Tropical storm!

We went to the beach on Thursday afternoon, setting up beside our favourite little beach bar, which makes excellent margaritas!!

It had been sunny all morning at home, while we sunbathed and enjoyed our pool, but the clouds started forming about an hour after we arrived.
Miki has been waiting all this time since she had her cataracts done to finally go snorkelling WITHOUT her glasses and still be able to see the wonderful fish. You can tell by that smile that she was pleased!!!!~
Later in the afternoon, this wonderful black sky developed, got blacker and blacker, and finally erupted in lightning, thunder and torrential rain. We packed up slowly, taking pictures, until we were the last ones on the beach and finally made a dash for the car.

Ah, for a wide angle lens that could have taken it all in.
There is nothing as spectacular as this tropical rain - it bounces 6 inches off the road and creates instant lakes everywhere. It also fills the mangroves, which is so needed throughout the year, and cools the temps off a bit as well. Always a fun experience!!

Fashion Divas????

We worked Sat, Sun and Monday this week and on Tuesday we were part of a photo shoot for a new clothing store!! We arrived downtown at 7 am (on a day off!!!!!) and met Sharon (who owns the store), photographer and his assistant, (names to follow when we get our pics) and spent until mid afternoon wearing a number of different outfits, shoes and jewellry in various settings all over town. It was so much fun, and we will have a raft of photos to share with you soon.

Part of the deal for doing this was that we got to choose and KEEP whichever outfit we liked, and Sharon took us for lunch. In addition, we get all these professionally taken photos of ourselves, some of which you will have to agree are pretty good.

Sharon and hubby Les have been running a printing business in Cancun for the last 10 years, and while he is going to keep it going, she has imported these great dresses, pants and jackets from Indonesia, which are even in large and extra large sizes - very hard to find down here. Great shoes, sandals, and accessories complete the store, which will open in a couple of weeks, and is just down the street from the bookstore on the main square, so great location.

What would a blog be without an animal.....I have taken another pic of Botas (our sick black dog). The other night Diane picked me and Botas up at our place and we went to Jorge, the local vet, who says he has all the suspected things (mange, parasites, worms, etc) but is quite young and has a strong heart. So he did the first of Botas 7 injections, one a day for a week, gave me mange bath stuff to do once every 2 weeks and will have the worming pills tomorrow.

Diane gets donations at her bakery for street animals, so that is how we paid for the vet and the treatments. We are feeding him every day and now give him a mulitvitamin with his food. He is very sweet, gentle, and was so good at the vets. Will try to keep you posted on his progress, but the vet feels he will recover for sure, so that is good news.

ANOTHER CAT???????

Three days ago, I was taking out the catfood bowl to our regular 5 street cats (Chaplin, Panther, Baby, Negro and Stripes - ok, its a bad sign when you start naming them....!!) when I heard this tiny meow...and who popped in the house but this tiny (probably 5 week old) kitten. He is a little boy, about the colour of a latte, with pale stripes on his skinny little body.


He fits right inside our smallest blue bowl, and we have now bought kitten food, give him unsweetened yogurt, and when put into a container of litter, knew EXACTLY what to do, so today I had to go buy clumping litter......oh dear. No name yet, but he is in the house most of the time, but goes out to our protected front yard overnight.


Cute or WHAT???????????????????

Friends and Guadalupe

We had dear Valorie over for dinner the other night and managed to sit outside all evening, except when we came in to have dessert. It is always a little dicey before dark, because of the mosquitos, but as long as there is a breeze in our patio, it is do-able!



















Everyone knows about the squeegie kids at home who wash windsheilds in exchange for spare change. In Cancun there is another version of it - circus acts. The is a juggler, dressed in a clown outfit, juggling balls. On the other corner, there was a guy with two large balls on the end of long ropes,which he swung all around him. Very enterprising, yes....????.. and very entertaining!









Ok, these are the LAST Guadalupe pics, I promise....!!! Dec. 12 was the big day, and the parade through our neighbourhood included trucks with floats, cars (all honking!!) with banners, and even men and women on horseback - loud music, lots of images of Herself, and every person in the neighbourhood was out in the street to clap and cheer.




In town, the parades went on all day and it was great fun!

Patio

Our little dining table fits nicely under the palapa, and gives good shade on the house and over what will be our outdoor kitchen to the right of the sink.


Here are the men of the hour - Papa on the left and Rauol on the right! Great work, gentlemen!!!!!

Ta Da!!!

Papa did a wonderful job putting on the undercoat of cement, and with a high concentration of sand, it is a lovely soft beige colour.

We will wait a week or so, then paint all the cement surfaces with "sellador", a clear sealant that protects the cement, and then a couple of days after that, paint the cement.

The zapote tree came as a full sized tree, which Rauol had to debark with machetes before putting it in place - this is the little stump that is left, which I am using as a plant stand! It is only about 12 - 14 inches high and weighs 20 pounds - that is how heavy the wood is.

I have kept a couple of the slices of wood as well, to show the great cedar colour, and will use the larger one as a hot plate for the outdoor dining area.

The zapote trees have to be cut in the 9 day period around the full moon, so that the sap is at its strongest and therefore protects the wood from insects. We will nevertheless paint on a bug repellant oil and then varnish just to fully protect it.

Day 2 of palapa

Tuesday at the bookstore was a hot, quiet day, with very little activity in the town square and very few customers as well. We had 3 big book deliveries during our days there, so there are lots of great new things waiting for Rob and Jo to unpack!!!












The second day of palapa building was another transformation. Now that the first layer of cement has been put on, we are starting to see how great it will be to have shade over both windows.









In additon, it will provide a nice shaded area for our outdoor dining area, cover our hot water tank (on the wall) during rains, and provide for a covered area to the right of our sink, where we will install a counter area from the sink to the hot water tank on which to put our barbeque and outdoor cooking stuff.
















Ok, so we have 5 cats we feed and are taming, hopefully enough to be able to catch them and get them all spayed and neutered. We now have a street dog (decidedly unphotogenic, as you see) who is quite sick. He is full of parasites, worms, mange and fleas, and is very underweight, so we feed him every day and leave water out all night for him - and whatever other street dog is thirsty. Our friend and rescue animal queen, Diane, is finding out from the vet what it will cost to give him a series of antibiotics and pills to help him recover. He is very sweet and gentle, but the second I brought out a camera, he hit the trail. I will try to add a better shot soon.