After returning from our little trip up north to Chacala, we ended up spending another week in Lo de Marcos. When we’re stationary for a week or longer, it’s easy to sink into a routine and get comfortable, and a place like Lo de Marcos makes that even easier.
We probably could have stayed here much longer (most of the other RVers here have been here for months), but we’re also looking forward to new adventures farther south.
Here are some highlights from our daily life living in an RV in Lo de Marcos, Nayarit.
Oftentimes, it’s a challenge keeping our home stocked with fresh fruits and vegetables in Mexico. But not in Lo de Marcos.
Every morning around 10am, this mobile fruit stand rolled into the RV park, stocked with most every sort of produce we could hope to find in Nayarit (and TAMALES)—steps away from our front door.
Mornings are the best time to take a quiet stroll around town and on the beach, before the town hubbub heats up and it starts to get sticky. Unlike neighboring Sayulita, Chacala, and San Pancho, life in LDM doesn’t start to pick up until 10 or 11 on most days.
And this time of year, tourists (both foreign and domestic) seem to steer clear of town. In the Centro, there’s usually a healthy amount of commercial activity happening on any given day. But the long golden beach remains quiet until a few hours before sunset. Even then, it’s a relaxed, mostly-locals vibe.
We’ve had some nice options for doing the kids’ school here. In addition to our own table and chairs, there’s a large palapa next the pool (yes, this place has a pool, which we definitely don’t utilize as much as we thought we would—given the beach is a five minute walk away).
This week, they’re doing some work on the palapa, so the owners offered up the second-story veranda of the main house. A bit noisy right now, but it works.
National Elections are just around the corner. The signs are everywhere (as well as the candidates, themselves, apparently).
The name of this beer: “The Rooster that Killed a Rancher”. Tasty.
Noe’s always got an idea for a new project. He saw in one of his Curious George books that you could make your own solar oven and was determined to make one for himself. This was the result. Here, he’s melting cheese on rice cakes. Works pretty well.
Father’s Day is observed on the same day here in Mexico as it is in the U.S. Mother’s Day, however, is always on the 10th. As a result, mommy usually gets celebrated for TWO whole days, and daddy just one. In all honesty, that’s probably fair.
For Mexican Mother’s Day, we took Lori out to the Indian restaurant here in town. Yes, INDIAN food. We haven’t had Indian food since Tucson, and rarely have it south of the border. Lori’s been talking about going here since we got to town two weeks ago, so it only seemed fitting. And pretty darn good Indian food at that.
On American Mother’s Day, we set out on a 5-mile hike to the town Mirador.
It doesn’t take long to get out of town.
It’s roughly a 400-foot vertical ascent to the viewpoint, and it’s definitely one of the warmer days we’ve had. We’re use to hiking in the heat in Mexico, but were still surprised how quickly we went through our water and Gatorade.
The view was worth the effort, and we made it back to town with water to spare.
I can’t help but wonder if this isn’t a coincidence.
Wish they labeled food in the U.S. like they do here in Mexico.
Never thought much about drinking a Coke in the States every once in a while. Here, I have second thoughts after every purchase. “EXCESS[IVE] CALORIES”, “EXCESS[IVE] SUGAR”, and my favorite: “CONTAINS CAFFEINE, AVOID IN CHILDREN”.
Sorry boys, the Mexico Secretary of Health says you shouldn’t be drinking this stuff.
But we didn’t come to Restaurante Las Glorias for soda. We came for this:
Lo de Marcos has one of our favorite little plazas of all time. It’s clean, bright, and tidy, and HUGE for a town this size. In addition to the requisite kiosk (gazebo) in the center, it’s also got a performing stage AND a playground.
Midday on the main drag in LDM.
Back home, then Beach Time!
Every afternoon at some point, we try to make it to the beach. With conditions like this, there’s zero reason not to.
On this particular day, I managed to step on a bee on my way down to the water. This isn’t the first time. Half-dead bees seem to wash up on Nayarit shores all the time. Never fun.
In my experience, one of the best things to relieve a fresh bee sting is salt water. Fortunately, there’s plenty of that here.
I see many hours of icing and copious amounts of hydrocortisone in my future. But that’ll have to wait for now.
Taco Time!
Tacos Lichos might just be the best darn street taco joint in town. Noe and I sat down to save some seats for Lori and Noe. I took a look around and thought, “Yay, we beat the crowd!” Seconds later, a huge crowd of what must have been a hundred people came around the corner out of nowhere. I heard this place was popular, but this is nuts, I thought. Then, I saw the Hearst. Ah, funeral procession.
Moments later, Riley and Lori joined us and we sunk our teeth into some of the tastiest tacos we’ve had in a while.
It all started with Lori. On Mother’s Day (the American one, not the Mexican one), she woke up complaining of a severe earache. I’ve never had swimmers ear, myself, but Lori seems to get it anytime she spends more than a couple of days in a row in the water. A bummer, but not a complete surprise.
Two days later, Noe was complaining of the same thing. Lori’s hadn’t resolved with the drops she was given, so they returned to the clinic together.
We were supposed to head south to El Tuito mid-week, but it was clear that wasn’t going to happen. We were going to be dry camping on a ranch outside of a small town, far from a reliable clinic, so we wanted to make sure all our ailments were resolved before then.
Now, Lori and Noe were on meds which seemed to be helping and things were looking up. Until the next day.
Wednesday morning, Riley woke up with…a fever! I was starting to wonder if it was only a matter of time for me.
Weird thing was, Lori and Noe didn’t have a fever (just a severe earache), and Riley didn’t have an earache.
Lori called up the ranch in El Tuito again and pushed back our arrival date. It seemed Lo de Marcos doesn’t want us to leave. I’m not exactly complaining about that.
Since it looked like we were going to be sticking around for a couple more days, we went ahead and got a propane fill.
I’d been dragging my feet on this one thinking it would be something of an ordeal. In reality, it was quick, painless, and cheap.
The truck rolled up to the RV, a couple of guys hopped out, hooked up a hose, and less than five minutes later (and 386 pesos for 37 liters, which is the equivalent of US$23 and 10 gallons) we were good to go for another 3+ months.
Our onboard propane tank holds 18 gallons, which means we’ve used just over half since we bought the RV in February. I wasn’t sure how much we had left, since the levels test only shows Full, 2/3, 1/3, and Empty. We’ve been at “1/3” for weeks.
That’s with about a week’s worth of combined dry camping (fridge runs off of propane when we’re not hooked up to shore power), and daily use of water heater and stove. We probably could have gotten another week of off-grid camping out of the tank before needing to fill.
In other news, Noe’s been really into gardening lately, which isn’t the easiest hobby for an RV kid to have.
A neighbor here snipped a few sprigs of mint for him to try to transplant himself. You can imagine Noe’s excitement when he woke up one morning and roots had sprouted.
With Riley out of commission, I took Noe on a little daddy day morning to our favorite coffee shop in town, The Water Man. We’ve been coming here for years, and it’s one of the few places in town Noe remembers from his pre-Baja days. Salmon avocado toast and a huge fruit bowl. Happy kid.
After breakfast, it was on to the beach for a nice, long stroll and a poke around in LDM’s tide pools.
After living in Sayulita and Chacala, it never ceases to amaze me that we can be out here at 10 o’clock and have the whole beach nearly to ourselves.
The blue of the water is one of my favorite things about the beach here. Incidentally, it’s one of Noe’s as well.
Riley’s fever had ticked up to 104, so back to the clinic Lori went with Riley in tow this time.
The doc looked him over, gave him some meds and sent him on his way. The next morning, everyone finally woke up happy and healthy.
After three fun-filled weeks, the time has finally come to say goodbye to Nayarit and—once again—make our way south toward new horizons.
