Oh, that's better. I just uploaded a photo of Pete the Iguana to the body of the blog, with no trouble at all. I think the problems I was having the other day had nothing to do with my failing mind. Rather, I was Experiencing Technical Difficulties. That's good.

My trip to the fish market today turned out to be a trip to the meat market, which was open this time. More Technical Difficulties, I guess, in my communication with Ian. I decided to just go with the flow. While I was off gallivanting, R went for a swim, complete with fins and body board. My husband, the surfer! I got back and told him I had brought him pork chops for dinner, which he found very confusing, what with thinking I'd been at the fish market.

I also bought half a kilo of corn tortillas from a tortilleria I noticed on the way home. There was one right by the meat market, and I tried to buy flour tortillas there, but they only made corn. When I got to the second place and they didn't make flour tortillas either, I got the drift. I bought corn. When in Rome. Yesterday I bought a cunning little quilted affair like an oversized round pot holder. It's two pieces hemmed together around 2/3 of the circle. You tuck your freshly warmed tortillas into the pocket and it keeps them warm all through dinner. Very clever. Now I have warm tortillas to go with the splendid beans I've taken to making. I'm getting to be an expert. I soak a couple of handfuls of white beans. Meanwhile I put a couple of dried Ancho peppers in water, bring it to a boil, simmer it for a few minutes, remove the peppers, pour the liquid in with the beans, then scrape the pulp off the pepper skin and throw that (the pulp) in too. I add diced onion, garlic, a vegetable boullion cube, diced Poblano pepper, and when the beans are tender I mash some of them to thicken the stew. Perfect.

Anyway, after this morning's expedition we all had coffee and made plans for Thursday. Ian has heard about a lovely little village about 50 kms north of Mazatlan. It's a silver mining town, and we are invited to go explore it with him. I'll be sure to take the camera. So if I'm not around on Thursday, that's why. We're planning to leave about 9 o'clock in the morning. Tomorrow I won't be going anywhere, at least until after Tony brings me my clothes.

February 5, 2007

Yesterday was the first day since we’ve been here in Mazatlan that I managed to Skype. My Texas sister happened to be at her computer while I was posting, so we talked for a long time. I was talking to her and watching the iguanas at the same time. They really were very entertaining yesterday, skittering up and down the trees. It seems to be breeding season. Pete, the big male, is displaying his bright orange wattles at every opportunity, strutting his stuff for the ladies.

This morning we went for a walk on the beach, and I ended up swimming – well, playing in the water – for a few minutes. It was great. As I walked back to the RV, it occurred to me that our holiday is about a third gone, and that I should appreciate certain things, particularly that this day is mine. Every moment of it is mine, to do with as I will. I have no obligations. R may ask me to go bike riding with him, and I probably will, but I don’t have to. If I would rather sit and read a book or go for a walk or play on the internet, I am perfectly free to do so. What a lucky lady.

It didn’t turn out quite that way, of course. Ian dropped by on his way to the supermarket, and we can’t pass up the opportunity to go to the supermarket when Mazatlan’s version of the veggie truck man charges the equivalent of 30 cents an egg. (In Kino I would pay 10 cents). So off we went, and by the time we got back, it was too late for me to post to my journal, so I’m typing the post into my laptop, to be sent off tomorrow morning. Early. Before my day can get away from me.

Now it's February 6. I took a picture of myself blogging, with palm trees sort of in the background, in response to popular demand, and this time I figured out how to upload it. It's not a great picture, but it verifies my presence in the land of sunshine and iguanas.

It's a red letter day, today. Tony the laundry man came around, noticed my huge bag of laundry, and picked it up for me. I'm reduced to wearing my bathing suit as much as possible, nursing the last shirt and pair of shorts along. He will bring back our clothes tomorrow, he says. I understand he is very dependable - unlike certain airlines I've been reading about recently.

I also learned that my provider's name is Bodie. It's odd. I've been coming up here to post pretty well every day for over a week, and we've chatted quite a few times, but somehow names never came up. I got the information from a neighbour who dropped by this morning.

As I suspected, the day is going to get away from me. A trip to the fish market is in the offing. That's good. I can explain to Ian why the meat market was closed yesterday. Apparently it was Constitution Day. I'd have been looking for civic celebrations, if only I had known.

Time to make brunch now. Best wishes from Mazatlan.

Such a social day, yesterday. After our usual beach walk and strenuous afternoon of watching the orioles sipping at our makeshift bird feeder (half an orange), we cycled over to Ian’s for 4 o’clock tea. Ian had got out his Ivan Rebruff CDs to play for me. We all drank tea and chatted, and then he brought out some books about English villages, Stonehenge, and various other things British. While R and I were leafing through them, just about ready to come home, the topic of my first visit to Winchester Cathedral came up in conversation. I ended up telling Ian all about it, including the fact that I wept through the entire Evensong service, and that I then phoned my friend Karen in Canada to tell her what I had just done and ended up weeping all over the phone. As I told Ian the story, my eyes filled with tears again. Sheesh. It must be ten years since all that happened. I think it’s one of the signs of old age, this inability to hide one’s emotions. Not that I wasn’t always a crybaby, but I seem to be getting worse.

We had a throw-together dinner, entertained by some pretty loud music coming over the fence, then I decided I would head to the beach for a few minutes.

When I got as far as Alfredo’s place, there was a man sitting in the big outdoor salon, reading a book and drinking a beer. He turned out to be a local dentist named Luis, a friend of Alfredo’s. On his invitation, I sat down and we started to talk. We talked for about an hour, which is pretty remarkable in that Luis seems to know about three words of English. We talked about the beauty of the sound that the sea makes, about how lovely Alfredo’s park is, about the group next door. The government, it seems, carts people in from all over Mexico to spend holidays at this big “hotel”, for lack of a better word. They were the ones having the loud musical party, and it sounded like fun. We talked about how important music is to both of us.

All the while, Luis’s cell phone kept ringing. He kept taking it out and fiddling with it, putting it back in his pocket without actually answering it. He seemed to be trying to explain to me that the people calling didn’t want to talk to him at all, that they were looking for other people that live at his house. Or else he was telling me that it was some woman calling him, and that he didn’t want to talk to her because she had been ignoring him and he was annoyed with her. Or both. Whatever he was saying, I was only catching bits of it. I told him that his cell phone was just like mine, and he got all excited. Would I show him? Unsure what he wanted, I showed him how to check his messages. “No! No messages!” I scrolled to the call records. “ No! No records!” He was the picture of frustration. Finally, “How do I make it stop?” Aha! So I showed him how to turn his phone off and how to turn it back on again. That led to another conversation about the fact that he hadn’t seen a television until he was thirty, that this new technology was more than he could cope with, that he didn’t know how these young people figured it all out so easily.

Now you may get the idea from all this that the conversation was flowing fairly smoothly, a gracious exchange between strangers, a few rough spots where language got in the way, but no. The fact is, Luis was doing most of the talking, and I was struggling mightily to understand him, but most of what he said went past me like verbal gunfire. I hadn’t a clue. Periodically I would interrupt him in order to explain that. You must keep in mind, I said in my halting Spanish, that I’m only catching about one word in six. He would slap his forehead, roll his eyes, cross his hands over his heart, throw his arms out in an expansive gesture, and Zoom! Off he would go on another tangent, looking at me as if, all evidence to the contrary, I understood what he was saying. At one point I thought he said that his father died a year ago, but when I asked if that was it, he started to laugh and said, no, he died fifty-two years ago. Ah. He died when Luis was a year old.

At the end of an hour, I excused myself and walked wearily home. I must say, the visit was fun, but it was also chastening. I’m thinking of enrolling in a Mexican kindergarten, to learn the language from the ground up.

Oh my goodness. While I was reading through my post I heard a loud skittering sound from the tree a few feet to my left. I looked over, and there was Pete, the Really Big Iguana whose photograph I posted yesterday. He had slid down the trunk of the tree and was sitting on a low branch, huffing and puffing and shaking his bright orange wattle. I think he had lost his footing. He's gone back up to the top of the tree now.