I have successfully completed Salsa School. I went to Guaymas on Friday with my Mexican cooking class. We took the bus, all seventeen of us. Just outside town, there was a field in which the floats from Carnaval had been parked, so I got to see the floats without having to actually go to the party, old stick in the mud that I am.

At the market I listened to Maria point out all the various chiles, then bought a papaya and a couple of Serrano chiles for my own salsa. I wanted a pineapple, but there weren't any at the market, so I settled for the papaya. I also bought a cazuela. That's a clay cooking pot. It's glazed on the inside only. You bring it home, wash it, then put warm water and a spoonful of salt into it and set it on the stove to simmer for at least half an hour to season it. I've done that, and now it's ready to use. I saw a taqueria in Guaymas that had half a dozen cazuelas lined up on a stove, all bubbling away with various taco fillings in them. I plan on doing mole poblano in mine one of these days, and it will also be my official bean pot. Meanwhile, it's serving as a fruit bowl until my current batch of beans is gone.

At 3:30 on Friday, the class met again so that we could all taste each other's salsas. My papaya salsa got a hand wiggle from the teacher. (I think that was a B, or maybe a C+.) I got all the ingredients right, and the amounts, so it tasted fine, but I cut the papaya up too small. I was just glad to hear that it tasted right. I'm afraid I'll never be a papaya fan. I can't seem to get past the smell. Next fruit salsa I do will be pineapple, and I'll make sure not to dice the fruit too finely. It was fun to listen to the critiques of not just my own, but everybody else's salsa. Mostly Maria figured they had too much tomato in them, not enough chile, and if she had her way, everything would have oregano in it. Somebody made an avocado salsa, though, that was to die for. We all agreed on that, even Maria. I plan to make one of those every week, just so I don't forget how. And of course there's pico de gallo, which has become a mainstay of my meals.

Yesterday R and I took the bus to Guaymas together, just to shop at Ley (the supermarket), which is in a mall. I saw a couple of hair salons there, tried without success to sneak peeks at customers coming out. Some time this week, I really have to go get a haircut.

Today, we cycled out to the west end of town, near the base of Tetakawa. I've found out what Tetakawa means. The word apparently comes from one of the local languages, maybe Yaqui, and it means goat's teats. I also found out about the word Totonaka, but I'll tell you about that later. Anyway, we went out to the west end on our bicycles this morning, and I took a few pictures of the town from that angle. The sky was very clear this morning, so everything was in sharp relief.
There was a glass-bottomed boat out in the bay, but I don't know how much they could see under the water. The sky was clear, but the water was a little murky.

Now I'm about to give the computer up so R can check out the BBC.

It's Saturday, isn't it? Maybe that's why I can get the internet from the Turtle instead of having to go to the clubhouse. It comes and it goes, so while it's here, I'll take advantage.

This morning, for the first time, R and I rode our bikes out to the estuary known as Estero el Soldado. It was a forty-five minute level ride from the park, very pleasant. When we got there we were delighted with what we found. There were pelicans, cormorants, egrets, gulls, and apparently plenty of fish. Right after we arrived, a cormorant caught a fish and was holding it above his head. The fish was flapping. Suddenly a pelican swooped in behind the cormorant, reached over his shoulder, and grabbed the fish.

We were only there for a few minutes, long enough for me to grab some photos. Then we cycled home, planning to go back with the canoe. We decided to talk to some neighbours about it - they could drive us and the canoe over in their truck and pick us up a couple of hours later. Then we could leave the canoe in their truck, and they could use the canoe the next day - or vice versa. What a plan. When we got home, I made breakfast while R went to talk to the neighbours. He came back saying you apparently have to be really careful about canoeing or kayaking in the estuary, because if the tide goes out while you're there, you can get well and truly stranded. Sounds as if we need to get hold of a tide table for San Carlos before we get too adventurous.

Meanwhile, though, discovering the estuary has given us a reason to stay longer in San Carlos. We will probably book in for an extra week, which makes me happy. It will give me a chance to do the field trip to Guaymas with the cooking class, and maybe get in one more class after that. Also, we have an interesting destination for morning cycle rides. Maybe tomorrow we'll pack a lunch and do some serious bird watching.
The birds don't seem the least bit skittish. They must get a lot of gawkers. A couple that came along while we were there said they have cycled and hiked around the estuary many times, and that it is well worth the effort. Not that you can cycle "around" the estuary as such, but you can follow several different paths that give you a good half-hour's exploration time by bike, much longer on foot, I would imagine.

Here is my favourite picture. I'm afraid that all the motion did awful things to the focus, but you can probably still get a good idea of what I was trying to capture.
One of these days I'll remember to take along a towel or something to throw over my head while I'm taking pictures. I always seem to be trying to photograph stuff I can't see in the camera. If I had been able to see this, I would probably have swung the camera a little to the right. Guess I won't quit my day job just yet!

I've had fun today, at least this afternoon. The day started out with laundry detail, general housework, then finishing Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (the four-part trilogy) so R can have it to read without having to pinch it from me. I had said I would go on a photo binge, but the laundry/housework/reading stuff took up most of the day, so I limited my binge to in and around the park. I started out with the office building, which contains the clubhouse, where I'm sitting right now.

I have to carry the laptop from where we are parked, which is way at the back of the park, but after the Mazatlan experience, I'm not finding it particularly onerous. There are no iguanas in here, but there is a map of North America into which people have stuck pins indicating where they live. There are so many pins in the southern British Columbia/Vancouver Island area, I couldn't find a place to put one.


I walked out to the road and took a couple of pictures of what we see, including one wall that always amuses me. When we've been out walking or cycling, I use that wall as my navigational aid.




Looking north along the main road, you can see the mountain that seems to be San Carlos's official symbol. There isn't a whole lot to this town, but it's a relaxing place to stay, except on days like today.



We are right across the road from the beach. Since we got back this time, we haven't walked up the beach. That should be on the agenda for tomorrow.






Today, after the housework and reading and picture taking, I went to the palapa for a cooking class.



A woman named Maria apparently does these classes every week for five weeks, then starts the cycle again with a class on the kinds of chiles and what to do with them. That's next week's class, the one I really want to hear. Today's class was on chiles rellenos. One of the women in the park had inadvertently missed the class and wanted the recipe. I told her I would go home and put it in an e-mail to her, which I did. So here is the recipe:

Chiles Rellenos

Recipe gleaned from Maria’s cooking class at Totonaka RV Park

6 roasted, peeled poblano chiles
Filling (cheese/tomato, cooked chicken, cooked ground beef, or whatever)
1 cup flour
1 tsp. salt
½ tsp. pepper
3 eggs (if I remember correctly), at room temperature, separated
Oil for frying

Have all the ingredients out and ready to go.

Make a small slit in each chile and carefully remove the seeds and membrane. Set the chiles aside.

Make a filling. Maria suggests sliced Chihuahua cheese and diced tomato. You could also use tuna, shrimp, ground beef or chicken. Meat must be pre-cooked.

Lightly stuff the chiles, fasten each of them closed with a toothpick, and set them aside.

Beat the egg whites until they are quite stiff, then fold in the egg yolks – be careful. The mixture should not fall.

Combine the flour, salt and pepper on a plate.

Heat the oil in a frying pan at a medium high setting. You will want a pan big enough to cook two chiles at a time. Oil should be about as deep as if you were frying chicken.

One at a time, dip the chiles in the flour mixture. Coat them completely. I think Maria made the point that they should be completely coated, but not to get carried away. ;>)

Hold the chile by its stem and dip the whole thing into the egg mixture.

Fry two at a time, about 4 minutes on each side. They should be well browned, but not burned. Drain them on paper towels. Serve immediately with a salsa of your choice.

*****So next Wednesday I get to learn all about the various kinds of chiles (I found out today that my two favourites are really the same one. When it's dried, its name changes. Never mind. I'll expand my horizons, learn to make my own Really Good Salsas. There's a field trip to the mercado in Guaymas on Friday. I hope we're still here for that.

Now for something completely different. We stayed last night at Mirador RV Park, not our idea of a place to spend any time, as I think I told you. This morning we drove back into town and checked into Totonaka RV Park, a horse of an entirely different colour. It's a bustling little village of a park - full of Canadians, by the way. I remarked to one fellow that I wondered whether anyone was left up in B.C. He replied, "Why would they be?" which makes me think the weather hasn't improved back home. We booked in for one night, changed our minds and paid for a week. www.totonakarv.com

San Carlos has lots of interesting shops, and it has Tony, who sells everything from steaks, Italian sausages and tamales to pineapple and Microdyn (for washing vegetables) from the back of his truck a few blocks from here. The truck can't possibly hold it all, so he sets up a sort of mini-market around it, using cafeteria tables, ice chests. He's sort of like Bahia Kino's Martin, but on a much grander scale. He even sells homemade banana bread and tortillas.

I decided that 'twas better to be safe, and all that. I got the address of the local doctor, Dr. Canale, and walked to his office. I told him how long it had really been since my last tetanus booster, and he said I should get boosted again. I waited a few minutes, read from Barbara Kingsolver's Animal Dreams, which I found on his bookshelf. Dr. Canale isn't nearly as cute as Dr. Duran, but he speaks excellent English and his taste in literature is impeccable.

When he had given me my shot, the doctor said that the dog would have to be kept on a leash for fourteen days. I said fat chance. I explained the situation. He said that if the dog gets hit by a truck and killed or disappears, I'll have to have the rabies shots. I e-mailed my friend in Kino and passed that tidbit on.

After that I walked down the street and bought a bathing suit. That was my act of optimism for the day.

The only problem we're having here at Totonaka is with things electronic. We haven't been able to get the cable working (no great loss), and the wireless has been hopeless. They gave me a password for each of their two networks, and I couldn't get either one to work. I carried the laptop back to the office and the fellow could make it work in there. I still couldn't make it work at home. On my second return to the office, I found out that the password had been changed, apparently since we booked in. I still couldn't get the one I'm supposed to use at the rv to work, but I could use the default network in the clubhouse, so that's where I'm sitting. The crowd in here has shrunk to two of us, which probably means that the managers have got the other network working now. If I don't book onto Skype while we're here, that's why. I will come in here every day and check e-mail, tell you what's happening, if anything.

Oh yes - this is where all the pelicans are. For some reason there were none in Bahia Kino this time, whereas last year the place was filthy with pelicans!

And oh yes - the sun came out here today. See Sandra do her happy dance! I saw a newspaper here that warned that the temperature was going to go down again, but I prefer to stay in denial as long as possible.

San Carlos, Sonora. We left home between 9 and 10 a.m., stopped first at Kino Viejo for gas and to mail a letter. Then I drove to Calle Doce, where we stopped to visit the bicycle shop. As we pulled into the parking lot next to the store, I first noticed a pharmacy with an amusing sign. It was called Farmacia Similar, and it claimed to sell "the same things, but cheaper". I was still smiling at that when a dog appeared in my field of vision. He was so thin that his ribs stood out, and his head hung as if he hadn't the strength to hold it up. He was drooling. He wandered off behind the buildings. When we came back, having managed to get a patch kit but no inner tubes (the shop didn't have the right sizes), the dog had wandered into the parking lot again, but he was keeping his distance, staggering. I think that if I had had a gun, I would have been tempted to put him out of his obvious misery. He was so far gone, there was nothing we could do for him, and we drove away, but we were both very quiet.

I drove for the next hour or so. We turned onto a road that offered a shortcut to San Carlos. After about six or seven kilometers, we encountered a construction zone. It was only eight kilometers long, so we kept going. At some point I stopped and let R drive. Altogether, the road - construction zone or no - was pretty awful. It did have its moments, though. We saw another dog - a little Jack Russell type obviously cared for, collared, well-fed - skipping around. I couldn't figure out where he could have come from. R said he was probably attracted to a female somewhere, and might have run for miles....Then there was the cowpoke. We had to slow down to a crawl because there was a herd of cattle wandering around on both sides of the road. The adults were sensible about getting out of our way, but the young ones were obviously not streetwise. As we were making our way slowly through the crowd of annoyed calves, a man appeared on horseback. He was about 50 meters off the road. He wore a 5 gallon hat and was twirling a lasso.

Eventually the awful road came to an end where it met the main highway (15) to Guaymas. Much relieved, we drove on to the San Carlos exit, then down a secondary road lined with palm trees, right through the pretty town of San Carlos. We saw one of the RV parks that we wanted to check out, but passed it by, following the signs for Mirador RV Park, which has the reputation of being the best RV park in San Carlos. (R says it's supposed to be the best in N. America, but that's just absurd.) What it is, is the farthest RV park out from the centre of town - six miles? There's nothing out here except the RV park, as far as I can see. There are hills around us, and a lovely harbour out there somewhere, but that's it. No shops. No nothing. Fortunately, we have plenty of food on board, so we'll be fine here for the night, but I certainly wouldn't want to spend an entire holiday here. Maybe the park's reputation springs from the fact that it offers U.S. cable TV. Eight channels. I'd rather have a real town to explore.

I'm making a note here just to aid my failing mind. I called my doctor's office this morning and heard that my last tetanus booster was 6 1/2 years ago, not the three I was guessing. The woman who gave me the information said that losing track of such things goes along with the grey hair. I checked online and saw that usually you get a booster if you have a dirty wound and it's been five years - but this wound is really clean, so I'm not going to worry about it. So - for the record - my last tetanus booster was in July of 2000. Sheesh.