2013 February 17 Not Dead Yet

Hi, I'm back.  That was an interesting 2-week hiatus.

 

My fancy-shmancy Nexus 7 woke up dead the morning we went to Guadalajara, which is about 2-3 weeks ago.  I thought it might be in a coma, but now I'm pretty sure it's stone dead.  Either the charging-thing inside the machine is hooped, or all the magic drained out of one of the slots overnight.  That puts us down to one machine, and Deb is hooked on a new game.....  grrr.  The Nexus is still on warranty, so no worries.  It quickly became apparent that I was going to have to call (on the telephone) to get anything started on a replacement.  That's always fun for me, but with just one hearing aid it's absolute bliss.  Eventually I got Omar from Iran, who is the warranty guy for the Chinese tablet sold by an American company to a hapless Canadian.  After I finished explaining my situation to Omar he said 'no worries, just give me the serial number off the box that the tablet was shipped in.'  Hmnnn.  Apparently this guy thinks I pack my shipping boxes along when I go to Mexico!  Maybe they do that in Iran, or else the boxes get stolen....  Once that option was discarded, he came back with 'OK then, just turn the machine on and go to "settings".....  Double hmnnn.  Omar, if I could turn the freaking thing on, I wouldn't be talking to you!  Much discussion ensued, and at the end Omar assured me that Asus would be happy to fix it off warranty for me.  In other words, drop dead you infidel.  The good news; I'm pretty sure I HAVE the box at home as I am profoundly suspicious of anything that runs on magic, and it will still be on warranty until July.  So I'll just have to drag it along with me until we get home.

 

Deb had mentioned to me back in December that our friend Dorothy in Manzanillo had just purchased a new Asus Transformer, which is a really cool machine.  I had actually been lobbying to buy Deb one for this trip, but being the cheap little thing that she is (I love that in a woman) she declined and we went with our two existing machines.  The Transformer is a 10" Android tablet with good guts and good software, it runs 10 hours on a charge.  It has a high-quality detachable keyboard that makes it into a netbook, and the keyboard gives the tablet an extra 5 hours of battery life.  Very cool machine.  Apparently the Asus was giving Dorothy worms as she's not an Android Person and the whole experience was just different than she was used to, so we dropped in for a visit a few days after returning from Guadalajara, and I'm now the proud owner of a shiny new (to me) Transformer!  After the mandatory 2 days of mutual butt-sniffing we are good to go, so I thought it was time to get back working on the blog.  The Posterous folks, bless their little souls, haven't got around to porting their site for Android.  Rats!  That means I'm back to Deb's machine for blogging, and here I am.

 

Many things have taken place over the past 2 weeks.  The hearing aid got fixed, I bussed to-and-from Guadalajara to pick it up, it works perfectly, and I am now marginally aware of people yelling at me and large vehicles bearing down on me.  But that's all for later.  I'll start my next post where I left off, on our trip to Guadalajara.  Love you all.

2013 January 30 Guadalajara Two

Some general notes about the city for those who haven't been here.  Guadalajara is Mexico's second-largest city, located in the Central Valley which is in the mountains at 5,200 feet.  This gives it a terrific climate, with 9 months of the year in the mid-20s and 3 months around 30; overnight lows vary from 10-15 degrees.  In other words, it's spring/summer pretty much all year.   It was founded just under 500 years ago, and has a magnificent historical section and is loaded to the gunnels with art and culture, which of course is pretty much wasted on me.  But the buildings are cool.

 

The scale of this place is also pretty daunting.  If you took all of the people living in BC, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, the Yukon, the NWT, and Nunavut, you could put them into Guadalajara and have room left over.  Of course you'd have to take all the Mexicans out first, but you get what I mean.  It's big.

 

Today was Shopping Day, as Deb had heard from many of her friends that Guadalajara has an enormous market that just absolutely can't be missed.  So after finding it we didn't miss it.  No, that's not right....  Anyway, we're about 5 blocks from the centre of Centro, which is the historical centre of town, and the market is about 5 blocks on the other side, so the 10-block walk was a good leg-stretcher to start out the day.  The market turns out to be a 3-floor behemoth that is at least 500 yards long and 2-300 yards wide, and then of course there are a couple of ancillary markets as well.  At 50 square feet per vendor, that makes - let me see....... a shitload of booths.  There are at least 3 floor-to-ceiling atriums (atria?) housing a ginormous food floor and a vegetable market, amongst other things.  And of course you can buy pretty much anything except the Ikea Monkey there, although he may be there and we just missed  him.  Can't figure out how, though.... Deb pretty much covered the whole thing.

Looking down on the green-grocers

This pig appears to be surfacing out of the other pig-parts.

The food floor is at least 5 acres.  Good too!

 

After that, with throbbing feet and absolutely no purchases (this was a catch-and-release outing) we spotted a four-floor shopping centre that kind of looked like a Sears of something, but it was completely crammed with jewellers, watch-makers, bling-slingers, makeup sellers, and DIY accessory shops.  All the doors are guarded by steely-eyed security guards with pump shotguns, so I guess it's the safest place in town other than under my bed back in the hotel.

This is a parking garage, with plants in the outside walls. 
Go figure.

By now, our feet are REALLY throbbing, so we tottered off back to the cathedral square where Deb spotted a second-floor restaurant that looked out directly on the cathedral and had a bathroom.  Up we went and shared a plate of cecino, which is thin-sliced meat fried crisp and served with guacamole and refried beans and taco chips.  Pretty interesting, and washed down with 4 beers to ensure it stayed down.  Then it was off to the hotel for a serious nap (we're seniors) with only about 30 stops for photo opportunities and further shopping spurts.

Deb resting her feet in front of the municipal hall - I think...
They're starting to all look the same!

The cathedral from our restaurant table

Evening eventually showed up, and we wandered back down to the Cathedral Square as it's got a pretty nice sidewalk restaurant where you can listen to live music and soak up the ambiance along with some beers.  Caught the obligatory Nighttime Shot Of The Cathedral, and it was time for the walk home and we're bunked in for the night.

Mandatory evening shot of the cathedral and fountain

Tomorrow is Tour Day; we're going to Tonala for shopping (yay!) and a bus tour of the city centre.  Should be fun.

2013 January 29 Guadalajara One

Well, the last week has been extremely eventful and not without its stresses.

 

Last Monday night I was off with my buddy Bob playing Texas Holdem with 9 other like-minded snowbirds.  Bob won, again, but that's another story.  Whilst I was there my left hearing aid started acting up, with the sound cutting in and out.  By Tuesday morning it was completely verlumpt.  This is bad, as I have a tough enough time with TWO hearing aids, so getting it fixed became the immediate priority.  No problem, I thought; I'll just get someone in Manzanillo to fix it.  Not!  OK, how about Puerto Vallarta, which is a mere 4 hours away by bus.  After a day or so of searching, it turns out that there are two places there and they both send their stuff out of town to be fixed.  OK, how about Colima, which is 2.5 hours out past Manzanillo?  I found a guy, but he sends his stuff out of town too.  So, where do these folks all send their stuff to?  A little shop called Salamanca, which is in Guadalajara about 5 hours away by bus.  I found someone there who can speak English!  She asked me to put everything into an email explaining the problem, and the technician would get back to me if it could be fixed in-house or not.  Naturally, the email system went down for 3 days.  Faced with the choice of waiting for my head to explode or just going to Guadalajara, I bought 2 bus tickets for me and my trusty sidekick and here we are!

 

To get to Guadalajara, we could take a Primera Plus (1st-class) bus from downtown Melaque where we live, or an ETN (executive-class) bus from downtown Barra de Navidad.  The ETN bus is very cushy, a bit more expensive, and only goes once a day quite early in the morning.  The PP is still very nice (aircon, wifi, in-flight movies, free lunch) and there are way more trips and it leaves right from town, so PP it was.  I think the 5-hour trip was $20 each.  Good trip, but it takes one of the secondary highways through the mountains rather than the autopista that ETN uses.  Very pretty and scenic, but don't do it if you're prone to motion-sickness!  It's pretty wind-y in places.

 

The bus station in Guadalajara is VERY cool, like an international airport.  As buses are the major form of travel for the middle-class here, I guess that shouldn't be a surprise.  Probably 100+ bays for buses like ours, plus another station 200 metres away for all the second- and third-class buses, plus a big station just outside for all the city buses, plus an enormous cab-stand if you're completely lost like we were.

 

The cab ride into downtown was great, the hotel is just fine, and the weather is great here.  I'll give you more of the straight poop on all of that over the next few days.  The bottom line is we still had time to walk the 14 blocks from the hotel to the repair shop (completely voluntary, just sniffing out the ambiance).  The nice lady immediately recognized us (I guess we still don't quite look like locals) and dragged the technician out of the back, who immediately advised us that this brand of hearing aid would have to go to Mexico City for repair, and it would take 2-3 weeks.  Of course if the email had been working we could have saved ourselves a trip and just couriered it out.  And yes, the email is working now.  Sigh.  So I bit the bullet and the little fella is in a box on his way to Mexico City.  The good news is we get to explore Guadalajara for at least the next 2 days, as I booked us in for 3 nights.  We're already liking it, as we found a bar-restaurant called Hamsterville.  Doesn't get much better than that!

 

 

Gotta go, as we're sharing a computer and Deb is champing at the bitt.  That's because my shiny new Nexus 7 tablet just blew up this morning, looks like a catastrophic fail (beyond even duct tape).  Sigh.  On the other hand, what a perfect excuse to check out that new Asus Transformers!

2013 January 16 In The Trenches

Humanitarian aid is a pretty big deal amongst the long-stay snowbirds (is that a redundancy?) in most places, and that's certainly the case here!  Our friends Cheryl and Kelly have been doing work down here for 3-4 years, and this year Deb and I brought down 3 - 50 lb bags of food, clothing, shoes, etc whilst Cheryl brought down 10 bags!  The target for all this largesse is the Indios, the Mexican first nations.  They are truly a breed apart down here; the adults are often under 5' tall, they are very poorly educated, and their only employment options are stoop labour in the fields and perhaps selling trinkets on the street or the beach.  With the ongoing lack of education, future generations are pretty much screwed as well.

 

Our friend Chuck, who is from Indio, California (rather droll, don't you think?  From Indio, working with the Indios?  Sigh.  Never mind then.), is a Rotary Person and he raised a bunch of money up north and brought it down here for specific humanitarian projects.  He has formed a Melaque Rotary chapter, which is composed entirely of snowbirds.  There is another Rotary Chapter in Barra de Navidad, and while I haven't personally met them I have been told that they are essentially demons from the pits of hell.  In other words, the clubs aren't getting along really well.  Kelly and Cheryl are completely disgusted with both sides, and just work independantly.  In addition there is Doctor Rosa, a local physician who has taken a personal interest in one group of Indios in a nearby community; her and her husband are running what is essentially a mission for them including a school, kitchens, washrooms and showers, laundry facilities, and a few residences.  She is a saint, and works with anyone who has money and time to spare.  Overall it's a pretty complicated situation, but things are getting done.

 

Of the men living at our villa, four of us (Howard, Bob, Joe, and myself) are operating as hired guns available to the lowest bidder, which has so far turned out to mean we work for free.  Everyone of course has some level of skills from our previous lives, so as a group we're a pretty handy bunch.  The project for the past couple weeks has been putting a sewer system into a 10-room school in the nearby community of El Ranchito.  Notice I don't say "putting a NEW sewer system....".  This school is getting pretty long in the tooth, it definitely needs a lot of TLC, and it will be a LONG time before the government gets around to doing anything about it as Indios are at the bottom of the food chain here.  So, Chuck has $3800 from Rotary to 'invest' in the property, there is an expectation of volunteer labour from the locals, and us old guys are the Rented Mules.

 

Once we determine where the trenches need to go, and the volunteers dig the trenches, this should be a 1-2 day job.  In Mexico, that means it's gonna take about a month.  First you show them where to dig the trenches and go away for a couple days.  Then you come back and find out that they've dug half of them in the wrong place, so you instruct them to do it properly and go away for a couple days.  Then there is a big rainstorm and the trenches are pretty much all filled in.  Then everything appears to be ready to go, and there is a frenzy of pipe cutting and laying until you get around to the back side of the school and you find out that all the tree roots crossing the trenches have not been cut as the guy digging the trench felt bad about hurting the trees.  So you instruct them to cut the fracking roots off and go away for a few days.  Then you come back and all the pipe is locked into a schoolroom and the only guy with the key is in Manzanillo for the day, so you go away for a few days.  And eventually all the stars align and you get all the pipe in the ground.  This is not a comedy of errors, this is pretty much business as usual and you just have to adjust to it or you'll get an aneurism.

 

Joe and Howard engaged in precision work.

Lots of existing stuff to work around and under!

This puppy goes straight down 8' and under a retaining wall

Bob basking in the afterglow of a job well done

 

We had a lot of fun doing it, I only pulled one muscle in my back, Bob recovered from heat stroke quite quickly, lots of beer was drunk, and the school now has a proper sewer system tied into the municipal system, with 400 feet of new pipe and cleanouts and everything!

 

So what did Chuck get for his $3800?  We figured that the complete cost for the new sewer system was $400.  In addition, a number of roofs were repaired or refurbished (a big deal when they are made out of tile or concrete), the school was repainted inside and out, the washrooms were completely redone, and showers were added as most of the children have no opportunity to take showers at home.  Not bad for under four grand!

 

Pouring a new skin on the roof (one 5-gallon pail at a time!)

The local women scraping, painting, and cleaning.

Opening day.

 

 

 

 

 
 
 
 

 

 

2013 January 12 La Manzanilla

Deb and I were muttering to each other a few days ago that we were long overdue for an adventure.  We were chatting idly about taking a bus to La Manzanilla, which is a pretty little town about 30 minutes up the coast, when our friends Cheryl and Kelly overheard us and said 'hey, we haven't been there for a while either!'  So of course next morning Cheryl and Kelly showed up in their trusty jeep, and of we went to La Manzanilla.

 

One would be tempted to think that it's just another Mexican beach resort with cheap food, cold beer, and miles of pristine beach.  Well, yeah, it has those too.... (perhaps the best beach in Mexico!) but La Manzanilla has crocodiles!  When we were here 8 years ago there was a bayou (river that is turned into a lake because of a sand bar at the beach) that was just full of honking big crocodiles and caymans.  There was a 3-foot chainlink fence keeping them off the street, but they could still wander onto the beach and spoil your afternoon if you didn't keep a sharpish lookout.  Now the fence has been extended to block off the beach, so in theory this is no longer an issue.  (Note to self: these are wild crocs, and they are fenced on 3 sides; the upstream end is wide open)  Even better, some entrepeneur has built an elevated walkway (2 feet above the water) that goes about 200 yards through the mangroves and you can go for a really cool stroll for 10 pesos (75 cents).

 

There were definitely a ton of slavering killer lizards out there, but also birds, crabs, iguanas and all kinds of other neat things. Up until last year there were a couple of 16-footers which probably weighed a ton apiece; they aren't in evidence so must have been converted into handbags or headed for other parts or something.  Nevertheless, there were still lots of big boys and girls on hand for our edification.

Not a telephoto shot....

Steve on the walkway

A whopper out for a cruise

After checking to ensure that Molly was still in one piece and on the end of the leash, we headed off downtown and parked at Kelly and Cheryl's favourite spot on the beach.  Not hard to figure out why; they have free tables/chairs/umbrellas on the beach, and they bring you food and beer for as long as you can continue to raise your arm.

 

After a couple of beers and some truly great fish and chips to fortify us, Deb and I headed down the beach for a bit of a walk.  The beach here is marvelously flat, the sand is very nice, and the water is very calm.  Three for three!  (Steve is very careful with beaches, as it turns out he is allergic to being swept out to sea.)  One still has to be careful though, as the beach is at least 5 miles long and if you get too far from the beers you might not make it back!  Fortunately we had the sense to turn back after a mile, so other than the usual mild sunburn we arrived back safe and sound.

 

This beach goes on forever! 
Taken from the beach chair.



Good snorkeling out here (I am told). 
Taken from the beach chair.

Sadly, the same couldn't be said for our beach bag.  It is woven plastic stuff, and Steve left it on the sand beside his chair.  In our absence, the cafe owner's German Shepherd wandered over, gave it the mandatory sniff-test, and very helpfully marked it for us.  Cheryl, after recovering from her initial horror, quickly poured a couple litres of fresh water inside the bag to wash/dilute the dog piss off everything.  That certainly seemed to work for my cellphone, which was hidden in the bottom of the bag; I couldn't smell any dog piss at all once I got all the water out of it.  Usual drill; rip apart, yank out battery, wipe off, leave naked in sun to dry out.  I'm talking about the cellphone, not the dog :/  Miraculously, it survived without a scratch.  I'm talking about the cellphone, not the dog. :)

 

All good things must peter out eventually, so it was then back into the jeep for a leisurely drive back to our villa.  All in all, an excellent day out!

 

 

2013 January 5 Melaque Bay

Our beach here is quite nice, and it is framed by rocky headlands to make a very pretty bay.  The north end of the bay also has a malecon (sea-side walkway) which is backed by steep hills and/or cliffs, and is therefor completely undeveloped.  We have discovered that it is home to at least one troop of coatimundi, which are new world simians that are racoon-sized and have ringed tails but have fox-like faces.  Very cute, and definitely opportunists.  When we were in Costa Rica some years back we had lobster dinner in a palapa restaurant in a wee beach town south of Puerto Limon.  There was a wild coatimundi lurking up in the eaves, and he'd steal your lobster right off your plate if you weren't paying attention.  Going for a whiz definitely entailed posting an alert sentry!  We've seen these little boogers on a couple of occasions; they hang around on some very steep cliffs just underneath where the cormorants roost.  One of the babies was clearly trying to figure out how to get at one of the birds to make a meal of it, while the bird looked on with a jaundiced and obviously experienced eye; he appeared to have seen it all before.  The first time out we didn't have our camera and of course they posed outrageously, the second time we had the camera so they were quite shy.  We'll keep working on it, and will eventually have some pics for you....



Deb on the Melaque malecon

The first couple weeks here were quite smoky as the farmers burn their fields in December for pest management, and then the Christmas holiday season came along with floods of Mexican tourists from Colima and Guadalajara filling the beaches.  Now the weather has smartened up considerably and the beach is busy without being crowded.  It's a great place to hang out over a beer or lunch and just watch the world go by.  This year the baitfish have decided to come on-shore, so it's a constantly changing mix of pelicans chasing baitfish, fishermen chasing the tuna and jack crevalle under the baitfish, swimmers and boogie-boarders just generally getting in the way, and people, dogs, hawkers, and runners working the area above tide-line.

De-hooking an overly enthusiastic juvenile pelican

We may need to put up some traffic lights....

 

The beach is not an excuse to lose touch with your BFFs!

 

Yesterday our friends Howard and Barb asked us out for comida (lunch, the main meal of the day) at Froy's, which is a very nice beach-side restaurant near downton Melaque.  The weather was perfect, the company was great, and the beach had on it's best outfit, so I definitely had to include a few snaps.  Howard and Barb are now officially homeless, as they sold their house in Canada a couple years ago; they live in a 32-foot fifth-wheeler in Canada in the summer and rent a 2-bedroom bungalow down here in the winter....

Melaque Bay from Froy's

Melaque Bay from Froy's

 

Deb, Barb, and Howard at Froy's

 

 

 

 

 

2013 January 3 The Birthday Boys (Steve, Jesus, and 2013)

December 23 is my birthday, and about a week before we had discovered a beach-side terrace restaurant that has live music in the evenings.  Dec 23 was listed as blues night, which is my favourite, so our plan was to spend a quiet evening together over dinner, drinks, and music on the beach.  But first we thought we'd spend the afternoon walking around Barra, and mayhap having a beer at Popeye's, which is a nice little bar/restaurant just on the edge of the Malecon.  It was a beautiful day, and reminded us of why we like Barra so much.  Whilst sitting in Popeye's drinking a beer and watching the world go by, we heard a shrill whistling and Santa rode his bicycle by!  He was headed for the malecon, and had 3 little nosepickers just digging to catch up with him and be the first on his lap.  Well, we definitely had to go and watch this for a bit.  Turns out the emerging Mexican Santa trope is the full traditional Santa costume plus a shiny whistle.  Don't know why, it just is.  He blows it a lot.

Santa, mermaids, and ocean.  OK, I guess....

Steve's birthday present at the Barra de Navidad malecon

We got to our little restaurant promptly at 7 pm, and the manager informed us that our table for 12 was ready.  Hmmmmmn......  Debbi managed to pull off another surprise party for me, complete with a large table of guests and a marvelous carrot cake (don't ask where you get one of those in Mexico!).  Surprising me must not be overly difficult, as this is I think the third time that she's done this.  It was a great night, and now I'm a year older.

Steve and Deb at the birthday party

 Carrot cake and tequila?  Why the heck not!

This is our second Christmas in Mexico, our first being Christmas of 2004 with son Dave in Puerto Morelos on the Carribean coast.  This time around we have been invited by our friends Kelly and Cheryl to share Christmas dinner with them, Jack and Irma, and Eric and Rochelle.  Deb is contributing a honking big tureen of her signature ceviche, and Irma, Cheryl, and Rochelle are whipping up a traditional holiday feast of turkey, mashed potatoes, sage dressing, green things, and cranberry sauce.  Everyone arrived around 4 pm, in plenty of time to catch up on the latest news, down their favourite social lubricant, and graze on a large assortment of antojitos whilst the ladies worked their magic in the cocina.  And it was excellent!  Kind of weird eating Christmas dinner around the pool in the dark of the evening while it's still 32 degrees, but we'll work on getting used to it....

 

Got home about 9 pm, which is just when the Christmas party at our villa was breaking up; they had dinner for 26!  I'm sure that would have been quite a show, as half of the population in the villa is somebody's grandma, and we all know how grandmas like to cook!

Christmas around the pool.

Irma the Candy Cane

Our hostess Cheryl and good friend Rochelle

New Year's Eve is generally a pretty quiet celebration for Deb and I.  This time around our friends Jack and Irma have invited us to an intimate party for 20 or so at Lucy's Paradise, which is a really cool little bar that features live entertainment just a half-block from the lagoon in Barra.  It isn't a restaurant, but you can get anything you want to eat from the restaurant across the street; the waiter simply jaywalks over and serves you!  Tonight the restaurant set up a really big barbecue on the sidewalk across the street and the chef barbecued up about 50 lb of excellent ribs for us, which were served with salad and garlic mashed potatoes and washed down with the poison of our choice from the bar.  Then the 4-piece band showed up and played very good music (mostly blues and light rock) until Deb and I left, which was about 10:30.  I know, I know!  But the room was starting to move around significantly, which is apparently a side-effect of too many margueritas, and we thought that we'd better get a bit closer to home in case our condition took a turn for the worse.  Our good friends Terry and Joe were sitting at the palapa counting down, so we joined them until the dirty deed was done and we finally went to bed well into 2013.  I'm pretty sure tomorrow is gonna be a REAL slow day....

 

 

 Photos from New Year's deleted by censors.