Beachin'

The coast was beautiful! We drove down to Lazaro Cardenas, took a right, and headed west along the Pacific. This picture is walking along in Las Peñas - our first night on the beach. My brother messed around with this shot to make it look pretty:


The next morning we did some birdwatching (we ended up in a marsh and I got bitten by about three thousand mosquitoes), and then drove along the windy roads until we got to Maruata:

Rocky prettiness:



View from above - lots of palapas, or shade structures to sit under in between swimming:


We bought fish from this guy - 20 pesos for a pretty big fish:



We spent three days in Maruata before heading west again to check out Faro, and then heading back east to Pichilinguillo - a tiny town of nearly nothing, but an awesome cove to swim in and a couple of restaurants, hotels, and some palapas. We ate really great fish dinner there, and spent the night in a hotel room equipped with two beds, a hammock, an outdoor balcony overlooking the cove and ocean, and use of public bathrooms and showers. The cost for the room? 250 pesos, or less than 25 dollars. Here is Pichilinguillo:


After Pichilinguillo, we spent a rather unimpressive night in Lazaro Cardenas (an industrial city - mostly shipping). The next morning, we went "down to the docks" and bought some tuna and stingray to take home. The tuna was 90pesos/kilo already filleted; the stingray was 45pesos/kilo. Inexpensive! And I had never tried stingray. It was quite tasty.

Throughout the trip we gathered seeds to try planting here, and on the way back we got some cactus that might do ok here in the forest.

Heart attack anyone?

It is fun when the local villages have their parties, because lots of vendors come in and sometimes there is food! Like tacos and hamburguesas.

Last week was a disappointment...
This is not food:


What is it?

French fries and cut up hot dogs, smothered in mayonnaise, "ketchup" (colored corn syrup), and hot sauce.

Sounds great, eh? What was especially funny is that we were *really* hungry, and there were maybe five or six stands selling food, so we thought, great! ALL six of the vendors were ONLY selling french fries with hot dogs and mayo.

Anyway, this week is party time for the village above us. Last night we went to the jaripeo, which was less loud than most. There was a drinking contest between six women for the entertainment during an "intermission". They each had to chug a beer, then run across the bullring and spin around a bottle ten times. I'm not sure how they judged who won... I think there was a tie between the three women who were actually able to do it without falling over.

And people are so friendly! And proud of their town and their town party. Very fun.

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Today I work more on webpages and we begin invites for our next event. We have two volunteers who are definitely coming next month which will be fun. And one person who might come in the fall and stay for some months working on projects for her masters degree.

yay!

Mr. Acorn

Poor puppy... and other things...

Yesterday we went to a small town across the lake to purchase a bit of clay from a potter. We brought a bit of the dirt from the forest here to her to see if she thought it would be good to use for clay.

Her family was kind and everyone felt the dirt to see if it was good, and they decided it would be fine mixed with a different dirt, one that had more plasticity, and they mixed us up some to take home.

And we bought some clay from her too. She has cool bowls and plates - hand made and fired in her home, then hand painted and sold. Totally friendly family. They told us where to buy dirt in the future to make our own clay, and told us the price to expect so we won't be charged more because of our gringo-ness.

So if we have friends up for Earth day, we can make something out of the earth! I have been looking up how to pit fire stuff. Could be fun.

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Sad news last night though. We came home to find Contreras with a head the size of a basketball. She likely encountered a rattlesnake.

We went back to town today to pick up some meds for her. It surprised me that they recommended a diuretic, but because rattlesnake venom is bad for kidneys, supposedly it will help a bit. They also gave us penicillin and anti-inflammatories. She will either live or die in the next few days... unclear what the outcome will be. But right now she is calm and totally out of it, so that is good I suppose. If she lives she has learned not to pounce on rattlesnakes.

Pobrecita... =(

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We have begun planting in our anticipation of the rains! There are thousands and thousands of seeds to plant, tons of nopales to spread throughout the property, a drip irrigation system to install for our tomato garden, and many other things to do before the rains come. Pressure's on! It should be fun. We have done a garden inventory to see what we have to work with. Many of the seeds will just be planted out in the forest, good luck to them. Lots of trees this year! Hopefully cedars will begin growing here again. Many coralines, some nut trees, citrus, etc. We harvested the seeds from the maguey plant that flowered this year - thousands! Hopefully some will grow to be giant plants.

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And I have discovered I live in a bird sanctuary! The bird-enthusiast who visited inspired us to put a bird bath to be put into use. This morning there were a gazillion different birds hanging out. And two days ago I saw my first trogan - do an image search on google. Totally cool looking bird! And it makes a sound that is similar to the honk of a pig. Strange.

It is kind of impressive how many types of birds are here. Not a bad place for them to live. Lots of bright colored flowers and water baths, tons of trees (obviously)...

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The webpage is functional now, with some minor things to fix. We have put a listing in for wwoofers, and we hope to get a couple of long term wwoofers or volunteers this summer during the planting season. Maybe even a friend of mine from NC! Who knows... plane fair is super expensive, unfortunately. We shall see.

Spring!

Wow. It has been awhile!

We have been busy busy.

Our first event happened! It was perfect. All the attendees were wonderful people who contributed much. I did all the meals, with much help from my kitchen team:






We did well with buying about the right amount of food for the amount of people we expected... but only half our RSVPs showed up. Oops. Oh well, lots of food leftover to give away to people who live nearby.

And so with all the build up to the event, the event itself, and decompressing afterwards, life had been a bit hectic.

Back to normal! I will continue working on making the website great, and we will begin planning for the next few events.

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We went to explore the Malpais (bad lands) on Tuesday. The malpais is an area very close by with lots of volcanic rocks, and therefore a different sort of ecology then here in the forest. The goal is to map the area a bit so that it is more easily explorable by visitors to the lake area. The entire place is covered in windy trails, and there is a spirit who tries to make you walk around in circles and get lost (or so they say...). Had we not had a GPS... well, it is very smart to go there with a GPS or a map, or a *very* good sense of direction, which I do not possess. It was very pretty and different! And made for a nice hike. We discovered a grove of Eucalyptus trees, and tons of magueys everywhere and bromiliads hanging in the trees and other cool plants. I brought my camera and an extra battery, but no memory card, so no photos.

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Yesterday we had a couple of birder visitors. "Birders" is apparently the term for obsessive birdwatchers - they were very impressive! One woman knew the name of every single bird she saw, and she probably identified over 20 birds that she saw in the short time she was here. One was even a "life list" bird for her, which means she had never seen it before and will now add it to her (likely very long) list of birds she has sighted. Good news for this forest! It is a natural bird sanctuary, and probably a great place for birdwatchers to come visit. Kind of a fun hobby... I am not sure that I care about the names of all the birds, but it is cool to watch them through good binoculars. And easy, too. Most of the birds we saw were spotted from the terraza while we were eating dinner.

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And today we have another visitor coming up. And lots more around Earth Day, hopefully. Things begin to come together.

Naranjas

Oranges here cost 15 pesos for 5 kilos.

That is $1.40 for 11 pounds, or 13 cents per pound.

I estimate that the average orange weighs 1/3 of a pound.

A cup of orange juice takes approximately 4 oranges to produce.

This is 17.3 cents worth of oranges.

Therefore, the ladies who sell me orange juice are making 52 - 66 cents per cup.

Not bad. What do oranges cost in the states?

Everyday things...

Day to day life here is very normal and predictable... about 95% of the time. The other 5% of the time is filled with completely bizarre events that can't really be predicted. Like the other night when we woken up at 3am by strange noises of vehicles out on the (not normally used) road. Banditos! No... just a group of lost carnies and their circus equipment.

And so things continue moving along. Maybe there will be an event here in March, maybe not. Hopefully so!

I've been learning web design. My first page isn't very pretty, but it's functional. The next one will be nicer I think.

A couple days ago walking back here from town we ran into a couple of horses. We had just bought fruit so I got to feed this one an apple! Cute.

Mom and Dad Visit Mexico!!

My parents braved a journey to Mexico! And survived!

Mom and Dad came to visit on Christmas. They got to see where I live and enjoyed the area around the Bosque, which was fun and nice. The little town nearby really is cute and quaint, and we sat at the bullring and drank crappy Mexican beer and watched the kiddos do crazy things to impress the gringos.

Then we headed to Uruapan, where we were able to do a day trip to Paracho, the guitar making capital of Mexico. Cool place! My dad loved it and got to buy some wood to make a new guitar with.

Uruapan was not a highlight for me. I'd never been, so it was nice to see a new place, and we've talked about going there to tour coffee farms, but the city itself was crowded, smelled terrible (it is in a valley and pollution here is pretty terrible-- no emissions standards), had loudness forever.

Uruapan does have a nice park area that is fun to walk around and enjoy. After we went there we enjoyed fresh trout at a nearby restaurant, yum! And there is a cool fabric making place that is fun to look/shop around. So, the city has attractions, but is otherwise noisy and irritating.

Next was Patzcuaro and Janitzio. Patzcuaro is a wonderful town, and Janitzio is always fun. We got jarros locos, of course. And my mom had fun shopping around downtown Patzcuaro. Cute shops with local artisan crafts, etc.

Morelia was the final destination. Both the parents got sick, unfortunate. But we all enjoyed the butterflies! All the monarchs fly to areas near Morelia during the winter every year. Strange phenomenon. We saw an insane amount of monarchs! They fly around when it is sunny and you can hear them all fluttering their wings, and when it is cloudy they form clusters on branches of fir trees. The branches sag with all the weight.

Morelia is a nice place to spend time in. We enjoyed walking around the downtown areas, and I enjoyed watching silly sitcoms (in English!) at the hotel.

Yay parents! It was great to see them and was great for them to see where I live!

Happy family.

Now to convince brother Tom & Wendy to visit. Hmm...

Happy 2008!