Author: zihuathyme

We had our shopping list made out, knew what stores we wanted to shop. Had been there measuring tv’s to make sure they would fit our stand.  We were up early had a lovely breakfast of fruit and figured there would be a huge line up so arrived at the store 40 minutes ahead of opening time.  There were no lines and they let us come right in, maybe they opened early and we didn’t know  it.  Took us about 5 minutes to show the staff which TV the Senor wanted and brought it down,  A  43 inch Samsung smart TV, but the box didn’t sa smart TV and I was determined that it had to be a “smart ” TV.  The employees then took it out of the box, two of them held it while the 3rd plugged it in and then turned it on where it promptly lit up saying SMART TV.  I was satisfied and impressed with the helpfulness of the staff and the Senor Singer is happy with his TV.

Next on to purchase a sewing machine for me as I want to make new curtains and drapes for the apartment. 20 percent off on my Singer was a good deal especially with the peso running 20 -1. Buy this time the fabric store was busy and they have an unusual way of dealing with merchandise it takes a minimum of 3 people to compleat a sale and you have to criss-cross the store to do it.  I needed notions like thread bobbins and scissor, but they are all kept behind the counter and only 2 – 3 employes deal with that and also with the cutting of ribbons and trims.  The mexican ladies were lined up 3 deep and they are a little pushier than I, so I decided to return tomorrow early for the little stuff,  My “lista” is all written out in Spanish.

Once at home we was discovered that even though we had measured carefully our TV stand is 1 inch to short.  So we went back to the wood shop that made it and they will have a new top for it tomorrow.  Problem solved! Pictures to follow  Signing off KO

As I headed out to the swimming pool this morning, I thought it is a long walk and taxi’s are cheap, but then I saw what reminded me of why I walk everywhere.  You miss out on the small stuff, the stuff that makes you say ahh! On the main drag, Benito Juarez a car was half in the road way.  Why I do not know why but the back-end definitely stuck out into the driving lane and the front end not so much. There was a group of 5 or 6 men

were around it actually lifting the back-end to rotate it out of the roadway.  As I was madly attempting to pull my phone out of my pack back they had successfully move the back end and now weretackling the front end.  Now at home someone would have a AAA card or someone would have called for a police impound.  But in Zihuatanejo

neighbors help neighbors.

Just before I reached the pool there is a large vacant lot that is fenced off from the road with a chain link fence. Stuck in it was an old palm tree branch.  What makes this branch

special is there was a bird’s nest still in it.  A family once made this their home. I hope they moved on before it fell.

A couple of days ago I went to an “electronico” store as we left at home a cord to a light fixture that we wanted to put under the kitchen cabinet.  In my fracture spanish I asked if they had one and showed her one similar.  She searched her drawers with no luck then went for her phone and called someone.  I know just enough spanish to know she had sent for help and I was to wait.  Moments later a small red car rounded the corner, an employee ran out to meet it and cord was quickly changed hands to the employee.  45 pesos later I’m on my way with a home with new cord.  No drug deal was ever transpired quicker. LOL

signing off KO

Beginning to feel like home, so I started back swimming this morning at the community pool.  It is an Olympic size pool, but no lanes marked off and they expect you to swim cross ways rather than lengthwise.  Too bad I love swimming long course.  It a short 20 minute walk to the pool and I swam for 35 minutes. The pool at the Navy Base at home was kept at a 79 degree or less temperature all summer, so I was prepared for swimming in this large covered outdoor pool at 8AM.  To my surprise it felt quite comfortable. Life is good!

My daily rounds on the way back from the pool take me to the Mexican old style Mercado where I have my favorite egg man and buy them buy the half flat, then on to the fish monger where I bought enough Mahi mahi fillets for 3- 4 meals next onto the avocado wheel barrow when the young man picks out two large ones  “un por hoy un por manana”” one for today and one for tomorrow at a cost of about $1. As I pass a fruit seller, the mangos catch my eye.  Mangoes to me are the fruit of the gods, better even than strawberries.  I brought one home which the Senior and I share for breakfast with hard-boiled eggs.

Our shopping excursion today was to buy lamps,  one for the living room and two for the bedroom night stands that we haven’t bought yet.  We are now the proud owners of 3 colorful ceramic lamps which we put in our push carts and pushed them the 4 -5 blocks home safely.  Still need one floor lamp for reading, for me.

From home we had sent a roaster oven thru DHL shipping so the Senor could cook his Thanksgiving turkey.  It was horribly expensive to ship, but we were packing too many suitcases to manage it on the air plane.  We picked it up at DHL today and had to pay customs tax on it.  If we can’t take it with us on the plane it stays at home in the future.

He better enjoy the turkey!signing off KO

The Senor is not much of a “shopper”, more of a buyer. Walk in the store, see it, buy it walk out. I on the other hand would want to look in every store, compare prices, colors etc.  But he has done well here, managed to look in several stores before his mind was made up.  Our shopping excursions have taken us to the big mexican one stop shopping stores, The Bodega,  Mega Soriana and Copell, a Canadian based store that the Senior favored  but he ended up purchasing at a smaller  local  mexican store.  I like to shop local when we can.

Our first few days here we were very cozy sleeping  on a ” matrimonial” sized bed, but

Nice King bed, but those curtains have to go

Colorful????

with this warm weather, a king bed is more comfortable for us. Our apartment came furnished with 4 comfortable chairs, but the Senor is now is stretched out on his new sofa I’m happy with the chairs we have, but am on the look out for a foot stool.

The kitchen is a good kitchen to work in, still needs a few things, mainly curtains and under counter curtains.

We have one last major purchase to make, replacing the 19 inch tv with a BIG screen. But he will wait for “Buen Fin” the Mexican equivalent of our black Friday.  It falls the weekend prior to Mexican Revolution Day, Nov 20th.  We are hoping for some excellent prices.

Our balcony is just 3 feet wide and 25 ft long  and affords us lovely insight into Mexican street life. It is quite different from our previous balcony that was over a pedestrian street with many restaurants and bars. We no longer have loud thumping music all night long and little traffic in the evening.  We still enjoy our meals outside on the balcony, but as we are protected from the afternoon sun here so we can even eat lunch outside.  We are anxious to do some balcony gardening.

We have been here a week and about all we have done is shop trying to get settled in.  I have hardly had time to read.  The good thing is our money has been running about 19 pesos to $1, and I’m getting ready to decorate.  I managed to get all our new apartment pictures into an album, but as usual I can’t find the album in computer only individual pictures.  Signing off KO

The Senor assembling our shelf unit

st purchase, my hat rack

Finished project

Breeze flows from back door out to balcony

Lamp light dinner for two on our balcony

The Senor and I often laugh about how w used to spend one week here scurrying around trying to do everything in one week and now it takes a full week just to get settled in.  The beach will be there when we are ready.

We needed extra storage space in our bathroom and bought an over the toilet frees   standing  wire shelf and a separate shelving unit. Starting yesterday and on to today we worked on the wire unit that had no parts labeled and managed to get the Senor  reverting to his former Navy language so we set it aside and assembled the shelving unit.  Now it is possible to walk into the bathroom without tripping.

I did a morning run on Waldo’s, the mexican equivalent of our dollar stores. Picked up trash baskets storage containers and such.  In the afternoon I headed to the Mercado.  If you want or need it, it can be found there, but you need to search  and it helps to speak some spanish, mine is quite limited, but I managed to pick up a hammer and a screwdriver, a cooking pot, 4 3 prong electrical adapters, 2  chicken legs freshly amputated, 30 fresh shrimp, peeled and deveined, right before my eyes, mushrooms, garlic, onions potatoes, tomatoes, lettuce and those super yummy little bananas.

Tomorrow we tackle the wire rack.  Then we start shopping for the big items, namely a very large screen TV.  As most of you know the Senor is a bit TV addicted so this is very important.  The other item is a king size bed.  We are currently sleeping in what the mexicans call a “matrimonial” size bed, we call it a double bed.  It’s cozy and it is comfortable, but with the weather here bigger is definitely better.And just to make any of you who are north of th boarder envious it is 8:30 at night  I am typing this on our balcony and it is a balmy 79 degrees.  If you click on the peictures the caption will show Signing off KO

We arrived in Zihuatanejo almost 2 hours later than we expected as we were delayed in LA.  Seems like the pilot had a flat tire on the way to work.  That on top of flying on the day after the clocks got set back and neither one of us knows who to set our wrist watches.  Needless to say we’ve had a bit of trouble adjusting to the 2 hr time difference or is it 3 or only 1 when you factor daylight times savings change.

But we got our mexican chips in our phones today and now we can tell time plus make all the calls and use data for about $10 a month per phone. ( Verizon’s idea was I could pay $5 a day for any day I use my phone in Mexico.)

We love our new apartment, It was so clean and ready for us that it absolutely sparkled.  Then we moved in!  In our old place we knew where everything went.  We would unpack our storage boxes and be out to dinner in an hour or so.  Here we are still finding out where we keep things. Not only things from our 5 storage boxes but also from the 3 bulging suitcases we traveled with.  And we have spent the last two days shopping for more stuff! Not quite organized, but very happy here in the land of sunshine and no jackets or sweaters.  Signing off KO

This season in the sun is about to come to its conclusion. It’s about time to return home

The Senor and Kathleen

to Port Orchard, WA. To our cat Denzel, and our 28 chickens, and rain. In future years I have hopes of staying longer, at least thru April.  But this year I have a busy agenda, 5 days after we get home I’m off to California to move my sister to Port Orchard where she will have family around to help as needed. First week in May I head to Bozeman Montana to see my oldest granddaughter graduate from Montana State.  Very proud of her as she has accomplished  this all on her own. And the end of May it off to Casper Wyoming to see another granddaughter graduate from High School and head off to Nebraska for college.

This is a time of saying good-bye to our Zihuatanejo friends, but knowing it is just a temporary good-bye makes it easier, as most of us will return by late fall. There are so many Zihuatanejo things I will miss, the early morning calls of the vendors moving through the streets, fresh mangos and little bananas, warm evenings and never needing a wrap. Sunrises and sun sets.

Sunset at Troncones

Sunrise from our roof top

I will miss swimming daily at the community pool, at

Me finishing the Sharkfest swim

Getting the snorklejust right

Escollera and the beach. But most of all I will miss 86 and sunny most nearly every day and the friendly people.

Friends Lynne and Dwight

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Boys line

So this is most likely the last blog of the season. Next year I have high hopes of a better camera and better skills in getting the pictures from the camera to the computer which I have had “mucho problemas” with this year. Signing off KO

We are down to our last week to enjoy Zihuatanejo. I know for many that is the entire vacation  time they have. It was that way for us once, but now that we are retired we find no need to have winter in our lives and choose to spend that season in the warmth, sunshine and friendliness of Zihuatanejo. Staying as long as we do also means that we have accumulated much “stuff” that make  our apartment homelike. Storage has always an issue, but our current apartment manager has been accommodating and  has stored our 5 crates in his store-room.

But this year is different as we are changing apartments and renting it full-time.  In

December when we made our arrangements with the new apartment our idea had been to start our rent in March and slowly move our stuff over and get the new items we would need and be all set up for our return in November. But the land lord had  already had a commitment for March and April, so that didn’t work. Now the issue of storage really became a problem until our good friend and upstairs neighbor said she could store our boxes until our return. So problem solved, there is exactly enough space to store our now 6 storage boxes.

Our job this last week to pack so none are too heavy and nothing breaks and make sure we are in sync with the young man who will do the lifting and trotting them down 3 flights of stairs and then up one flight of stairs and stowing them on an over head shelf.

We have been 10 years in this one spot and really loved central location. We won’t miss the music and noise from the all night bars that spew drunks onto the streets at 5:30 AM. We won’t miss the clanging of metal weights from the gym across the street, especially now that they have expanded to their roof top which is eye level with our balcony.  We won’t miss the announcer from the Zocolo always calling for “aplauso, aplauso” after every performer and the high-pitched voice of the kids clown. The noise from the Zocolo funnels right down our street, at times its pleasant other times just annoying and I spend a great deal of evening time on the balcony.

We will miss the friendly neighbors in our building. We’ll miss  watching the humming birds flit between the two feeders that are on each side of our pedestrian street, watching them balance at the very tippy top of a palm frond ‘ll miss seeing baby doves nested in the coconut palms. We already miss the view of the bay we had before the row of palm trees were planted down the middle of the street and grew so tall to just about block the entire bay view. We will miss the frequent evening gatherings downstairs at Javiers when a couple of guitars come out.

There are lots to miss but much to look forward to. Our new apartment has a great kitchen area, a separate large bedroom, only one flight of stairs and a nice balcony. It is situated so that the breeze from the bay blows through the apartment keeping it quite cool and comfortable.  We are still just a block and

1/2 off the bay and a block and a half from our old apartment.  And most importantly we can choose to furnish and decorate it as we please. Life will be good! Signing off KO

Mexico is loud, vibrant and colorful! From the candy carts to the food that is served, from the flowers and trees to the colorful dress there is color everywhere.

There is music everywhere, soft guitar music played by the many s

trolling musicians. The loud, ruckus music(?) blaring from some of the all night bars and some  quality old rock and roll and blues played by both gringo and mexican. And then of course there is a fellow who strolls around with his very poor quality amplified speaker mounted on a tall tripod and sings to the music from it.  It’s awful.

Zihuatanejo has many beautiful bronze statues placed around the El Centro area, but this is not one of them.  I

don’t know what it is suposed to represent, but it looks to me like two space aliens, I keep expecing some one to paint some slitty eyes on them.  And more over  they were constructed where a very funcional bus stop used to be.

Walking around town there are murals, flowers and beautiful trees full of little berries. No matter where you look there is color.

There is now color on the tomato farm! Our planter box tomato farm which we started from seeds early December is now providing us with lovely ripe red tomatoes. Signing off KO

From the vine

To the table

I’m fortunate that my birthday falls in February so that I get to celebrate my birthday

with our many friends here is Zihuatanejo. We opted to go again to Sr. Pintos again for the celebration as it is not only a beautifully decorated place with with a running waterfall and a mayan pyramid.  The large are in the back lends itself to a large group rather well. There were 20 some in our group and still plenty of room for regular diners both up front and in the back area

with out any crowding. The menu is interesting and with lots of different choices, the Senior had some very meaty ribs and  I had blackened catfish. The lighting is soft, so soft it’s difficult to read the menu with out additional light, ( cell phone flashlights sure come in handy)

Stefania the lovely daughter of the owners, has the voice of an angel. She  sang not only Happy Birthday, but sang When Irish Eyes are Smiling and several more popular tunes.  Quite the treat!

The cake was the luscious Tres Leches from the “Pink” bakery on Vicente Guerrero, the most moist cake ever created. Thank you to all my friends for making my birthday special. Signing off KO