San Pancho Vida

Parade of Visitors

I have had a houseful of guests lately.

You know Allen and Travis and Rafi were here for their spring fling at the beach. Unfortunately, we all (except Rafi) took turns being under the weather while they were here. In between, though, we had our usual excellent visit.

Rafi knows how to make himself at home at Aunt Candice's.

He loved seeing my sister, his Aunt Denise, who timed her visit perfectly to overlap with her own dog's brother's visit. Oh, and she wanted to see Allen and Travis, too. Rafi fell in love with Denise and followed her all over the house. I hear he broke out in a rash when they got back to Ajijic: our diagnosis is stress. He obviously prefers the beach and his Aunties.

And he misses the new friends he made on his walks.

As I write this, it is Thursday, March 21st, Primavera Day in Mexico. The first day of spring. I caught the afternoon parade of the children who attend San Pancho's preschool/daycare.

They came in strollers and little vehicles of every description and in pickup trucks decorated as floats.

I saw Lidia following the parade with her new baby Valentina.

Here's her two-year-old, Santi, being a lion with a lollipop.

And her niece Carla, being a bunny.

There were lots of different critters represented today.

I'm not sure, but I think this was Snow Whites and the Seven Dwarves, who tossed candy to the spectators.

This next visitor didn't actually come to my house, which is probably a good thing.

He or she is smaller than the one I photographed last fall. I haven't seen the big one since the estuary broke through. It may have moved on. But this one's a constant presence now, hanging beside the estuary just down from the beach restaurants.

This visitor did come to my house. Allen spotted it one morning as he and Rafi descended the outside stairs.

It's a dead-leaf mantis, according to our research. It couldn't possibly look more like a dead leaf, although it's considerably more active and actually flew rapidly away when I freed it after taking these photos! I felt like Johnny Carson: "You didn't tell me it could fly!"

I don't keep all my visitors under jars...although I admit it's crossed my mind lately.

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Thanks to all of you who voted so faithfully throughout the recent Best Mexico Blog contest. We made a respectable showing, and of course the greatest honor was being nominated by my readers and making it into the top five. Wow! Gracias to all! I'm keepin' that badge up there. I like it.

Happy Spring!

xo

C

The Nature of Things

Nature has been so... natural around here lately. Natural and... interesting, you might say.

I woke to a slam bam of a thunderstorm a couple of mornings ago, wind blowing the curtains in my room perpendicular to the windows, rain drumming on the banana trees, lightning brightening the dark of pre-dawn to daylight. It was highly entertaining until the power went out. For seven hours. Even that would've been fine except that it started getting real hot when the sun broke through the cloud cover and my ceiling fans stayed stubbornly still.

Two nights ago, the lightning in the southern sky was so magnificent that I stood holding my camera over my head until my arms ached, taking photo after photo in hopes of catching just one display. When I downloaded the pictures to my computer, I had forty-plus shots of black...and this one.

A paltry and blurry sample of what I actually saw, but better than nothing.

This summer weather makes one's attention to nature more acute. I find myself running for my camera often, fascinated by the variety of life that appears.

The three critters above are busy all night with their cacophony of chirps and quacks and shrills and general yammering.

Also busy all night are the leaf-cutter ants, which have so far stayed outside my wall. As I was pulling into the garage one night recently, I spotted a parade of them crossing the short driveway. I followed their trail and found them at work on one of my hibiscus bushes.

The poor hibiscus was decimated. But I cut it back the next morning, and it will grow again. It needed pruning, anyway.

I had another big surprise last week. I'm sure I've told you of the dozens of geckos that decorate my ceilings every night, scurrying about eating the bugs that are attracted by the light. They're my buddies.

So I was sitting here at my big table at the computer when I heard a sort of splat. I looked over at the floor from whence the sound apparently came and saw a gecko on the floor. Stunned for only a moment at having fallen ten feet, it ran to the wall and hid behind a side table. I looked up. Another gecko was up there watching.

"You're kidding," I said. "Did you really push him off the ceiling?" The gecko up there barked once.

Turns out that's exactly what happened, as I've had two more geckos land within a foot of my head in the past few days. One of them just missed my computer keyboard. I've discovered that this occurrence is accompanied by a vocal fight between two of the little lizards first. They seem to be having some sort of territorial dispute these days, probably mating-related, as so many things are. I do have a lot of baby geckos showing up lately.

Fortunately, geckos are made of some weird rubbery substance, so although they definitely make a splat noise when they hit the ground (or the table), they recover rapidly and hurry back up to where they belong. Unfortunately, I've not actually witnessed the process by which one disconnects another from the ceiling, and I can only imagine the extent of the gecko-rainfall that must occur while I'm sleeping each night and they have the run of the place.

There are daytime lizards, too, little guys who show up in my gardens and on my screens.

Meanwhile, the plants are still growing...and growing...

The jungle is magnificent.

Sunrises and sunsets are glorious.

I'll miss a bit of this, as I'm traveling next week to a town I haven't seen yet, San Miguel de Allende in the state of Guanajuato. Greg will be holding down the fort here and preparing the Blue Pig for re-opening in mid-October. He's had his own experiences with nature lately.

I may not have a post for you next Friday, as I'll be exploring and learning and taking more photos. We'll see how the week develops. But I'll post from San Miguel in the following weeks. I think we have some treats in store.

In the meantime, I know you'll enjoy nature wherever you are.

'Bye for now.

What's for Dinner?

I've just arrived home from a quick shopping trip to Bucerias, where I not only bought groceries, but also was able to score a new internet modem, now hooked up. Telmex gives you a brand new one for free when your other one goes wonky, which mine did.

My friend Bobby, who only shows up now and then these days and leaves again tomorrow, is coming for dinner. I made Sicilian meatballs, which are simmering in the tomato sauce right now. I, too, am simmering--in a sauce made of San Pancho humidity.

Seems like food and what to eat was even a bigger topic around here this week than usual. For example, my young Mexican black iguana stopped by several times to munch in my herb garden.

I was actually able to feed him a few lettuce leaves, which he nearly took right from my hand. I think he's a him. We'll find out when he gets a little older as the adult males look quite a bit different than the females. Here he is eating the spinach leaves I gave him, which he also liked.

Good pictures, huh? Actually, they're terrible pictures compared to the three following, taken by Trevor Evans, a houseguest of Richard and Linda Prince who housesat for me while I was in the States last month.

Trevor managed to catch my voracious pet devouring hibiscus leaves in the roof garden. I don't have to wonder any more what's been happening to those leaves and flowers.

Quite the dinner guest, isn't he? I mean the iguana, not Trevor.

Now I'll tell you about another unexpected "dinner" guest who stopped by a few days ago.

I was out on the terrace after sunset and spotted a frog sitting on the wall near the herb garden. I hurried inside and got my camera. By the time I returned, he'd hopped up onto the drape.

When I took a flash photo, he hopped to the mirror. So I turned off the flash.

I kept watching and snapping photos. Turns out I wasn't the only one interested in this green fellow, who, according to Richard Prince, is a Mexican tree frog, one of the largest of tree frogs. This guy measures around 3 1/2 inches from nose to tail.

From the ceiling and down the wall crept one of my house geckos, who I depend upon to harvest insects all night long. This one was the curious sort. He stood about a foot from the frog and craned his neck to try to figure out what the heck he was looking at.

Suddenly (and I mean in a fraction of a second), the frog bounded off the mirror sideways and landed perfectly on top of the gecko, which he then proceeded to stuff tail-first down his throat.

I was flabbergasted...as are all the people here I've told about it, who had no idea that tree frogs ate chorros (which is what the locals call the lizards we gringos call geckos). I mean, really -- who knew??

The frog, not much enjoying being photographed in the act, leapt back to the mirror and, hanging upside down, finished his surprised meal, who was still moving around in the frog's belly until the frog ate the head end. (Okay, I probably should've warned those of you with weak stomachs. Sorry...but not very...)

So anyway, Bobby and I are having meatballs.

☺

Here We Go Again

Update--Saturday, May 26: Bud has melted like an ice cube in the sun. My flight looks to be on time. Thanks for your comments and emails of concern. San Pancho and Puerto Vallarta received around half an inch of rain over the past 24 hours, and no wind to speak of. See you next week!

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Ah, the best laid plans of mice and women so often go astray.

I must remember to send a thank you note to Robert Burns for being right yet again (and for letting me paraphrase him so poorly), as soon as I'm done rearranging my plans and preparing to cancel carefully wrought reservations.

I have all the reservations printed out and paper-clipped together and tucked into a nice new file folder. I have a flight scheduled (five of them, actually) and my itinerary aligned for the coming month. I have my suitcases nearly packed and everything in the house fairly well organized. Good friends who live here in San Pancho are ready to come and stay while I'm away, to have some extra space for their visiting family and as a change of place. All the ducks in a row, one might imagine.

Except for the hurricane.

Which pretty much came out of nowhere as far as I'm concerned.

The latest update from the National Hurricane Center shows this hurricane's center right atop the Puerto Vallarta airport on Saturday afternoon, just about the hour my flight is leaving. Or was leaving. Whatever.

I write this Thursday at 9:41 p.m. Central Daylight Time. Usually I'm finished with my blog post by now, but today I was packing and not packing, hovering over my computer to check the latest forecast, moving art and chairs inside, dithering around more than accomplishing much. The complete advisory update is due on the NHC site in eighteen minutes or so.

In the meantime, I think I'll show you some pictures to distract us. Lots has been going on around here. We had an eclipse. You probably did, too.

Here in this latitude and time zone, the sun was scheduled to slip beneath the horizon just as it approached full coverage. It did set as scheduled (some things happen as planned...) but the sky was hazy and a thick cloud band prevented us from seeing the last half hour or so of the eclipse. Robert Burns strikes again.

I also took another Dr. Seuss photo for you. (See last week's post if you don't know what I'm talking about.)

There are few things as ridiculous looking as a gecko, in my opinion. Remind me to tell you in a future post about the research being done in nano-technology to replicate their sticky feet for the rest of us.

And then yesterday, Dinah (or possibly one of her offspring) came to dine on the basil just off the main terrace.

See her in there? She's hiding. But not very seriously.

She doesn't eat much of it. Just a leaf or two, perhaps as a delicate starter salad or maybe a light dessert. Her main dinner is usually my bougainvillea blossoms and hibiscus buds. 

Being a conscientious blogger, I decided to find out what the heck she actually is this time. The locals call her kind garrobos, not iguanas, but it turns out she actually is an iguana: ctenosaura pectinata, I believe from my research, or the Mexican Spiny-tailed Iguana.

It's kind of fun having your own private dinosaur. She's around thirty inches long from nose to tip of tail and is as big around as my forearm. I'm going to tame her and teach her tricks eventually. She already knows how to climb up the walls.

Well, that was fun. But let's go check on the update from the NHC, shall we?

Oh, lovely. Bud the Hurricane (what kind of name is that for a hurricane? Bud?? ) is now a Category 3, with wind speeds of 115 mph. 

RAINFALL...BUD IS EXPECTED TO PRODUCE TOTAL RAIN ACCUMULATIONS OF 5
TO 8 INCHES ALONG THE SOUTHWESTERN COAST OF MEXICO IN THE STATES OF
MICHOACAN...COLIMA...JALISCO...AND SOUTHERN NAYARIT...WITH POSSIBLE
ISOLATED MAXIMUM AMOUNTS OF 12 INCHES.

I cribbed that right off the NHC report. Do they not understand I have a plane to catch? People to see, places to go, things to do?

I imagine I'll still be sitting right here on Saturday afternoon, or maybe inside. I'll let you know how it goes over the next few days with my own updates, if we have power. Don't worry, the NHC also said that Bud had likely reached its peak. We'll be just fine.

Hey, wait a minute. Bud??

I wonder if I could teach Dinah to eat it...

 ☁☁☁

Update 7 a.m. CST, Friday: Not a breath of wind this morning. A few interesting clouds in the sky. According to the NHC, Bud seems to be weakening, but now is forecast to bring in even more rain to some areas. Maybe I'll get out of here after all. Better go finish packing, huh?

My Seussian World

Three and a half years ago, when I was just beginning to get into the groove of Mexico, I took this photo of Travis's post office in Ajijic:

He found me laughing hysterically as he exited with his mail.

"What are you laughing at?" he asked, bemused.

"Your post office!" I replied.

"What about it?" he said.

"Travis," I said. "Look at it. It has a motorcycle parked in the entry and sacks of corn stacked against the wall. This is where you get your mail?"

He told me then that he guessed he'd just become used to it. We agreed on the spot to try not to get used to the quirks and oddities of Mexico, to notice and appreciate them, to stay awake and aware. Of Mexico's beauty, too. And its rawness, its marvels, its many delightful aspects.

I suppose that, in the past few years, I, too, have become more accustomed to this country. Lately, I've been prodding myself to pay attention. This post is a reminder to me, and to you, too. Because no matter where we live, wonders abound if we only keep our eyes open wide.

Early on, I felt like I was living in a world that Dr. Seuss drew. I am still surprised daily.

I mean, really -- who but Dr. Seuss could've invented palm trees to illustrate his wonderful wacky tales?

Not to mention agaves and all the other weird things that grow all around.

Three months ago, Lidia and her husband Waldo (who is taking care of my yard these days) told me that Lidia's father wanted to send me a ciruela, a kind of plum tree, as a gift. How lovely!

The following week Waldo arrived with a very large stick. A hunk of trunk, actually. It had no leaves and no roots whatsoever. Picture a five foot chunk of firewood.

Richard was visiting at the time. We assumed this was something to support the new plum tree until Waldo, mystified, said no, this is the tree.

We watched, mystified in turn, as Waldo proceeded to dig a hole in the ground and stuff the giant branch into the dirt. Then he watered it twice a week.

Can you imagine how we laughed when, to our utter amazement, it sprouted leaves? Then it sprouted plums, growing directly out of the trunk.

Again, I ask -- who but Seuss?

Then there are the animal surprises, of which I shall present a mere smattering.

We'll be covering dogs and insects in a future edition of My Seussian World. They deserve an entire issue.

On with other surprises.

My entirely unsolicited advice for this week?

Stay Surprised!!

Adios from

❤