Travelogue IV

Greetings from Mazatlan. We moved up here on March 1st. We see that the

South Dakota area has been warm this winter and not much snow. Mexico

has been nice, normally by March 1st it gets hot and humid on the west

coast where we were at in Rincon De Guayabitos but not this year. Here it has

been nice for us but abnormally cool. There was a low of 51 degrees

last night so the weather is quite unusual a lot of places this winter. It

has been in the 70's to low 80's and low humidity here and normally low

60's at night. We lost our wireless Internet connection when we left

Rincon but the amateur e-mail connection has worked super here at Mazatlan.

We rode the bus downtown, about 10 miles from here and really looked the

city over. We have been walking the beach and getting to know a lot of

people here in the RV park. The big news is we got all the dents fixed on

the F-350. The one on the top of the box from the Alaska trip in 2001,

the one in the front, left fender from Maine in 2002, the rear, right

fender from Florida in 2004 and a bad one on the right, top of the box in

the Baja in January. We got all these fixed and painted for $255.00. The

color match is perfect and it looks like a brand new pickup. We had a

deep gouge in the fiberglass of the 5th wheel for about 5 feet from our

Mexico trip last year. We had that fixed for $28.00 Edith got a pair of air

tennis shoes for $20.00 but I could not find 11 1/2 as they don't have

big sizes. With the dental work, pickup body work, 5th wheel fiberglass

work and Ediths shoes we have spent about $900 which figures out to about

20% of USA prices or $4500 for a saving of $3600 which about pays for this

trip.

I have learned how to hook up my laptop on the LAN at the Internet places

here and get my e-mail in about 1 minute. This is a lot better than web

mail. I can then take my laptop to the 5th wheel and answer any that

need attention via winlink. I have also been helping our friend Blake VE7DO

who we met here in 2002 in the park use a phone program called SKYPE

and he has talked to his daughter is Australia, and people in the USA and

Canada. It is 2.8 cents a minute for the phone time. The broadband

connection we found is 38 cents an hour. Unbelievably cheap! The quality is

excellent! In addition to getting the party on the other end via their

telephone you can talk computer to computer free other than the broadband

connection time. I also have had good success using e-mail to send text me

ssages to cell phones. We had several friends in Rincon De Guayabitos

that uses Pocket Mail which I think we will get for our NZ/OZ trip.

On our last day at Rincon two fellows Butch and Ralph from the park \

invited me to go fishing with them. I caught a 16 lb. Dorado so we have 5

meals to eat from that. It was a great experience, we were out about 25

miles in the Pacific Ocean and really thank Butch and Ralph for taking me.

Here in the park we seen a 5th wheel pulling out that was not latched

into the hitch come loose and came banging down on the pickup box, not a

pretty sight! Our neighbor across the way had the steel that makes up the

over hang which the hitch is attached to break and made a mess of things.=

He has it all welded but it is not completely true so it is under

warranty and is going back to the factory in Ont. Also our weld job on the

hanger from the frame to hold the spring is not correct as the wheels on

that side a closer together than the other side so the tires are wearing and

I will have to get this corrected when we get home.

The Spanish keeps getting a little better, especially in understanding

people talking to me and in reading. Edith's Spanish is getting better also

I have a long ways to go but it sure has helped out a bunch of times.

The GPS mapping as lousy as it is for Mexico has really bailed us

out several times. The problem in Mexico are the towns, no highway signs,

few street signs and even if you have a good city map it is tough and

without a city map you are in for a real challenge! Many of the streets are

one way and if you make a mistake and get down one of these streets with

the 5th wheel you are in a major hurt!

We plan to leave Mexico on March 18th well before Easter!!!

Ed and Edith