Making Hay While the Sun Shines

Posted on January 26, 2012 by Katalina
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God, it’s beautiful here. I live in a near constant state of awe at the magnificence of the jungle and the sea, at the bustle of boats and people and energy that permeates this small village.

This house is closer to the water than any other I’ve lived in here, and the sound of the sea is sometimes deafening. This usually happens at night, it is the music of my dreams, and even when it’s really rough and waves are crashing below me, I feel peaceful in ways I find difficult to define.

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While I was busy making plans about how it would be living here, the Universe was laughing at me and cooking up surprises. My intention was to get to work right away after I moved in; doing paid writing work, hiking and swimming, visiting with friends, getting to work on the novel I started years ago that I want to rewrite, blogging more.

I’ve done all those things to some degree, but then Hurricane Robert stormed into my life. He will leave in the spring, as will many other old friends who only stay for part of the year. If I’m going to enjoy all this, I have to do it now. By June or July there will hardly be gringos left until after the rains end in October.

So instead of working as many hours as I’d planned, I’ve been going to dinners and parties, breakfasts and swims, musical events and dances. This week I’ll be trying my hand at croquet practice to see how bad an idea it is to perhaps enter the annual tournament next month. There have been tango lessons promised – Yikes! This is both exciting and terrifying – I’m not very graceful.

Walked upriver to El Manguito this morning to have breakfast on the terrace overlooking the Rio Tuito. (Spaced out the food photographs again!) This flock of birds included two juvenile great blue herons and a very macho young egret who rushed at all the other birds, waving his crest and taunting them.

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On the way home I caught these planters in the village made of old, worn out soccer balls.

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All in all, I’m pleased with my progress, even if I’m not working quite as many hours as planned. After 3 weeks I can finally say Yelapa feels like home again. I’ve made peace with the vagueries of the house, and I’m very, very glad I’m here.

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Posted in Living in Mexico, Puerto Vallarta, The Jungle, The Sea, Traveling in Mexico, Yelapa | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Mechanics of Living in the Jungle

Posted on January 23, 2012 by Katalina

Oh boy, I forgot how complicated it can be living here. My water heater is a nightmare, and after almost 3 weeks of screwing around with it, I can tell you that the only workable solution is for me to buy a new one and pay to have it brought here and installed. Keep in mind that the coastal tropical climate is extremely corrosive, and I live right on the water. I’ll have to replace all this stuff fairly regularly.

Also, all the new locks I bought last week are the wrong size, so I am armed with a long list of detailed information about where to obtain the right kind, as well as receipts and various pieces of hardware I hope the original store will take back.

I also need a new toilet seat (wooden, cracked and a pincher), and my cell phone battery is dying – it won’t hold a charge or receive much in the way of signal. That’s the cell phone, not the toilet seat.

Other things about the bathroom drive me nuts. There is no shower pan or surround in my bathroom, when I do manage to get a few minutes of hot water, it goes all over the bathroom floor, which never seems to dry, causing me to track muddy footprints all over the rest of the house. So I have to build a shower surround too.

Since I don’t have a mechanical bone in my body, so all this is very challenging and involves having to hire various people who may or may not ever show up.

And to top it all off, after spending practically everything I had on moving, the US government has screwed up and not deposited my first social security check as promised. This means I have to go to Vallarta tomorrow and use a friend’s Vonage phone and call both Social Security and my bank. Oh joy, a day of sitting on hold.

On the plus side, it’s a beautiful sunny day. I’ve also been sleeping really well, with a window open and a stiff offshore breeze blowing down the river canyon at night bringing the scent of night blooming flowers. Cool and lovely. Cold actually, for a couple of hours in the morning. These will be lovely memories to carry into the hot summer months.

And here’s another kicker for you – a really interesting man, a writer and photographer with a ton of great stories and a wonderful sense of humor, has been calling on me. Oh lord, that sounds so old fashioned. But folks, this old gringa has been on the shelf, by choice, for quite a few years, so it’s all a bit overwhelming. I’m not taking any bets on where it will go, but I like him, and that’s a lot farther than I’ve been willing to go for the last 14 years.

Did I mention he’s good looking? Jeez. I guess it was a good idea moving out of that gay neighborhood in PV. (“I feel alive again, they’re lettin’ me drive again!” — from the movie Steelyard Blues)

So I’ll be back in a few days, hopefully reassured about funds and hardware.

Posted in Living in Mexico, Puerto Vallarta, The Jungle, Yelapa | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Sweet Spot Surprises Me

Posted on January 20, 2012 by Katalina
The Sweet Spot

Here is the Sweet Spot – at the table in the corner by the far window. Interestingly, it is not the computer table I spent so much time, hassle and money to procure and set up here.

This surprises me. All the technology I brought – buying it, learning to use it, setting it up just so, transporting it to Puerto Vallarta on a plane, putting it on a panga and ferrying it to Yelapa, setting it up here, buying even more more stuff to make it work here, and, finally, buying half a dozen new locks to protect it – how ironic that after all this I feel best writing with a pad and a pen at that little table by the window.

George Carlin would laugh at me.

I have been so thoroughly programmed to get up and start working early in the morning, it’s a hard habit to break. I find that if I start my day slowly – coffee, prayer and meditation, some time on the terrace with my nose in the wind scoping out the sea and sky, then more coffee and writing at the sweet spot – well, that’s a really fine way to begin the day. Hopefully my boss will learn to accept that I’m sending my work in a bit later. She is very supportive, so I think it will work.

Then after a couple hours of work (researching, translating, writing, sending it all off), I can fix and eat breakfast. By them I’m really hungry, so the enjoyment factor is high.

After all this a hot shower (if I’m lucky – more on this later, I don’t want to complain today), a few household chores, and off somewhere to walk and enjoy the sights and sounds of this bustling little village and it’s people. Like breakfast at the town waterfall restaurant with friends.

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I’ve really been falling down on the job as a food photographer, have enjoyed many great meals at wonderful little local restaurants without remembering to take pictures. I’ve got to work on that! This is a photo of some huge jungle bees in a flower at the Eclipse Cafe (where I enjoyed yet another great meal I forgot to capture).

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I find the most important thing for me to remember is to go slow. I got very amped living in the big city, and I don’t want to be like that any more. The other day I caught myself standing at the counter of an old friend’s store, asking her for a quarter kilo of tortillas before I even said hello or asked her how she is doing. Not good! This is a small, intimate community, not the big city. I want to live a life here in which I am more present, more engaged. How sad that this doesn’t come naturally. I hope, I get better at it day by day.

Posted in Living in Mexico, Puerto Vallarta, Traveling in Mexico, Yelapa | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Hammock Dreams

Posted on January 14, 2012 by Katalina

Casa America is coming along nicely.  My precious friend Pegge loaned me a beautiful hammock which now graces the terrace. I must learn to use it a bit more. I dream of the day when I realize I can just take a siesta in the hammock for more than 10 minutes.

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I am  having a surprisingly hard time adjusting to living here again.  I haven’t found the sweet spot yet, though it’s coming closer, I can feel it.  It will take time to slow down to the pace of village life. In Vallarta, pretty much all I did was work, hoof it all over town doing errands, swim laps in the pool and collapse in by myself in my apartment watching a bit too much TV.

I haven’t talked about it much, but I’ve worked very hard to establish myself as a writer and journalist here.  Please don’t be impressed – I’m an absolute fledgling at this. But I have managed to make it here for two and a half years, all the way through to the commencement of my social security this month. Yippee! In theory, now I can work and worry less.

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It’s so much harder to relax and enjoy life here than I thought it would be.  I’m so goal oriented, regimented in my habits.  I want to be in bed at night early with a book, no later than 9:30, and I usually get up at dawn.  That was OK in Vallarta, but it doesn’t work very well in Yelapa, where the high season nightlife is in full swing.  So far I’ve turned down parties, gatherings, dinners and jam sessions, poker games and art openings. There has been something to do every night since I got here. I did go out two nights, to a Yacht Club disco and an evening of music and dinner at Gloria’s Restaurant.

I feel guilty as heck for turning down all these invitations.  I haven’t gotten to see much of these old friends in recent years.  But I need to ease into it, the potentially overwhelming whirlpool of Yelapa social life.

In the meantime the view from my terrace is endlessly entertaining.

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Posted in Living in Mexico, Puerto Vallarta, The Jungle, The Sea, Yelapa | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

Interesting Times & Orbs

Posted on January 9, 2012 by Katalina

Blessings and curses are associated with living in interesting times, and I’ve had a bit of both lately.  But the move went better than imagined, and I keep asking myself why I made it more stressful than it needed to be.  I was afraid I had too much stuff for both my friends’ pickup truck and the panga.

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As you can see, I needn’t have worried.

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The sky was blue and the sea calm, and I arrived in Yelapa smiling.

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Casa America is adorable, and quite a modern, well built house for Yelapa, with the exception of the bathroom.  I have not made peace with it yet!  Nor the hot water heater!

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In my somewhat frenetic state I managed to get a lot of the house put together the first afternoon and evening, and then sat on the terrace enjoying the view from my terrace.

 

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I didn’t intend to write about the orbs again so soon, but when I downloaded the photos from my first night here, there they were again.  I don’t know what in the heck they are; so people say they are the result of moisture in the air.  Other people believe they are some kind of entities – all I know for sure is that I only get them in my photos in Yelapa. (Click on the photo to see it in a larger format.) The larger one is not the moon, it’s an orb.

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This is the almost full moon through the clouds.  Speaking of which, it has been very cold and cloudy for the last couple of days.  In the mornings, when I crawl out of my warm and comfortable bed, I put on flannel pajamas, a jacket, shoes and socks, reminding myself to enjoy this weather, which will only last a couple of months before the heat returns with a vengeance.  For me, that is the big question about this move.  How will I do without air conditioning which has kept my comfortable the last three summers in Vallarta?

The next morning was sunny and beautiful, and on my way home from a walk I took this shot of my house from a hill on the other side of the village.  It’s the little house with orange trim on stilts on the other side of the pier.

 

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Yelapa is such a bustling place now.  There have been many changes here in the years since I last lived here, and yet some things remain the same.  Yelapa is all about the boats.  The pangas that bring tourists, hence money, into the village, cargo of all kinds, and provide food.  There is a fishing coop located beneath my house, men I have known for many years, so I get to watch them come and go each day, see what they have caught, and buy fish.  I delight in all this.

 

My first full moon in this house, accompanied by a particularly bright orb.  I wonder what the next one will bring, how much different I will feel by then.  It is quite an adjustment living here again, after two and a half years in the city.  Vamos aver.

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Posted in Living in Mexico, Puerto Vallarta, The Jungle, The Sea, Yelapa | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments