Sylvie's Travels Home

March 10 and 11, 2024

Today’s brunch was at No Soy Juan since Pogo had really liked it yesterday. It was right beside the new pickleball courts location. The restaurant opened only a month ago. It is own by the same owner of Tarantella, Ciao, Riviera Grill and Coco Beach. He also owns the pickleball courts and a restaurant in La Cruz. He is a pretty young guy with 2 young kids (they were actually at the restaurant) and he inherited the whole business when his dad passed away last year. I asked the waiter the significance of the name of the restaurant and he said that the original owner was Italian and named Giancarlo but his wife was always calling him Juan. He would always say to her: No Soy Juan! No Soy Juan! The restaurant’s name is a homage to him. I loved the decor inside, with giant “pinatas” hanging on the ceiling and straw plates on the wall. The food was really good too and the staff was very friendly. We will definitely go back to try the lamb barbacao (bbq), cooked underground for 4 hours in a big oven. They have it every Wednesday and Saturday.

The tide was very low mid-afternoon, so we took a walk on the beach, went in the pool and chatted with Christiane and Pierre. Later on, as I sat on the balcony, sipping a glass of wine and reading, I was reflecting on our much lazier schedule this year but instead of feeling sorry about it or sad because my knees had stopped me from being more active, I felt a sense of contentment. It probably was the wine speaking to me, haha. We had burgers for dinner. Double patties burgers. We are trying to finish what we have in the freezer 🙂 We watched the first episode of American Nightmare.

Monday morning, I got the condo ready for Martha. Pogo had a phone meeting with someone back home about, what else? pickleball! We prepared a lot of food for Martha to bring home. I went to PT for the last time. I asked Ishmael about the wedding shooting in Samao again and he told me that it had happened 11 years ago. He said that there was a lot of corruption but it is much better and safe now. I did finally find an article online. https://www.mexicoviolence.org/post/nayarit-and-the-making-of-a-narco-state . I was hoping to see the doctor but he was busy with patients. I am disappointed that the gel injections didn’t work. Pogo had been hanging out at Starbucks while I was at PT so we left from there to go for a car ride. He wanted to do the Ameca river drive again and go to his little restaurant in Los Sauces. We went there first since I was starving. We arrived at almost 1pm and we were the only customers. We had our usual order of ceviche tostada, beef quesadilla and salsa mexicana.

I took a lot of pictures, Pogo droned a lot. We got back around 5pm. We had a quick dinner at La Sonorita Al Pastor at 8pm. The tacos were a little dry but still delicious. We tried some grilled onions in a soya sauce and that was good too. We watched the 2nd episode of American Nightmare.

Shaun sent me pictures of his house. The snow had been all gone but then he got 14 inches the night before and today! We didn’t get any at our house! He lives in the mountains but we are only 50 minutes away. Crazy.

Maxime’s Travels Update:

She had rented a scooter to drive around the island and said it was one of the best travel days of her life. She said it was the best day of her trip and ironically her last. She said the island was so nice and it made her want to go back to the Philippines. She couldn’t send me pictures because of not having any WiFi. At 3am, she took a ferry back to Cebu and started her 40 hour journey back to Vermont: 3 hour bus to the airport then flying Cebu to Taipei, Taiwan to Seoul, South Korea to Tokyo, Japan to Washington, DC and finally to Vermont.

I was in bed around 10:15pm when I received an Emergency SOS notification from Max’s phone giving me her location. We totally panicked and called her. Thankfully she answered. She was running through the airport to make it to her gate (Max was late??) and said that it was probably a pocket dial. She had to hang up to get through the gate. She told me later on that she also had called 911 by accident. Haha! She sent me pictures of her sitting in first class. There were only 6 out of 24 seats taken.