(Domingo 14 -
Sábado 20 Julio )
From the latter
half of June thru this week, we have been experiencing tropical
rainstorms almost every evening. Now this is not a great hardship,
since we are inside and dry, and the precip is not cold or
unpleasant, just a lot of water coming down all at once. If we were
other people, with desires to use the evenings to be out and about,
it would crimp our style. But, we are either curled up with a book
or enjoying some TV fare, and the amount of falling moisture outside
just adds to the comfy ambiance. And, we appreciate the almost
clock-like schedule that rain keeps, as virtually every day provides
many hours of dry outdoor time to get some work or travel done. We
always said that, coming from the US Pacific Northwest, we would miss
the clouds and green vegetation that comes with the rain, one of the
reasons we chose to settle here, at 3000 feet near the southern end
of the Sierra Madre Oriental mountain range. Gulf clouds blow in
from the east, and when they hit the mountains behind us, they
release the moisture to fill the streams and irrigate the land here
in western Veracruz. Tropical showers are a small price to pay for
otherwise ideal (never too hot, too cold, too dry or too damp) living
conditions we have encountered here.
For several weeks
we have been serenaded, come evening time, by what we thought was
some sort of goose or duck living down the street from our house.
Sounding something like a metal file being dragged across a metal
drum, we finally realized that what we were hearing was the call of a
Mexican Burrowing Frog. Sometimes it's confusingly called a toad, in
fact in Spanish it's a
Sapo borracho (drunken toad) because of
it's belch-like call. Only 3” or so long when adult, it can inflate itself
and release a very loud croak. Hailing from the Jurassic period
(dinosaur times), it's the most evolutionary distinct amphibian alive
today. Comes out to call and mate only in very heaviest of
rainstorms (which flood the streets and streams in just a couple of
minutes), and spends the rest of the time underground subsisting on
ants and termites. There's a stream and banana field just down the
block, an ideal environment for this frog which spends most of the
year in shallow burrows, and that revels in a downpour such as we
have been experiencing. We named this particular frog
Chac
(the Mayan rain god). The hard rains are mostly over, so no
serenades now. We wonder whether next year we'll hear more of these
weird creatures, if mating this year was successful.
Our passion fruit
vine is growing like gangbusters on the funky bamboo trellis we made
for is. Lots of the most intricate lavender-colored flowers promise
lots of fruit “capsules” down the line. The new storage unit in
the master bedroom is finished and is starting to be filled up with
stuff. Dan moved on to creating shelves for the closet space in the
new bathroom addition hallway. These are made of two layers of our
leftover 3/8” plywood over 1x2 interior stiffening, attached to the
walls invisibly along the edges. He also started on a slotted
bottom shelf for footwear for the same closet.
Carmen started
creating lightweight curtains that we'll hang over our bedroom
closets, to minimally conceal the luggage and boxes we store up high
over these storage units, yet still let air to flow thru. In this
climate, one takes care to not create spaces without allowing for air
to move past stored items, so as to reduce the chance of mildew.
We'll keep tabs on the chest area below the seat in the new bedroom
storage unit, and will drill holes in the front face if we have
problems there.
It is interesting
to occasionally look at the stats Blogger provides, to see that this
blog is approaching an average of 400 page views a month, with a high
of about 600 views. We are gratified that our musings are finding a
little following, and hope that opening up our lives to you a bit is
appreciated, whether you are just keeping up with our doings, or are
using this source as inspiration for a future move to Mexico.
In our walks and
drives around Fortín, we have noted a good number of attractive
homes for rent and for sale, and wonder why more folks don't elect to
become expats and spend some or all of their time down here, out of
the expensive rat race that is the US today. Carmen remembers
talking to Bill, our mailman in Anacortes, who spoke of a great
number of people he came across who spoke of retiring to Mexico, and
that we were the only ones he knew who actually did it. Social
security and savings stretch a long way farther here SoB. A few
vacations investigating living conditions around Mexico will turn up
a place with the ideal climate, housing, healthcare, social
environment and any other condition that's personally critical for
enjoying your life beyond the working years.
