Armeria

Shortly after my last post, I drove my rig from San Juan Cosala to Armeria. I took the toll road and had to pay 131 pesos twice in tolls. I got into Armeria in the early afternoon of the 13th. We picked up Marc’s van from the guys who had been doing some work on it. Around 9 AM the next morning we drove to Manzanillo and spent some time on the beach before heading on to the airport to pick up Marc, Denise, Catalina and Keone (Denise’s son from her prior marriage). When they arrived they were also accompanied by a friend of Marc’s, Todd, a 26 year old welding contractor.

Norma at the beach in Manzanillo

Manzanillo
Marc, Catalina and Denise at the Hotel Fenix

Catalina and Denise

Catalina, Marc, Denise and Norma

Since they arrived, I have been hanging out with them. We went to a birthday party of a friend of Norma’s at a pizza restaurant in Tecoman. Catalina got to try and break the piñata. Marc and Todd went shopping and returned with sombreros. I had been thinking of getting one myself so I returned to the place they bought theirs and got one myself. We have been doing lots of things, like going to the beach, visiting some caves near Ixtalhuacan and touring the Tortugaria to see the sea turtles where I finally got to see a crocodile.

Birthday party in Tecoman

Gary & Denise dance

Norma and Denise
Lupita combs Denise's hair

Cave entrance

Catalina with a goat



Into the cave

Gary and Grand daughter, Catalina

Lupita and Glenda

For two days we stayed in Colima at the Hotel Maria Isabel while visiting with Denise’s Grandfather and Grandmother. The Grandmother has several birds and four baby parakeets. She is a great cook and fixed a meal of enchiladas. Afterwards we played horse shoes in the park across from the Grand Parents home in Colima. We went to see her Uncle Jaime’s trained horse perform at the stables in Colima. The horse could not only do the dancing but could do a trick I had never seen before. The horse with a rider astride could kneel down and then lie on its side. After resting for a couple minutes, the horse could then stand back up with the rider still in the saddle. We went to Uncle Jaime’s Rancho about 20 minutes from Colima. He has 40 hectares of land with about 10 horses and 10 cattle.

Catalina at the Maria Isabel hotel

Denise's Grandma

Baby birds
Denise's paternal Grand Parents and Denise

Jaime on his dancing horse

Marc and Jaime on the second floor of the rancho
Carved door at Jaime's Rancho

Jaime feeds a colt

Catalina’s aunt and Denise’s sister, Glenda is spending the Christmas holiday with her mother, Norma. Glenda, 22 lives in Colima where she is attending college. So Catalina is the star of the family with doting parents, Grandmother, Grandfather, aunts, uncles and Great Grand Parents.

Another day we drove closer to the volcano to go to a Suchitlan restaurant that was very nice and had some exotic foods like rabbit and quail on the menu. After the meal we drove higher on the volcano to visit another 40 hectares of Jaime’s property in the pines. On the way the Vulcan de Colima had a small eruption of smoke which was kind of exciting. Jaime has about 15 cattle on this piece of land. Before I saw it, I heard that Jaime wants to sell this land and I thought I might be interested in buying it. It is a nice piece of land with a spring at a higher elevation to escape the heat but the land is too remote, the road is in poor condition and the volcano is active.

The feast in Suchitlan

Spider

Taqueria in the trees
Volcano spewing smoke

Jaime's mountain land
Some of Jaime's mountain herd

Grandma climbs a hill

Todd, Marc and Denise

One day we got up at 5 AM and drove to Manzanillo for a fishing trip. Keone caught a large mackerel and Todd caught a 9 foot sailfish which we released.

Last Saturday, Todd caught the plane in Manzanillo to Los Angeles.

Manzanillo fishing trip

Keone's fish

One day we visited another relative, Raul’s farm where he has a horse, goats and he raises fighting cocks.

One of Raul's fighting cocks

Denise dancing at the new house

Altar in the new house

Lupita, Catalina and Ramona in the new house

We had a family Christmas Eve party at Norma’s house. We had a lot of good food with Glenda cooking paella made with scallops, shrimp and crab.

Lupita, Glenda, Denise, Catalina and Norma on Christmas Eve

When Marc and Denise first saw the new house they were happy. Marc is a demanding building contractor. It didn’t take him long to find problems with the new house. He told the crew to stop working and removed Norma from being involved with the building of the new house. They went ahead and moved into the new house the Mexican way (half finished). The swimming pool is finished and has been a welcome source of relief on the warm days here. Electricity has been turned on with a few temporary lights and two outlets. There are no windows or doors installed but with high walls and wrought iron gates the place is pretty secure. A couple faucets are functioning but no fixtures like the showers, sinks or toilets are installed. You need good aiming to hit the sewage pipe in the bathroom near the swimming pool and then flush with a bucket of water.

I moved my rig from being parked in front of Norma’s house to in front of Casa de Schroeder. I now have electricity for the rig and the satellite dish is set up on the second floor deck with the cables snaked through the wrought iron. It seems that I will be staying here for awhile house sitting and supervising the workers after Marc and Denise return to Solana Beach, California in a couple weeks. The work on the house re-starts tomorrow.