San Felipe Hotels
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Days One Sixty-Five and One Sixty-Six
Entry 69 of 119 | show all | print this entry |
After our sleepless night at Campo los Compadres and a few hours in San Felipe learning to navigate the Mexican federal telephone service TelMex, Kudzu and I settled into the much more congenial Campo Pai-Pai still a few kilometers north of San Felipe. Campo Pai-Pai lacks the flush toilets of Playa del Sol and Los Compadres but it does include cold water showers (actually just a plywood stall with an open spigot underneath a one hundred gallon water tank on the bluff above) and is only one hundred pesos per night. Best of all, no one at Pai-Pai brought a moto.
The sun and the water are warm. The beach is clean. A few motos, Jeeps, and dune buggies pass by from time to time, but it is basically pretty quiet. A group of families from San Diego at the end of the campo host a disco for their preschoolers each night complete with light show and hip-hop and ska hits from Nelly, 50 Cent, UB40, and No Doubt but they are usually changing diapers and sending the muchachos off to bed by 9:00 P.M. Our only other neighbor is a couple from Calexico with a young son and a Schnauzer puppy named Chaquita who took a brief fancy to Kudzu. The man was very friendly and told me a lot about the area. Early Saturday afternoon, just after they arrived, he came over to borrow a match since his lighter wasn't working. Shortly thereafter, I noticed the pleasant and primal aroma of red meat over fire and before I knew it he reappeared asking if I ate meat. After trying to figure out how to ask if a frog's ass was watertight in Spanish, I simply replied in the affirmative and he offered me a freshly cooked carne asada torta. It was one of the best things I've ever eaten.
Even though the exchange rate is a around eleven pesos per dollar, most of the merchants seem to employ a de facto exchange of ten to one to facilitate transactions. For instance, if the campo manager quotes a price of ten dollars, he will gladly accept one hundred pesos which only costs about nine dollars. Kudzu and I have quickly learned that it is to our advantage to always pay in pesos, not that I allow Kudzu to handle money. There is a branch of the Mexican bank Bancomer in San Felipe with a cajero automatico (ATM) so pesos are easy to obtain. The is also a casa de cambio in town which will exchange dollars for pesos at a favorable rate. Many of the merchants seem to be willing to exchange small amounts for customers and everybody accepts dollars as payment.
Campo Pai-Pai was much quieter and more agreeable so we spent Saturday and Sunday reading under our palapa and taking lots of walks on the beach. I should probably explain that a palapa is a crude structure to provide shade from the sun. Some are not much more than a semi-permanent beach umbrella covered in palm fronds while others can be elaborate structures with a grill, picnic table, and hammock. They all have that slightly seedy appearance that seems so fitting at the beach.
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