Leaving Coventry Hills, Calgary

After 4 years of renting in Calgary, our landlady decided to sell the house so we were faced with a time-sensitive decision. We hoped to be returning to Playa in the fall following the birth of grandchild number two, so did not want to commit to another lease. Fortunately for us, opportunities presented themselves, the first of which was to spend a month in Port Alberni, British Columbia staying at Jordan's brother and sister-in-law's second home.

Following an annoying three months of viewings, the house finally sold. Now we had to deal with all of our stuff. Facebook Marketplace worked out nicely for decluttering and downsizing. We offered a couple of things to our young neighbours which they could happily use. We rented a small storage locker to house the few things we wanted to keep and hired a junk removal guy to deal with everything else.

Over the last two weeks of June, we moved boxes to the storage locker and finally moved our furniture on June 26th.

In the beginning ...

Bursting!

We spent the night in a local hotel before hitting the road to BC.

Our new Airbnb - expectation v reality (Feb 10-Mar 9, 2024)

Our Airbnb experiences have generally been very good with accurate photos and helpful hosts. This time was disappointing. The condo is very modern with 10ft ceilings and in a great location but it was clear that the management company is not aware or keeping up with needed repairs - sunken sofa cushions, lifting tiles, calcified faucet, stained sheets, and completely broken patio furniture that had just been left!! Their response to our messages was quite unhelpful - they didn't seem to care that much so our honest review will reflect this. Instagram ... ... reality ...replaced with two mismatched indoor chairs!! Playa as a whole has gotten busier and outside of the reality of inflation and a stronger peso, everything is much more expensive as happens in popular tourist spots. We are going to look at other more affordable places in Mexico to spend the winter months.

Painful winter travel from the Prairies

Minus 30 degrees below zero apparently causes problems for aeroplanes in the Prairie provinces. We were scheduled to depart at 6.30am January 13th Saskatoon-Calgary-Cancun but received word of cancelation the day before. They rescheduled us to depart at 7.30pm but added in an overnight stay in Vancouver (now SK-VAN-CAN). On Saturday morning we learned of yet another change, slightly better, to SK-Edmonton overnight-CAN, however by Saturday afternoon we got another notice of de-icing problems, crew delays, and departure changes upon which we would be updated within the hour. We waited for the update but no update came. Google informed us that our flight was canceled. Westjet had apparently abandoned us! At the same time, adding to our stress was that Nick was travelling with us but on a separate booking and his cancelations did not coincide with ours. First he would possibly land in Cancun before us, then with his reschedule he would lose almost a week of his vacation. It was...

Trolley Tour in Campeche

We booked this quintessential tourist activity and it was charming. It was of course, a little less amazing when the tour took us around the very neighbourhood in which we were staying, so maybe we should have done the tour earlier on! Independence Square Fisherman statue outside our local OXXO

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