Christmas in Nuevo 2013

Imagine losing your job.  No Obamacare, no unemployment, minimal family to help in the area, six kids with one on the way, and no steady income to count on in the future.  Imagine having to take kids out of school to work for pennies, so the family can eat.  Imagine having long term pain from a car crashing into you.  Imagine the stress of wondering how to support your family.  Unimaginable.

That describes Pedro,  Rosa and the kids.  Pedro goes out early morning to fish, with one or more of the older kids and they race the catch home.  Rosa then goes out in their neighborhood  with the smaller kids, and sells the fish, door to door.  We recommended Pedro to other cruisers for boat work, as well as having him work on our boat.  We are running out of work, but with the new outboard (used) that we bought him, Pedro is able to fish.  He used to row himself out into the Bay, now he cans sleep longer and get to the fishing

We feel that they are family and despite the  awful poverty, they have such an incredible richness of spirit, we are blessed by them.  They may worry, but they laugh and know that somehow it is going to work out.  But the worry after a while grinds anyone down.  So we had a party for Christmas.

Presents, Robert cooking a turkey and the trimmings, everyone playing with the toys and the older ones having a poker fest and lots of laughing on the boat.  We  stuffed ourselves and then went to play soccer.  Futbul.   With our own rules, and Pedro yelling out different plays to the kids.  I was referee.  Rosa and the girls were the audience.  We laughed and laughed some more. 

                                                              

Robert and Rosa getting ready to serve the turkey.  He also made mashed potatoes with gravy.  I made a stuffing that was apple, onion and sage - pretty good after all these years of red wine, sourdough  and spinach.  Along with the fruit salad, I made a salsa of pineapple and a green chile, chopped up with red pepper for Rosa, who really likes hot sauces. None of that was left....not cranberries, but definitely popular with the blandness of our American food.



Ice cream after the soccer game.  The younger three boys really got into playing, while the older one, Joshua (Hosoy) was more laid back.   Goal posts were laid out with string and Robert and Pedro were goalies.

Now, this was a great Christmas.  While not our regular family, it is family and a family that decided to just have fun and forget everything for a day.  It was literally magic.

Sebastian, Adolpho (El Toro), Rosa, Joshua, and in fron, Natalya, Crystal and Daniel.

 

My birthday day.....

the haircut is Jean's fault  - but it is great for boat life.  Robert found the restuarant had Mexican style pulpo cocktails.  We later went to our beach and sat under my birthday beach umbrella for a bit and went to a local restaurant for more shrimp.  I think we should celebrate for a month or so. 

Bucericas in the morning to buy laydown dresses to replace the ones that went back east.  Lots of bargaining and fun, as well as a Mayan replica mask and shrimp for  birthday lunch.  Straight across the bay are lovely houses that we rented years ago with Linda one year and Jean, another.  La Cruz is on the left where about 40 boats are anchored outside a pretty nice marina.  There is some probllem with the marina - blamed on the economy, but a lot of La Cruz boats have come into Nuevo,  with owners shaking their heads at the conditions.  We love Nuevo.. 

 

The lagoon/marina area is the reason whiy.  This is one of the small cottages across the way from the marina.  Nuevo is based in what used to be a lagoon;  dredged mostly and filled with channels and crocodiles.  The cottages all have docks with huge boats out front, but it is a lagoon, and it is notable for the crocs and bugs in the spring.  We take dink rides around the channels to see how the real people live. We see this every time we look across the channel.  Not too shabby a way to spend a birthday.  That and bitch at AT&T as we were not getting the birthday calls....they are supposed to be local calls to and from the US...well, email worked and I felt loved.

 

Our life in Nuevo.....

We went upriver, or up estuary, to find the crocodile sanctuary and ran aground.  Thinking that being in a rubber boat with food, aka, the dogs, we poled our way out of there real fast until we could start the engine.

 

When we were in San Diego, we met a man on the dock who said our boat looked familiar...he had either raced against it in Hawaii or knew of it as Shockwave.  Further conversation had us, Hawaiian style, as being almost related!  We had a lot of mutual acquaintences and/or friends.  Our friend Barbara in Santa Barbara had attended a luau given by Russ and his wife On Lopez Island in 2006.  A woman who had worked for Barbara in Hawaii was one of Russ and Jonelle's neighbors.  Barbara had sent us photos of Jonelle's work as a printmaker, and it turns out that I had sailed on her ex husband's boat in Hawaii.  This same sort of thing happened when we ran into someone backpacking in Haleakala....and it is very Hawaaian.  It also means you don't get away with anything if you live there. 

So went to Eddie's for dinner:  coconut shrimp and margaritas.  I will never have more than one of Eddie's margarita - take a look at the size of it in front of Russ.  The people alongside Robert sailed across the front of us with a lovely blue spinnaker a few days out of Turtle Bay.  We took photos - sort of a grim day, but they elegantly sailed on a latitude as we tried to make a longitude.  The wind was so fluky, they must have thought they could zig zag across the squall.   This is also when I had hair.  It is all Jean Orsini's fault.

 

how the mighty have fallen.....

It doesn't look 102' long until you see one of the crew on deck.....

For saile, at Paradise, across from us:  Chimera, 102' long, built in 2002 with , er, ummm, upgrades in 2008.  Alloy - Robert said it could be titanium, but I think alumiunun.  Roller main...I'O will be for sale, also - but maybe the new owner of Chimera needs a dinghy.

 

We were awakened early with the boat acting like a jumping jack.  Big waves (not to us Hawaiians) were coming in with big tides and wiping out the beach.  A few years ago a storm brough in huge waes that wiped out many of the turtle nests that were close to the hotels.  You can see that mornings here are magic...as well as afternoons, as well as evenings...but the jerky sleep of the couple days of semi big waveswas quite interesting.



Across the channel from us were these America's cup boats...I had asked a dealer in NZ, via EMail, what they were doing here...I imagine they have been stripped or someone had the great idea of having a regatta.  We used to watch  Stars and Stripes, years ago in Hawaii when Connors had them at the fishing dock.  They would scare hell out of us when we were out sailing moff Honolulu with crazy Rodney in his 27':  swoosh, get the hell out of the way.  Rodney was usually stoned and simply would say we were on starboard and stare blankly and the onrushing giants.