La Libertad

27 June

We left at 7am to go to the fish market in La Libertad.  The town looks OK from the North, the South side looks sketchy.

Norm took us around the pier and showed us the fishing boats, which are wood, laminated with fiberglass, inside and out.  The boats are stored on the pier when not out fishing.  The outboard motors get taken off, too, and stored securely elsewhere.  

When the boat is ready to be lowered into or raised out of the water, a large, 2-piston, slow-speed diesel is fired up to wench the boat on/off the pier and raised from/lowered to the water.  The process takes about 10 minutes. 

The fish market has a variety of seafood.  We are having corvina prepared for us by a friend of Norm’s for lunch (around 2 pm).  

After we picked out our fish we proceeded to take our bagged fish over a two hour walk.  Sandra, Roger and I were all concerned about a “fish walk” to breakfast, a haircut, a phone data purchase, a fruit stand stop, etc. in the warm weather.  Time will tell….

Norm had to take us to Pollo Campero for breakfast.  We all thought we were going to eat some place local, and were very surprised when we got to Pollo Campero.   The plus side of the stop was air conditioning.  Roger had a Diet Pepsi with a muffin. I had a Diet Pepsi, as we had both eaten breakfast due to a failure to communicate on somebody’s part.

After breakfast we walked to El Centro, where Roger got a haircut for $1.50 USD.  He said the barber did shave his neck, and the overall haircut is “nothing special, it’s short.”  Sandra was also able to get more navigation time for her Tigo chip phone.  Potatoes, tomatoes, onions, and cooking oil were also bought for our lunch.  

From there we walked to the bus stop and had to wait until the bus could depart El Centro on time.  The bus we rode was a short, 20-passenger former school bus, with front and rear passenger doors.

Our laundry was picked up yesterday evening and we’ve been told we should get it back sometime today.  This concerns us a lot, due to the vague response from Norm.  We strung our clotheslines yesterday in anticipation of wet clothes.   Unfortunately it decided to rain this afternoon, so the inside of our RV looks like a Chinese laundry.  Hopefully it will clear off and we can get the clothes back outside to finish drying.

Our corvina lunch today was very good.  Corvina is a white ocean fish.  One of Norm's friends fried up our morning selection for us.  Roger and I were both served headless fish, the rest had heads.  I had asked Ana before not to see the head.  Norm told me that we'd be served with the head, regardless of my request.  I guess it doesn't hurt to ask politely.  With the fish, Ana's mother had fried potatoes, and fixed salad with tomato, cucumber and onion.  For dessert we had sandia (watermelon.)  It was a lot of food and too much for me to eat.

In closing, the below is sent for Mark.  He just doesn't do enough in his dentistry practice.

Random thoughts:

-- Most everybody in towns has a cellphone.  Plans are generally sold as voice/text plus navigation.  It appears that month to month is the way the average person gets service.  We bought from Tigo a month of 2GB of data only for $10 USD, plus the cost of a SIM card. There are 3 major companies:  Tigo, Movistar, and Claro.

-- People who have smart phones take a lot of pictures.  Our RVs are very photogenic..

-- People want to see inside our beautiful RV (Casa Rodante). 

-- People are curious and will tolerate less than perfect Spanish to talk with you.
-- And finally, why would this sign have to be posted at the Retired Police Association pool?