Greetings From The Land of Towel Art – April 10

It’s been almost a month since our last post because we’ve been on the move and in places where the internet connection has been weak and/or inconsistent.  However, we're now settled at our time-share condominium at the Pacifica Resort in Ixtapa [context: about 200 miles north of Acapulco and 400 miles south of Puerto Vallarta] which has good internet coverage, and we plan to use part of our time here to post about our last 400-ish miles of Travels on Abracadabra.

In addition to updating this blog, we’ll be enjoying life in what we are referring to as The Land of Towel Art.  [Explanation: Certain Mexican resorts train their housekeeping staff in the somewhat amusing skill of creating animist totems from towels and flowers.]

Towel Bunny . . . or Towel Kitty?

Towel Arctic Explorer?

Pacifica Resort also boasts fabulous views of Ixtapa Bay, a ski-lift thingy to give guests (we're referred to as socios -- associates) rides to and from the beach,

Unfortunately, the gondola runs right outside our bedroom window!

several swimming pools and several lovely beach-side restaurants.  However, as you know, we have had the luxury of many months of viewing beautiful beaches, dining at beach-side restaurants, and swimming in pools and secluded bays.  So the resort’s primary attractions for us are not beach life, pools or restaurants -- but things that our tourist brethren may take for granted: 

• Nights without periodic checks to confirm that Abracadabra remains securely anchored or trying to ignore a marina neighbor’s party or preparations for an early-morning fishing expedition; 
• Two real - meaning not hand-held - showers with abundant hot water;
• A bed that isn’t accessed via an obstacle course maneuver (the V-berth on Abracadabra is a four foot high space that is approximately 3.5 feet above the cabin sole; this requires an awkward climb up by the height-challenged [Molly] and an awkward crawl in by someone over 6-feet tall [Bryce]);
• A refrigerator with a door (not just a box Molly has to stand on her head to access) and a freezer that can make ice more often than once every 24 hours;
• Toilets connected to a central sewer system (Abracadabra has holding tank capacity of 30-gallons and the logistics of emptying that tank in an environmentally acceptable fashion is an ongoing, bizarre topic of on-board conversation);
• A television with three American language movie channels;
• Consistent internet connection regardless of where the wind is coming from; and the most amazing of all
• Air-conditioning (Abracadabra has three fans and lots of canvas shade, which work really well until the temperatures hit 90 degrees in the mid-afternoon).

So, we may not go far from our own little unit and the almost private pool outside!  We’ll be in touch about how we got here and where we’re going from here in future posts.  Right now we have to vacate the unit for the towel artist to do her work.  Hmmm . . . guess we’ll actually go to the pool.