Painting The Patio

This afternoon to our surprise the painters showed up to paint the newly done patio roof and also the walls.
Our landlady had told us that she was going to hire them to do the work; but we had no idea of when they were coming.
A few hours later it was all finished, looks really good.  Now just waiting for the tiles to be put onto the floor and the patio will finally be done.

Road Trip Part 8 - San Javier to Hermosillo, Sonora and Home

After San Javier we again headed down the road.  We were ready for breakfast so stopped in Tecoripa.  There wasn't much in the town; but we found a small place with two old kitchen tables that called itself a restaurant.  When we walked in we thought there was no place to sit as one table had 3 or 4 men seated at it eating and the other table was full of juice, sodas, etc..  The lady told us to come in and they cleaned off the table and we sat down.
We ordered eggs with ham and as they had no coke we settled for water.  While we were waiting the men at the other table starting talking our ears off.  The cook and the other lady there joined in the conversation and we could barely eat our breakfast when it arrived.
The men went outside to gossip when they finished eating and when we went outside they continued the conversation.  We walked over to the plaza for a few minutes and then came back, said our farewells and left.

Tecoripa.

After that there wasn't much on the road and we didn't make any more stops for awhile.  We passed through San Jose de Pima without stopping.

We came to the small town of La Colorada; but didn't like what we saw so we didn't bother stopping.  Not much to see, a mining town that looked less well cared for than any of the others we had seen on the whole trip.
Scenes along the road.
Just another burro, we saw burros, cows, horses, cowboys, goats, a couple of deer, some roadrunners, lots of birds including some Cardinals.

After this we passed through Hermosillo and headed home to Guaymas.  An interesting trip and some new sights.
Not sure which area we will pick for the next trip around the state or in which direction we will go next time.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Just a couple of photos today.

1.  Cat on a hot tin roof.

2.  Hungry Hummer.

Early Evening In Downtown

I was downtown this evening to go to an event and snapped a few photos of things while I was outside the event location.
Lovely evening.

A Sunny Sunflower Day

It is a good day, even better than usual after getting some good family news.
I walked down to the corner and took some shots of some wild sunflowers.
They are so sunshiny and happy looking, they always make me smile.
Have a great day.

                                                                                                                                       

5 Years Blogging

I just realized last night that it must be around the anniversary of when I started blogging. Just went and looked and sure enough. I first blogged on the 8 th of May 2005. Wow, 5 years of boring people under my belt and still hanging in there; although certainly less often now than at the beginning, (I am sure everyone is happy about that one lol). This is the 810 th post by the way.

When I think back on the last 5 years it is hard to believe all the things we have seen and done, most of which we enjoyed. It has been 5 years of major life changes.

We sold everything in Canada that didn't fit into the car and said goodbye to consumerism, status symbols and stress. Major change! We have continued our life SOB happy with ourselves and each other and find no need to try and purchase happiness. We live a very simple life here compared to NOB and love it. We haven't lived here for 5 years yet, that anniversary will be the 10 th of October this year.

We have traveled some of the USA and spent some weeks at different times in New Mexico and also Arizona. We have spent 7 weeks on the Baja. We have traveled a little bit on the Mexican mainland, not a lot. We have explored most of our sprawled out city on foot in most of the neighborhoods, good and not so good. We have never felt threatened. We have explored our surrounding area by car and seen some very interesting things. This area has a lot of history being a port city.

We have driven, flown, bussed and taken ferries.

I must have taken about a million pictures and apparently a lot of people have enjoyed looking at them as my webshots photos usually have anywhere from 1500 to 3500 views a week. Unbelievable to me!!! I have found websites online using my photos, (without permission), which kind of irks me in some ways. I don't mind people downloading the pictures to their computers for their own use; but when commercial sites use them without asking permission it does bother me a bit. I have started putting the blog name on the photos that I upload (which is a pain in the butt), so if they use them now they have to go to the trouble of editing the photos first.

We have learnt to go with the flow and to relax more. We have learned some Spanish and hopefully will continue to learn more. It is nice to be able to converse with people in the stores, etc. now. We have attended more parties in the last five years than I probably attended in 15 yrs. in Canada. This is a big thing for us as we are both a bit antisocial and like being on our own. We have met many people including our landlords and their families who have all been amazingly open to us and have basically adopted us into the family. We have great neighbors who don't often have loud parties lol. We now meet people downtown in our city of around 130,00 or more, that we know.

We have navigated the immigration FM3 process on our own along with the IMSS application process. We go to doctors, dentists, optometrists appointments, basically all the necessities in life and manage in Spanish.

We returned to Canada for a couple of weeks in February this year and managed to renew our passports in English, yah us good for 5 more years!

We have noticed changes over the 5 years in our adopted city. The prices go up as they do everywhere, more people are speaking English, more people are leaving their homes wearing more casual clothing, eg: shorts, more people from NOB are venturing into Guaymas; although very few actually live right in the city. The city is trying to clean up the garbage more and is looking nicer. Lots of ascetic work has been done in the downtown area probably because of the cruise ships starting to come in. Despite the changes the city continues to be a working port city and we continue to love it.

We discussed what the 1 thing is out of the last 5 years that we will never forget and both agreed that it was when we first drove into town and recognized things in the area from the photos that we had been looking at over the previous 10 months of online researching. An unforgettable sight to us.

I raise my glass of ice cold Coca Cola to this great city, state and country. May the next 5 years be as good as the last 5 have been.

Errand Checklist

OK, so here's the report back on getting my checklist of errands done the other day.

The switch I bought for the computer system is working well, so that is accomplished.

On Wednesdays trip to centro I almost completed my list. I got my eyes checked and ordered new glasses. They had a 20 % off sale on complete glasses, (frames and lenses). I was only going to buy new lenses as my frames are fine; but the price of the lenses alone was more than if I bought new frames with the lenses. So I ended up buying a complete set. This way I will have the old set for a back up if I happen to break the new ones.

Checked the sweet corn at the one veggie lady at the Mercado. She said it was sweet corn; but it was way overripe and looked not tasty so I didn't buy it. Oh well, maybe next time or perhaps the season is ending for it, not sure. I never really keep track of the seasons of stuff here as we pretty much know what is in season by the produce trucks that come through the neighborhood.

Went to the butcher and got my meat and then to another store where I get pork chops for Roy. I don't care for pork chops and he doesn't care for fish. So when I cook him pork chops I cook fish for me and we are both happy. I noticed at the butcher shop that they have 3 kg. bags of tomato paste now. Tomato paste in the little cans or in any form is not usually available here. I don't use it often, well mainly because I know I can't get it so I hoard what I do have lol. I am thinking that I will buy a bag and re-package it into smaller bags and freeze it for when I want it. Should work I think. Might also see if my landlady would like some of it. I gave her a can to try and she liked the concentrated flavor so she might be interested in some. This butcher shop has a lot of large packaged items for pizza and restaurants and it is also where I buy my mozzarella cheese to use on pizzas, etc.. We like the Mexican cheese but I can't seem to get it to melt very well on pizzas, etc., so like to have some Mozzarella on hand. I buy a 2 kg. bag and keep it in the freezer and take out what I need as I need it. Already shredded which is nice also.

So, the list is pretty much complete and it only took 2 trips this time. Not bad.

Yesterday I met a couple of ladies from Canada and we did the 50 cent tour of Centro. Interesting to see the city through a newcomers eyes and I realized that the city is working very hard to clean up the garbage, etc.. Funny, I guess you get so used to things that you don't really notice it anymore until someone else mentions it. Way to go Guaymas!!! They also mentioned how nice everyone has been to them here, which is normal and is the main reason we live here. Great people. Again, WAY TO GO GUAYMAS!!!!! Got to love this place.

Views Of The Bay

Some views of the bay and surrounding area, most of them taken from Club Nautico restaurant and the rest taken on our stroll there.

Guaymas At Night And Other Things

The Palacio Municipal lit up at night.

The Iglesia de San Fernando also lit up for the evening.

Fountain at the Iglesia de San Fernando.

Just an old building that I like for some reason. It is the second floor of a building. The first floor is brick; but for some reason the second floor is built out of wood. It is rotting away and not safe looking.

They had these photo stands all over the malecon when the first cruise ship came in and also the evening of the Festival of the Calaca. I love the expressions on the various faces.

Surfing YouTube

Surfing YouTube

Every once in awhile, I head over to YouTube and do a search for "Guaymas". Today I found quite a few that I hadn't seen before. There are new ones on the Delphinario, which I found interesting and then I found the one below. It is a very good representation of our area and is posted by user: bungolio. It shows all of the highlights of our city and I enjoyed it very much, I hope you do.