Melody is a big thief

I stole pictures from Cheryl. There. I admit it. She is good, I am bad.

A while ago I promised to post pictures of the very nice condo built by Oswaldo and Eduardo. Here they are:

The entryway to the complex, with electric gate.


The front of the condo. The circular window is stained glass, which you'll see another shot of later.


As you walk in, you gasp. The brick domed ceiling is twenty feet high easily, with elegant ceiling fans dropping down from it. This ceiling is laid by local artisans, about whom I'm trying to find out more. It is a sight to behold.

There's a very large patio upstairs. This condo is in the deisrable area of Mirador, just blocks from the beach.



Wrought Iron stair rail, with tile stairs.


The incredible kitchen, with colorful tile work.




One of the bathrooms with their classic brick shower.



And now we move on to dog shots, also taken by Cheryl:







Interspersed with this local shop:


Shots of siestaland:





And Melody shopping for veggies.



She's a good photographer, isn't she?



A local denizen:


At Rene's:


Marysol working diligently.


Marysol and Oswaldo- her baby is due any minute!


These are the new light fixtures Dan and Cheryl got for us- they match the house perfectly, we love them!


The little boy from across the street- cute.

He is throwing rocks at the big kids. Not so cute.


Mr. Fish, our fish guy. We just got some flounder, today, "Muy, muy fresco!" We hope.


Dan was a huge help with some of our electrical problems.


Daisy is Oswaldo's pit bull puppy, very enthusiastic!!


Cheryl helped us get Mexican email addresses. I called and thought I understood the woman who gave me the user name and password, but it took Cheryl's greater grasp of the language to get that it was carlaandmelodyscott, not carlandmelodyscott. Just a gender change and we were on our way.

Why are there no shots of Cheryl you ask? Well, I'll tell you what, I'll steal one more from her blog: (In response to her request, I've swapped in one we took today of her in siestaland).



And another of Taz:


The weather's heating up down here, we're getting into having some possible beach days.

Sorry! And a link

Sorry, everyone, I've been super busy with the newspaper etc, but if you want to know what Dan and Cheryl's visit has been like, check out Cheryl's blog here:

http://cheryl-dan.blogspot.com/

They helped us fix the back porch light and switch, then very kindly bought us lighting fixtures for our two outside lights at the back door and the guest room. They are similar to our front lights, metal with a design. There is some discussion about what the design is, I say the a Mayan pyramid like this:

http://www.quinnsgate.com/friends/cancun/images/mayan/mayan_pyramid01.jpg

Other say other things, but what they say isn't important. They're lovely light fixtures, and they complement the house perfectly. Pictures to come. Cheryl is a really good photographer, although she has taken far too many pictures of me. She has some terrific action shots of the dogs (Taz and Shadow, who were thrilled to see each other).

So more soon, but as Randolph Hearst always said, I have a paper to publish!

Tucson and home

We drove up to Tucson on Thursday after parking Shadow with the dog lady. It's a nice drive, as my cousin Kerri would say, very clean and cactus-y. But a bit dull, what with the road being absolutely straight for about 3 hours. We bought many books, had a hot tub and scooted back home. The temperatures were in the mid-twenties.

We've been told that the worst part of winter here is over, we'll get a few cold blasts (down to +10 during the day- brr!) but for the most part spring is here. We're back to shorts for most of the day. We've been wading in the ocean again as we throw the ball for Shadow. It's a little cold, but not bad.

We brought back English muffins for our friend Tanya (The one from Canada who's been here for many years, and the only thing she missed was English muffins). The thanks were all out of proportion to the gift. I think she liked it.

We went to the shrimp festival on Saturday. Lots of booths selling shrimp dishes for $5 each, entertainment, sunshine and tons of people. We had the shrimp empanada, shrimp something else we can't remember the name of (like an eggroll shell around a shrimp filling, deep-fried) , a couple of beers, and some carne asado tacos. Very filling and what a lovely day!

Out with Rosie yesterday, and of course we've been doing lots of cleaning because Dan and Cheryl are coming today!! We expect them any minute. More later.

Renee's and no turistas

It was a really warm day yesterday, so we went back to the Old Port for some shopping and to go back to Renee's, where Tanya from BC works. We had tried to find her place on Christmas Eve, but to no avail. Turns out we were walking the wrong way. She's on the other side of Josefa.

We bought some furniture for the guest room at Consign & Design, then went over to Renee's. Tanya was glad to see us, and it turns out we were the first customers they'd had in six days. We like to go there because there's a balcony you can watch the ocean from, the staff's friendly, the margaritas are 2 for $5, and you get either really good chips and salsa or else tasty spicy peanuts for free.


If you click on this old photograph of the Malecon, on the left where it says Beto's Place, that's Renee's now. At least as best as I can tell- it's across from the Pointe restaurant. So whoever comes down, be forewarned, you'll probably get taken to Renee's!

There are strawberry stands out now, and the strawberries look really good, but we haven't purchased any yet- we'll do that today. I think we're in the height of local produce now, we're getting some great cucumbers, asparagus, honeydew melons, cantaloupes.

Not much to report, we paid our yearly property taxes today, that was only 400 pesos. The ladder we bought yesterday was 1600 pesos. The heat is out again, but as long as we bundle up a little we're ok. I think the unit just needs to be reset, we don't know how to do that however. We'll have to wait for Oswaldo's guy.

Today's 'clean up the guest room' day, in preparation for the next visitors, Dan & Cheryl. Can't wait. We're heading up to Tucson next week for a couple of days. There's a big book sale.

The newspaper's going well, we're getting lots of attention. It seems a lot of people were looking for an English language newspaper down here. We even have people from Germany, India, and Croatia looking at it and staying there for 6 or 7 minutes.

That's all the news that's fit to print, the town is all ours, no tourists hardly at all. So come on down if you can!

Aged gringos

Now I officially have all the possible symptoms of menopause. Insomnia, irritability, hot flashes, extreme night sweats, anxiety, headaches, achy joints, mood swings, trouble concentrating, and now acne! Which makes symptom #2 much more acute.

Anyway.

I wanted to talk about food! My favorite subject! We have discovered THE hot dog guy in town. The very lean, not to say skinny, lady who told me where he is said she usually had 2 hot dogs while she was waiting for him to pack her takeout. Must be her only meal of the week.

The hotdogs are cooked till they're crunchy outside, buns are fresh and steamed, he loads it up with sweet onions, mustard ketchup, piquante salsa, tomatoes, and tops it off with cooked onions. Yum.


I told you about Los Olivas, which is another Mexican sit-down restaurant, very good and great service. They saw I had a book, and played with the lights until I had light to read by.

Tacos Diego has had a refit! It used to look like an unlikely building to eat in, but they rebuilt the front and gave it a coat of paint, now it's lovely! We'll go soon for the best tacos in town. They're difficult because they have no posted hours, just open when they like.

We also have located the papas man. He's just down the street from us, maybe ten blocks. Apparently he has the best loaded baked potatoes anywhere, we'll let you know when we've been.

A week ago we were going to have company for dinner, and I was ready to make a huge clam linguine. The guest had to cancel at the last minute, which was actually fortuitous. I decided to cook the clams and freeze the meat, freeze the lemon juice, the lemon zest and the parsley. I discarded the liquor the clams had cooked in, and discovered that it was the culprit in making my linguine too salty.

This time I started with the olive oil, lots of garlic and diced onion, then a couple of cups of white wine (We had a LOT of clam meat), and the lemon juice cubes. Cooked that down, then threw in the clams, the parsley, the lemon zest and the hot cooked pasta. Stirred it up, let it sit for five minutes, and threw in a little butter. Delicious! I'll always cook the clams separately now, and I have no qualms about freezing the ingredients either.

I've learned a couple of things about tacos. Tacos Birria is a stewed meat, I'll have to try that. Tacos tripitas is the lining of the cow's stomach. It is apparently nice and tender, but you won't be hearing about them from me.

The other day there was a man on a horse outside our house, doing tricks. He made the horse walk backwards and sideways, we watched for quite a while. And realized that if we wanted, we could get a horse or a burro and keep it in the driveway. Hmmmmm.....

Oh! I wanted to say to Cheryl and Dan, that Shrimp festival is January 19. I wondered if you could get here the 18th? I know nothing's written in stone, and you may not arrive till the 25th, but I thought the 18th would give us time to catch up and get you settled in, and then we could attend the shrimp fest the next day. Here are the details again:

The Festival is at the Shrimp plaza from noon to 6pm. • Regional Dance Performances • Culinary Showcase from Various Restaurants and Local Establishments • Showcase & Factory pricing of arts & crafts, furniture, jewelry, clothing, shoes, kitchen accessories, etc .

Desemboque

Today I decided it was time to go for a drive. I had decided on Caborca, but spoke to Rosie to see if she could come along, and although she couldn't, she said, "don't go to Caborca! When you reach the intersection (I had no idea where this intersection was), turn right instead of left. Drive for about 25 minutes and you'll reach a beach community-you might want to take your camera."

So off Shadow and I went, out past the Mayan Palace, and onwards toward Caborca. I made one mistake when I thought maybe she meant Santo Tomas, and there are lots of signs to that community, but when I reached the turn off it was just a sand road, so we retraced our steps. However, there were vineyards and orchards along this road, I saw oranges for sure.

All along the main highway there were palls of smoke- the farmers are doing controlled burns on their fields.



Here is a burned field with smoke backdrop:
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After a bit on this highway(quick note on highway driving- it's a narrow highway with no shoulder, the speed limit is 80, I was going 115 and almost everyone was passing me), I reached what I knew had to be the turnoff she meant- good thing, because I needed to gas up, and the intersection had a Pemex and lots of restaurants and stores.

As we drove along the road to what I later discovered was Desemboque, the road surface changed from pavement to really old pavement, to dirt road, then there were work crews building a culvert so you had to take a little side ditch, then really bad pavement, then gravel, then highway again past a garbage dump.But we passed this very cool honeydew field,

looked like a field of large tennis balls. And these very green fields:





And finally we reached Desemboque. The town isn't much, although the people and dogs seemed friendly. But the beach goes forever and is fine sand, no rocks, really beautiful.














I can see March and April days when we pack up and drive there for a beach day! ONly about 2 hour drive.

On another note, Yesterday we got our lattice up:



Tonight I went to a local restaurant called Las Olivos, and had their special turkey dinner. Delicious, with a sauce made of sweet peppers, cream, and smoky bacon. Came with a baked potato and vegetable medley. It was the 2nd most expensive dish on the menu. With 2 glasses of wine, and tip, 240 pesos which is currently $21.08. Their Mexican dishes were half the price of this turkey dinner. All in all a great day, and now Carl is up and we're off to Capones!