Accident and finally getting mad at Mexicans

October 14, 2006


One morning very diligently, as every morning, I take M and O to school, I just pass the gate at a speed 2 km/h and I hit a man on a bicycle. Ok I had the scare of my life, I hit his leg with my bumper but he seemed ok. I offered to take him to the doctor, bring him some ice but he say he was ok and he asked me my phone number in case something was wrong. Well, off he goes with his bike… but sure enough in the afternoon he calls me saying that he is at the doctor, he needed 5000 pesos (500 dollars) as a deposit for the medical bills. Ok the “scam” antenna start going in function. I run at “Julieta to the rescue” to try to understand the unwritten law. Anyway, after some brainstorming we call the insurance, the insurance guy “deus ex-machina” arrives, solves the problem with the injured person and pays all the damage. The poor injured guy was standing up but clearly something was not quite right with his leg. He was nice and I hated to have been the bad foreigner who hit him but it was clearly a stupid accident and that’s why we have insurance (which are not compulsory in Mexico).

We need it to do a double of the car key. It required an overnight stay that was stretch out to a 72 hours stay and for the first I got mad in Spanish. I said that they were free to keep the car but I would have a rental paid by them. Julieta added another speech few hours later. The difference is that I get really frustrated she is just pretending! Anyway WV at Playa del Carmen now fear us…

Turtle go!
Saturday night after an afternoon at Paamul with the Taormina’s and the Casco’s (Lorenzo family) and at night we went to release the baby turtles to the sea. It involved some waiting and commotion and music way too loud (tecno liberacion, how my yoga instructor named it, she was also there but I did not see her). Each of us got a turtle, Matthias named his/her "Cancun", Oscar “Baby” and then we release them and hoping they would survive the wilderness. Out of 1000 only 2 survive! The kids were cheering for their turtle to get into the water. Lorenza’s one "Dynamite" was really fast. It was a great moment…

Few accidents

Friday night, I went with Julieta and Eli to another social event, the opening of Ultrafemme (a kind of Sephora), we got our usual, at this point, pictures from various local papers…it’s very funny and we finished the night at Carlos and Charlies a restaurant/dancing/pub/whatever/ favorite hangout.

I will mention our trip to Soliman Bay famous for a great restaurant on the beach (Oscar y Lalo) and for the lagoon where you can kayak. Well, the water was calm as a lake until we did not decide to start rowing to the next creek and there menacing waves out of nowhere started coming, it did not take long for us to flip over. The kids had life vests but they were a little confused about what was going on. Matthias was not happy and he did not want to row row anymore. Well we were able to get back in, by that time we were at the shore of the lagoon in between rocks and various vegetation. We manage to row a little further from the shore until we were back in the water. Well this time we put only the kids back in the kayak and we just swam. At that point, the rescue team arrives via land and via sea and we were saved!!! We compensate the kids for their courage with a brown ice-cream.

Should I mention our flat tire in the middle of the Carretera (Mexican highway ) fortunately not too far from home, the best part is that the spare tire was flat too…Julieta came to the rescue and after a pilgrimage from tire store # 1, to garage place, to store #2 back to the garage place where of course we were still missing a valve. We were able to solve that last problem with the guy at the garage that sent his helper to buy a valve down the block. After all that we were back with a new tire. At this point we decide to go to Mamita’s to eat at the beach and enjoy a calm afternoon under the sun after so much commotion.

Be aware of the word “Ahorita”, means in a little bit but my radar are always in action when I hear ahorita, it is a indefinable time between 10 second and 1 hour.

Birthday week

It is getting difficult to keep up with the blog but I really have to tell you about the lagoon we rediscovered in Akumal. We were in this Yal-ku lagoon in ’97 and we could not remember where it was. Alain bought on ebay Le Guide du Routard of '97 and at the same time in a website I found the name. So we brought the little inflated boat and we swim around the green emerald water. After the lagoon we went to join Vito’s family on Akumal beach. We went snorking and saw a turtle….huge turtle. On Sunday we discovered another beach north of Playa Sangri-La… well the blue blue water was there but on Sunday you get more “pueblo”, Sunday in every country you get the pueblo! (as Julieta says).

Matthias and Oscar went through their Mexican birthday, they had a little party in each of their classes (very unpractical for me) without mentioned that I had to buy 60 cupcakes and equal number of goody bags. It was nice to check out the classes atmosphere and see them integrated in their new school. Then on Friday we had a mini-party at home and Matthias loved to be 5, no more that business of been 4! Oscar enjoyed the multitude of little and big cars he had as presents.

Today we went to a new beach Coco Bay and after enjoy a quesadilla on a beach restaurant we went sailing for one hour. It was so relaxing that the kids were falling asleep even if the water was splashing on their faces. There is an incredible coral barrier but it was a little too wavy to real do good snorkeling. We are doing all the tours so that when the visitors show up we know the good spot.

First confirmed visitors Esther and Victor from Dec 1- to 12
My cousins more or less from middle of December to middle of January
Chiara and Family to be confirmed sometimes before December and so Stefania we hope pretty soon. Steve to be confirmed beginning of November.

Everybody else needs to confirm. The Alaimo-Jacquot is a popular destination!