Day 6: Catching up and lying back

So, it's Friday morning, and now that our mission is accomplished, we can spend a relaxed kind of day. I was surprised to hear from David last night that he too is interested in the spa experience; Elliott knows a place where you can get a 100 peso massage and they do mani- and pedicures, too. However, first I need to catch up.

Yesterday we went on a home tour sponsored by folks who donate money to the local school for the deaf (I'll fill in captions later). So David walked me down to the lake as best he could--funny how even an inland lake has a sort of fishy, oceany smell. I recorded some birdsong, too, but we'll see if I can figure out how to post it. Right next to the Ajijic pier were a bunch of cars and people scattered around. We were eventually assigned to Dick and Doris. Doris had her arm in a cast, so I was relieved to see Dick was driving. However, he wasn't driving just yet--when he went to start the car, it turned out his battery was dead. These folks had made the news in California, by the way. They had brought their car back "home" (Escondido area, I understand) for some dealership type repairs, and the thing was stolen off the dealer's lot!

Anyhow, someone gave Dick a jump, and we were on our way. The first house we looked at was in the Chula Vista neighborhood, which you reach by a winding uphill road (cobbled, naturally) along a golf course. The house itself was quite impressive, but the biggest thing about it was the view.

The second house was a bit to the east of the first, just north of the main drag through town (Carreterra Oriente, which David refers to as Carotid artery). The first thing I saw on entering was the mosaic lion fountain. Again, spacious, airy, tiled, and to my taste a bit sterile. Perhaps because it is staged for sale. The flyer said they are asking $449,000. This would no doubt be a million dollar plus house where I live.

The third house was a bit odd. It was on the Camino Real in what appears to be a very posh part of town, but the house turned out to be a quite, er, cozy two-bedroom with a very small living room and kitchen. It was nice enough, and the fellow who lived there seemed lonely: he gave us each his "calling card."

On the way to the next house, Dick wanted to show us a new development, west of Ajijic and just south of the main road. There was a restaurant they both heartily recommended, something about "art," and you could see that some very fancy architecture was in play as boutique-type buildings were being constructed. I got the feeling, though, that the whole endeavor was not exactly eager--perhaps the general slowing down of real estate is affecting this area as well.

The last house on the tour (well, the very last house was our B&B, which Dick and Doris had known under the previous owners) was in a development called Las Christinas, I think, even further west and again between the main drag and the lake. This was a stunning house, designed from the ground up by a couple of men who had really thought about how to incorporate the outdoors into their living space. They had two adorable dogs, too, Honey and Sugar.

Then Dick and Doris offered to show us their house, which was also pretty fantastic. Doris had just about gutted and redesigned it to suit herself. She left the well that remained when she demolished the old spiral staircase, thinking they might use it for an elevator shaft later; in the meantime there's a giant ceramic parrot hanging in there! Once again, a lot of outdoor space, including terraces off the master bedroom and another on the west side of the house.

Then Doris and Dick brought us back to Casa Flores, where they could see the changes that Steve and Fernando had made. David and I made sandwiches for lunch and then had a 2-hour or so nap.

For supper, we ventured out onto the main street, but almost everything was closed except a hole-in-the wall taco joint that was apparently run by a 14-year-old boy. We both had two pastor tacos and a diet coke. It was steamy and brighly lit with fluorescent lights, and oddly decorated by a goldfish tank. I think David paid $5 for our entire meal.

Read The Alienist and drank too much tequila before enjoying a long sleep.

This morning the Irish couple are off to Guadalajara and points beyond to pick up their adopted child's birth certificate and passport, before taking off to finally return to Ireland next week. We were all sad to say goodbye to the baby.

Have now retired to the inside patio to work on some website stuff. It's 11:36, and I'm still in my pyjamas. I think David slept until 11:00, when Elliott came by with some clients. From the aromas coming from the kitchen, I'm guessing they are feeding David breakfast in spite of his late rising. ;-)

Day 5: Getting things a bit topsy turvey

First off, I have uploaded David's pictures wholesale via Picasa, and he may or may not add captions later, but you get the idea.

So, since I last wrote we had dinner at a place called Pedro's with Elliott. "Pedro" has a lovely voice and serves lovely food. I had a shrimp/pike Newburg, and Elliott had Chilean sea bass Veracruz, and David had some kind of pork. We had outrageous desserts, I think chocolate cheesecake for David, raspberry pie for me, and mango cheesecake for Elliott. When we got home I finished Elliott's book and started back in on Harry Potter. I had a little too much tequila. (Now I've pinched the Alienist from Fernando & Steve's living room bookshelf; hope they won't miss it, they are at a concert in Guadalajara tonight.)

I need to tell you about our "stately homes" tour this morning and also to uploade and organize the 72 photos I took, but I think I'll wait until tomorrow and see what this Alienest thing is all about.

Hasta luego!

Day 4, or dolce far niente

Another long, long sleep, followed by the same delicious breakfast. There was a new twist today, as there are more guests at Casa Flores: an Irish couple adopting a Mexican child are here. The little girl is adorable, and the parents are very happy to be near the end of the process.

You may or may not have noticed that, when I wrote about getting lunch stuff, I didn't mention bread. That's because even we stupid gringos know that you get that fresh at the beginning of the day. Steve mentioned to me last night that he would be going to the market this morning, so I took advantage of the transportation and got fresh rolls as well as some heavy-ish potential tequila mixers at Pharmacia Guadalajara. It is one busy place, and I got to stand around outside for about 10 minutes and take a few photos for "ambiance." The fruit seller stand that you can barely see in the distance in the one photo is identical to one on just about every corner--all it is is a card table and a chair or two, either under a tree or sporting its own umbrella, and the folks sell fresh pineapple, mango, watermelon, what-have-you, and Elliott says they season it with salt and hot pepper.

Since returning from the market I've done nothing but type, here, as I have a new web site to do and also wanted to get caught up a bit on the blog.

I mentioned the Lake Chapala Society earlier, and you can see it among the links at the top of this page. As I indicated earlier, there is a very active community of ex-pats here, mainly from the States and Canada, and they do everything from run a library to invent and participate in charitable causes. There is a Little Theater, an animal rescue society, and tons of other activities. For the kind of person who doesn't feel comfortable off the bat in a "foreign" environment, the LCS must be a real blessing. David is already signed up and came home with a thick booklet yesterday listing all the members and providing info about the activities. Among the services advertised in its pages were "post-death planning."

Day 3: Lonches and more cobblestones

In spite of extensive post-prandial napping Monday, we slept long and hard. David did mumble something about getting up to make coffee at 4 a.m., but I persuaded him that 4 is much different from 5 or 6, and we both managed to wrest a few more hours' sleep out of the night.

When I say it is tranquil here, I have to acknowledge some exceptions. There is a particularly mellow rooster with an internal clock problem who crows pretty much most of the morning. Then at odd intervals we hear people shouting with megaphones. Sometimes the shouter is female, and it sounds like one of those are-we-having-fun-yet public spectacles. Most of the time, though, it's just a guy in a truck selling something: bottled water, gas, fruit...

Then there is the relentless birdsong and the odd clicking noises the hummingbirds make. It's a tough job, but someone has to listen to that stuff. ;-)

I have taken to lounging about the place, still dressed in pyjamas, during the period immediately after breakfast. This is the wrong approach, probably, as you will see. By the time it seemed reasonable to go out and scrounge a bite to eat, the day had turned quite warm. The main street is only a block up the hill from us, though we get surprisingly little noise from the traffic. David led me purposefully past a couple of delicious-looking holes-in-the-wall to a place called Danny's, where he had breakfasted on his last trip. The menu held all sorts of enticing things (including something made ostensibly of cheese, eggs, and jam, but when we flipped the menu we discovered it was actually ham they were talking about), but the true bargains were in a category called "lonches." Now, I would hate to spoil my amateur status by actually looking the word up. It appears to be a cognate of lunch, but that's always a risky thing to assume. David told me that prior "lonches" he had experienced were a sort of pre-packaged picnic style meal, such as a cold quarter of chicken. My carne asada lonche turned out to be grilled meat with onions and tomatoes in a freshly baked roll, somewhat sweeter than you might expect to get at a US deli. His pork version was the same. Ironically, Danny's is located directly across the street from a Subway. David assures me there is also a Señor Sushi chain.

I suggested we acquire a supply of lunch ingredients, so that we could eat in the relatively cool comfort of the B&B during the hottest part of the day, then go out to dinner in the evening. So we picked up some sliced ham, local (pot-type) cheese, and tomatoes from a small shop. I managed to remember what little Spanish I had, and we did fine.

The meal at Danny's had been lovely and just enough, and I didn't feel too tired yet, so we decided to press on to the Pharmacia Guadalajara, source of all the little things we felt we needed. Of course, it wasn't quite as close as David remembered, but we kept pushing on, past among others a restaurant that promised: filet mignon: big base ball. Huh?

Perhaps I should explain at this point that I was feeling a little frustrated. Normally, I am the one who obsessively plans the trip, poring over multiple purchased and library books until I have a good idea of various spots we would want to seek out, including restaurants to try, and so on. And I always have at least one good map, if not more than one for specialized purposes such as public transportation. This trip I pretty much walked into blind, and I managed to leave David's little real estate company map in Elliott's car on Monday. So I was starting to feel a bit crabby and disoriented because of that. Fortunately, David was able to find a few decent maps by ducking into various real estate agencies on our way (you can't throw a rock around here without hitting one), so by the time we were ready to head back from the pharmacia I was able to get a bit more familiar with our surroundings. We ended up taking a bathroom/rehydration break at the same restaurant where we had lunched before, so I was able to take pictures.

A common beverage here is an agua fresca, which is like a diluted smoothie, I guess. It's a really smart thing to drink, because you really need to be constantly rehydrating yourself. Needless to say, beer and margaritas, though providing a delightfully anaesthetic effect, are diuretics, and so at least in the middle of the day they are THE ENEMY. As it is, I feel like more of a drunk than ever, surrounded as I am by former alcohol and other substance abusers who are now living the clean and sober life.

The way home was, again, torture, even without benefit of alcohol, and when I took my shower after a brief nap I could taste the salt on my face. Still, I was motivated enough to go out again to replenish my liquor suppy--I had decided it was stupid to drink whiskey when I'm in the very country and even province where tequila is produced, but finding an appropriate mixer is something of a challenge. For the short term I picked up a bottle of fresca, which is okay.

The book Elliott lent me is The Hour of the Cat by Peter Quinn, and I am enjoying it so far.

We found it! Day 2 in Ajijic

For those of you who are only interested in the pictures, here is the link.

So, as I said, we were much closer to human on waking up Monday a.m. I went up to the breakfast terrace, just because the wireless connection was better there, interrupting the poor maid who was trying to get the tables cleaned. She brought me breakfast: a bowl of fruit, bacon and eggs, toast, and a gorgeous glass of freshly squeezed grapefruit juice, along with yummy coffee. I went back and woke David up in time for his breakfast. After grabbing a much-needed shower, I settled in to get my blog started and upload the photographs I had taken.

Elliott showed up sooner than expected. She had planned to take us to an exclusive luncheon where members of the Lake Chapala Society (about which more later), or possibly a separate club devoted to the culinary arts--hard to keep track of all the clubs and societies here--were competing in presenting various Italian dishes; unfortunately, she discovered she was not permitted to sign up guests after the closing date of last Friday. So, after profuse apologies, she proceeded to take David and me to a gal who had several rental listings. While Sarah was showing him a house in the Los Olivos development up the hill, Elliott and I went to her house, where I borrowed some ugly yellow rubber shoes known as crocs. Ugly is as ugly does, they are a lot more comfortable on the cobblestones than my "dress" flipflops. We then drove over to the second house Sarah was to show David. Unfortunately, Elliott parked in exactly the spot where the remotely activated gate opened, and before we could enter the courtyard the bright blue painted gate pretty much scraped off her right-side rearview mirror.

Again, because of bone-headed failure mentioned yesterday, have no pics as yet, but we all agreed this was the perfect house for David. It has a gigantic kitchen with both an island that has barstools on one side and another counter that lets you look straight into the living/dining area. Three bedrooms, one with a huge walk-in tiled shower, another with a bathtub you could practically swim in, as well as a half-bath of the third. There is a long room that I would call an indoor patio, which leads to a covered outdoor patio along the side of the house. The back patio is also covered and looks onto a walled yard with citrus and avocado trees, bird of paradise, a small lawn, etc. There is also a spiral wrought iron staircase leading up to the roof. Um, concrete patio/driveway sort of arrangement in the front of the house and a building that is used for storage and laundry. I'll definitely get photos later, but it seems perfect, and the price can't be beat, either. It is pretty well, if minimally, furnished, and there are some art pieces David is already worrying about in view of the proclivities of his cat, Jean-Claude.

I'm not sure exactly how David became aware of this retirees' paradise, but what attracts people are: the low cost of living (you can still buy a nice house here for 100k), the relatively mild climate (mild because of the tempering effect of the lake, as well as the altitude; mild is also relative, see below), and I suppose the presence of other ex-pats to ease the transition. One example of the cost of living improvement is that one can seemingly escape here the gap in the US between being poor enough to qualify for publicly funded medical care and rich enough to afford good coverage when you have a preexisting condition, such as diabetes. According to David according to Elliott, health care is generally better here than folks are used to in the States.

Our next stop was the hardware store, where Elliott acquired some duct tape to temporarily repair the mirror. She said one of the de-stressors here is that when something like that happens to your car or other important object in your life, you don't take it to the Ford dealer for a $2000 repair. You take it to Pepe who fixes it for $25.

After finding the house, we went to lunch on the main square in town, at the Restaurant Jardin (picture at link above, though actually snapped on Tuesday, yesterday). Elliott recommended we split a local dish, which is cheese melted in a stoneware pot so hot the edges of the cheese formed a crusty, brown layer, along with soft, small, flour tortillas, garnished with guacamole and a choice of fresh salsa or hottish sauce. I was stuffed to the gills after that and in the heat found it hard going on foot back to our B&B (well, it could be that the beer and the margarita were ill advised).

Perhaps this is the place to point out that Ajijic is not exactly handicapped accessible. Granted, I have something wrong with my knee and am both out of shape and overweight, but the combination of the 5000-foot altitude and the cobblestoned streets, alleviated occasionally by sidewalks of varying degrees of smoothness, height, and consistency, can make for slow and tough slogging. And did I mention the heat? If I were going to live here in my current health/fitness configuration, I think I would have to buy/rent a scooter of some sort. Among the handful of taxis we spotted in the main square, by the way, was a bright yellow City Car, and this is exactly the kind of place where that would make a lot of sense.

Having groaned and staggered our way back to the welcoming cool and tranquility (this being relative, too: more later), I for one has no plans to emerge again--I would rather starve. Not that that was an issue, with the huge lunch we had had. David did I believe go for a stroll once it was dark and after refreshing himself with a dip in the pool. I settled down with my Scotch and soda (feeling a bit decadent and furtive as I sipped it out of my coffee cup, the only drinking vessel provided in our room) and finished The Woods by Harlan Coben. The book I finished up the prior evening was Bitter at the Root, an Inspector Banks mystery by Peter Robinson. Elliott had brought me one of her books, so I had something in reserve.

Ajijic: Day One--Flight of the Living Dead

I don't know how I get myself into these situations. When I booked my flight to San Diego to attend a meeting of the Family Law Executive Committee in place of the chair of my regional subcommittee, Mark Ressa, I had no idea my friend David would be inviting me to come and spend a week in Mexico with him to scope out the ex-pat retirement community he was hoping to move to this summer. So I booked a latish return flight.

So my day Saturday went like this: Arise at around 8 a.m. to make a 9 a.m. meeting, which went on until about 1 (thank goodness for Passover, which dictated that our Jewish members had to head home in time to cook before sundown), then limp over to Borders for some travel reading, hire a cab to take me to Ritz Camera (where I purchased the 3rd charger for my digital camera--who knows where the other two are?), to the Horton Grand hotel to check out, and to the airport, a good 3 hours before I had to be there. Then the just-over-an-hour flight back to Oakland (where a surprisingly freezing wind prevailed), the drive home via the ATM at my local Lucky's so I could deposit enough money to ensure bills would be paid through the end of the month (sitting on about $2000 of travel reimbursements that have yet to be processed), and finally home with about an hour left to ensure a week-long supply of food and water for the cats and pack a new suitcase with appropriate tropical items. David picked me up at 10 p.m., and our nonstop flight to Guadalajara left at the inhumane hour of 1:10 a.m. I felt especially sorry for the parents of the already pyjama-clad children, especially one single dad who had a push chair (that had to be folded up to put through the xray), his own bag, a pink Hello Kitty! roller bag, and a daughter whose limbs were completely flaccid in sleep.

The flight itself was pleasant enough, with food and beverage (two cuba librés for me, thanks very much) service probably occurring at about 2:30 a.m., but of course this was all seriously past my bedtime, and the fitful sleep that ensued involved the inevitable stiff neck, drooling, and vain shifting of buttocks to attain a more comfortable position.

When we arrived, along with the contents of at least two other planes, there was a single immigration official on duty for each of the Mexican and Foreigner lines, so that took another 45 minutes to an hour. At this point one child started screaming so persistently that the officer asked someone to fetch her and her mother to the front of the line. I felt she spoke for all of us, really! ;-) When the day shift came on, there were only about a dozen of us left. Customs was interesting: you pushed a button, and if a red light came on, your luggage was searched; if the light turned green, you were free to go. David was red, I was green. Maybe the random light generator sensed he would be sicking around.

Then the 30-mile cab ride (after a brief break at the ubiquitous Starbucks and time for David to have a cigarette and change some money). Of course, the area around the airport is generally not the most salubrious, and we were already on the outskirts of Guadalajara, so all I saw of it was the the golden glow of lighted streets and monuments in the breaking dawn from the air as we approached the landing. The road started to climb, and soon we could see Lake Chapala, a bit misty to the south and backed by even higher mountains.

The village of Ajijic is not at all what I had pictured; the streets are cobbled and quite narrow, the houses stuccoed, with many painted in very bright colors. Our B&B presented a deep rose-painted front, and before we had even unloaded our luggage, I could hear the welcoming tones of our hosts, Steve and Fernando. Through the grilled door we had glimpses of a lovely garden with bougainvillea climbing everywhere, and a tranquil pool tiled with turquoise mosaic. Casa Flores

This was David's second trip here, and on the first he became acquainted with a Realtor who provides a newsletter and a blog. While he was still napping after our arrival, and I was chatting with Steve and Fernando, Elliott arrived. She is, as was promised me, a force of nature! Her plan was to take us to the Mariachi Buffet at a local luxury hotel, the Chapala Real, but before we left we had the kind of free-flying conversation you can only have with people you have met 5 minutes ago and with whom you share a lot of common sensibilities and history. Steve told some cute stories from the village in Northern Ireland where he grew up, and Elliott made a vain attempt to teach him how to incorporate a blog into his website. We duly went along to the "comida," seeing street-corner fruit stands and donkey and horse rides along the way, all the while gossiping about other ex-pats who inhabited this or that house.

I forgot to mention Steve and Fernando's adorable poodle Kika, who still has remnants of green food coloring on her head and the puffballs above her paws (a memento of St. Patrick's day). If I hadn't been such a bonehead and left my memory card in the computer when we went out today, I'd have a photo of her by now, as well as of the place I'm 99% sure David is going to rent for the next 6-12 months. (It's Monday, now, all this stuff happened yesterday.)

By the time we got home from overeating (and 2 margaritas) at the buffet, talking our heads off in the breezy and clean air, David was ready to fall into bed unconscious. I still had to have a couple of nightcaps, finish my book, and start to re-read Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire for about the 6th time (hey, it was there, okay?), but we both slept for at least 12 hours and were a bit closer to conscious human beings when we woke up this morning.

The photos are finally here, thanks to some good advice from Al Sparber and Gary White about how I had managed to screw up my file paths. Now to get working on Monday.