When we woke up on Sunday, October 2, it was very windy. The wind was pleasantly cool and refreshing! Christi needed a jacket when she went out to watch the sunrise. Once the sun was up, the wind died and it warmed up fast.

Does anyone know what kind of bird this is?

Eric started changing the engine oil and filter first thing in the morning, as planned. Unfortunately, he’d failed to notice that a valve was set wrong, and accidentally drained out the transmission oil simultaneously with the engine oil. And then, unbeknownst to him, while filling the engine with oil, he was also simultaneously filling the transmission with engine oil. It didn’t take Eric long to figure out that the engine wasn’t filling up with oil proportional to the amount that he was putting in. That’s when he noticed the valve.

We immediately headed to AutoZone, which was .6 miles north on Highway 1 (which paralleled the water), for more oil. We’d done this walk several times back in August, but this time it was a bit treacherous. There were no sidewalks, and the sides of the road were covered in mud. Our choices were to either walk on the highway, which had a lot of traffic (including big-rigs) or walk in the deep, sticky mud.

As we walked along, it was obvious that the waterfront had taken more damage than the interior. Here are a couple of before and afters:

We were surprised to see that the tower looked basically the same as it had last time. Under the tower was a sunken boat that wasn’t there in August:

Eric carried the 5-gallon bucket of oil the whole way back. Fortunately, it was only 87 degrees Fahrenheit, so it was relatively cool compared to the weather we’ve had lately. This time, we split off Highway 1 at the Malecon. Since the structures along the Malecon had already been in bad shape, it was hard to tell if there had been more damage. They’ve made great progress on the small-boat marina waterfront improvement project they’ve been working on, though the sign advertising it had blown away.

Back at Kosmos, Eric drained the transmission oil, flushed the transmission and refilled it. All seemed to be fixed.

At lunch time, we headed back out. Near the roundabout, the two truckloads of soldiers were shoveling mud from the side of the road into a big pile. A loader was scooping the mud from the pile and putting it into a dump truck. We felt bad for the poor soldiers. While it was cooler than it has been lately, it was still too hot to be doing such intense physical labor.

We went to a restaurant called Restaurant La Huastica for lunch.

They had three menu items that day: carnitas, posole soup and menudo soup. We each ordered two carnitas tacos and got a bowl of each soup to share. The servings were huge. Carnitas is pulled pork. The tacos were simply pork in tortillas, and they were served with a large platter of accoutrements (left in photo below), including three types of salsa, guacamole, cabbage and lime, so that you could doll up your taco any way you liked it (in the photo below, we’d already put salsa and cabbage on one of the tacos before we remembered to take a photo).

The soups were served with cabbage, onion/cilantro mixed together, lime, bread and chips. Pozole soup is a traditional Native American dish that is often served at special events. It is usually made with pork (although we wondered if this soup had chicken instead of pork), hominy (treated giant corn kernels), onion, garlic, chili peppers and assorted spices, such as cilantro and oregano. We loved the pozole. The menudo soup had a very similar broth, but it was greasier. The texture of the meat was weird and we couldn’t figure out what kind of meat it was. When we looked it up later, we found it was tripe (cow stomach). Even though the menudo was similar, we didn’t like it as much as the pozole.

They also served a bowl of sliced nopales, which is a type of cactus that can be easily mistaken for a slightly bitter, cooked green bell pepper, along with a bowl of pickled carrots and jalapeños mixed together. The bowl in the middle of the above photo was a spicy spread. The red beverages in the background are jamaica. The jamaica was lightly sweetened which made it even more yummy; usually, it is served unsweetened, and the tea is slightly bitter.

Shortly after we started eating, the owner and head chef came by to make sure we liked our food. Later, as we were finishing up our meal, she sat down and chatted with us. She was such a nice lady. She told us that because it was so hot, she was only open on Saturdays and Sundays until 5:00 pm. We are not sure if that meant that she’ll be open more days/hours when the weather cools off. She told us about her family and life in Santa Rosalia. Since our Spanish isn’t very good, we missed a lot of what she said, but we got the gist of what she was talking about.

After lunch, we went the gelateria, named Splash. We’d briefly mentioned it twice before. Looking back, we’re surprised that we didn’t mention that the gelato was made in house, there were lots of flavors, and it was delicious. They also make phenomenal aqua frescas.

We’d had such a large, late lunch, that we didn’t get hungry for dinner at our normal hour. Near bedtime, we decided that we should eat. We went to the closest restaurant to the marina’s pedestrian gate, which is housed in a building that looks like a giant palapa.

We hadn’t gone there last time because none of the other cruisers had liked it very much. It’s basically a bar that plays reggae music and serves pub food, including burgers, fries and chicken wings. The food was fine.

Here is a photo of the half-full moon taken near the pedestrian gate.