Beach Time

We found out last year that if we wanted to see the best of the kiteboarders on Algadones Beach we had to go on a windy day. Yesterday was just that day. There were boarders close to shore and some far out in the Sea, near the old Club Med.

We sat at the restaurant eating crab tostadas and people watching. As usual, the wind made for a chilly day so all three of us became walking advertisements for the Soggy Peso.

Lenore will enjoy the fact that we ran into Alec working on the beach. He is still going to school in Guaymas and supplements his income by working as a waiter at the Soggy Peso.

Success at Last!

We had a great Christmas Day, opening a few gifts and cards and then just relaxing for the remainder of the day. We debated about going out for a nice meal, but in the end decided to stay home and cook up some fresh fish.

Mexicans don't celebrate Boxing Day so everything was as usual today. We finally broke down and bought ourselves a new flat screen TV in Guaymas. So now we had a nice, new TV and still no Star Choice!

We contacted a Mexican worker who specializes in setting up Gringo satellite dishes and he accomplished the "impossible". We are now able to watch the Canadian news and sports. Go Team Canada!

Christmas Eve in San Carlos

The weather continues to be just perfect - around 24C during the day and cool enough at night to get a good sleep. Fred's mom is finding the early mornings and evenings too cold. She can't find the sweatshirt she bought for the trip and is blaming her youngest child.

Fred has spent the last few days trying to set up his Star Choice system with no luck. We rode our bikes through Totonaka looking for Star Choice users and got a few good tips, but nothing worked. The only thing we really accomplished was to meet a few friends from last year.

We went to Blackies for an excellent Christmas Eve supper. The food and service were perfect for the occasion. We had planned to stop on the way home to watch a boat parade that takes place every Christmas Eve at dusk. It had already started by the time we finished, but we were still able to catch a view of the twelve brightly decorated boats from the beach across from Tecalai.

Working on the House

Fred brought a number of furniture pieces down in the truck and now we had the task of setting them up. We started with the main bedroom, moved on to the spare bedroom and finally tackled the living room. Most of the items were from IKEA so we had some building to do.

The old furniture has been donated to the poor of Guaymas, through Carlos and his foundation. His group of volunteers pick up the donations and take them to a holding spot until distribution.

We spent the better part of the afternoon looking at flat screen TVs. They are fairly expensive so all we did was look. We were hoping for a deal just before Xmas, but no such luck.

Chuyita is not working through the holidays so we had to settle for "second best". Too bad we can't keep her all year long!

San Carlos at Last

We had a fairly easy trip from Tucson to San Carlos on Sunday.  The customs declaration was easy as the officials were polite and courteous.  We had to pay a duty of 1057 pesos on the furniture we had in the truck, but we expected that.  We received a green light and did not have to unload the Dodge, and for that we were extremely grateful.

We arrived at 2:15 after a 7 hour drive to a clean house.  We had let Chuyita [our housekeeper] know when we were arriving so she prepared the best she could. 

We spent the first afternoon unloading a few necessary items and getting groceries from the Santa Rosa.  We walked across to the Fiesta real for an excellent meal ranging from a Waldorf salad to chicken and fish.  

Eleanor was exhausted and ready for bed at 7:30 and I wasn't too far behind.  We justified the early bedtime with the time change.

Fleeing the Cold

It wasn't an easy trip, but Eleanor and I finally made it to San Carlos.  We were scheduled to leave Saskatoon at 3:20 on Saturday and arrive in Tucson at 7:40.  Right from the start we were delayed 45 minutes and things kept getting worse all day.  We had a window of approximately 1 hour and 15 minutes to catch our connecting flight in Denver, but!!! 

In Denver we sat on the gate [the reason was never revealed] for 25 minutes before they would let us deplane. We had to go through customs before we could even begin to find our new gate.  We "ran" from gate 15 to gate 87 and made it just as they were completing the loading.  After all that,  we were forced to sit at the gate for 1/2 hour because our pilot was delayed coming in from San Francisco.  Once we pushed back we got the news that there was an accident [plane went off the runway and was on fire] and we would have to sit until the departing planes could be rerouted.  We finally headed for Tucson two hours late.

We were too exhausted to go out for the supper Fred tried to talk us into.  Instead we feasted on cookies and more cookies.