Un Frenesí de Actividad

The one on the right is the scary one!

The past month flew by in a whirl and immediately after Independence Day on the 16th, red, white and green decorations were replaced by Dia de Muertos decorations. Witches, ghosts, pumpkins and more Halloween decorations are also available in several stores. Here in Mexico, there’s always a reason for a party, and Halloween and Dia de Muertos (2nd of November) is a great way of extending both holidays. Skulls and skeletons are shared by both holidays, but the meanings and ways of celebrating are very different.

We are enjoying an extremely social time with several friends. Our anniversary and my birthday fall in September, and since I had Spanish class on both dates, I baked a coffee cake and chocolate chip cookies to share with classmates. Our teacher sang the Mexican birthday song to me, and it went on forever. It seems the full version goes on for about 20 verses, but he only sang the first few.

Our anniversary lunch was a traditional meal for two at a restaurant overlooking the Malecon. Rather than reminiscing, we spent part of the afternoon trying to come up with costume ideas for a party that night that while having lunch we’d just decided to attend. Some friends were hosting a pizza and movie night with a showing of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.  We were to come in costume which would be judged for prizes of 30 pesos (all of US $2). At such short notice I couldn't come up with anything other than jeans, so we focused on Steve’s costume. Not having a brown serape that we could think of, I dug out a scarf (later we found a blanket that would have been perfect). Both of us combed the Internet for mustache templates – yes, the pun is intended and with our creative juices flowing, Steve worked on his mustache. I found some “Hollywood tape” to hold it on (it’s what the stars use to hold their various clothes into strategic place) and made him a cigar from some brown paper from my card making supplies.

You can't miss "The Bad" one in the middle

We were attaching the mustache and scarf at the last minute as we got off the elevator to arrive at the party. When Steve walked into the room with his over the top mustache and cigar everyone broke into fits of hysteria – partly because of the costume but also because it’s the opposite of Steve’s personality. It was no contest as he won the prize as “The Bad”.

On my birthday, we went to dinner at a restaurant on a hill overlooking the bay. It was a beautiful evening with great lighting, great food and the church bells ringing in the distance. The grand finale for our meal was Mexican coffee made and served with a flourish! 

Flaming Mexican coffee

Mexican birthday cake

Two days later we met a group of people called the Friday Foodies. It’s a group that meets at a different restaurant each Friday for dinner. Our Foodies group is a fantastic way to get to know people and sample some restaurants so we can decide where to go back. The Foodies gave me a cake while the waiters sang happy birthday to me and this time it was the English version. The lights went out for a while due to one of our monsoons, and when it came time to leave, it was still pouring. Since we had no umbrella, we stayed on with a couple of friends and had another drink until the rain slowed to a drizzle.

When do we get to the tasting?

A couple of days later we joined in a “Mystery Tour” with a couple of friends and had an entertaining evening. When we booked it, we had no idea what was going to happen but it was loads of fun. It didn’t hurt that the organizers provided unlimited drinks on the coach. We started with a tequila tasting and were given samples while being told all about the different tequilas and how they are processed. We progressed a few kilometers farther for drinks at the botanical gardens where we had front row seats at the hummingbird feeder while sipping extra-large margaritas. 

We also found out later that we were a full-blown meal for lots of biting bugs. Our friend calls them “no-see-ms” because you can’t see, hear or feel them and the next morning you wake up with big welts that sometimes itch. Following the botanical gardens, we traveled to a tiny little village where we had a true Mexican dinner at a little mama and papa restaurant. They pulled out the stops and dinner was fantastic! Plied with plenty of drinks all evening, several in the group decided to sing on our way back to PV. One of the organizers sang some lovely Mexican songs while some gringos in the group should have just listened.

We’ve joined friends for more lunches, afternoons and dinners and we are enjoying getting to know them more. They all keep telling us that it’s been quiet - just wait until the season starts but I’m getting the feeling that the season is now beginning. We’ve had several cruise liners come into port over the past week where before it was only one a week. Stores that were closed during September are opening up, and downtown seems quite a lot busier already. I’m not sure that I’m ready for the town to be busier. I want the stores that I’ve been waiting for to open, but don’t want to have to deal with mobs of gringos. Yes, I’m already being possessive about my pueblo.

Normally it rains in the late afternoon but it’s been unusually dry. When it rains it comes down like a monsoon. So far it hasn’t stopped any of our activities although we almost had to swim back to our coach after our tequila tasting. We keep waiting for cooler weather with less rain but it's not happening.  When we’ve visited here in the summer before it was hot but not so humid, and it would cloud up every afternoon and then rain around 4.00pm. This summer because it’s been "unusually" hot and humid, we seem to have a constant heat haze with only a few clear days. I’m desperate for the “normal” beautiful autumn weather!

In the two short weeks that we had a reprieve from Spanish classes, Steve has spent an enormous amount of time in getting our various TV systems to work as we'd like. Nothing is straightforward, and our expat friends all have various means of “it’s not legal but not illegal” systems for getting English speaking channels, but they all seem to be Canadian. Steve has been working overtime on getting ours set up so that we can get British channels. Telmex doesn’t make it easy for a reason – called dinero! Something that we are desperate to find is a DVR but it has to be one that’s programed for Canada since that’s the main system we are using. Steve found one but the cost would have been about the same as a return flight to Canada and a purchase.

Steve's - best pizza in Puerto Vallarta!

We have also been getting ready for some hobbies. Thanks to being able to get some British programms (programs for those of you in the US), we are watching the Great British Bake Off which is inspiring Steve to delve into baking bread. It’s been a challenge to find the right ingredients, not to mention the actual challenge of making the bread. He’s downloaded some books from Paul Hollywood, one of the judges.

I’ve decided to resurrect a sewing hobby so we went in search of a sewing machine. I purchased one at a great price but of course, all of the instructions are in Spanish so it meant a google search for the manual in English. Recently my trip to a fabric store was a whole different experience from the US. For one thing, they don’t speak any English. Let’s face it, gringos don’t come to Mexico to sew, do they? You can’t pick up a bolt of fabric – you have to get an attendant (usually a teenage boy) to come to the bolt and you tell them how much you want. Of course, everything is in meters, not yards. The attendant cuts it for you and gives you a printout with the fabric info and price on it and then you take that to the cashier (caja) to pay. Once you’ve paid, you take your receipt to another desk, and they give you the fabric. When it comes to thread, it’s the same procedure – you don’t just pick up a spool of thread, you give your fabric to an attendant, and she will find the thread that matches and will give you a piece of paper. You take the paper to the same cashier you visited a few minutes ago and then go back to the pickup desk to get your thread. There are no dress patterns in any of the fabric stores, so thankfully, you can now download patterns from the Internet although it takes about 65 sheets of paper to print them off. Then you have to put all the sheets together to form the pattern pieces.

You would think we would have loads of time on our hands to just sit by the pool but this hasn’t been the case. For one thing, it’s been too hot and the sun too strong. And I can’t imagine this has been the quiet time of the year but I guess we are still learning every time we venture out just for a shopping trip.

PS -- the title for this post - Un Frenesí de Actividad just means a flurry of activity, which pretty much sums up this past month. So far, PV has been everything we wanted and more. In spite of some days where we have almost 100% humidity and constant scavenger hunts when shopping and the grueling Spanish conjugation, we’ve enjoyed every single day.