Just a quick post to keep this old blog alive...
Etepetzin
...occasional musings on our everyday life experiences in Mexico, which may not amount to more than a "small hill of beans" (etepetzin in Nahuatl, language of the Aztecs), but are recorded here as fond memories. We're not set up for in-blog comments, but you can send us comments/feedback at etepetzin (at) gmail.com or using Google+ [Click on images for enlarged view]
23 November 2023
26 August 2014
Proyectos pequeños
Wow! (or as spelled out in spanish
“¡Guau!”), how time flies (como vuela el tiempo)!
It's been almost two months since we last posted here. No problems
or issues, or too much of note, we're just enjoying life, reading,
jigsaw-puzzling, some TV most nights, and keeping up with the flowers
in the yard. It's typical summer weather here, with warm days and
very frequent evening showers, that rainfall taking care of a lot of
keeping the plants in the yard irrigated, except for those on the
porch and under the roof overhangs.
One monday in
mid-July, taking advantage of the timing of a 4pm IMSS appointment in
Veracruz, we arranged to drive down early in the morning, taking our
neighbor Carolyn along with us. She had been wanting to show us one
of her favorite beaches there. Our previous trips to the big port
city had us in the downtown area, so some time on the beach sounded
great. We managed a good part of the day on Playa Mocambo, in the
adjacent city of Boca del Rio, south of the port, From our shaded
spot on the shore (we're not looking to burn) one can see far around
south, past the river mouth, to the point where the navy school is
located. The port area is not visible from here, as that vista is
only available from around the point to the north. Carmen had packed
a light lunch of sandwiches, so we didn't even have to wander off the
playa for snacks or partake of fare from the occasional
vendors trudging by. Keep in mind this was a non-weekend day, before
school was let out for the month long summer vacation, so parking was
no problem (in the lot of the waterpark just up the strand), and the
beach was not crowded. The water temp was great, with minimal wave
action just right for floating on one's back—a relaxing time.
We left Carolyn
under a rented-for-the-day (MX$30) umbrella station (table, chairs)
on the beach, got to the clinic in time for the cita, and
afterwards had time for a great Carl Jr's burger next to where we
parked. Then back to the Plaza America mall (across the coastal
highway from Mocambo) where we connected with Carolyn in the food
court. She just loves to mall browse. Aside from a few routing
mistakes, caused by not having a detailed city map and street construction
changing things up a bit, it was a good day. We got back home just
after dark, the last few miles on the new lanes of the autopista
in the rain (no visible lane edge markings yet, and a steep drop
where the shoulder had not yet been graded) causing just a bit of
white-knuckling. Dan hates driving at night, so we make every effort
to plan our trips to avoid it—if we had avoided the transit
misdirects in Veracruz we could have been home an hour earlier.
We celebrated Dan's
birthday with a restaurant outing in Córdoba. A few days before we
took the time to do a walking tour of the area we think of as the
restaurant area of the city. We dropped into six or seven eating
establishments serving a variety of cuisines (italian, argentine,
brazilian,japanese, etc), viewed menus, prices and ambiance, and
decided for this occasion we'd visit the Villa Franca, a new
restaurant specializing in “Mediterranean” meals. It was a good
choice, after we moved our party (the two of us plus Ania &
Frank) from the open area in front (too much street noise) to farther
back but next to an inner courtyard window.
Items in open
hanging areas and on shelves tends to get dusty, but one has to be
careful if closing-in spaces or covering them, because mildew is
always lurking. So the new bath cabinet has louvered doors. The
shelves and unenclosed “closet” spaces where our clothes live
have been great for reducing chances for mildew on the fabrics, but
even so Carmen hangs them all out in the sunshine every so often to
keep them fresh. Closing off that end of the bedroom with louvered
doors was considered, but that would have been a big, pricey, job and
the doors would always be in the way. So for the master bedroom we
found some pull-up “cortinas romanas” made of bamboo slats at
Walmart, a type of shade normally used outdoors on a porch. Even
this much of enclosure will keep the air a bit stagnant around the
clothes, so we will only use these shades some of the time. Pulled
up, they are completely out of the way.
Of course they
didn't exactly fit the spaces, so both sides had
to be trimmed off with shears and hacksaw, and the bracket slots recreated in the new ends. That got the widths correct, without having to change the cording mechanisms. We elected to hang these so that there was about 8” of space above the shade (where air can easily exit, yet above the sight-line so the hanging clothes aren't visible), and a similar amount at the floor, where our shoes get stashed (again, this is good for keeping them dry and mildew-free).
to be trimmed off with shears and hacksaw, and the bracket slots recreated in the new ends. That got the widths correct, without having to change the cording mechanisms. We elected to hang these so that there was about 8” of space above the shade (where air can easily exit, yet above the sight-line so the hanging clothes aren't visible), and a similar amount at the floor, where our shoes get stashed (again, this is good for keeping them dry and mildew-free).
We have had
building-related activity on all three sides of us. Actually, as I
write this, there is a crew cleaning out the undergrowth and pulling
down bedraggled and brown leaves from the banana field to the north,
so some activity interesting to us has taken place in all four
directions. After Valentin, in the single-story house to the west,
moved away, the landlord came by with a crew to touch up all the
exterior painting, reseal most of the roof, and put it new rain
scuppers there. So far, no new tenants into this small house, and
the landlord comes by de vez en cuando to keep the garden
looking nice. Beyond that house, there is a vacant lot, overgrown
and rampantly green for all the
while we have been here, that has now be cleaned out, possibly to be sold?
while we have been here, that has now be cleaned out, possibly to be sold?
To the east, the
corner double-wide lot across the street has been rising fast. The
regular crew seems to consist of six or seven happy guys. After the
concrete walls went up, about a week of work erecting temporary posts
and plywood floor forms, topped with a maze of rebar (varilla)
and lastly a bunch of orange flexible electrical conduit and junction
boxes tacked to the forms. We expected a pumper and concrete truck
(from Veracruz port, the closest ready-mix plant) would be the next
step.
Not so. This past
saturday trucks delivered huge piles of sand, gravel and then a
hundred or so bags of cement, these last stacked against the walls of
the church to the north. A crew of 35 men swarmed over the area,
making concrete in two large towable mixers, with others carrying it
in partly-filled 5-gal buckets (cubetas) to the wall, others
standing on a mid-wall height scaffold and hoisting the buckets to
the floor level where others would run it over the rebar-covered
floor to dump it for the guys placing and vibrating the mix into
place. There were enough guys on the crew that a couple would be
free to rest for brief periods. By the end of the afternoon all the
work was done. Amazing!
Next door to the
south, the house (used to be an office for a social-services
organization, empty since the end of the year) has been sold to a
local newly-married couple, Jorge & Carla. This is Jorge's
second marriage, as also living with them is his daughter and his
granddaughter (nieta). We have only met Jorge so far. This
building, as an office, was only finished on the ground floor, with
open-to-sky partial brick walls on the unfinished second story.
There is now a crew of three albañiles working to complete the
construction (with also some paint and finish work downstairs), which
will consist of pouring posts between the old freestanding brick
upper walls, then beams and eventually a sloping slab concrete roof.
It will be good to have this building made weather-proof, as the
rain-soaked brickwork has been wicking moisture into our contiguous
wall.
A couple of new blooms have pleased us. First, our night-blooming cereus had three buds that we had thought were new branching stems, but as they developed we discovered they would be flowers. Unfortunately they got to just that point where we were checking every night to see if they had opened when they suddenly died back. Turns out we had let the pot get too dry. We are now taking more care and we have gotten another burst of seven flower buds. Since this plant blooms earlier in the year, perhaps this is because the first flowers failed to mature. How far will these get, and will any of them then form into pitahaya (“dragon fruit”). (Dan bought a huge pitahaya at the grocery store and enjoyed it's succulence. Carmen used a bit of it as a garnish on a melon-jicama pineaple-yogurt-dressed salad one day that Frank & Ania visited us for lunch.). The Stapelia gigantea (carrion plant) just keeps pushing out huge blooms that the house flies just love to visit.
The Stanhopea occulata (Torito, Two-Eyes Stanhopea) we have had for the longest time in a coir lined wire-basket hanging near the from gate, pushed out a bloom stalk thru the bottom of the basket. The large native orchids didn;t last very long but were beautiful, with a fragrance of mint-chocolate. We took the time one day when the car was out to visit the floricultura center north of town and but several plants we have been wanting. This include a Cycas revoluta (sago palm), a native Zamia furfuracea (cardboard palm) and an Adenium obesum (desert/karoo rose), plus another hibiscus to replace the one we lost.
Currently, the open storage wall in the mid-sized front guest room also is getting an enclosing “treatment,” vertical curtains. The fabric Carmen is using is actually plant shading cloth, so it is very strong, weatherproof and yet allows air to pass thru it. Aside from some problems with the sewing machine, which have been resolved, this project is almost done.
.
05 July 2014
El juego hermoso
Sábado 05 Julio 2014 Why it is called
“the beautiful game” always was a mystery. No longer. Futbol
(you might know it as soccer)
mania cannot be escaped in whatever corner of the world you
might find yourself, outside of the USA. It's the most popular sport
played across the planet. Over the last half of June and the first
couple of weeks of July, the elimination tournament known as the FIFA
World Cup (Copa Mundial) is played out, this year in Brasil.
More people watch these broadcasts than any other event. We are now
veterans of this here in Fortin, as we were first here thinking
about finding a retirement home, four years ago during a similar time. Still can
remember the flat screens TV's playing to load and attentive
aficionados at every possible open-to-the-street venue we
passed.
It's a beautiful
game because it can be played on almost any flat field, little team &
personal equipment is required, the ball is always highly visible,
anybody can score, scoring is rare enough that each point made is
memorable, the rules are very simple, collaborative skill and
intelligence is needed to score, a team doesn't have to win to leave
the field satisfied (hard-fought ties are sometimes the most talked about
games), and except for rare overtimes, the game never consumes more
than two hours. It doesn't hurt that, at a national level, a lot of
very smart, very fit and arguably very attractive players fill out
the teams.
Contrast this with
the paint-dryingly boring games that populate the NoB networks: baseball,
basketball, golf and “American” football (and that, a real
misnomer).
Why is the USA the
only country where soccer has been almost a second place sport?
Perhaps because there the crowds can't chant with any conviction
“We're Number One!” Perhaps because the media can't get behind a
sport where there are rare time-outs and the halftime cannot be
longer than 15 minutes, therefore not allowing enough time for lots of commercials? Perhaps because the American public has been now well
trained to demand spectator sports broadcasts long enough and slow enough to allow for frequent and extended beer and snack breaks?
The scoop is that
this tournament has actually amped up US public interest in the game,
so things perhaps are looking up. Both the Mexico and US teams made
it to the octavo eliminations, succumbing to Holland and Belgium,
respectively. It was great while it lasted. That last four minutes
of the Mexico-Netherlands game was so disheartening—“we was
robbed!” Please tune in and enjoy the rest of the
tourney—personally, we're hoping that tiny Costa Rica triumphs.
There was a field-of-vision eye exam scheduled in Veracruz city, so we decided to go down a day early to see if we could catch some of the port's festivities surrounding the presence of the Tall Ships, which were due to sail out the same Monday as the eye exam. We found accommodations at the Hotel Posada del Carmen, one block from the pier. Our room, on the sixth floor, gave us a view of four of the ships, and later the Sunday parade that came down the Boulevard Avila Camacho that evening. This was the last port of call for the Velas Sudamerica 2014 Regatta that left from Rio de Janeiro in early February. The extremely long, slow-moving lines formed up for people to board and visit the ships this last day convinced us our time was better spent on land. We've been on large sailing ships before.
We walked around
the downtown area, visiting a few of the sights including the city
museo and the Baluarte de Santiago, a fortified cannon
battery that used to sit on the coast here to protect this city. It
is now inland about four blocks from the water, and city maps showed
how, over the years, the city configuration of today was built up on
reclaimed land around the present day port basin. We arrived just
before closing for the famous naval museum, so we'll visit there
another day.
The next morning we
visited the mooring area for the other three veleros altos,
including Mexico's Cuauhtemoc training vessel. Ships were
also there (in homage to the 100th anniversary of the
brave who died in defense of the port from the invading US yanquis) from other countries: Brasil (Cisne Branco), Colombia
(Gloria), Venezuela (Simon Bolivar), Chile (Esmeralda),
Argentina (Libertad) and the Peru (Villavicencio).
We
have been jumping thru hoops for more than a month now, dealing with
the fallout from BanamexUSA's abrupt action to close our accounts in
Los Angeles. No great problem making wire transfers to other US
institutions (at least while we still own a bit of property there,
with an address of record), and redirecting social security payments
was a snap. But, we have been fighting with BmxUSA for over two weeks
trying to wire funds to a recently opened Banamex account here in
Fortín, still not accomplished.
Interestingly,
opening the Banamex peso account was no problem, but part of the
process was completion of a W-9 form, in English, and an agreement
(again in English) stating: "The undersigned hereby authorizes
[Banamex] to report, on (an) annual basis, the account holder
information and any interest earned to the US Internal Revenue
Service and to withhold any US tax on such interest, if withholding is
required, at the current applicable rate." We are attempting to
maintain Mexican joint bank accounts well below the US$10,000 amount
to avoid annual FBAR reporting, and to be able to maintain FDIC and
SIPC protections on our assets NoB. This may be impossible depending
on how other US financial institutions react.
It
is incomprehensible to us how rejecting investments from persons
outside the US (ie, stopping money flow into the US), coupled with
requiring that US citizens living abroad remove their funds from the
US (ie, making money flow out of the US), can make any kind of
economic sense to the US economy in the long run. Seems that
paranoia in the US congress (source of these xenophobic new laws), on
both sides of the aisle, is moving that once-great country nearer to
a fiscal meltdown. I guess we will have to do some investigation
with a goal of discovering some Mexican financial instruments that we
feel good about--where it seems like where we will ultimately have to
place our assets.
06 June 2014
Dia mundial del medio ambiente
Turns out yesterday was World Environment Day. We learned this after the fact, but as it turns out we had put out for the regular solid waste collection, a large container of clean plastic containers and tin cans we had been accumulating, and Carmen had also policed around the house and up & down the streets a bit, disposing of the scraps of paper and plastic trash blown out of passing vehicles or was discarded by sloppy passers-by. Here, separation of waste materials takes place right beside the garbage compactor truck, which has bags and boxes strapped or tied to it for plastic, steel, newspapers and the like. When a container is completely filled with a recyclable material, someone lifts it to the top of the truck where it is tied on. At the end of the run the truck is quite a sight, covered as it is with bags and stacks of flattened cardboard. Only true mixed garbage goes into the maw of the compactor. This seems so much more sensible than compacting everything and then picking thru the mess in some centralized recycling facility.
A hard rain again
last night and steady all last sunday. However at this time of year the temperature only drops into the high 60s F with the nighttime tormentas. so we leave the windows open except if there are gusts blowing the raindrops thru the screens. Around here, when we get rain it's often accompanied by a bit of (usually distant, 9 seconds away or so) trueno y relampago (thunder and lightning, donner und blitzen). This kind of sound and light show was very rare in Anacortes,
WA, so we're kind of in awe of the spectacle here and beginning to like the dramatic, usually brief, tropical downpours. At night we often smell the fragrance of whatever orchid is currently flowering. We've heard that flowers which smell strongest at night are normally fertilized by moths.
We are reminded occasionally that we still live on the Pacific ring of fire. Every so often we feel the ground tremble. Not long ago we awoke one morning about
5am with our bed jiggling. There was a tremor down on the isthmus of Tehuantepec in Oaxaca. No damage to speak of, but it's always unsettling when what is presumed to be solid underfoot, isn't. (It seems that most of the faults that are subject to underground movement are on the Pacific side of the country, most often in the states of Oaxaca and Guerrero.) Then that same morning at
8am there was a tremendous boom, as a power transformer down the street blew up! We expected a long period without electricity, but CFE had it replaced in about four hours.
We
finally put a bar along the bottom of our car gate where we saw the gray cat belly-squiggling under. Then a week later we found her
sitting just inside our back door discussing who knows what with our own cats – very quietly. Shooed her out and discovered another place
that she could squeeze thru. She surely is slender, and gets along well with the other two. We just do not
need or can afford another animal, so we blocked that access point off as well. The animals will just have to visit nose-to-nose thru the gate.
Seems that the zafra (cane
harvest) is finished for this season, which means the air is cleaner.
We have worked hard getting the black soot off from everything. We
are busy “working” on jigsaw puzzles and reading, including the Harry Potter
series, borrowed electronically from the Anacortes library, which we have not read before. Our bleeding heart Clerodendrum thomsoniae (flor de bandera) is blossoming
beautifully this year.
Things are
happening! First and most interesting – Gardi cat found us a
salamander. Are they not just the cutest creatures? Long slender
bodies with a bulbus roundish head and tiny short stick like legs
with toes. This one was medium brown and in our back yard. Actually
in a large empty flower pot which Gardi tipped over with a small
crash of the ceramic pot. Carmen rescued it and hopefully saved it in some thick plantings. She notes that american robins are out and about singing the songs we grew up with. Since Mexico is as far as they migrate south for the winters, the ones we have seen must be stoking up getting ready to wing their way north!
The house construction across the street to the east of our house has been restarted after a five month
break of no action. The work and daily progress keeps us entertained. One of the fellows working
has a great voice and spends much time singing at the top of his
lungs.
Our good quiet
neighbor, Valentin, to our west has moved out. Bummer. The house is
a rental and is now being spruced up. We hope the next tenant speaks
English and is quiet, and perhaps this time with no barking dogs. Time will tell. Also the house to our immediate south (actually used as an office), with which we share a wall, has had
no visible activity in it since before Xmas.
Thanks to Homeland Security and Bernie Madoff, BanamexUSA has canceled all of the bank accounts it holds with folks living in Mexico, giving only a month's notice, so we have been scrambling to find the best new arrangement for our banking needs. BanamexUSA was so convenient, providing peso withdrawals by local ATM from our accounts held in California, and charging no international funds access fees. This also means that we must have
our social security sent to a different location. Talk about
frustrating!!!!
On the way home
from our walk into town today, we purchased 17 manila mangoes for US$0.78. The time before we bought a bunch of fresh litchis. We love the availability of fresh, inexpensive tropical fruit. When visiting the bank, we walked past a nearby house in downtown Fortín, where we heard and saw two men yesterday
sitting on the front porch and speaking english. We were in a hurry at the time so did not stop
then, and they were gone later. Will introduce ourselves eventually.
We went to bed one
night recently and discovered that part of our upstairs is now lit with a bright new halogen light. We could probably read by this light in the one
bedroom. The new light is aimed down Avenida 21, but canted in such a way to illuminate our north wall from the power pole across the street. It will
certainly give us more security, and at no cost to us except for a bit of glare! The bedroom we sleep in has
curtains heavy enough that the extra light does not bother us, plus
it is easier to see when we go to the potty in the night.
So, what we first considered to be a bad thing, is actually all
good!
We discovered the
hugest paper wasp nest (about the size of a soccer ball) we have ever seen near our chimney high up on the north wall
outside! We are getting up early in the mornings when the air is as cool
as it gets, and spraying with a long jet of insecticide. We now see little wasp activity, and need to eventually get brave enough to knock it down, hoping that
the wasps have all departed.
We are getting back
into fix-up mode again. Dan put up the toilet paper roller and towel rods in our new bathroom, and also hung a full length mirror and installed a door stop in the tiled floor.
Next we sanded off the deteriorating finish on our cedar chest. We have two
power sanders, so we could both work at the same time. Had to mix a
bit of special stain for some trim strips. Carmen gave the whole
chest three coats of new nitrocellulose lacquer. We also sanded some rough spots on the bed frame we had made for the guestroom, and restained and sealed that too. While we had the lacquer out, we disassembled our queen-sized storage bed John Janda had built for us, and attached padded galvanized steel channel stock on the bottom, to raise the structure about 3/4" off the floor. When we reassembled things we touched up the surfaces where the shallow flooding coming inside from the terrace had damaged the finish. The bed is now high enough that it stands completely off the the floor--so no more worries about damaging things from stormwater emergencies or wet-mopping the tiled floor.
We still have many small projects. Dan was going to paint
a sealer on a bit of our wall that faces the house to west (where Valentin lived). There are some fellows working there getting ready to repaint that house, so Dan
asked if he could go over with our ladder to work on that face of our wall while they were there. The fellow showed up this morning and suggested he could do the application of the impermeabilizante for us. Dan was happy to pay him, and mark that job off our to-do list.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)