. : Tuesday17th September 2013…road trip!!

As there was no Internet service because of the storm this is one long post of the tri so maybe a cup tea of coffee may be required.

Carolyn and I left SMA at 8.30am this morning in her car which is a nice almost new VW wagon lots of room for everything and the drive was very beautiful lush mountains and great views!!

Market bound!!

It was a pleasant 8 hour 400 mile drive on good fast Toll roads and no wrong turns.

The sleepy little village where we are staying is on a long bay and we found the apartment easily…..the lovely young Mexican couple who are our hosts helped carry all our stuff and we are on the first floor and no one else is staying here.

Literally on the ocean.

I went for a long walk on the beach and a wonderful swim!!

It is a lovely place and we have all we need and the evening went by so fast.

This morning we took a long beach walk

I love this next shot!!

When we came back the fishermen had pulled their boat out onto the beach by us.

We have been playing some board games and I think you can tell who is winning…..

The time just passed so quickly reading, studying Spanish oh of course yes the Hammock!!

Forgot to mention there is no Wi-Fi here and I forgot to put time on my Internet stick so we will walk into the village tomorrow but I doubt there will be a place to add time so no blog until……..

Yashi Koshi!!

Day three Saturday and I have decided just to make this one long blog…well guess what happened during the night….. for some reason I cannot press the question key down on my computer..anyway during the night it started to rain hard and by morning it was as we say in jolly old England “chucking it down”. It never stopped all day long…I cannot remember the last time I was inside all day …. the rain was torrential and the waves huge..I think we had a small tropical storm come through!!!

So we were not able to walk to the village so we played board games, ate, read, listened to music, watched the sky and the waves and in a funny sort of a way it was a fun day. Carolyn spends a lot of time studying her Spanish and I prepared my lesson for my English class next week…..we also did about an hour of Yoga and afterwards I did venture into the ocean for a swim!!!

These photos do not really show the extent of the rain.

Those white type lines by the grass are rain drops.

What a storm watching day!!!

So during the night the rain was relentless and the rain was coming in all the rooms and in the morning the bedroom was under about a quarter of an inch of water which Carolyn swept out whilst I worked on the kitchen area…and the rain continued.

There was a brief intermission around 11 am and we took that time to walk to the little sleepy village..the storm had washed away many of the restaurant's frontage

What colors on this critter….

Walking home the rain started again a downpour we got drenched so when we got home home Carolyn headed for the shower and I headed for the beach for a swim….well could not actually swim as the waves were so rough but enjoyed just playing in the surf…these pictures do not do justice to the power of the storm…

We amused ourselves with more board games, reading, studying and of course eating.

As tomorrow is Independence Day here in Mexico we wanted to go into the city to see the celebrations and around 3pm it did actually stop raining so we drove the 14 miles into town..I found out that the storm had cut all the Internet service out so my stick will not work and we were disappointed with the dirtiness of the Centro and also the lack of celebrations….no flags…no music nothing..perhaps the storm had dampened everyone’s spirit.

To show how much rain had fallen the basket ball court is completely flooded!!!

We arrived home about 6pm and Carolyn had made a lovely batch of pea soup and as we sat down to eat another storm blew in and again gale force winds, tides and huge amounts of rain…..come to the beach for some sun and fun I said!!!!! Right!!!!

Still we enjoyed the day.

So now Monday morning …………….. Independence Day in Mexico…of course it was s till raining so sent some time doing this

and after breakfast I told Carolyn that I was going to walk the beach so dressed in just my swim trunks I started walking in the rain is was quite refreshing and I walked for two hours when I got back it had just finished raining and Carolyn wanted me to go for a walk with her so another hour of walking….came back and had a great hot shower the first one all the time we stayed here as the pilot light kept blowing out in the furnace…we had some snacks and played some board games and then finished off the lovely soup from yesterday…..by now it was clear and the skies were a little brighter and as this would be the last time being by the ocean for a while I went and sat and just watched.

Carolyn came down and joined me and we sat for over an hour and watched the sky change literally by the minute.

It was quite beautiful!!!

So the ending of the little holiday was a beautiful sunset memory.

It was clear this morning and we loaded the car with lots of snacks and drinks and were on the road by 8.30am and on the drive to the main road when we went through this

and then when we got on the main road we bought this

and our first knowledge of THIS!!

Tropical Storm Manuel Death Toll, Tropical Storm Manuel Mexico, World News

ACAPULCO, Mexico — The death toll rose to 47 Tuesday from the unusual one-two punch of a tropical storm and a hurricane hitting Mexico at nearly the same time. Authorities scrambled to get help into, and stranded tourists out of, the cutoff resort city of Acapulco.

With roads blocked by landslides, rockslides, floods and collapsed bridges, Acapulco was cut off from road transport after Tropical Storm Manuel made landfall on Sunday. The terminal at the city's international airport was flooded, but not the landing strips.

Emergency flights began arriving in Acapulco to evacuate at least 40,000 mainly Mexican tourists stranded in the resort city where some streets were transformed into raging brown rivers. .

Interior Secretary Miguel Angel Osorio Chong told the Radio Formula that 27 people had died because of the storm in the Pacific coast state of Guerrero, where Acapulco is located. Osorio Chong said 20 more people died nationwide, many as a result of former hurricane Ingrid, which struck the Gulf coast on Monday. Mexican meteorologists said it was the first time since 1958 that two tropical storms or hurricanes had hit both the country's coasts within 24 hours.

While most Acapulco hotels seemed to be operating normally on Tuesday, many outlying neighborhoods were without water or electricity, and floodwaters were knee-deep at the city airport's check-in counters.

Federal officials said it could take at least another two days to open the main highway to Acapulco, which was hit by more than 13 landslides from surrounding hills, and to bring food and relief supplies into the city of more than 800,000 people.

Two of Mexico's largest airlines, Aeromexico and Interjet, began running flights to and from the still-swamped international airport. Those with tickets got first priority, then families with small children or elderly members, officials said.

Interjet's director Luis Jose Garza told Milenio TV that his airline's first flight was taking 150 passengers back to Mexico City and it hoped to run four to six such flights Tuesday.

Guerrero state's government said 40,000 tourists were stuck in the city, but the head of the local chamber of business owners said reports from hotels indicated the number could be as high as 60,000.

Thousands of stranded tourists lined up outside an air force base north of Acapulco to try to get a seat on one of a handful of planes flying to Mexico City. Many said they've been waiting at the base for hours after they were unable to return to Mexico City by road.

Gavin McLoughlin, 27, a teacher at Mexico City's Greengates School, said he went to Acapulco on a late night bus Thursday with about 30 other teachers at the school, many of whom are in their 20s.

"We had no idea of the weather," the Englishman said. "We knew there was a hurricane on the other side but not this side."

They group was staying at the Copacabana Hotel and by Sunday they were unable to leave the hotel because of the rain.

The main coastal boulevard was open Tuesday and most hotels appeared to have power, water and food. But that was little consolation to those unable to leave Acapulco.

"It's probably one of the worst holidays I've ever been on," said David Jefferson Gled, a 28-year-old English teacher at Greengates School. "It wasn't really a holiday, more of an incarceration."

Military officials said there would be 17 flights on Tuesday. Nine planes and five helicopters shuttling back and forth between Mexico City and this air force base.

The situation was far more serious in the city's low-income periphery, where steep hills funneled rainwater into neighborhoods of cinderblock houses.

City officials said about 23,000 homes, mostly on Acapulco's outskirts, were without electricity and water. Stores were nearly emptied by residents who rushed to stock up on basic goods. Landslides and flooding damaged an unknown number of homes.

Natividad Gallegos said she returned Monday from shopping to find her house in a poor Acapulco neighborhood buried by a landslide that killed six members of her family, including her two children. "I saw a lot of strangers with picks and shovels, digging where my house used to be," she said, weeping.

The coastal town of Coyuca de Benitez and beach resorts further west of Acapulco, including Ixtapa and Zihuatenejo, were cut off after a river washed out a bridge on the main coastal highway.

Marcela Higuera, who runs a bread stall in the Coyuca market, said the only aid that had arrived so far was a helicopter that rescued stranded flood victims.

"Flour's already run out. There isn't any in Coyuca," she said, adding that the Coyuca River had swept away the bridge and riverside restaurants, and flooded low-lying neighborhoods. "This is the worst storm that I've seen."

"There are hundreds of people in shelters and they're begging for clothes and blankets because everything they have is wet," Higuera said. "They had to leave without taking anything."

Remnants of Manuel continued to drench Mexico further up the Pacific coast and the U.S. National Hurricane Center said it was expected to become a tropical storm by Tuesday night or Wednesday morning near resorts at the tip of the Baja California Peninsula.

One of the biggest single death tolls was reported in the Gulf Coast state of Veracruz, where 12 people died when a landslide smashed into a bus traveling through the town of Altotonga, about 40 miles (65 kilometers) northwest of the state capital.

More than 23,000 people fled their homes in Veracruz state due to heavy rains spawned by Ingrid, and 9,000 went to emergency shelters. At least 20 highways and 12 bridges were damaged, the state's civil protection authority said.

We had NO idea how severe the storm had been and in a few miles the detours started because of the fallen bridge..we had both never seen scenes quite like this…

With the road closures it tok us 5 hours to drive 120 miles….really I have never seen such devastation and so much water and mud…after we got back onto the closed toll highway everything including the weather improved