Yesterday, I asked the mechanic who worked on Igor’s brakes if he knew where was the best place to find propane lines and fittings. He recommended a place that was conveniently close to the big Walmart store about 6 kms away, so we packed up Igor and went for a drive.
Of course our fridge and cupboards were basically empty, so we knew it was going to be a big shop! Our liquor cabinet was empty as well, and it turned out that this Walmart was having a 35% off sale on all hard liquor and wine! We laugh about this, because back in Ontario or Nova Scotia, when an alcohol product goes on sale, you MIGHT save 10% if you’re lucky. And of course that’s not much of a savings off an already overpriced item.
Here in Mexico, most standard brands of hard liquor are already reasonably priced… so when you take 35% off of that, it’s a real deal! We don’t drink a lot of the hard stuff, but Ruth likes to have a gin and tonic or a margarita now and again, and I like a shot of Scotch, which I haven’t had for a long time.
So we bought a bottle of gin, a bottle of blended Scotch, a bottle of orange liqueur, a bottle of tequila, and a six pack of beer. All for a total of 554 pesos ($42 CAD, $30 USD). Now, they were all cheap brands, but that still would have been about $130 CAD at LCBO in Ontario.
Of course we also bought groceries. That bill came to 1,917 pesos ($145 CAD, $103 USD). I know you don’t have any perspective as to what we bought for that price, but suffice to say that the cash register receipt was quite long! I can only imagine what the same items would have cost in Canada.
Then it was off to the propane supply store. The girl who served me was really knowledgeable. Unfortunately, one of the fittings on the line I’m trying to replace is an oddball one. She said it’s an American one, and it’s not even that common in the United States. But definitely not available in Mexico. The option she suggested was a different fitting at the end of the copper line, but I didn’t have that removed yet. Now that I’ve though about it again, it might actually be easier to run a flexible braided line directly from the regulator to the oven/stove appliance. Our fridge operates off 12V only, we have hardly ever used our hot water heater, and our furnace operates off gasoline. So all of those branch lines are not being used anyhow. If the connection to the oven is easily accessible, that might be the best fix. I’ll look into that option this morning.
In the meantime, without a functional stove or oven, Ruth is stuck cooking in the communal kitchen here at the campground. It’s pretty basic, but at least there is one! I offered to do all the cooking for a week, if she would crawl under the motorhome and work on the propane lines. We both had a good laugh at either of those situations working out well! I don’t normally mind doing that type of thing, but yesterday when I was under there, I actually said to myself “I’m getting too old for this!”.
As always, she made a delicious chicken stir fry using only the appliances in the photo above.
Our Amazon package is supposed to arrive today, part of which is a new propane regulator for Igor. If all goes according to plan, we’ll have a working oven and stove by the end of the day. We’ll see!
Despite the fact that we are here longer than we wanted to be, it’s not a bad place to hang out.
Great deal on this Monster Bluetooth Speaker at Amazon.com
And in Canada… this Sony Bluetooth Headset is a fantastic deal at Amazon.ca
Leave a Reply