Wednesday around Puerto Penasco

On Wednesday, we decided to visit a neighboring village, La Choya (or La Cholla, or Cholla Bay) and return to the restaurant by the Reef RV park for lunch.

Some of us wanted to get a walk in during the morning, so set out walking, with the plan for the two drivers to come pick us up when we called...

Along the way, we walked across a vacant lot... Pam and Carl (aka Carlos) take the left fork...

Nancy and Wayne bringing up the rear

Uh oh, there is a fence... can we escape through the fence? I guess we did! Did you hear about anyone breaking through a fence in Mexico? "Carlos" became "Carlos the Jackal".

The sign told us to turn right to get to La Choya...

Along the way, Pam found a couple of geocaches, so we got to participate with her!

Cholla Bay (or La Choya or La Cholla) is an interesting town. It is pretty with buildings painted different bright or pastel colors and some with beautiful tile work. It appears to be mainly inhabited by gringos (white people), but we saw NO ONE there, except a few Mexican construction workers. It was rather eerie!

Most of the houses had water reservoirs on the roof for their water supply.

An example of a brightly colored home/compound with some tile decoration.

A building with interesting dolphin shaped block glass windows, though the walls are not painted that made it different and more boring than most of the other buildings.

Another house with pretty accents. Note that there is a tall garage door on one of the garages -- we saw these on many houses, that we would have thought to be a RV garage in some parts of the US, but most of the ones we saw seemed either too narrow to be able to get an RV into, or the space in front of the entrance was too short to think about getting a big RV lined up to get into the garage.

This was the welcome sign into the town (we stopped so I could take it on the way out)...

This sign welcomed us to Cholla Bay... - it seemed to be a nice town, just with no residents in residence! We were wondering if the owners had purchased some years ago, and the time for construction in Mexico meant that their houses were not completed until many years later, at which time the original owners could no longer travel or had passed away, and their children don't know what to do with the properties? It just seems like a very odd town!

We stopped at the restaurant at the Reef and Carl and I got guacamole and salsa and fish tacos (we didn't get a picture of the fish tacos when they came)...

When we got back to our RV park, Santiago and crew were close to finishing up their work on Steve and Nancy's RV. Steve had moved it to the front of the park away from any other RVs to avoid any paint drifting and to ensure that it had good sun coverage for drying.

I was to get a pedicure in the afternoon so had my feet soaking for a while...

... until Martina came to do the pedicure.

Sunset over California Bay -- can you hear the "hiss" as the sun hits the water?

Beautiful skies...

So lovely!

It was a little chillier on Wednesday with wind (high in high 60s instead of 70s) and a bit cloudy, but that gave us the beautiful sunset.

Body work completed

Santiago (we found out his name) and his crew came back today to continue and complete the body work on Gracie. We found out that the two men that work with him are his father and uncle. We think we understood that Santiago has been doing body work for 30 years - right out of high school.

I think this was Santiago's uncle - masking off the areas for paint...

Meanwhile, we were sitting in front of Steve and Nancy's rig -- the RVs that had been in the row in front of us had left on Tuesday morning, so we had a clearer view to the water.

Carl and I took a walk around the RV park, and when we returned, the door was masked closed and the steps were covered... whoops... we didn't realize we would be outside the rig all day! Oh well! Semper Gumby (always flexible)!

Santiago was there to apply the primer

Primer going on

The lights were masked off too.

After the primer was on, they masked off for the first paint color...

Meanwhile, Carl was soaking his feet -- on Monday afternoon, a lady came by offering pedicures and massages. I wanted a pedicure and we agreed that she would come back on Tuesday to provide it. Pam also wanted one, so the lady had two customers.... but... we decided Carl's feet needed it worse so Carl prepared for a pedicure!

Painting the first color...

First color done...

Re-masked and painting the second color...

Second color done...

We were all out enjoying the sun!

Third color (small stripes and bottom part) masked off and starting to be painted.

Paint all done and ready for clear coat.

Two coats of clear coat applied

Meanwhile, the nail technician prepared to work on Carl's feet -- we were kidding him that she had to get the orbital sander out...

Clear coat finished

Wow - it is all done! How gorgeous!

While Santiago and team were finishing Gracie, and the nail technician was working on Carl and Pam (and Ada got a toenail trim too), Steve was smoking a tri-tip that Pam had brought from a ranch she visits in Texas. Once all the jobs were finished, we had a delicious dinner of tri-tip, baked potatoes, cole slaw, brownies, and ice cream!

... and we finished up the evening with a sunset over the Bay of California!

Getting some work done...

A few months ago, we did some body damage on Gracie. We checked into getting it repaired at National Indoor RV in December, but they did not have available cycles to do the work (even though we had arranged ahead of time), so we decided to wait to get the work done while we were in Arizona. We had thought about getting it done in Yuma later in the winter, and called a shop, but they did not call us back... so... we decided to look into getting it done while we're here in Mexico.

Front corner damage

Close up of the damage

We spoke to the manager/owner of the RV campground where we are staying to find out if he had someone who could do the work that we needed. He sent a guy over on Saturday and gave us an estimate of what it would take to do the work. We cannot remember the name of the guy, but he has done body work previously for Steve and Nancy's rig and they were pleased with it, and the estimate was about 10% of what National Indoor quoted us... so we decided to go ahead and get it completed while we're here.

To match the paint colors, he wanted to take a component (compartment door) of the rig and to have access to any paint samples that we had.

We found the paint samples and had them available when he came Monday morning.

They started the work by using a heat gun to remove the Diamond Shield on the damaged panel.

Pulling off the Diamond Shield

He had warned us that pulling off the Diamond Shield was likely to cause some damage to the paint and thus he would need to re-paint the entire panel. Sure enough, there was damage to some of the paint as the shield film came off.

Then it was time for sanding...

For the sample of the paint colors, they took the hood over the front compartment.

We left the guys working and went out to eat...

At the restaurant located near the Reef RV Park (which would have been our second choice if Concha del Mar had happened to be full). It is a nice RV park (full hookups for $26/night, I think). And the restaurant is nice too!

The reef in front of the Reef RV Park

Looking back up toward the restaurant, our table was the furthest one out on the beach.

We were about 3.5 miles by beach walking from Concha del Mar RV park -- two of our group walked each direction, we decided to drive.

Carl and I shared a nachos appetizer...

Then we headed into Puerto Penasco for shopping...

A couple of the places that we stopped were near the corner of Fremont and Sinaloa (we took a picture of the street signs to help us remember).

When we got back to Gracie, the fellows were still working, but they finished by about 2pm and left it to dry overnight.

There is also a damaged area next to the steps that they are repairing (we think this may have happened when we had the front end get off the pavement and sink into the sand at Monahans Sand Dunes State Park - https://journeyinamazinggrace.blogspot.com/2021/12/pictures-from-our-last-couple-of-days.html).

We think that they will sand tomorrow and then paint the next day. It will be great to get this to-do off of our list!