

The last few days were every nice, high’s in the low 80’s and lows in the high 60’s. A little bit of rain but nothing that affected our beach time. On the weekends La Playa Restaurant always has a few hours of live entertainment on Saturday and Sunday afternoons. Some good, some loud. These guys were good,

Tuesday morning was cool and the sea was pretty calm so I decided to paddle over to Puerto Aventuras a large condo, hotel community that is expanding every year,

One interesting thing is although the place is really nice the don’t have much of a public beach for all the people to use. The beach behind me is all private belonging to the condos along the water. So, many of their residents jump in their cars and drive over to share our beautiful beach at Xpu-Ha,













They are expanding by dredging deep channels with lots of boat docks and room for many more private homes and hotels but no beach access. But beautiful concrete seawalls and well protected from any big storms.
All of this is actually behind the large cenote on the south side of Puerto Aventuras that I paddle to a lot.

This is an older section which shows what it will look like some day.

Of course I always walk over to the Dolphin pools to watch them abuse the Dolphins and amuse the guests.
They have 6 large open pools where they keep Dolphins, Manatee, Sting Rays and Sea Lions. People go swimming with them for a price but are open so anyone else to walk around and watch for free. This is a gated community but you can drive in and say you are going to a restaurant, diving, snorkeling or fishing and they will let you in the gate. The also rent bikes so you can ride around see the whole community which even includes a golf course.
You can bike here from Xpu-Ha but it is on the busy highway but it does have a bike lane.
We have heard from two of our friends, Rob & Shirley from Martha’s Vineyard and Paul & Helen from Inverness, FL. They all should be crossing the border into Mexico this week and be arriving here in Xpu-Ha early next week.

We Have Been Gone for Four Weeks Now

We left on our trip on November 1st and got to Xpu-Ha, our winter destination, on November 14th a few weeks earlier than normal. The reason is our nice little campground at La Playa is getting more popular every year. There are only 7 campsites that are front row facing the beach and 2 are occupied year-round and 2 are occupied all winter by campers who leave their rigs here and fly in. So that leaves only 3 sites plus 5-7 sites that are scattered around and may or may not have full hookups. Of course they don’t take reservations here. They always seem to be able to handle a few campers who want to stay for a few days but not for the whole winter. There is another campground next door (Bonanza) that has a lot of shade and small sites for tent and van campers, They may have one 15 amp outlet for the entire campground and no sewer hookups.
There was one site left in La Playa this week that had been occupied by several short term campers over the past few weeks. Claude & Mags from Ontario, who have been here before, got a late start this year but were able to grab this last site on Wednesday morning.

Peggy & I have been getting out on the beach for our three mile walk every morning since we got here.









The beach has been very clean and not very crowded.

This is a view is from our campsite toward the beach. We have a security fence between our site and the beach.



We always walk down to the south end where we set up our little private seating area under the palapas by the abandoned resort.


After the rain stopped it got very hot and humid for almost a week but the last two days have been very cool & dry. High around 80^oF and Lows, about 62^oF.












Now that Claude & Mags have come with their nice big pickup truck we will be able to get a ride for our big Friday night out at Pizza Leo’s in Chemuyil.

Finally the Rain has Ended

It didn’t rain at all on Friday night but exactly at 6 AM Saturday morning we were awakened by another heavy rain. It was over in an hour and the day kept getting nicer and nicer. There were clear skies to show off the almost full moon on Saturday night, I found a shady spot to put up my hammock and instantly fell asleep for an hour. Peggy caught me waking up.

The new sun screen which hangs from the awning is working out great. Now if the waves calm down I may do some paddling on Sunday.

All night long from Saturday night to Sunday morning a RAVE was going on down the beach about 1/4 mi. away in front of the other small campground. Heavy base music all night long. So in the morning just before they finished at 6:30 AM we wandered over and took some pictures. They were still dancing, but looked a little tired.

Later in the morning everything was gone and our beach life was back to normal.

Arrived at Xpu-Ha a Week early

The drive from Catemaco took longer than we planned. Along the cuota after Acayucan there must have been an accident that we never saw because it was cleared before we started moving again after a 1-1/2 hour delay. We had planned to make in into Campeche to a Silvituc restaurant campground but I thought we would not make it due to the delay. We had better roads than last year and were able to roll in right at dark. It’s a neat place to park off the highway with Peacocks walking around. They don’t charge for camping if you eat there, We had a nice big fish dinner and a beer. It was quiet all night with a heavy rain drowning out any other noises.

We got a nice early start and made good time since the rain had stopped. They still have not finished the bypass around Felipe Carrillo Puerto, we stopped to fill our propane tank just North of town at the new Gas place that they put here last year. Just before we got to Tulum to do some grocery shopping a big thunder storm rolled in and flooded the streets. So we took our time shopping and when we left the rain had stopped. The road into Xpu-Ha was under water but passable. When we pulled in all our old friends were there to great us and help us park in one of the last available places next to Dierck’s new huge palapa over his 5th wheel.

We got there at 2 PM and it was dry when we set up including our new sunscreen.

This is Gerry parked on the other side of Dierck.

We had a nice cocktail party with Carol & Richard and the two new couples from BC, Canada. But the rains came again for most of the night. It was dry in the morning so we took our regular 3 mile morning beach walk to see what changes were made over the summer.

They lost some beach in front of La Playa, but built a new restaurant and palapas next to the kite boarding place.

Both ends of the beach looked about the same as ever, two abandoned storm damaged resorts.

Scroll or click to see the entire picture.

Three days in the Rain at Catemaco

We rolled into Tepetapan campground early Sunday afternoon after a slow rainy drive through the Tuxtla’s. The bridge at Boca del Rio was back out of service and there is a little detour around it. Gene welcomed us to an almost empty campground. There was a couple from Germany who purchased a used truck camper in CA and say they are heading to South America (Patagonia), they left the next day.

We normally get here over Thanksgiving and have beautiful weather and more campers. There was a short period each day where I got to walk to town to buy some vegetables and use the ATM to get some pesos. This is what the lake looked like last year.

This year the new pier was barely above the lake level and a walkway to a new floating restaurant was under water. There has been over 8” of rain while we were here. So three days was enough of a visit, we need to go somewhere dryer. We will hit the road early on Wednesday morning and see how far past Villahermosa we can make in the day. Hopefully the rain has stopped and the bridges or roads won’t be washed out when we pass by. Agua Dulce is a very low lying area that often floods after tropical storms.