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| Gino's Panorama photo from our balcony |
She loooves a sunset stroll around our house area, walking side by side but occasionally she disappears from my view in the high dried out grass, until I see her leap over some tall grass, when we walk towards the house again she starts happily hopping around, too cute. She loves the balcony and watches everything intently so I think she will like being on the boat, at least we hope she will.
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About the boat, Paradise is still in the
yard, but the intense summer heat prevented Sid from working into the
afternoon, he had to call it quits at 11am already and to make up he would
leave the house at 5.30am. After 11 he then worked in or under the house
sanding and varnishing any pieces that could be taken off the boat including
the steering wheel. The wheel he took down to bare wood an even took the brass
hub off and polished it. What a superb job, it looks like knew. Guess one more
thing to start polishing again on the boat LOL.
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| Even the cap matches |
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| Sid put epoxy resin on the table it looks so good |
So boat work is going slow, but little
by little Paradise is looking better and better.
Sid had a little mishap, one screw on
the handrail on the dodger broke loose, corrosion, Sid fell backwards and down
the ladder but luckily his leg hung up in the ladder he was practically
vertically hanging and it took him quite a bit to pull himself back up. I tell
you this guy has more lives than a cat. A scraped shin and a sore back for a
few days, but never quit work, what a guy.
The tropics truly is very rough on anything. Even our bow pulpit had enough corrosion we decided to have it all replaced also in a thicker stainless steel. The one and only guy here to go to for this job is Luis, he made us a new bow pulpit and what a beautiful job he did. It took Sid a few days to get that back up. It looks great. I got my freedom seat back, yeah! And now we are seriously thinking about replacing out life line into a solid stainless steel one, that surely would look wonderful and be so much stronger. Let see what Christmas will bring us.
I finished sewing the bimini and dodger windoI finished sewing the bimini and dodger windows plus covers to protect the strata glass from the intense Mexican sun. Well and then I ran out of Sunbrella, luckily this time there was not a 3 months wait to get it imported, the fabric arrived within 2 weeks. There are still a few projects to sew, but most are when we are back on the boat. So I found some other projects and recovered the ugly, dirty dining room table chairs. Might as well enjoy it as well and not just the future renters LOL.
We are still amazed how little rain we got during this hurricane season. I don’t think we counted more than 5 days in all the 5 months. 2 rain falls were pretty biblical and the dirt road in front of the house had a river trench which makes it now very bumpy to drive in/out the car port and down the drive way.
The first heavy down pour Sid had just
finished a project and was glad he was able to cover the cockpit again.
Wellllll… a few days later when he opened the bilge hatch, he had a little
surprise. Seems like Paradise tried to commit suicide by drowning on land. The
bilge was all the way up to the bottom of the new batteries filled with water,
and due to the oil leak in the transmission , the bilge was covered with it. It
took Sid a while to clean it up. He also figured out where the water was coming
in and put some plastic over that lazaret hatch and he installed another bilge
pump. Well, that didn’t quite work, as the next rain brought some more water
into the bilge. Bilge pump for some reason didn’t work either, so more work for
Sid, at least the bilge was clean already.
2 weeks later another rain storm hit this one came with the hurricane Nora that luckily didn’t quite make it up here but we did get a lot of rain and some wind and again the boat tried to sink on land, this time almost to the top of the batteries. Obviously the bilge pumps didn’t work again. Well that is now fixed!!! We had another rainstorm and we are safe from drowning on land. Since then we had nothing but sunshine again. I have to say the rainy season up here is pretty dry along the coast. Inland is an entire different story and entertains us with incredible lightning shows.
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| Just to get an idea where we are |
With the high humidity and some of the
rain we had the dusty, barren desert turned into a green lush flower garden,
even the mountain tops turned green, what a pleasant change of scenery. And the
wild flowers growing in front of the house, spoiled me with beautiful flower
bouquets which I enhanced with wonderfully scented Frangipani flowers from the
tree in our garden. Amazing though how people that walk by our house every day
never even noticed the beautiful flowers Mother Nature produced for us to
enjoy, until I brought it to their attention.
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| It's eatable |
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| Our house s across from this bay |
With the humidity and especially rain came mosquitos and not just that, Sid keeps finding Black Widows all round every single boat in the marina, yickes! I wondered if they would go up and inside the boat, but Sid ensured me that is not happening, I sure hope so. But then one day he showed me a video of a spider he thought was a tarantula that had snuck into the cockpit and was wandering around in his tool bag. When I saw it 2 spiders came to mind Wolf spider and brown recluse, but which one is it. After researching the internet we found that wolf spider is smaller and the brown recluse even smaller than this monster. Our visitor was a crab spider, they do bite but are no venomous. They are loners and the females carry the eggs with her, good thing, don’t like any spider eggs on my boat, and they do like to go indoor, questioning if we may have some inside. Sid again assured me that they are not inside the boat. The next day I had to pick something up at the boat and as I stepped into the cockpit Sid showed me a Ziploc bag with yet another Crab Spider still alive. He also found this one in the cockpit, Sid are you sure they are not in the boat?!!! So much for being loners as well.
By the way we found some black widows around the house as well and at our neighbors, luckily none inside.
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| Black Widow eggs |
My neighbor Barbara was flying to
Sacramento so I offered to go with her and Roger to Hermosillo and make sure
she gets checked in as she does not speak any Spanish. On our 1 ½ hour drive
back Roger pulled over on the freeway to see what all the moving critters on
the right shoulder were. Locust, lots and lots of locust for at least 25 miles,
it was amazing, never seen anything like this. Having watched Naked and afraid,
I thought: hmmm heard they taste good roasted! But then the thought of picking
one up and it would start moving in my hand, I wasn’t up to do that much
screaming.
My niece Stefania surprised me with a
Skype call. She told me that she is organizing a belated BD party for my
brother Gino when he returns from his yearly Italian Vacation. He turned 60 so
she organized a small dinner party at a restaurant for him and asked if I would
send a photo of the two of us and a few words with it as she create a BD book
for him. Not just that my little brother Marco turned 55 on September 11 so she
organized a combined party for both with about 30 guests, for that she asked if
I would play a song when they call. Knowing how the connection can be and our 9
hour time difference I decided to write a song or rather change the lyrics to a
song. I had just learned of the “Trip around the Sun” song by Jimmy Buffet and
it gave me the idea of this song. Unfortunately it’s in German, but I wrote
about our childhood and that with both of them coming into my life our trip
around the sun begun. (I wrote the lyrics to one of Jimmy Buffet’s song “Trip
around the sun”. I also wrote a funny over the hill poem to which Stefania
bought a few items, like Fixodent, depends, fleet enema, I think you get the
picture. Unfortunately Marco didn’t make it to the party, but Gino had a good
time and I was on zoom with them for the old age poem. Gino loved the song and
about 2 weeks after his Birthday my sister in law Anna asked me where Gino
would fly into for a visit!!! He has so much vacation that Anna told him to
come visit, thank you Anne. All I got from my little brother after I sent him
the song was “Thanks”.
The water here is not potable, has lots
of metals and calcium in it and who knows what else. I used to schlepp big
heavy jugs up the dirt road to the house. Then I realized there is a water
truck delivering them whenever we need a bottle. When Rudolfo delivered the
bottles for the first time, he noticed the guitars in the living room and
wanted to know if my husband plays, when I told him I am playing he pulled a
guitar pick out of his wallet so I gave him one of my guitars and he started
playing. Funny, every time I order water now I call him I tell him it was time
to play guitar. One day he started playing Bamba la Bamba, I couldn’t help but
bring my harmonica out and omg we jammed. Fun guy. But I found out that he
double charged us for the bottles and our neighbor even quadruple so I
questioned him on it. He fessed up and until the end of the year he is
delivering our water for free. So we still play guitar and have him deliver the
water for free for now LOL. I love his honesty about his dishonesty LOL.
You know we have been so busy so that we
just stay home and relax in the evening. But when the Manuelito’s Band started
up again at JJ’s, after the long summer heat break, so I play again every
Tuesday during their break. And right down from our balcony, I’ve been
listening for months to this incredible guitar player with a bausa nova rhythm
I finally went down there to see him live. Adam we had met at Tortugas 2 months back was sitting there playing a
percussion cajon (just out of curiosity I looked up the history of the Cajon: https://rolandcorp.com.au/blog/what-is-a-cajon, I had no idea). Anyway Adam told the lead singer I
played the guitar and he invited me to play a song so I’ve been playing a few
songs on Wednesday, it’s awesome to have rhythm accompanying my songs.
Not having seen a sunset since we
arrived here I insisted we go see one, change the pace a little. We grabbed a
couple cocktails and headed off into the sunset. Well not quite, I realized I
needed to get gas, as soon as the car hits ¼ tank, when you turn around the
corner the engine shuts off and also blocks the brakes. So we had a mad dash to
the gas station then all the way back and over the hill towards Playa Blanca.
Well, we got to see a partial sunset between trees and buildings, so drove to a
beautiful cliff by Tetakawi sat on our beach chairs and enjoyed the view of the
calm ocean and hungry Pelicans feeding.
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| View from the Lookout |
We eventually did this trip again, this time I remembered there was a view point, a huge terrace overlooking several bays that would be the perfect sunset spot. It sure would be if the sun would not go down behind the hill blocking it, we laughed so hard and of course rushed back to the car and drove back to where we came from and as soon as we spotted the sunset I pulled over slammed the breaks and we jumped out of the car, grabbed our cocktails and toasted to a sunset with made just on time LOL.
Lupita is the care taker of the owner’s properties that are for rent and we became pretty good friends. As summers here are too hot to go walks, even in the early hours Lupita let me use the condo pool to do my noodeling aerobics and of course I invited Lupita to join me. We were in the pool every morning at 7 with her sister in law Lupita joining us. We had so much fun and it is really great exercise. Unfortunately it only lasted a little over one month and the water started getting so cold we had to quit, bummer.
Yes the weather has gotten cooler fast,
faster than I had anticipated and now beging of November the nights are getting
chilly, I imagine in a couple of weeks we are back to the freezing our butts
off.
But let me go back to my sister in law sending Gino on vacation with us. She could have not chosen a better time than middle of October.
We had such a great time but it was a
short 10 days, which went by way too fast. I had to pick him up in Hermosillo
which is a 1 ½ hour drive, all he got to see on his way home was desert and
desert.
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| Gino brought us some flag for Kanton Thurgau, were we are from, and Sid's is the first Swiss flag from 1201 |
Every day I had something planned. We took him on his first day to the beach down by our house and he sipped on his very first Margarita, or was it two LOL. After a well-deserved sleep from his long trip we rested at home and had dinner at JJ’s watching the Manuelito’s and I played a few songs as well. I think Gino had a fun night.
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Day 3 unfortunately
the car needed new tires, not just was the thread gone, but it also had huge cracks in, so Gino came with me to get
new ones, the bonus was he got to see Guaymas and I also took him to the Pearl
farm, that cultivate black pearls. Unfortunately they don’t make beautiful
jewelry anymore just simple stuff, I imagine the pandemic put a halt on it as
well. But Gino enjoyed it anyway.
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| Gino loved these JD's & Soda, so do we. |
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| What beautiful horse |
Gino did a great sunset video:
We always wanted to go to the Nacapule
waterfall but heard in October is a better time as it is not so brutally hot,
so we saved it for Gino’s visit.
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| This is the waterfall! |
Next to the where the waterfall can be
was a good size cave, we ventured in to it. I went back out and told Gino he
had to go in, it’s an awesome cave. Well Sid had his flashlight and found a
deep crevasse that lead into yet another big cave, Gino found a bat and took a
good picture of it, wow.
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| View from inside the cave |
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| Gino in Cave |
We followed other paths and did find
some well waters coming right out the rocks. Very beautiful area, and it was a
good hike, Sid was sore for a few days.
Between San Carlos and Guaymas along the
beach rout there is a Dolphin Aquarium. The dolphins are a big part for helping
handicapped kids, plus you can schedule to interact with the dolphins with a
petting session or swim with them. All this time we were here I never saw
anybody there, so when I finally saw a couple cars I drove to the entrance and
inquired if they were open and asked about swimming with the dolphins. The park
would open in 2 week and make an appointment soon as it fills up. Perfect
timing the Aquarium just opened and I scheduled swimming with the dolphins for
us, my Birthday present for Sid and Gino. Gino did not know what was in store
for him but oh man what an unforgettable adventure this was. We definitely will
do this again and again. Imagine all the places we have been to with aquariums
they wanted at least 180 dollar per person. Here it’s 65, plus of course you
spend an extra 100 for the photos, but those we were able to share.
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One of our outings took us to the La
Manga beach and beyond. We heard there was some good snorkeling back there, but
as soon as we stuck our feet into the water we developed an instant ice cream
headache in our toes, the water was already too cold. But the Seafood
Restaurant in La Manga made up for it and spoiled us with fresh oysters,
chocolate clams, scallops, shrimp and, and, and it was delish. Gino sure
enjoyed it.
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| Fisch Chicharon |
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| Best clams ever Chocolates |
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| raw Scallops and Avocado Tower |
We also took Gino up to the outlook at
Marrian’s, brought our chairs along with
of course a cocktail or two and watched the sun disappear behind Tetakawi. On
our way back, Sid twisted his ankle on one of the sharp rocks, tumbled and
started rolling over those sharp rocks. Luckily parachute jumping in the
Military he learned to roll and it’s now an automatic reaction for him.
Nerveless both his knees and one elbow was bloody and his ribs hurt. He was a
sore puppy for the last 2 months and still (so boat work was delayed).
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| Gino's wife Anna wanted a few photos of the two of us |
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| So we did |
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| A few days later we sent her the good ones LOL |
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| Marrian's beautiful property with the greenery |
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| View from Marrian's house |
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| View of her Casita from the house and behind the palms the view point we went |
One evening I invited our yard neighbors to the house for a fun BBQ dinner and for Gino to get to talk some German, one couple is from Switzerland the other from Austria. It was a fun evening.
Down by the beach from us is a public center for parties, wedding, etc. and each party showers us with incredible fireworks. Gino got to see one on Friday and on Saturday 3.
I also hired a fishing boat trip for 3 hours and invited Lupita and Silvino to join us. We had a great time and Gino that hasn’t fished in 2 decades and only from lake shores, other than the 1 fish on the beach that got off his hook, he had a blast. We caught 2 sierra plus lots of Bonita. It was a fun day.
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| Lupita caught the first one |
On his last day, I took him back to La Manga and to the wonderful Restaurant to indulge in pulpo and more clams, man was it good. Poor Sid stayed home nursing his still very sore ribs.
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| by the outlook place |
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| These puppies just came out of the pot and are ready to be grilled. Couldn't resist and order one |
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| I am not an octopus fan, but wow was it good. Will order it again that's for sure |
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| We ordered 1 dozen but got an extra dozen. |
A few other photos of his vitis:
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| Mexova cheese fondue |
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| This micro brewery served different flavored beer in a sample board, my favorite the Coffee beer yum |
Gino was lucky with the weather, right
after he left the nights were getting a lot cooler.
Miss Kitty AKA Little Shit! I heard a scratch noise on the balcony, looked outside, saw the humming bird feeder, she just was sitting under, swinging, but no cat. Jumped up, ran out to patio but no cat, oh no, she couldn’t have fallen off the balcony. Looked down and no cat, so I ran down below hoping not to find an injured cat, no cat. So went back into the house and there she was by the window, plus trapped along the window was a little hummingbird. I immediately picked it up and placed it in my hand, thank God it was still alive and no blood, so I put it on a paper towel in a bowl and back out the balcony into the sun, hoping it would make it. Of course I locked the cat in, she was grounded. About 20 minutes later Sid told me the bird had left. So far I have not seen the bird return, but then would you, I wouldn’t. Obviously this wasn’t her first time catching one. I found some fuzz on the carpet away from the window, wondering what it was then realizing the tiny feathers of the poor little hummingbird. That explains the fuzz I saw days prior on the patio floor, wondering what it was as I have never seen it before. Mystery solved. Sid hung the line with the feeder higher up and propped it up with a broom stick and the other PVC pipe.
For a long time we also had bats feeding off the hummingbird feeders, what a mess they leave. We found 1 bat on the floor dead one morning, not from the cat. Also found one dead dangling in the door screen. But one evening I had the door slightly open for Miss Kitty, when I heard something fall on the balcony. Of course I went to investigate and what I saw was a bat wings stretched out on the floor and the mop handle on top of one wing and my cat launching at the poor bat. I grabbed her through her over my shoulder into the house, closed the screen slightly and took the broom off, slamming the screen shut, but the bat was faster in escaping than me closing the screen, luckily the bat took off into the sky. Probably never to return either.
She was barely back on the patio she
went for the birds again, although it’s a little too high but she’s trying
anyway, so I squirted her with water. Oh she did not like that, especially
followed with NO! NO!NO! She disappeared under the bed. About 20 minutes later
she came running to me meowing like crazy as if to say I’m sorry I’m sorry. So
I played with her for a little bit. And there she went right back on the patio
terrorizing the hummers, more water………
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| Sitting on my Basil and hiding from the Hummers behind the Rosemary |
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| On one of our walks |
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| The cat with the most toys |
The birds love to be hire up and the
line is sturdier so now they are several at a time not just one at a time
sitting there and relaxing, to kewl, just beautiful little birds.
Leave it up to Sid to do some Catfishing:
I washed the throw rug in the kitchen and let it dry on the wall in front of the house. As it wasn’t dry yet, I left it out overnight and around 10 am I checked to see if it was dry but there was still moist on the wall so I flipped the carpet over and to my surprise a reddish brown scorpion was sitting on top now. Yikes, I ran inside to get my camera, yep now days no one screams anymore but runs for the camera to record it, I am guilty of that. Well the little scorpion was gone when I returned. Sid was running behind me with a can of bug juice. I couldn’t find the critter anywhere so figured it crawled under the carpet again to hide. Sure enough, I flipped the rug this time on the floor and there is was taking a B-line towards my feed, it literally chased me down. I managed a few photos and a film then Sid sprayed it. That spray did not do much to it, so I smashed it with my flip flop. Was I lucky I didn’t just pull it over my arm as I usually do. Would have been a bad surprise!
Sid’s ribs are slowly mending and after
1 month he finally went back to the boat but he was limited in what he could
do. There is still a bunch of jobs to be done and we extended the house rental
once more to end of March.
We just celebrated a quiet Thanksgiving with our neighbor Roger (wife if in Sacramento) and a single hander KennyBobyJack. It was fun cooking a turkey which was my second ever. House is all decorated for Xmas, my favorite time of the year.
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| Yeah, Frosty didn't listen again, though North Mexico is cool enough for him, but..... |
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| Kitchen window |
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| Thanksgiving with KennyBobyJack |
Unfortunately my girlfriend Rita and her
hubby Miguel had to cancel their Christmas Vacation with us. She almost lost
her Spanish school in Malaga Spain but luckily managed to survive it and
relocate her school and is finally having students again. But we will celebrate
a joint Christmas next year.
Christmas Cookie Baking day was huge fun this year, I invited Lupita, Lupita and Marrian to make Swiss Christmas Cookies. We had a fun day with bubbly a yummy lunch and nothing but baking, baking, baking. At 5:30 the hubbies came and BBQ for us. Sure was a fun day.
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From left to right Lupita, Marrian and Lupit that is the caretaker of our house |
A couple days later I baked some more cookies for everybody we know here:
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| Cocos Almond Macroons |
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| Cinnamon Stars |
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| Brunsli (Brownies) |
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| Maiaenderli (Milans) |
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| Secret is to let the cookies dry at least over night before baking |
If anybody is interested in her school: https://www.instituto-andalusi.com/# I was there for 6 weeks and absolutely loved it.
Classes are small, teachers very professional, the apartments right on the
beach in El Palo about 20 min bus ride to Malaga Centro. And most of all Rita
is the kindest host and her hubby an incredible chef, my favorite is his
paella, oh did we get spoiled.
Talking about having had nothing but sun, but the day after Thanksgiving we had a pretty good rain and some thunder and lightning, very unusual for this time of the year. Talking about rain, last year when we hauled out on December 10th we hadn’t seen any rain in months and out of all it had to rain that day. Guess what, this year it did the same it rained through the night into the early hours on the 10th, what are the chances of that.
So here we are, still in our beautiful rental house, still lots of boat and sewing projects and loving San Carlos. What a jewel of a place. It’s been a wonderful year, full of hard work but we surely don’t miss out on fun stuff, that’s for sure. We do miss the boat and are looking forward to moving back and do what we do best, cruising, but at the same time we are enjoying living in this incredible house. Actually we are talking about finding 2 other couples to split the rent and use it as a vacation home. We will see.
As the year ends, we wish you all a Happy Holiday Season, Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukah, Happy New Year and may the world’s governments give us our human rights and freedom of speech back and let us live our life as we used to.
Hope this finds you all in good health
and spirit in these insane times.
Sid and Manuela
A few or a lot more photos:
The sunrises an sunset are always spectacular, we get up way before the sunrises just so we don't miss any LOL
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| Sunrise from our neighbor's car porch |
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| A kewl rain cloud |
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| Our beach |
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| We discovered a new Seafood restaurant in Guyamas |
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| This is called Sarandeado, entire fish smoke grilled and topped with shrimp, delishes, the above is Fish Chicharon |
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| My new creation, Pesto Gordon Bleu Chicken. Inside the chicken breast is rubbed with Sam's Club filled with cheese. Use toothpicks to keep it closed. Then I rubbed the breast with more pesto and crusted it with, also Sam's Club, fresh grated Parmesan, then pan fried on low at first and at the end to get parmesan crispy on higher heat. It's a little tricky to keep the cheese from sticking before turning over, low heat is important at first to get the breast completely cooked. It's is so delish. |
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| This is my favorite coconut stuffed ceviche, with scallops, just down the road from the house |
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| My first attempt for beef wellington is now on the menu, I substitute mashed potatoes with 1 cauliflower, 2 to 3 carrots and 1 potato. Steam the cauliflower so they don't retain water, the carrots and potato can be cooked in water. I add lots of butter and depending on the consistency no milk but I always add nutmeg |
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| Swiss Onion Pie and Swiss Spinach Pie. Unfortunately I can't get Gruyere here so instead I started using 1/2 pack of Swiss Cheese Fondue, it actually is better than with the Gruyere. |
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| 4th of July Party at our neighbors car porch, Roger, Barbara, Gordon and Ruth |
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