5C's Que Pasa

Dec 10, 2018

Two different visits to Mazatlan

Last Wednesday we headed into town to do some shopping. A tug positioning one of the Navy vessels.

A crew putting up the Christmas decorations in the Plazuela Machado.

This must be Santa’s Village in the plaza across from the Cathedral. Not open yet.

Lots of decorations in this plaza and very pretty at night when lit up. We stopped in this area to use an ATM.

Next stop the main mercado. This is where we buy our Santa Rita Chihuahua cheese. In my opinion the best of the best.

Still doing some renovations in the market.

Where we get our fish. Very fresh. We got some shrimp for a stir fry and dorado for a BBQ and it was the best ever.

Love her tattoo. It says that life is beautiful or wonderful. She always has a smile and a thousand words to share.

We got a newly renovated pulmonia on the way back to the embarcadero. Love the teal color.

Always great to be heading back to the Isla. The air is fresher. And so fun to watch what is happening in the shipping channel. Here a freighter is being positioned.

On our way to the pick up our laundry we ran into a grandmother and her proteges.

Three little ones on her ATV.

A quick stop at the local hardware store before heading back to the RV.

Friday was to have been Art Walk as well as the lighting of the lights at the Plazuela Machado. But because of the huge rain storm on Friday that was all delayed to Saturday, when we went into town. Love this candid shot of the cat.

We dined at La Bohemia.

Not only were the Plazuela Christmas lights turned on, but we were treated to a musical concert.

…and fireworks.

A children’s orchestra were performing in the kiosk. They were fabulous .

They even played Pachelbel’s Canon.

Then they stopped playing and formed a choir. Beyond amazing.

It was truly one of our top ten nights in the Plazuela. Once the child band finished and we moved on from our wonderful meal we came across my favorite band, Los Cryps. They are a rock and roll group that we have followed for many years. We danced non stop for close to an hour. We have made reservations for next Saturday so that we can dine and dance. It really was a great evening.

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Dec 09, 2018

This and that catch up

Love how you my dear blog readers have been having fun with your comments. I took yesterday off and we had a grand time. But first a bit of catch up and I have so many more photos that I have time to post 😛

I actually was up at 7AM last Tuesday so I was able to catch the Princess ship come in. We often don’t eat until as late as 9PM and don’t go to bed till 11PM so we are later getting up.

Even the fishermen stopped to watch the ship come in.

That is El Faro behind the ship, a hilltop lighthouse, actually the highest in the Americas, accessed by a hiking trail & stairs. I was thinking of trying to climb it in January but might now wait for our friends Laura and Alan to arrive in February.

Such a beautiful day.

We often find a starfish in distress on our beach walk. It is on its back and you can see the feelers moving about.

Colin flips it over.

It then starts to dig itself into the sand.

Often Colin covers it with sand so that it stays moist while the tide goes out. You can see one arm sticking out on the bottom right.

It took a lot of brawn to push the banana boat out past the low tide line.

There were two cruise ships in port Tuesday and it seemed to take forever for them to leave. This is the Princess.

I used my iPhone to get this shot of the Carnival ship. Many more lights.

We went into Mazatlan for several hours on Wednesday, more on that in another post.

Both Thursday and Friday were hot and extremely humid with little to no wind. The beach was void of tourists. Our friend Miguel was having a snooze as he waited for someone who might like a horse ride down the beach.

The beach has been strangely quiet.

Our Orioles are back.

We only had the oranges out for a day before they discovered them.

Then late Friday afternoon, the sky began to get darker and darker.

Most unusual to have rain at this time of year.

We had time to roll up and lift some of the carpets. We knew that this one would dry quickly.

A lot of rain fell in a short period of time.

Several parts of Centro were flooded, with water pooling at the Plazuela Machado. We had planned to go in for the lighting of the Christmas lights but decided not to because of the rain. It also was the Friday of the monthly art walk. Too bad for us and for everyone else 🙁

But the lighting of the lights was postponed to Saturday night, last night, and so we went, but that is for another post. Too many photos to add to this post. Life is good. Hey, we are ready for Christmas, lights done inside and out 😆 Christmas decorations done inside and out 😀 Time to start the parties. Stay tuned.

Well we actually did have a wee happy hour tonight. Lots of fun for all of us. We were waiting for the cruise ship to leave. If it has left, I have missed it by sitting here working on this post. Another fun day here in paradise.

So much happens everyday, so many changes. Almost caught up. Time for our special Sunday night dinner, tonight it is homemade Spanikopita from the Greek House restaurant in Lake Country where we live and a Greek salad by us. I sincerely hope that you all had a wonderful Sunday.

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Dec 07, 2018

Scenes from a beach walk a few days ago

Nasty jellyfish on the beach. Fortunately we don’t have them very often.

I believe that these are Portuguese Man of War.

On our return we saw the usual turkey vultures but that hawk was a surprising addition to the flock.

The hawk was not welcomed to the feast of the sting ray. He eventually flew away.

There is a squatter right next to RV2. RV on the left, another RV under a palapa and about mid shot there is the squatter. That is his patio to the right of the photo.

Close up. I have heard that he is somewhat spaced out on ?? and that he is being paid to squat on the land for at least a year.

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Dec 06, 2018

I just got a massive refund

We have been planning our next trip to Europe, leaving May 15th, for six weeks. This trip will be using the last of our Aeroplan points and we are once again traveling business class. I booked our flights this last July. We had to go with what we could book at the time and that involved traveling Air Canada from Vancouver to Frankfurt and then onto Istanbul, etc. There is a huge tax surcharge traveling on Air Canada even though Aeroplan is associated with Air Canada. We paid what we had to and then were free to plan the stops on our trip and book our accommodation.

I had made a note to recheck our flights and so I did that this past Tuesday. By leaving just one day earlier we are able to reroute via Montreal and traveling from there on Turkish Airlines, our favorite airline. We only changed the overseas flight and I was shocked at how much the refund was going to be. I was pretty sure that the booking agent had made an error but when I checked just an hour ago the refund had been credited to our Visa account. There was a $250.00 change fee but taking that into consideration I am still getting a $1658.80CAD refund 😯 😆

The new routing also gave us another two nights at our first destination. The only problem was that our Airbnb was not available. So I have spent all of yesterday and today on the computer trying to find a new place to stay. Not even a beach walk!! Nothing is perfect but we have found something that might work. It is middle of the night there so I will have to check back in the morning. The best part is that for the same amount of money we will be getting five nights for the same price as our original three nights 😀 If I were back home I would be rushing out to buy a lottery ticket.

If you want to see how our flight went on Turkish Airlines this past May, please click here. We loved traveling with them and are thrilled to be doing so yet again. Then there is that refund to enjoy 😎

Happy hour from Diane and Pierre’s last evening.

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Dec 05, 2018

Candid photos from the colonia on the Isla

Here on Isla de la Piedra we have ejido and colonia lands. I am not an expert but in a tiny nutshell the ejido lands are a Mexican system of government, an area of communal land used for agriculture, on which community members individually farm designated parcels and collectively maintain communal holdings. The colonia is outside of this area and is often referred to as a colony or community or neighborhood and sometimes a shantytown.