2nd Day – Sunday – Well, we survived the first night, and so I said to Toni – well – “It’s a third world thing”. That didn’t go over well at all! She wanted to move to another hotel. I told we just paid $220.00 for the week and they won’t give us a refund. I said “Let’s try it another night.” Toni replied, “you’ll be sleeping alone, because I’ll be sleeping in the car.”
After the frightful night, we decided to make the best of the day. We spent the morning watching the beach goers on Playa Zipolite. Some were clothed, some were nude, some were jogging, others were walking their dogs. Others were doing yoga in many different ways, some even had headsets on, and were literally dancing along the beach. There wasn’t a set pattern. Couples and singles were enjoying life in their own way. It’s a beautiful sight to see as we watched the sun starting to rise east of the beach.
Later that morning, we met a married couple of eleven years, Malena and Pablo, on the beach, outside of our room. Pablo is from California and Malena was born in Mexico. Pablo and I struck up a conversation about our t-shirt. We both had a Bob Marley t-shirt on – what a coincidence. Pablo told us that he lived in Port Antonio, Jamaica and was married to a Jamaican woman for seven years and that he’s got two children in Jamaica. He went on to describe how he got to Jamaica in the early 1990’s on a sailboat (he was part of the crew that was abandoned there by the person who hired them to sail the boat there – that’s a whole different story). Anyway, after being abandoned in Jamaica, he loved the place so much that he decided to stay. Met his former wife, had two kids, got divorced and here he is again.
Anyway, we sat around with them for a couple of hours, drinking cerveza (beer) and tequila – should I say, I drank cerveza and Toni drank tequila. After they left, I decided to take a dip in the ocean – it was refreshing – however, it wasn’t easy to swim because the water was kind of rough. Well, not kind of – Zipolite beach is not a swimming beach. It’s a place where people from all over the world come to sun naked or walk the beach either clothed, half clothed or nothing at all.
We made the best of the second day, which was Sunday, by driving all over the immediate area. While driving, we noticed a campground called Ranchos Los Angeles. Being we are campground owners, we decided to check it out. I don’t remember how many ‘hectares’ it is, but the ground was beautiful. It had areas for tent, rv’s, motorhomes and also a hotel on the property. While walking around, we saw a camper parked in an area, that looked just impossible to get into. We noticed that there was a couple sitting in front of the camper, so I said to them “May I ask a question? How did you get this camper into your lot?” The gentleman replied – “It wasn’t that bad. We didn’t have all these bushes around, four years ago. After we parked the camper, we planted all the bushes around it, and made it our special place.” The gentleman then invited us to join them on their patio. They asked us where we are from – we told them Minnesota. They then said that she’s, Leslie from St. Paul, Minnesota and he’s Mike from Hayward, Wisconsin and that he had owned a campground in Hayward, near the Lac Courte Oreilles Reservation.
We sat with Leslie and Mike for about an hour drinking a couple of Coronas, sharing our lives including that we run a campground in Sandstone, MN. Then they said they had to go, because they wanted to watch the Eagles and Vikings game with other people from Minnesota at the club house. They went one way on the campground and we went another direction.
About ten minutes later, on our way out the campground, Mike ran up to us and said, “Are you the couple that runs the clothing-optional campground near Sandstone?” We said “Yes, why?.” He said there is a couple in the club house that says there is a black couple that runs a great clothing optional campground near Sandstone and that they were planning on going there next summer.
After telling them yes, they invited us into the club house and introduced us to the couple from Annandale, MN. They said they were planning on coming because they heard good things about the campground and knew that it was run by a black couple. What a coincidence to meet a couple in Zipolite, almost 2800 miles away who knew of us and were planning on coming to the campground? It was like wow! We sat with them for the first quarter of the Eagles and Vikings’ game, said our goodbyes and went our way. Just as we were about to leave, the male half from the couple from the Annandale area shouted out, “See you next summer at the campground!”
From there we drove some of the back roads, then went to downtown Zipolite for the night life, saw a small ‘European Comedy and Mime Show’ at one of the hotels on the beach.
Well, was late now, about 11 pm, Toni started to fear the torture of going back to our room at Hotel Salmastro. She said this was the last night that we’ll be staying there and I promised her we would get somewhere else to stay for the rest of the week.
With that, we headed to Lola’s Restaurant to get a couple shots of tequila, so that we can sleep. After drinking a couple shots, Toni turned around and said to me, “Have you ever heard of the song, ‘I left my heart in San Francisco.” I said “Yup!”. She said, here is a new version, “I left my liver in Zipolite … so that I can sleep.” It’s funny now, but it wasn’t funny then. She was petrified about going back to our room.
Well, we survived the night. Actually, we only stayed in the room for a couple hours and spent most of the time during the night on the beach, drinking tequila (yup, we bought a bottle). Toni had far fewer ant bites than the night before and I was still untouched. I guess it’s because she’s so sweet. But she did say to me firmly, “we are moving tomorrow, or I’m sleeping in the car!”
It’s getting better. We’ll be updating Day 3 shortly.
