I want to add a short (?) blog at this point, as things have been less stressful and a little more fun since I wrote last.

I finally got a decent haircut following the storm. I had tried numerous people in the past year, without much success as to the end result. Nice women, but no one really “got it.” Well, the Director of the Escuela de Espanol (Spanish school), Juli made arrangements for me to go with her to her hairdresser’s house and she warned me before we got there. “This guy used to run a salon in town, but his mother became very sick, needed a pacemaker which of course she could not afford as they are quite poor, and he moved her in with him to take care of her while he was trying to earn enough money to buy her one. His house is in the barrio, and is not easy to find, and a very simple house. You will see how many Mexicans really live here. I am warning you beforehand.” The house was in a fairly dense neighborhood, with very simple houses, some looking better than others, but nothing that was really shocking to me. You entered through a white iron gate into a cement front patio, with some plants in a few pots, and the first thing I noticed was the huge grey, duck-tapped tarps for the two front walls, possibly where large windows had been. I nearly said something to the hairdresser about the hurricane damage to the front of his house, but I held back. Later Juli told me that his house had never been any different since she had been coming to him; he just can’t afford the windows or cement blocks needed to finish it off. So they live with tarps covering the front of their house. We have heard that many people buy the cement blocks or bricks one by one, building their houses around them, as they can afford it, maybe a brick a week. Anyway, the guy’s house was very nice and clean inside, with an “interior designer touch.” He had made his living room into his salon, with the haircutting chair in front of a large mirror, black leather couches and a coffee table with magazines, red rugs and silk flower accents, a cream colored tabby greeting us, and his mom in her smock wandering around the adjoining kitchen. So you got a mix of hair salon and Mexican cocina (kitchen), along with the odors of both! What the heck, we are on an adventure! And the guy, who was openly gay and very funny, (sorry for the stereotype, but ALL of my good haircuts have been by gay men) really understood what I wanted. After I showed him photos of what I wanted, he said “AH!” and pretended to stick his finger in the electric socket, saying “ZZZZTTT, relámpago.” (Lightning!), and proceeded to give me a great spiky, sassy haircut.

I have to tell another funny story, at least it is funny now. Okay Ron, I know it wasn’t funny at the time…. but we can laugh about it now, right?? Ron and I were in a little Mediterranean restaurant in La Paz. A vendor came in, selling camarónes (shrimp) and pescado (fish). The shrimp were large, about 30 to a kilo, which is 2.2 pounds. BIG, beautiful, fresh, and more than all that, mostly CLEANED (They didn’t have the heads). We bought a kilo from him, as did the owner, who also bought some fish. We took them home and changed our dinner plans and I deveined the shrimp, while Ron heated up the grill and chopped some things. We made a quick marinade of chopped garlic and fresh ginger, mixed with fresh-squeezed lime juice, and olive oil. The shrimp marinated while Ron heated up the grill, and we transferred the shrimp, very delicately to a grill basket. I began preparing a salad below, while Ron went up top to put the shrimp on the grill. All of the sudden, I heard Ron go, “Oh SHIT” in a very panicked voice, followed by a long string of other choice words, which I won’t share. The grill basket had slipped off the cutting board he was carrying, right into the drink, essentially taking a dive overboard, back to Mother Ocean. Our whole meal, including the great grill basket we loved …overboard. Many feelings came up for me at that point, but what I ended up doing is laughing, because there was certainly nothing we could do about it, and getting angry at him was absurd. He was upset enough. We just had to say, “oh, well!” and think again, outside the box. What do we do for dinner now?

I also have to share one of those silly domestic discussions you have when you have been married to someone for 24 years, or probably less (!). This “discussion” was about who thinks “outside the box.” Ron said that I draw “inside the lines; you don’t think outside the box,” but at that moment, when I was cooking, I couldn’t think of a good response. I can only do so much at one time. Anyway, when I later asked what he meant, I realized he was referring to his “snacking on food” or grazing on dinner preparations, before I had can add them to the pan, or salad or whatever I was doing with them. I always get angry at him because I have planned certain ingredients and voila, there is less than what I started with! At the time he had an array of Tupperware laid around him in the “auxiliary galley” or workbench, of our dinner from the night before of orange chicken. To me the dinner was somewhat of a disaster, and to think of eating it cold, including dipping the fried chicken pieces into the cold orange sauce, sounded like yuck. But to him, it was grazing, or “drawing outside the lines.” To me, it was not having the discipline to wait for the real deal. (But of course, who am I to speak of having discipline?). I then turned to him to let him know that my hairstyle is “outside the box” in Mexico. For example, that day a woman that we had spent some time with, helping us with legal issues, said quietly to me, “I wish I could have hair like yours.” Her’s was the traditional long hair that we see on the majority of local women. She said, pointing to her neck, “then I would not have the heat here.” Indeed, if we never thought “outside the box” we probably wouldn’t have sailed to Mexico from San Francisco, and be living in another country right now!

The Legal Dance Which Goes Round and Round, and On and On …
The legal issues that we have been dealing with include trying to extend our 1-year temporary residence visas to additional 3-year temporary residence visas, and getting health insurance. The visas will allow us to not have to re-apply every year, and to eventually apply for permanent Mexican residency, while keeping our US citizenship. Why do that, you ask? Well, it allows us to stay here as long as we want, without having to check in and out of the country every 6 months. We also have certain rights that tourists might not have, and can have health insurance, for a reasonable price! We will be paying for one year of health insurance what most people in the US pay per month; actually, a lot less. So why do people continue to say that one of the reasons Mexicans enter the US illegally is for the health care benefits??? Not true! This insurance covers EVERYTHING. Let me repeat - EVERYTHING.

Well, we finally got the insurance, which was a trip in itself. We are now on Seguro Publica. It is an insurance program for those who don’t work, due to retirement or other reasons. We had to meet with someone from the attorney’s office, who took us to the hospital to apply. The woman had copies of our paperwork, including our visas and passports. The one important required document was an electric bill for a few months, showing we have been living here. Well, the marina refused to give us a copy of their bill because it was so complicated and contained all of the electricity for the whole resort. So we had to leave to get other paperwork to prove that we were living here and paying for electricity! The attorney came up with a very creative solution to this problem so when we went in the next day - bingo! - we got in the system. We still had to answer some odd questions, such as, “Do you have a CD player? Do you have a separate bedroom in the boat, do you have a refrigerator, or washing machine?” This is all to determine what you will be charged. They never asked what kind of money we bring in each month. They then weigh you (in the same room with other people around), take your blood pressure, stick your finger to draw some blood, measure your height, and take your fingerprints. That’s it. We have insurance for the next 3 years. And the total we pay each year is $76.00 each. Not per month, but per year!

Our Ongoing Close and Sometimes Perilous Relationships with Taxi Drivers
Our favorite taxi driver has been talking to us more, as our Spanish improves. The conversation used to be limited to “Buenas dias. Como estas? Bien, gracias. Hoy esta mucho calor.” (Good morning. How are you? Good, thank you. Today is very hot.” But now he is becoming quite chatty, telling us stories about certain areas of town. Not as much as we want to hear, because we want to learn much more, but more than we can understand at times. I now know about his family, where he grew up, where his adult kids live, number of grandkids, the federales (federal police have come in since the hurricane and are “policing the main drag and the beaches), and about the taxi wars here. Taxi drivers make a lot more than many others in Mexico, and there is fierce competition for serving certain areas of town.

We took the free shuttle to the big store, Mega, this week, and after shopping we had three large insulated bags, a bag of dry cat food, and a couple of smaller bags that wad up into themselves that we bought back in the states from Whole Foods Market. So clearly we were loaded down. The taxi driver outside Mega wanted to charge us an outrageous amount to get back to our marina, much more than any taxi driver we have ever had. So we tried to bargain with him, but he wouldn’t budge, so we walked away, and started to call another driver we know. As soon as that happened, he came over to us and gave us a different price. We agreed and off we went, although we didn’t think we were going to make it. His car was having great difficulty climbing a hill, because the clutch was slipping so badly that the engine kept revving way up, and then clunk, the clutch would re-engage. We were down to 5 or 10 mph. The driver was continually making all sorts of weird hand motions, including taking his hands off the wheel and clapping as the vehicle struggled up the hill. This is not a place you want to wander off the road, as there is a rock wall on one side and the Sea down below on the other. But we finally made it, and we all breathed a sigh of relief. It really seems to be the case that if you don’t want a fare, and walk away, or don’t want certain things in a market, that people will start bargaining with you. And my understanding is that you want to enter into this kind of negotiation, because if you don’t you are seen as a “easy” American, or “dumb” tourista. Bargaining allows for you to have more conversation and overall a different experience. We have also been told that the taxi drivers, at least in La Paz, include their tip when giving a price, and sometimes the tips are much bigger than others.

Cats and Kindness
Our cats have become needier and needier since the storm. Don’t quite understand why, but they have each chosen one of us to cling to, to require some attention, some petting, holding, nurturing. They are very vocal about it, and Jackson (the male coon) has begun dragging his mouse on a string, including the stick, to our cabin at night as we are lying in bed reading. He meows while carrying the mouse in his mouth, which sounds very odd and seems like it would be a challenge. Anyway, they are continuing to survive their new life in the tropics, but I mean really, what choice do they have. As temps start going down, they are both becoming more active and chasing each other around the boat more.

One of the restaurants here at the marina gave us t-shirts at dinner last week with a picture of the storm and a caption in Spanish about surviving the hurricane. Now we can truly say: “Been there, done that, and got the t-shirt.”

Finally, another sweet story about the generosity and kindness of the Mexicans here: there was an elderly woman with an open flowery umbrella walking along in front of the cathedral, while we were standing there, loaded down with our groceries one day. She saw us standing in our little corner of shade. She offered to share the umbrella with us in the heat of the day, when she could see that our shade from the cathedral was getting smaller and smaller. We were waiting for the shuttle and it was VERY hot, and she came over to us, speaking in Spanish, saying that she wanted to share. She was about 4’5” tall, and probably 90 years old; very sweet and kind to us touristas. There have definitely been other instances this month of kindness, some of which we can’t write about, as they are likely on the edge of being illegal, in other words, again outside the box.

Please note that I have added two more photo galleries since I last wrote. One is called Architecture and Sidewalk Art, and the newest is People, Pets and other stuff.

Que les vayan bien! (Go with Health! – at least I think that is correct) - Vanessa & Ron