It's the middle of December and everything's blooming here. I'm amazed at the color and complexity of so many of these. To the left is a delicate flower with beautiful leaves and what look like pea pods hanging from the branches!?! The plant shown just below doesn't flower, but look at the beautiful purple color of the foliage. Below that is a picture of Mexico's version of our wild blackberries up north. The flowers on ours are simple white or pale pink - these are three colors. Lavender, pink and yellow. Everyday I take at least one "walk about" on this large piece of property with our dog. No leash needed as it's all enclosed, but she just loves the company.

What else do we do?

A couple of weeks ago we went to a fabulous 70th birthday party held by a good friend at the huge house he shares with his 52 year old lady-friend. No, she is not Mexican, but you do see that often as a large difference in age is not considered unusual between partners here. That is true for men as well. But more about the party: There were about 100 people there. Great food provided by a Mexican catering company that made the tortillas fresh, one-by-one for the guests and an open bar and live music with dancing on their veranda. The following week I went to a play with friends at the Lakeside Little Theater. It was a Neil Simon play - "Rumors"- well-played and hilarious! Cost: $200 pesos (less than $12US). Very talented actors here, and some have many years of acting experience in their former lives. Last week we went to a local bar that frequently has live music and dancing (and Sushi!) to see a blues band from Guadalajara, I believe. Absolutely amazing - the best music I've heard ANYWHERE for a long time. Google the "Cadavieco Blues Band" if you like music in the style of B.B. King, early Greg Allman or Stevie Ray Vaughn. Fabulous musicians, all Mexican, that play like they were mentored by all of the above and perhaps Clapton as well! Most of what I found online does not do them justice as we saw them the other night...

And further on the topic of daily activities - we have been playing Petanque twice a week down at the malecon. Petanque is France's version of Bocce ball played with metal balls that are heavier and slightly smaller. The play field is very casual vs the carefully groomed field for Bocce, I'm told. I know our area is fraught with all kinds of built in "obstacle courses" that include scraggly grass fading into dirt areas that have pebbles and exposed tree roots. I think I would be bored to death on a Bocce field - no challenge! Our friends who established the small group have been playing for years, beginning back in San Francisco before they moved here.  

The weather continues to be very nice, albeit a bit chilly at night. It's been about 70 - 75 degrees consistently and in the upper 50's at night.

We have a busy couple of weeks coming up with good food and drink with friends we have made down here, but I still do miss my kids and grandkids at Christmas. We'll Skype with our youngest (so that I can see how much our 22 mo. old grandaughter has grown!) on Christmas day.

All of these grow on "the Ranch" with no maintenance (or very little) once planted. And these photos were taken on only about a quarter of the spread here. This year the Summer months were warmer than usual and the rain was frequent, so everything is still blooming like crazy and the fruit trees on site are heavy with fruit. I have pledged to start using lemons, kumquats, oranges and pomegranites on a daily basis even though I'm not a huge fan of some of those. They are all here and I hear my mother's voice saying "Eat more fruit!" ...

From the Guadalajara Reporter in the last two weeks are lots of reminders that this place is very like up North in many ways - but usually with a Mexican twist. For the first time in this area they will begin imposing fines on autos that fail emission tests. Until now it was a suggestion, that might get ticketed. Then the fine would be forgiven if the situation was corrected within 15 days.

As Guadalajara centro has gotten a "facelift" recently the current mayor has banished hundreds of street vendors from the area, with a mixed response. The front page story said the area now has an "eerie stillness".  Many of the vendors took part in protests outside City Hall in response. This is perhaps the busiest time of the year for them and the hardship it places on these folks is huge. I personally think it is a harsh thing to do, particularly at this time of year and I love the street vendors! It is part of the heart and soul of the region and an editorial piece penned by another expat here echoed that thought.

Amazingly, they will begin to enforce and fine pet owners who are irresponsible for reasons ranging from not picking up after their pets, to allowing them to wander unleashed. And for more serious reasons such as neglect and damages done to others or their property by your dog they will take action leading to filing criminal charges against the owner. Finally! Many of these laws have been on the books for awhile, but not enforced. It seems to be related to who is in office at any given time ...

Lots going on here Lakeside - theatre, various benefits and LOTS of visitors. American Thanksgiving is this week (Canada celebrated theirs last month). This is also the week that Ajijic celebrates it's patron saint, St. Andrew (San Andreas).  It's loud, raucous and a party going on until the wee hours nearly every night. The newspaper published an explanation of the fiesta that was excellent. The "cohetes" which are loud bottle rockets set off every morning are meant to drive evil from the area, or are set off because prayers follow smoke into the sky and directly to God. These are pre-historic beliefs but still widely held by many. The festivities on each day are sponsored by various groups of workers in the area, but the largest is the final day sponsored by returning family members (hijos ausentes)who are working in the US and return this week to remember their home, families and their church.

"Castillo" in the making

Dia de Los Muertos alter on the Ajijic plaza

These guys are putting together one of the castillos that will be lit up as part of the Dia de Los Muertos celebration the first few days of this month. These handmade structures are amazing to behold when they set them off - producing spinning, shooting and generally exploding showers of sparks and fireworks. Look at a photo in my post dated 1/13/15 to see what that looks like.

I took the two photos below at the plaza in Ajijic on Nov 2 (All Souls Day) and this huge altar was very impressive, incorp-orating a skeleton on the left and a Catrina standing on the right.  The Catrinas are feminine skeletons, usually dressed up in long dresses and large hats, as this one is, but not always. Please look at my posts from 12/5/14 and 12/13/14 for great pictures from a year ago, when they had a wonderful collection of La Calavera (skull) Catrinas on display on the malecon in Chapala.  There was no display this year. They couldn't have topped last year's group anyway. What imagination!

The photo below shows a bit more detail of what is actually put on the altar for the person who is being honored. For those that aren't familiar with this Mexican holiday, it epitamizes the way people view death in this country. It's refreshing, but hard for those of us raised in other areas to grasp. I read an article in the local English language newspaper that explains from the Mexican perspective that "Most people don't have a fear of death" but they fear the process of dying. This is a quote from a Mexican nun who runs a non-profit hospice facility - very small - in this area, by the way. But, I digress...

To continue with the explanation of this holiday, people celebrate (literally) the dead relatives and friends by putting out their favorite food and drink, and with photos and other memorabilia on the altar. Then they visit the grave site and have a picnic and swap anecdotes about the departed. The marigolds are thought to attract the souls of the dead to visit the party. A couple of years ago we visited the main cemetary for Ajijic during this holiday and it was refreshing to see all the families, friends and visitors there to view the beautiful gravesites that had been painstakingly cleaned up and decorated, having comida (picnics) there and laughing at funny stories being shared. Those of us from north of the border should, perhaps, take a cue from this perspective, as death is historically treated as such a tragic thing with our funerals attended by grief-stricken family and friends. Yes, we should miss our relatives that have passed, but I personally don't think that grief serves any purpose if extended for any long period of time (my own perspective based on having lost several close relatives including my Mother and Father).

Another alter inside the Cultural Center

Hello from sunny Mexico!

We arrived recently by car, with our 65 lb dog in the back, as well as a Weber kettle BBQ as a gift for our Mexican family here at Rancho el Rosario - and a few suitcases... But it wasn't without incident. We missed being caught in a monumental mudslide north of Los Angeles by about 2 hours. The slide completely covered the freeway and carried cars and everything else off with it. Over 200 people had to be rescued. We merely had to be diverted off of the main road and over to the coast, along with thousands of other cars during the morning commute, and then back inland south of the slide. We spent the entire day moving at 10-20 mph, drove for nearly 13 hrs with very little southerly movement to show for it. We did get off the road briefly to take our high-strung dog for a good run at the beach at one point!
The image above is not a great picture as the natural light was not in the right place when I snapped the photo, but look at the size of this HUGE sculpture (compared to the 3 people at the base) nearly installed outside of Culiacan on our last full driving day. The signage was not there yet to identify this fellow so I did some research. It is most likely an Otomi (Aztec) warrior. I was not thrilled to be in Culiacan at nightfall as we don't know the city and, honestly, it is a city known for a lot of drug cartel crime. It didn't help that as we approached town we saw maybe a dozen different policia with their lights and sirens blasting, stopping cars, questioning multiple people and snarling traffic. We stopped at the first semi-decent hotel we saw at that point and went no further. A bit later Gregg took the dog for a walk and reported back that he thought it was a DUI campaign going on ...

When we arrived in Ajijic, it was a comfort to return to our casa inside the walls of Rancho el Rosario where we have been for a couple of years doing a 6mo lease over the winter months. Please see some of my earlier posts to see what this lovely place looks like, right in town and right on Lake Chapala. Some of the infrastructure at "the Ranch" is deteriorating as it's pretty old and that has it's challenges at any given time - however, no sooner did we arrive here than they began to talk about a hurricane offshore in the Pacific. It was of epic proportion, they said, as it approached the coast due West of here. Hurricane Patricia was supposedly the most powerful hurricane ever recorded - EVER! At landfall about 130 mi from here it was expected to be a Category 5, and when it reached Guadalajara (only 30 min away) it was predicted to still be a Cat 3 with winds of over 100 mph. It was the first time I have ever been truly frightened by the proximity of a natural phenomenon that had the power to be the end ... Long story short, we escaped the wind almost entirely as the hurricane did not take the predicted sharp turn that would've put us directly in it's path, and secondly the mountains in this part of Mexico did their job and shut down what wind did make it's way our direction. There was a lot of rain, which is a big problem here in town because of the threat of slides. Don't get me started about the situation on the West coast related to Climate Change. It has changed agriculture all the way down the coast - we saw that on our drive through California. And the effect is so much more than that, but this blog is not meant to be political so I'll leave it at that.

We are in the beginning of the Dia de Los Muertos multi-day celebration here. Halloween is relatively new as a part of this. I always try to capture the many wonderful parts of the Mexican celebration of this holiday, and I'll post about that next. In the meantime, we found some great Mexican craft beer with a Dia de Los Muertos label that is very cool. It is an IPA and it's pretty good. The craft beer industry, by the way, is doing very well here.

Last week the families who live on the Ranch had a huge Feliz Cumpleanos (birthday) party, with many extended family members attending. There were 35 people fed and entertained over the course of the evening. The party was for the eldest son of our maintenance mgr whose mother has been our maid for a couple of years now. It was his 19th birthday. Again, we were the only gringos invited.

Cooking up some pig in a pot

The pig being cooked up in the pot was butchered on site that morning, and we were told they were fixing Carnitas when it was done. Rather than shredding the meat after it was cooked to tender, they just filed large platters with chunks which you could put on your plate. Then you could pull the meat off the bones yourself and assemble "soft tacos", as we call them in the US, with all the fixings on the table. Gregg made a wonderful batch of Ceviche made with fresh tuna, local white fish (from the coast), mango and avocado. Then, after comida, Gregg brought out a bottle of very nice Tequila which he and all the guys proceeded to finish up, one shot at a time... In the meantime, the kids (who ranged from 6 mo - 6 yrs) ran around in the open space playing old-fashioned games like Tag and Hide & Seek. To be honest, there was one little boy whose mom had an IPhone with some game on it. Reminded me of kids back home. The dogs were having a field day, being fed scraps with bones attached from EVERYONE there. Our dog got very sick that night - I thought she might explode she had eaten so much!

Open Studios event in Ajijic

This was the other happening early this month. I love this event and have volunteered my help for two years now. The picture above was taken from inside one of the venues that allowed artists to display their wares in. It's a win-win situation. The owner of this B&B got exposure as person after person said "Wow - I've never been inside the doors here. Can I get some information on the rooms and the rates?" The artisans got a beautiful setting in which to display their work. This recurring event is in February every year and is sponsored by the Ajijic Society of the Arts. We have an astounding number of very talented artists here and this group keeps growing and growing, with many shows, sales and display opportunities throughout the year.

 Welcome to two of our newest tenants! They arrived two months ago, but they're not "Snowbirds" - they belong to the owner's wife. Beautiful, but very noisy, these are youngsters, and can live a very long time. Often they are included in peoples' wills to pass on to the next generation. Macaws can cost as much as several thousand dollars. I mention this as a lead in to the theme of this post: Why use money to maintain the integrity of your property when you can spend it on whatever frivolous project occurs to you at the moment?

For example, the tree they are perched in here is now enclosed in a very spendy cast iron strcture, with a concrete floor and covered with sheets of metal, like a grill - open to the air outside. It was designed by an engineer and is worthy of placement in a zoo. There is a ladder-like, multi level perch included for their entertainment. This aviary could easily house a few more birds. The joke is that it's larger than one of the smallest units here (inhabited by people).

The very OLD trees covered with what I believe is a variety of  Morning Glory was a spectacular sight. They cut them back to look like the ones in the bird enclosure - very bare and ugly. I can imagine it took many years for them to look as they did. In the process of cutting these two trees back, several huge piles of debris and many large chunks of wood, some that probably measured close to 4 ft across sat in one of our neighbor's front lawn and walkway for a week before it was cleared. You may also notice the spindley roses planted in the foreground below. Those were the first of truckloads of rose bushes brought in and planted all over the property, and promptly ignored, many of which are diseased and dying now. None of the staff is trained to maintain roses properly - heck, they can't even water them all there are so many! And all the while this is going on the plumbing in nearly every one of the units here has serious issues and is beginning to fail... We can only hope the owner will take notice sometime in the near future. Mind you, I'm not holding my breath on that one.

This was the "castillo" that was set off at the primary church near the plaza downtown at the height of the San Andres fiesta which took place the week of American Thanksgiving. We had friends visit that week and, to their credit, they were extremely good sports about the noise - especially because they were only blocks away from the source of it all! We went down to the plaza the night of the fireworks just to be a part of it, and it was huge. Many, many people there that night and rides, music and vendors of all kinds that reminded you of a carnival. Castillo, by the way, is one of those words that have two meanings. We have many in English. In Spanish the word means castle, but is used to describe these firework structures that are very intricate and built to order, by hand, for any given event. In the past we have seen people actually climb onto them and spin around on parts of the structure that were not lit. They are fearless here. Another example is the way they drive with total disregard for any other vehicle beside their own. But you don't want to get me started on that one ...

Above is the inner garden at a charming B & B in Chapala that we were able to visit when our friends were here that week. Locals call it "the double Q". It's actually called Quinta Quetzalcoatl. Recently written up in the Guadalajara Reporter, the writer DH Lawrence stayed here in 1923. We also visited the historic former railroad station, now a museum in Chapala, that day. So much to see - so little time.

Correction from a previous post: A catrina I named "La Rueda" is actually "La Rusa" - the legendary Horsewoman in Black who was a wealthy Russian ballerina that relocated to this area. "Rueda" means wheel in Spanish" La Rusa's beautiful home is in Ajijic, and is occasionally available for long-term lease.