Autobus

Today one of the guards (George), turned me on to a machinist friend that Works for a commercial fishing boat repair yard, who is moving the taper further back on my prop shaft, fitting my prop and making new threads long enough to install a cotter pin through th. Prop nut and shaft. That’s about four to five hours machine work. His price is 800 pesos. That’s about $60.00 US. I don’t even want to think what it would cost in the good old USA.


After making the arrangements with the machinist, I walked to the corner to catch the bus into Guaymas, about eight miles away.As I boarded, I handed the driver my 5 pesos (37 cents) and rode to downtown Guaymas. Now let me tell you, Guaymas is nothing like the cities in Baja California. Guaymas is the real McCoy. I mean it is a genuine Mexican city. Once I left the haul-out yard, the only gringo I saw was in the reflection on the window, and he was even starting to look like he almost belongs here.

The people here are very different towards gringos it seems than they are in BCS. A larger percentage of the older males tend to stare and ignore me if I greet them, but the younger males are very friendly. The women in BCS are very stand-offish and generally ignore greetings from gringo males. Here the women, both young and old, go out of their way to be cordial and seem very interested in speaking to male gringos. At least that has been my experience, so far. I suppose it is different in San Carlos, as it is a big gringo tourist town. I will be going there soon and will see!

Guaymas has just about anything one wants to buy. Today I picked up everything I needed (parts) at specialty stores (Hydraulic store, Oil store, fastener store, etc). It was amazing, every store I went to had what I wanted. This was a new experience in Mexico for me. In La Paz I would have to go to at least four or five stores and only about half the time would one have what I wanted. I like the people, the prices, the availability, and the food, but the weather is very hot, humid, and ELECTRICAL, as in lightening almost every night. The wether reminds me of the Oregon gray, and the hot sticky humidity of Oklahoma!

Today was my seventh day on the hard and they finally put the chains on my jack stands like they promised. I had to bug them every day since I arrived to get them to put them on. I guess they finally figured out that I am very tenacious, or stubborn, if you will!

I found a great Panderia (Bakery) that had all kinds of doughnuts and pastries. I didn’t know what would be good, so I got two of each. In that way I will know what to get next time. As I approached the check out, I noticed two trays of some different kind I didn’t have, so I picked up two of those. Well when I got back to the boat I ate all four doughnuts, yum! yum! Now, you would think would be plenty, and I'm sure it was, but one of the last two on counter I picked up just kept calling my name. Yeah, I crumbled and grabbed it! Now mind you, I had just ate doughnuts, so when I took a big bite I almost spit it back out. It certainly was not sweet, and since my taste buds hadn’t recovered, they were in shock. I was staring at this white stuffing with kinda pinkish flakes around it in the hole where I had bitten. It took a bit, but I finally realized that it was filled with not cream, but cream cheese and ham. About this time my taste buds started to come around and I took another bite. Hmmm, that’s okay! Hmmm, no that’s good! Hmmm, No that’s great!!! I couldn’t eat the other one, so I gave it to the guard at the marina gate. After total silence while he devoured it, he said only one word “Donde” (Where)!