What we have been doing in Zihuat!

Just thought that we should add a bit here to bring you more or less up to date. What have we been doing with our time here? In a word or three, not a lot!

One of the first things we did was get our Mexican cell phones working. We went into a Telcel shop and purchased new SIM cards for our phones. Gillian had a phone we had bought years ago in Mazatlan but the time had long expired so she had to get a new chip and number. Art had his quad band Motorola phone unlocked before we left, so it was a simple task to take out the AT&T chip from the US and install a Telcel chip. Our new phone numbers are only 3 digits apart. Not only that, the area code is the reverse of the local prefix--makes it easy to remember our phone numbers!

When we first arrived Art came down with a cold which slowed him down a little (even more than usual) for a few days. No sooner had he begun feeling better than Gillian began to feel a bit under the weather and soon had a full blown cold herself. It hit her pretty hard; for a few days she wasn't even up to walking the dogs!!! Those of you that know her well will understand how sick she was.

One morning some time later, when Gillian was almost completely recovered, Art was over at one of the neighbours having morning coffee with the guys. As he stood up from his chair he felt a muscle pull in his back. By the end of the day he was extremely sore and could barely walk. Fortunately his physiotherapist was by now much better and was able to attend! He was house bound for several days but soon began to hobble around. It took about three weeks to make a full recovery.

Meanwhile our neighbour Cal had come to the rescue in the news/entertainment area, and offered a connection to his Starchoice dish so we didn't have to fight with our own dish which we were transporting on the roof. The second day we were here we were watching our local (Victoria) television news. We took great pleasure in watching the home weather, it made our little sufferings so much easier to take.


After Art's back was better we had a couple of new arrivals, two couples we had met here in previous years; Keith and Yvonne and their cat Jake, and their friends Brian and Arlene who parked next to us. Brian asked if he could plug his Starchoice receiver into our dish as he had done last year. This was the excuse Art needed to get up on the roof and try to get the dish out of its transport mode and aimed in the right direction. Thanks in part to a fairly expensive do-dad Art that had been unable to resist a few years ago, he was able to be sure that the dish could "see" the satellite in spite of being backed up to a high wall. Scrounging in the scrap pile at the park resulted if a few bits of wood to stabilise the dish. Fortunately it is on the roof so no-one can see the lack of craftsmanship! He then "cheated" and rather than set the dish to the direction and elevation specs using said expensive gadget, he set the gadget to our friend's dish and then adjusted our dish to match! After a few more minutes of fiddling we had a good strong signal and an excellent picture. Cal's dish had given us a signal strength of 50. With ours we had 64! The best signal in the park. . .Until our old friends Dieter and Anna arrived. Dieter had installed an automatic seeking and aligning dish and has a signal strength of 75! Art is jealous! A man and his toys!

Carrying on with the satellite TV stories: We brought with us our newest satellite TV receiver which has recording capability but we had only used it to record once at home. We thought that with the 2 hour time difference from home it would be useful. A few weeks ago some neighbours were going out and asked if we could please record the second episode of their favorite TV program (24). We agreed and Art rummaged around in the parts box to find the splitter and hooked up the second input to the receiver in order to record. (The receiver has a hard drive connected to a second receiver which has its own input.) He programmed the receiver to start recording on the correct channel at the right time and we carried on. As the clock ticked the hour the satellite receiver lost the signal! It was bedtime anyhow so we turned it off and went to bed.

Next day Art began to trouble shoot. He found one suspect cable end so repaired that then tried various combinations to find that each receiver input would work if connected alone. Using the splitter caused enough signal loss to knock out both receivers. More rummaging in the bins found another length of coaxial cable so it's back up on the roof to add this new cable to the dish output. (It has 4, Brian is using one so we still had room for another.) Running a completely separate cable rather than using a splitter cured the problem--we were now able to record. Now all we need is something worth recording! So far all we have recorded is the news when we were going out at news time!

One of the things we had noticed on out trip down was the rapidly deteriorating upholstery on the dinette cushions. The dinette came equipped with seat belts, which made us wonder a little about the culinary abilities of the previous owners. The buckles had been laid on the plywood base under the cushions so as the dogs traveled on these cushions their added weight and friction for 20 hours a day ground away on the fabric. By the time we arrived in Zihuatanejo they were almost completely shredded--we knew they had to be re-upholstered.



Fortunately we knew who to call; we had re-upholstered the dinette and two chairs in our previous motorhome when we were here last year. Gillian stopped by the shop and returned with a few books of fabric samples. In a week or so (Mexican time?) we had decided on a fabric and called Juan to come round to measure and give us an estimate.

In less than a week they had the dinette done and removed the couch to their shop along with two cushions. Art was at a loss without his couch! Where would he have his afternoon nap? The couch took a week, but it was quickly and easily re-installed when they returned with it and it looked great.


We then decided to have the window trim (2) done to match which took another week. The cost? Dinette, couch and cushions, 6500 pesos (about $600.00 Canadian). The window trim was relatively expensive at 1600 pesos, ($150.00). We think they under bid the main job! Juan did however do for no cost a job that Art had planned to do himself, but forgot to bring the glue--stick some black vinyl on the wooden trim that Art had made to fill in the gaps around the new HD flat screen TV.

In any case we are very happy with the quality of the work and the price was far less than what it would have been north of the border.