I have somehow managed to find myself swamped with work through the weekend. Because of this and my needing to make a withdrawal at the bank, I decided not to do any overtime today and instead go to Maz after my shift ended at 2:00, then hunker down and work for the next three days.

The nearest Scotiabank to me is the one on Ejercito Mexicano, about 1.5KM from the embarcadero. I walked there and on the way noticed several stores, even hole in the wall abarrotes, that said ‘recarga TelCel aquí’ (recharge TelCel here). I’ve been meaning to put money on my phone so I can make and receive calls, but the website has been so terribly slow that I haven’t had the patience to do so. I’d never put money on the phone from a vendor before and decided to see if that’s easier than using my credit card on the website. Is it! I gave my number to the clerk, told her I wanted to add $100 to my account, and she punched it into what I assumed is a cell phone, although it looked like a big old Nokia from 10 years ago.

After about 30 seconds, her phone dinged and I got five text messages confirming that I’d added the $100, what my rates were, special promotions, etc. Super easy! That’s all I had to do because I was going to use the money for calls and texts. If I had wanted to buy bandwidth, I would have needed to send a text message to that effect.

I just checked the text messages and one of them says that my $100 got me $100 in bonus time (saldo regalo/gift balance)!!! I can use that for calls, texts, and bandwidth at full price. Wow! I remember from last year that I pretty much spent the winter making calls on only saldo regalo, but don’t remember it being that generous.

The Amigo plan (pay-as-you-go) rates are also pretty amazing. Get this, I only pay $2 per minute… to Mexico, the U.S., and Canada. I have been staring at those numbers for the last five minutes trying to figure out what I’m reading wrong. That’s 0.16CAD per minute. There has got to be a catch. I am going to have to call someone in Canada to see if this is true! Skype is free, of course, but it’s good to know that I have the phone as a backup! I just skimmed the fine print and it looks like I can use my phone in the U.S. as though I was in Mexico, which is very interesting. I will get back to this as this plan sounds like a game changer because I could keep my TelCel account active when I’m home and use my Mexican SIM when I’m in Montana!

But I digress. From the abarrotes, I crossed the street to use the Scotiabank ATM, where I was able to take out $4,800. It came out in all $500s, plus a $200 and a $100. Ouch! I much prefer withdrawing from Santander, which gives some small bills… but I don’t miss the fee! I went into the bank and asked to change the $4,5000 worth of $500s to $100s and $50s. Not a problem. The teller ended up giving me almost all $50s! I really didn’t mind, of course, but that made for a rather impressive stack of bills!

Since the big Waldo’s is just a block or two further down the road and I needed a few things for the house, it made sense to head there next. But since I was still on the Scotiabank side, I decided to have lunch first. I knew there was a Rin Rin pizza by the big Ley (where I didn’t need anything this time), but they wanted over $30 for tiny slice with a drink. Pass! I went to the Chinese place instead and had a nice lunch for $48.

Then, I climbed up and up and up and up and up and up some more to get to the pedestrian overpass to cross Ejercito Mexicano and then came all the way back down to ground level. Whew! I still prefer that to playing frogger in front of the Scotiabank!

Waldo’s had everything on my list… and a few things that’s weren’t. For those who don’t know, Waldo’s is equivalent to a higher end dollar store in Canada and the U.S., like Dollar Tree. I especially needed some plastic containers for storing leftovers and the like since the ones I bought last year weren’t in the kitchen when I arrived.

Walking back to the embarcadero, I was struck by the fact that this was my first time walking down Gutiérrez Nájera in that direction and that everything looked so different!

There was a short wait for a lancha, but I was back on Isla in a flash.

I made a quick stop for beer ($90 for seven, so $13 each, almost half the cost of getting a beer at a restaurant!) and then it was time to get home because I was ready to drop. It’s been a busy work week! I plan to get a bit of a later start tomorrow, which will probably mean 7:00 instead of 6:00. 😀