Things are heating up!

We have been busy here in paradise.  Every day brings a new adventure and something new for us to do.  Yesterday, on our way home from the beach and shopping we noticed that there was a  lot of smoke coming from a fire near our house.  Thankfully, it was in a vacant lot across the street and down past where we live.  We decided that since it was across the street from one of our favorite restaurants that we would stop in, have a beer and watch the action.  The fire truck arrived and quickly began to put out the fire.  These guys are all volunteers and rarely get to use their skills.  We were curious to know where they were going to get water to fight the fire because there are no hydrants in town.  They have a water tank on the truck but it can't be all that big.  We still don't know what they would do if they ran out of stored water on the truck.  There is no evidence of a tanker truck at the fire department.  Thankfully most of the houses in town are made of concrete so the only things lost in the case of a house fire would be the possessions and not the building itself.  The fire cause a minor sensation with all of the neighbors coming out to watch.  It was a hot, smoky mess as things are very dry here right now.  It is the middle of our dry season.

As things often work out here, we sat for a beer with Gabriel, our waiter turned friend.  Then one beer became two, two beers turned in to dinner and before we knew it, our 2:30 stop for beer had turned into dinner.   We left around 6:30 after Gabriel announced that he had to leave us to catch the next bus home.  Of course we didn't mind, the family take such good care of us whenever we eat there.

The night before last we had dinner with our friends David and Victoria.  David and his partner Michael have been coming down for at least ten years and have a home and rental apartments.  We have become good friends and visit with each other when they are not hosting their many friends and family from Ottawa, Canada.  They have been very helpful in filling in details about Sayulita life and the many characters who inhabit our little town.  They have some hysterical stories to share about the other locals and we very much enjoy their company.

I don't know if I have mentioned our friend Victoria who we met in the bar where she works, another of our favorite hangouts.  Victoria has been extremely helpful with our million questions about Mexican culture, language and history.  She is extremely bright speaks excellent English and understands gringo humor, which sometimes doesn't translate well.

Victoria grew up in Mexico City and moved to Guadalajara when she finished school.  She is unusual in that she has no desire to get married and is passionate about continuing her studies.  Because education in Mexico is free she is hoping to become a teacher of both Spanish and English as second languages.  She took her exams a couple of weeks ago and won't know the results for a few more weeks.   I am certain she will get in and that she will be excellent at her work.  It is so much fun to compare notes on our different cultures and learn as much as we can from all of our friends here.

Here is a picture of Victoria

Today I went to the gringo market to buy tickets to a fundraiser for the Primaria (primary) school.  It is a benefit to help them continue to build, repair and re-plant the vegetable garden that is used both as a teaching project and to provide food for the school.  The tickets cover dinner and a beverage.  Dinner is cooked by the mothers of the children and is guaranteed to be delicious.  I can't wait to see what they have in store for us.

As the temperature and humidity rise the bugs come out of the gardens and some of them find their way into the house.  Lately I have found large cockroaches, an enormous spider, a centipede and a scorpion.  I talked with my local friends and found out what to do to combat all of these.  I've bug sprayed and have moved large, heavy books into each room.  All of our friends, save Victoria, have said the best thing to do is smash the bugs and spray Raid in all of the obvious places.  So far, so good.  Between the Raid and the geckos I haven't seen more of the offending insects.  It isn't that I mind the bugs so much, I just don't like to be surprised by them.  The spider I found was the size of a three by five index card and was hiding in the bedroom behind the drapes.  I found it as I was closing the drapes for the evening.  I got out my Raid, spayed the terrified creature and continued to do so as it ran across the wall and behind the headboard!  I thought I had won.  I figured I had soaked it so good that it would just die behind the headboard and I would be done.  Oh no,  it had continued to move behind the headboard and was on the wall on the other side of where it had gone into hiding.  This is where the books come in handy.  I put the monster out of its misery with a good, solid smash.  

The scorpion was another subject.   We think it was hiding in the clothes that JD had brought out of the bedroom.  I was walking around and just happened to notice that Baxter was sniffing at it.  I called JD to come see it and we trapped it and soaked it in Raid.  We kept it to show Chela so that she would know to watch for them and also to let her know that I had sprayed everywhere I could think they would hide.  I stomped on the roaches and sprayed their hideouts too.  I also used a couple of tricks the locals taught me.  When I told this to my landlady, Jeanna, she offered to fumigate the house but I told here we would see if my spraying helped.  I have to keep in mind that the dogs and cat are sensitive to the sprays as well as their not being good for us, or our geckos and lizards, which we love.  They eat things like spiders and scorpions.  I think we have about 6 living in the house.
Here is a picture of one of the small lizards that hangs around.

As spring begins the trees are beginning to re-leaf and some of them are beginning to flower.  These yellow blossoms drop down on us from a tree above the house.  The red bogunvilla vine has grown up into the tree with the yellow blossoms.  It is quite beautiful.

We have been out to dinner so much lately that I think we will eat at home.  I've been wanting JD's spaghetti sauce.  We will likely meet up with David, Michael, some of their visitors and Victoria later this evening.  It gets really humid for awhile after the sun goes down and its a good time to sit and talk with good friends and to make some new ones.