Another Camera Down

The Picture is just Michelle and I walking out into the
ocean. Shortly after we came in a 15 ish year old nearly
drowned. He was swept out to sea, or walked off an edge.
He was popping out of the water screaming every 20-30
seconds. Life gaurds showed up on a quad long after he
was rescued.

The only internet we have is over at Joe's appartment
we can plug the lap tops in to a cable from the inernet
cafe next door. Or pay at the cafe if we don't want to
disturb the father inlaw at his place. So far it looks
like I go on line every 2 days for a few min, check email
update the blog and that is it.

I went over my truck cooling system very carefully, with
primitave tools. The crappy 12v compressor I got on sale
for $10 years ago has been priceless here. The whole
radiator presure test, with minimal tools will be another
blog post for a day in Canada. My discoveries were no
surprise. First of all the radiator temperature fan
switch failed at some point, so I will need to wire a
switch there or something. I found the fan is always on
this far south any way.

The head gasket appears to be not too serious. A head
retorque should fix it. I am having a hard time
getting even a torque wrench, so each bolt might just get a
1/8 turn. The worst case I will need to add water every
100km, which is just over 15 stops to get to Nevada,
where I can get a new rebuilt motor for less than $2000.

The plan is to stop and get a new motor in Nevada,
because it is half the price of Canada, and doesn'
require a core. In Alberta, they wan to charge me $100s
more still on top of that if there is anything wrong w my
core motor I am returning, on top of the $4000 price tag.
So if I am having to add water more than every 400 km I
will likely pay another $2000 to have them install the
motor there too. But I am sure that the water consumption
will only be a huge burden going through the mountains.

We parked the camper rite near some shugar type ants nest.
It didn't take even 2 hours to have a noticable ant
"problem" in the camper. However not 10' away are some
fire ant hills, with that in mind I am happy to welcome
the shugar ants.

At least 1 coconut falls on Joe's property every 48 hours,
that I have noticed. But the fallen coconuts are always
bad. We had to climb the tree and we got down 4 coconuts
a few days ago. I ate them all because Joe is sick of
them and Michelle wasn't interested. 2 of them were
not ripe at all, just coconut milk inside, wile 2 were
nearly ripe with lots of meat and milk.

I had scoped out the neighbors palm tree, because it hangs
over Joe's property and is full of ripe coconuts, easily
100 or more. It has never been harvested, until today. I
get the idea, and the neighbors read my mind and climb the
tree. So I went over and asked them "uno coco por u",
and they gave me 3 coconuts.

It was the Sunday market today. I had fun just walking
the streets with my new favorite beer, "Indio", and
negotiating prices. I did buy matches $2, 3 pairs of
jeans $12, a belt $2, a second pair of flip flops $2, a
12v transformer to run 12v camper accessories $5, and
a long sleave shirt to weld in $2.

It was also the end of my camera today. Ironically it died
exactly as my first good camera died a few years ago, in
Mexico. I had taken it to the beach and been so careful
with it. I went swimming in the warm ocean and hung my
shorts to dry over night. Then today I wore the same
shorts, took my camera wallet and keys. Well just enough
sand was left in the pocket from the ocean, and it got in
the camera, now it doesn't focus zoom or even open without
manual force. I still have the $40 video camera, so I can
take some pics w that. I was Eyeing up a DSLR camera in
Arizona too, that could replace mine.