The day after arriving in Teacapan, I moved North six or so miles to the only RV park in the area with WiFi. Gotta have the internet! There are like 6 RV parks along the ocean accessed by the one road that leads into Teacapan. The 2nd park along that route has WiFi. The 6th park is the one just outside of town and where I spent last night. You can see the block & brick fence that borders the town from the park. I hated to leave that park since it was the nicest one from my point of view, but I wanted my WiFi.
As I was heading north, ran into this cattle drive on the roadway:
A cattle drive along the only road into Teacapan.
The park was nice, if a little dull. No trees, but with really nice, flat, cement parking space for my RV. Gave me the opportunity to wash the rig and get out my creeper and check out the RV ‘s undercarriage. Installed a new slobber tube bottle, checked for snagged wires and what not. Most everything looked good so back I went to reading. Sitting on the patio in the shade, in shorts, light T shirt, while a nice ocean breeze chased the blues away. Reading book after book. Putting a book down and walking into the sunshine to roast a little once in a while. Then twice or thrice a day a nice bike ride on the mostly deserted beach.
Without a good internet connection I spent allot of time reading, getting a suntan, and napping. Ahhhh. Nice. And the nights were so much more comfortable then at Guadalajara. Didn’t need to use my electric blanket at all. Wore shorts and short sleeve shirts the entire time I was here, even at night. The stars are amazing. No town or city lights to speak of to wash them out, so I got to gaze into the sky many a dark night.
The beach next to the RV park.
Looking south. Teacapan is six miles that way.
There's my RV, way over there, the track in the sand is from my bike tires.
Got a little bored reading all those books so on the ninth day of my stay here, after I’d gotten all those little RV chores finished, so I decided to ride my bike the six miles into Teacapan. Since it was that far from Teacapan, and 12 miles from the other nearby town, Escuinapa de Hidalgo, I only rode my bike into town once. Twelve miles round trip, doesn’t sound like that much fun along a busy road does it? There aren’t any shoulders to speak of along most Mexican roadways, and tradition has bikes riding on the same side of the road way as the direction of traffic so it’s a little dicey for us that were taught to travel against traffic so you can see oncoming. The drivers will lay on the horn if you’re on the opposite side of the road from where they think you should be. But I made it to the towns ‘centro’ safely enough. Took around 45-50 minutes so made good time. Nice work out. The town didn’t really have much going for it. It’s a 2-300 year old fishing village and quite small. Maybe 2,000 people. A few small stores and restaurants is all. The roads were pretty narrow. I did see several gringos so I’m guessing some have houses here in town. I didn’t find a farmers market though. Like most Mexican villages, they have the market one day a week and I missed it. After an hour cooling off from my bike ride, I headed on back to the RV park. I was really tired & strained by the time I got back to camp. Took a nap even.
The entrance to Teacapan...
Looking toward the ocean from the highway. Way over there is the RV park I stayed at the first night near Teacapan.
Looking back on the route I'd ridden my bike. Those trees are mostly coconut palms.
Downtown Teacapan.
My camera battery died about here so I didn’t get any more pictures of the central plaza in Teacapan. Oh, well. Maybe next trip.
One thing I noticed on my way back to the RV park. There were cattle all over the place. Even a couple hundred yards from the RV park. But I didn’t notice any smell at all. Why? Because these are free range cattle. They are penned in, true, but the pens are so large that there aren’t any big pools of feces or urine to stink up the range. I was real happy about that. There were a couple hundred cattle within a couple miles of my RV and if they were in a factory farm it would have driven me out of Teacapan.
That giant earthquake in Chile happened when I was there at the park. Must have been a couple days after my bike ride into town. Since we were only around 6 feet above sea level, we (and I mean other RV’ers there at the park) were quite concerned about a Tsunami since the underwater topography in this area was conducive to lifting any big waves and causing a wash over of our location. Plus we were getting warnings via satellite TV. Nothing from the Mexican government though. Warnings that reached us were from US based news organization. They were hysterical and were warning all the way to Hawaii. Several RV’ers took off for higher ground soon after we heard about the approaching waves. Looked like a flock of birds getting out of the park. I stayed put because I don’t buy the hysteria most news organizations want you to feel. And, nothing happened. The tsunami wave died out before getting to us so we didn’t see much of a rise into the sand berms protecting the park except one morning where you could see it had splashed over the sand berms a few feet . It was one of the most powerful earthquakes in recorded history but didn’t come close to pushing that wave up to us in Mexico. Or to Hawaii. Whee. Dodged another mis-adventure. Since the countryside around that area was so flat, I’m not sure how far I’d have had to go to avoid a big wave anyway.