Quick neighborhood tour

Not too much to relay tonight, so I thought I'd take you all on a quick tour of the neighborhood. This is the route I took; by the way it's really nice out there tonight, probably about 30 degrees, no hotter. Our house is the little dot, the circle is where the Circle K and Pemex are:


The cool light fixture outside our door:


Our incredibly efficient screen door, reflects the sun and lets cool air in:


Rooster house- they must have six roosters in there. Thank heaven for our well-insulated house!! This is just across the street.


Just down the alley across the street (pass by the right of rooster house and by that white van)-is this not a neat place?:


And at the end of that alley, looking north(left); there's quite a bit of greenery here, you just have to look for it:

Looking south, and then that's the direction I went:



Just another neat-looking place on that street:


This is where we get our water bottles filled up:


Across Sonora is the closest vet, we haven't been there yet, fingers crossed:


Keep going east on Sonora and you'll get to Josefa, where the Circle K and Pemex are. I didn't go that far.


I liked this place, with the log shutters (I guess that's what they are?)


Back on Melchor Ocampo, behind here are what sounds like millions of birds:


And back to our house, that's the neighbor's dog:


And across the street in the other direction:


That's it for tonight, hope you enjoyed the tour!

Beach break and big mail day

This morning's walk, first a praying mantis on the side of the house- they are strangely brownish here, I guess because of the landscape.

Sky facing across the street from our house:



And the beach itself at low tide.


We took the best break from work today! We knew the tide was high at about 2:00, so we went to the beach and we all had a swim! Carl had his first full-body dip in the Sea of Cortez and proclaimed it, "Delightful!". Shadow was concerned with our swimming abilities and hovered around us like a mother hen. We had to be sure he didn't wear himself out protecting us in chest-deep (to us) water.

We got a lot of mail, including my new shorts, my Spanish English dictionary and the part for our BBQ! Carl built the BBQ, I bought some beautiful T-Bones, and they're waiting for me now. Bye!

and...they were awesome! I know, I'm not cooking Mexican, and I feel appropriately guilty. I'll get into it again soon, it's only that I can make a Greek salad with my eyes closed, but to make a cactus-pad salad I have to check the recipe, make sure I have all the ingredients, etc. etc. So the recipes will be made, in fact I have a carne asada recipe coming soon, and now that the BBQ is in place, more fish is going to be seen. Bass is imminent!

Glad everyone survived the hurricane with minimal damage!

Tamales and mojarra

This morning we had the usual beach walk, the tide was far far far out. Shadow and I went for a swim anyway. Got home and showered, which is a great part of the day- clean, cool, in fresh clothes. Then I went out to get some fresh bolillos. Outside the mercado, an hombre was selling tamales carne, so I bought a couple. Yummy!! Meat, potato, and an olive in cornbread, steamed in a corn husk. Sorry, I took pictures but they were blurry.

We found parts and fixed a toilet that was running, a big victory. Put a bunch more stuff away, so now there are very few boxes. I went down to the beach again about 2, to see the difference from the early AM. There were 100 yards of vendors' tents, more tents down the beach, people sunning, people hanging out in the water, boats flying by, jet skis, parasails, all the usual beach stuff. A far cry from our quiet morning walks. Again, sorry, no pictures..

I do believe now that the tide is high in the early afternoon, I'll take advantage and go for a long swim tomorrow or Tuesday. I'm sure Shadow will want to join me.

We tried the mojarra (tilapia) tonight, I pan fried it with a TON of garlic. It was quite good, obviously fresh, and the garlic was just brown, a little crispy, a little chewy. It was delicious, but the fish wasn't our favorite. It just has that tilapia texture, not firm like flounder, snapper, halibut, haddock. We are both waiting for that extra part for the barbecue to arrive, then we're all over the sea bass.

I understand there's a hurricane closing in on Nova Scotia!! Stay safe, you guys!

Hurricane warning in effect
Wind warning in effect
Storm surge warning in effect. Wind east 30 km/h gusting to 50 becoming southeast 90 gusting to 130 this evening then west 60 gusting to 90.

No Title

Fish, Bills and Local traffic laws

Well, bill-paying was interesting- it took the two of us, a Spanish-speaking Mexican lady we hired, a lot of documents and a pile of money to get our electrical bill in our name and paid up. The water bill won't be in our name until we get the bank trust back notarized. You'd think four months would be enough time, but no..... but at any rate, we're paid up, now we know how to do it, and the dates to pay are in my calendar. And we can go online to see some of the bills as well!

The lady, Kesia, was nice and very interesting, born and bred here. She started talking about how much we'd enjoy clamming, and that she and her family do it all the time, so I took the bull by the horns and asked if next time, she'd mind dragging along a couple of gringos. She said sure, she'd call us, so I guess we'll see if she meant it or was just being polite.

Someday you may see this on a shelf somewhere. Don't buy it.


Yesterday on the beach, Shadow got a little lesson. He was sniffing butts with a dog, and as the dog turned to go, Shadow started chasing it, which he does. The dog let out a huge caterwauling- as it turns out, he was calling his pack, and all of a sudden Shadow was running full out back to us, being chased by a pack of dogs. All they did was nip his butt, but hopefully that broke him of that particular bad habit.

Traffic rule here: The red line indicates where the train tracks run. Depending on which side of the tracks you're on, you have the right of way in the direction of the arrow, as long as you're not at a stop sign. I have a feeling this is the kind of law that could change, oh, I don't know, on every second Tuesday, so I am yielding at all times. That seems safest.



Here are some shots of the fish stand at the local market. It was a little embarrassing taking them, but I wanted to know what some of this is!

Cochina de Cazon is dogfish. Bagre is catfish. Watch out!! They're right next to each other!!


Cochita is trigger fish.


Dogfish again


Mojarro is.. mojarro. I think its a type of tilapia, which I don't normally like, but the web says it's a good eating fish, so we might give it a try.


We think Lobina is bass. Sierra we have no idea, but it looks mackerel-esque, no?


That's all for today- we're off to have shrimp quesadillas and catch the sunset. Sorry, Shadow, no port for you tonight!!

Success!

The haircut experience was a rousing success! Martha, a very nice woman with a salon a block away, was very patient with me. I confess, I not only memorized, but wrote down Cheryl's sentence. "¿ Cortar por favor mi pelo dos centímetro de más corto?" (I changed it to dos centimetros). I also mentioned that I spoke only a very little Spanish. She said sure, sat me down and asked me a question. I said, duh in sign language, although I could have said, no comprende. She brought out clippers and scissors. I motioned to the scissors, then I said, "¿Come se dice?". She said what they were, which I really didn't get (tijeras, as it turns out). She said, "in English?". I said scissors, which she really didn't get.

During the course of the cut, I managed to convey (using Spanish words in all the wrong order I'm sure), that in one year I would speak Spanish (A brave and perhaps foolish statement), and that because my hair wasn't pretty, I kept it short. She appeared to understand both. Anyway, here's the result, for 9 bucks including tip. I'll be going back to Martha.


Tomorrow we attempt to pay our electric and water bills, as well as our telmex bill. Exciting. Apparently you need to keep strict track of what day you're supposed to pay, because if you don't make it they just cut you off. And you have to go and stand in line. Memories of my childhood! (When you had to stand in line for everything, not that my parents made me go down and pay the power bill).

Tonight we finally have Shrimp Santorini- I'll take a picture. When the stove went out the other night, we had a backup dinner of shrimp pan-fried outside in butter and garlic and onions, and a Greek salad. It was a more than acceptable substitute. I'll try to get a shot of tonight's supper, and maybe a couple of house shots, and add them to this posting later.

Later- more pictures as promised!

Our hallway with a painting we inherited:




The shrimp on the stove:



shrimp just before being devoured:



containers in our kitchen-how Mexican are we? Of course, now the pinto beans are just for show, and we'll buy canned beans from now on. Shrimp, by the way, were $9.99/Kg.

We got gas!!

The good kind, that is! We flagged down the propane truck today, he got a look at our little propane tank and somehow between he and Carl and me, we figured out that we needed to buy a new propane tank from him (I wondered why we had such a little one, I guess Oswaldo just rigged it up and took his larger one with him- they cost about $160). Anyway, we have a 30K one, it should last for a while.

The propane gent wrote down, agua y jabón. I ran for babelfish at Carl's suggestion and came back with water and soap! Carl took it out to him, he checked for leaks and we're good to go. Everything's an adventure, boy! I love it.

Next: a haircut! "¿Puede usted cortar mi pelo? ¿Cuando-ahora?" And the always useful, "un centimetro apagado". Which I hope very much means "one centimetre off". Although what I really want is one and a half centimetres off. un y medio centimetro?

Here is a shot of some whalebones at the beach in Mirador. We've taken to going there now and again because it's less busy in the morning, although the beer bottles say it's busy at night. And yes, Mom, I do actually wear those clothes out in public. But only at 7 AM on a deserted beach. :)



And a local arachnid. Very local, Carl took this at the side of our house.



Oh, by the way, last night's pollo asado was stunning! It was better, I think, than Pollo Lucas, which I like, but seems too salty. This was delightfully barbecued, and is 2 for 100 pesos, about ten bucks.

Allow me to explain...

Ok, here's the whole story in a nutshell, beginning in August:

I didn't want to go to vonage too early in Calgary because it sucks, so I waited until 12 business days before the move to ask for it and the number transfer(they say you need 10 business days).
-vonage took a further 5 business days to place the request.

-By that time, our new tenants had requested a phone number at the house, and Telus denied the vonage request.

-neither company called me about this.

-I finally called vonage, and they sent me to Telus, who sent me to vonage, etc for a half day.

-Telus eventually said they'd forward the 276 number to my virtual vonage number, and that all I needed to do was wait a week and ask vonage to place the request again. (btw, no one told me that the virtual number was in Lethbridge so we were paying long distance for every call)
-Vonage placed the request. denied by Telus because the number was being forwarded. Telus said we had to clear the number from the system, reactivate it, and then vonage could make the request again.
- they cleared the number from the system. I called to reactivate it, and they said I needed a line to reactivate it, they couldn't have it at the CO because vonage couldn't request a transfer from the CO.
-My head exploded.

-we decided to keep our virtual number, because we still didn't know it was virtually in Lethbridge.
-I was shaking with rage, so I typed the damn thing wrong in my first email.
-then someone let me know they had to dial long distance from Calgary to reach me.
-what was left of my head exploded again.
-I called Vonage, and the only thing we could do was get another number.

Anyway, more about Mexico!! The restaurant the other night was good, we had a shrimp fajita and a big chicken burrito plus a coupla beers for $25. It's very nice inside, air conditioned, and quite popular. It was surprisingly a little bland, but I am quite sure they have hot sauce. It will definitely be a stop when people arrive down here. It's called Ramon's.

Was going to cook Shrimp Santorini last night, but when I went to turn a burner on, we had run out of propane. So we used the backup thunder range, and we're waiting for the gas truck to come by. We might need to get Pollo Asado for tonight.

written in the dirt on a car: "no lave - experimento científico" -don't wash, scientific experiment!

Shadow is getting very brave about waves, even waves higher than his head! If I go in, he'll brave anything to come out to be sure I'm safe. As far as he's concerned, I have no idea how to swim!! And his new big thing is to go into the water, then come out and have a serious roll in the sand. So we often have a "clear the sand out of Shadow's eyes" party after our walks.

So we're well, thanks for the comments, take care, and never ever mess with Vonage and Telus on the same day.

Lurker alert

OK, all you lurkers, time to make a comment- we know you're out there!! It's easy, you don't even need to sign in, just say something! You know who you are...you've never commented and you're not a British punk band from the seventies...time to de-lurk. Apparently that's the proper terminology. Sheeesh. The point is, we would love to hear from you!

Here's last night's sunset at the old port. We were even spotted as locals by some Americans who asked, "Do you live here? Where's a good place to eat?"

A lazy Saturday today, I spent an hour in the hammock napping and reading before I got too warm. It's cooling off here, and we're told as of mid October, the weather is perfect, keep your windows open night and day, the snowbirds start showing up, it should be great.





The party boat that goes out every night at sunset.


Oh no! Sandy Beach is on fire!


Shadow got lots of attention and petting last night. As is only right and proper.


We found a neighborhood restaurant on a side street that looks quaint and wonderful. This is just a few blocks away, we're trying it tonight and will let everyone know how it is. This isn't very Mexican, but is anyone else really excited about Grey's Anatomy next week?? I didn't know if we'd get satellite in time, but we did!

Views from Siestaland

Views from the hammock. Carl suggested Siestaland as a stress-reliever today, very effective.