Closing 2025 – Travels Sans Rita

I finished off my time at the beach, working, enjoying sunsets and preparing to leave Rita alone and finally escape Sonora for a while. It was a huge amount of work and worry to make sure Rita was going to be OK all closed up for a month or more. Shutting down all the systems, making sure all food that could go bad was out and anything else not in a glass jar was in a sealed plastic bin (in case of critter invasion). I also wanted to completely empty my fridge and deal with some terrible rust that was spreading out around the top part. I had the ‘rust converter’ shimmery, iridescent, magical paint, that I hope will put an end to that rust issue once and for all. I am, for now, ignoring the fact that Rita is having some issues with her charging system - the drive batteries died completely and luckily Rick had a charger he could loan me, to get Rita started so I could leave the beach. Something is draining the batteries, but I won't be able to figure out what until I get back. For now, I just unhooked the batteries when I left.

I had many generous offers for where I could safely leave Rita. I feel so lucky to have met so many great people in my year in Sonora. I decided Rita would feel most at home with Mariana and her Mom in Hermosillo. They have a quiet dead-end road surrounded by family homes. The day time heat is a bit more there, but overall I decided it was the best place for her. Also, it allowed me to drive to Hermosillo, where I was flying out from – and not have to figure out transportation to there.

I also got to spend some time with Mariana, her family and our friend Marlen, before heading out. I went up a few days early, to be sure to have time to finish everything in Rita and still have time for visiting.

I managed to get everything buttoned up and headed out at 0’dark thirty on Saturday before Christmas, for the airport. I had a relatively easy flight down to Guanajuato. Of course we left Hermosillo so late that I missed my connecting flight in Monterrey, but luckily they had added another flight that day and I was able to get in only 4 hours late. Could’ve been a lot worse. It gave me time to have a nice organic salad and juice for lunch, which cost more than I spend groceries some weeks…

I arrived at Jen’s housesit in Guanajuato just at sunset. It was great to see her and we were both excited for our time together. She had just arrived a couple days before me, so it was still a new setting for her as well. The house is beautiful and the 2 dogs, Benjie and Sadie are super sweet. They are an unusual breed – Canaan dogs from Saudi Arabia, and we had fun figuring out their quirks of the breed - for example they have NO clue how to play, fetch or use toys, they bark at EVERY noise, but never just for the sake of barking, and they hate being left alone. They were very sweet ‘velcro dogs’ sticking to us everywhere in the house, always angling for butt scratches.

Jen had a list of activities she had made for what we might do during my 10 day visit. Well, it was pretty much just one activity – EATING… she had a list of restaurants, in different areas, she wanted to share with me. We also had Christmas - which of course meant I was cooking shrimp on the 24th. We were also invited to a potluck on the 25th, so we had our holiday plans sorted. Guanajuato is a beautiful, old, historic and very picturesque place. It was also pretty crowded as a holiday destination. We were not deterred or crowded out from doing all the things we wanted.  They daytime temps were perfect/but a tad chilly. Up high where the house was, the wind howled like crazy almost every night.

It all went by way too fast, but it was a perfect combination of walks down from the steep hills to various areas in and around centro and some cozy times at ‘home’ watching movies with fuzzy blankets and a lot of dog hair. I ate more than seemed humanly possible, but it was worth the belly aches and probably a few extra kilos on the belly.

Our visit is probably best described in photos and a couple videos…hope you enjoy the album half as much as I enjoyed the visit!!

At 5:15am this morning my alarm went off and I somehow managed to get myself

to the bus station in an Uber in time to catch my first of 3 buses to get to Zihuatanejo. Sad to say goodbye to my friend and excited to see other dear friends and my favorite tropical paradise, which is roughly 25 degrees warmer than where I've been.

HAPPY NEW YEAR TO EVERYONE!!! I hope 2026 is a good one.