You can go home again - sort of.....

Eileen is one of the best friends anyone could ever have. Her cats were put in jail so that our two monsters could roam her house. She has the best guest bed of any I have ever slept on- and I hate to leave, as well as a shower that is firehouse strong. Bliss. Remember we sleep on a bunk and get wimpy showers in marinas or injure our elbows in the head while trying to wet down or use the camp shower on deck.

The laugh is typical and wonderful. It carries us all through prooblems and her, through life. We love her, big time.

The garage sale ladies - Caroline giving the values on the goodies that were brought over. We had thought it would be a huge one for the girls who had lost their mom, but it ended up with minor stuff from Caroline, ( I should have bought the church), a lot of stuff from Debbie, and our beads, and some furniture. It was as if we had never left Az. and being with friends was the greatest gift of all. We couldn't stop talk talking - Robert had to go hide out.

Shelley and Debbie -in the frozen south.

Us, hiding in the garage when the sun came out. The refrigerator behind holds a case of champagne. Sigh.

Eileen checking out what the girls brought over.....her hand had surg.
and she may have been walking around heavily medicated. Couldn't tell it by us..... We watched wonderful old movies with her when we were collapsing after all the running around.

Brunch with Bob and Eileen -in the sun. We look a bit tired - Bob spent a lot of time in Hawaii and is blessed by God, big time, with surfing summers in Calif. We will see him this summer. We are blessed with his friendship.

Canadian complaints

This looks like Paradise, doesn't it? Well the residednts of Mar Rosa, an rv park in Mazatlan, right in the hotel zone and on the beach - expensive real estate: were complaining, shivering, wearing heavy clothing. We had left PV in 80 degree weather, and found that the frozen north had arrived in the tropics. We cooked a fast dinner and went to bed with both sleeping blankets on top, and later, both dogs crawled up on the bunk....the van/ rv has a good sized bed, but not that big!

The road was full of the usual cows, and critters, but pretty empty - a herd of huge horned white charolai menaced the highway and we couldn't find any keepers around to keep an eye on them. There are signs of spring, in this freeze, trees that are totally bare of leaves have strange yellow flowers - shades of the Shop of Little Horrors, and the cinder cones are covered with green fuzz. Heading north means putting on socks, and finding out that the temperature in Scottscale is 13 degrees. And that the Canadians brought this strange weather down from home.

We found a very nice trailer park in Ciudad Obregon, but rented one the the rooms - and piled the sleeping bags on the bed. Still freezing. It was great getting over the border the next day, and we checked into a motel and pigged out on Jack in the Box, bypassing the Gem Show in Tucson. In years past we would have been right in there spending our kid's inheritance.....this year we buy food to take back. And will sell all the beads at the garage sale. I hope. It was fun to create the jewelry - but will have to stay in one place to market the stuff. Or Ebay when we are 98.

We got as far as the gate to the beach above and I was mentioning watching the sunset when Robert suggested not- too cold for romance. I think all of Mazatlan was hunkered down in heavy clothing wondering if romance is worth removing clothes.

Look out, turtle nests

The big waves of last week came all the way up to the walls of the hotels - and made new landscaping - not so much land, as lots of water. It was a full moon, too - and turtles had been laying eggs. We found some eggs floating on the backwash and proceeded to mess with mother nature, and buried what we found....it felt sort of stupid and hopeful at the same time. Later we passed a woman who had been walking strangely in front of us, and we found she was holding two baby turtles close to her. She stated that she was" going to put them in the bucket in the condo as the sign said."
Ok- two were ssaved that morning.

You can get an idea of the mountains around Banderas Bay from the top photo, some rise to about 5000' in elevation. One of the local boat people collected clothes and such from us to take to poor people in the mountains. As we are running low on stores and are going to the US to buy food you can't get here, I sent along a bunch of food, including Alfredo Sauce. Wonder what they will think of that - we know that the people here are into pasta as we see giant bags of it, sort of dirty, though, at the local market. We are so legislated for cleanliness in the US and get all litigous if our food gives us diarhhea - here, a little dirt seems to faze no one. I did send a package out of our 80 some packages of pasta, though. We were told it gets down to zero up in the mountains and the poor people in the unfinished homes that the guy visits are really suffering. I feel like Marie Antoinette, sort of , but did send along a sleeping bag - they can be warm while munching pasta alfredo.

Pretty Bird

These fellows, along with several others travel to this palm enclosed area near a dolphin attraction, by truck every day and are taken home. The white one below talks up a storm and makes kissing noises after tellng
everyone that he is the prettiest bird in the world. They can be picked up, but the non English speakers make ear splitting shrieks at each other so that leaving the area is in order. There is a giant sea lion that "hugs" swimmers who get in the pool with him/her - must be a her as a tiny creature hangs in the water half way across the pool, watching the tourists get their hugs. Ugh. Some of the tourists have incredible expressions ontheirfaces as the huge creature pins them to the pool wall and surrounds them with her flippers. That is trust or idiocy. The water looks pretty gross.
Little restaurants are all over here, tucked away, and it turns out that the bird area is another restaurant. Another ugh....but OSHA doesn't live in Mexico.

Market Day

Tuesday is the small market day in Jarretaderra, the little town next to Puerto Nuevo. John, Lisa,( Molly J) Angie and Natalie (La Fiesta) are checking something out in the photo at left.
There are abarottes ( small grocery stores) that are called mini-supers on just about every other corner, yet this market is loaded with locals, tourists, and boat people. It looks like a swap meet with, dollar store and veggie stands and used clothing. No one seems to bargain at the veggie stands- you just line up with what you want to buy and the man on the adding maching runs a tab. Some of the locals use a washtub to fill up with tomatos. Either huge family or a restaurant.

Dogs run around freely in the town
as well as children.

We like Jarretaderra as you don't have to drive so far - it is right next to Nuevo. The houses are colorful, but with lots of bars on windows and the streets would challenge four wheel drive. We feel very safe there, despite some gang tagging in places.

As a contrast, we bought tennis racquets at Walmart this morning, thinking it would be easy to find courts. It is, but being able to play on them is the problem. The Racquet club is very elegant, surrounded by million dollar homes and a beautiful golf course- across the entrance road to Nuevo from Jarretaderra. Hardly anyone plays on the one over in Paradise and you have to have a "special" card to play and be berthed there. Plan 2 had us checking out the local racquet club: $40 a day, not bad if you can last all day. Us old farts would fall on the net and not get up. There are hotels with courts - so more investigation. The people in Jarra don't play tennis, and their soccer field, alongside the expensive hotels is always empty. They are busy earning a living.

The best part of Jarretaderra is the tortilla factory, and Claudio's restaurant. These fellows took the mystique out of tortilla making: dried and heated (very hot) corn kernals are put in a grinder machine with water and the dough is transferred to the tortilla machine, and put in piles in a warm place. We usually buy a half kilo that lasts a week.


The guys thought our fascination with the machines was pretty funny, but then they work there and it is an every day thing to them.

Next week we will ask why they have all those portable ice coolers. Small roadside stands open up with whatever can be carried in the coolers, things prepared at home to sell in the stands. Voila, a restaurant is born. Two of our favorite, cheapo stands folded, so we found another one in front of one of the tourist restaurants - tacos and a drink. Lunch was $6 for both of us. How cool is that?

Critters

Yesterday morning we crossed the street to the beach to look for turtles. The dogs stayed home, thank heaven as we had passed two hotels and suddenly were surrounded by babies making a run for the ocean. We collected so many that the normal paint can the officials use wouldn't have workd. We put them in a small depression and called one of the beach cleaners to see if he could find someone to take care of them. He and a maid from the hotel came out with a bin and we kept putting the little guys in the bin as they kept trying to climb out. The beach cleaner found what looked like any other small pile of sand on the beach and started digging. The maid pitched in and we were trying to figure out what they were doing when they pulled out some more babies. Robert and I helped dig some more, pulling up fresh babies and stopped when we got to the newly hatched eggs.
I have changed my attitude as I now know
that they are taken to a beach in the north and released in the evening so the birds don't get

them. We found two, later, who had made a long trek of about a city block to get to the ocean from their nest in front of a hotel. Two big, burly American guys asked to see the babies and were pretty excited about the whole thing. We were pretty thrilled about the whole thing ourselves.

It would be a pretty jaded person who wouldn't be moved by an inexplicable miracle of life. The instinct of the mothers to return to the beach where they were born, to the babies who had just hatched and were beginning the cycle all over again is inexplicable. I just hope that launching the babies from another beach doesn't mess up whatever is hardwired into their brains as to where they are supposed to return in their future.

Koa is being pretty protective of Sha'ash lately as he has a hurt leg hurt hip...we are not sure. We took him to the vet who took an x-ray that showed little, and said German Shedders are subject to displaysia. He limps a lot, but doesn't seem to be in pain and we are hoping that the meds will help him. What is strange is that Koa now sits with him below and above deck. Another inexplicable animal intention.

An Australian New Year, mate

Temptation on the beach.

Mel(anie), Aaron and David getting ready to leave after a whirlwind week of examing A & M's new boat: an Orion 52. Gary Mull, who cut the hips off of I'O designed the Orion 50 and one of the owners extended the back deck by 8'. Aaron bought the boat on the Internet, from Oz, and David and Angie bought the boat across from us the same way. And they had only a week to familiarize themselves with their purchase(s). It is astonishing that they were able to trust a broker and surveyor in a foreign country to tell them about their boats. We went below and oohed and aahed about the luxery and space. We all went to Bucerias for New Year's eve dinner, getting a bit lost on the way but eventually found the beach and walked it until we found a restaurant we liked. Years ago we had rented a nearby house and spent the two New year's eves there where there were only about four restaurants Now there are hotels, condos

and more restaurants you can count. We managed to stay awake and drove back to see what was happening at the Vallarta Yacht Club - which turned into about five sleepy people. That tells you something aobut the median age of the members. We then drove back around, with minutes to spare to Eddie's, near our marina and found a crowd straggling down to the beach. We found out why with the stroke of midnight as the sky

exploded with glorious fireworks right overhead. And then we could see them in several different areas around the Bay. Wonderful. Kids were selling lethal fireworks on the beach....in the US, they would have been thrown into juvie and the parents fined.

The wheelbarrow above was wheeled onto the sand in Bucerias, where we had made the mistake of going for lunch two days later. It looks wonderful until you get closer and then see that some of the candy is a little "aged. The beach and the palapas were lined with crowds of people and it took us about an hour just to get chips and salsa. And another hour for lunch. The crowd here is just a small portion of what was there. I think the whole point is, if you sit on the sand, under a palapa, you are to drink something alcoholic, eat some chips and not give a damn about your growling stomach, order another drink, get sunburned, order another drink - hey, forget food. Order another drink. This is Mexico, get real, relax, lady.