Life Continues in Paradise

One of our storms

Four months have passed by since my last post, and people are beginning to contact me to ask if we are OK. We are both well and have never been busier! Low season, which is supposed to be the “slow” season, didn’t exist this past summer. Typically, when the snowbirds leave for the north, things calm down, and there aren’t as many events and dinners. This year the heat, humidity and daily thunderstorms didn’t slow anyone down at all. We still had as many dinners and activities.

Lake getting ready

Friends from the US visited in June, and it was great being with them and catching up after a few years. Stef and our two grandsons arrived in July and spent ten days with us. We didn’t do the all-out 24/7 activities that we did last December, but we still managed to pack every day with snorkeling, swimming, parasailing, and shopping. Lake has become quite the negotiator, and he loves to bargain with the locals. Fynn wanted almost everything he saw, and Lake jumped right in to see how low he could get the price. He even gave Fynn some of his own money because he had so much fun bargaining.

We eventually managed to get rooms painted and ceiling fans installed. We have an air conditioner in our TV viewing room that wasn’t working when we moved in. One night in July we had a fierce thunder and electrical storm. Lightning must have struck close by and all of a sudden, our air conditioner started working. We have no idea why. It continued to work throughout the rest of July and into August. Then we had another violent storm, and it stopped working. Now, sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t. Someone is supposed to fix it tomorrow, but we’ve heard that before, several times.

Wendy and I share birthdays

Scotty's beautiful table

We threw a house warming party for 30 of our friends in September and we planned it to coincide with our anniversary and my birthday. One of our friends who is a chef catered it and provided a bar tender so we didn’t have to do anything but enjoy. And we certainly did that! It was so much fun. About 12 of our friends were traveling so couldn’t be with us and they’ve decided that we need to host another one just for them when they are all back. I have a feeling that we probably will.

Carlos cleaning up after flooding

Things are continuing with our charity work. There haven’t been tours to the cat shelter, but other things have come up, so we’ve made special trips to visit. A couple donated money to have a building rebuilt, so Steve had to go out to meet with the contractor and get plans in place. I went along to cuddle the cats and to check on the new buildings. Visitors from Minnesota wanted to visit the shelter, so Steve and I went along with the group. They ended up taking five cats back with them. A productive visit! During one of our storms, three buildings were flooded, but our caretaker was on top of things and made sure the cats were all dry. We’ve built in high places for them to go to so they were all high and dry. But we then had to build a water barrier around all 3 buildings so that we won’t have that problem again.

The little ones school packets

Some of our back to school shopping

We have started a new group to support local families who have children with cancer. These families have absolutely nothing so our group puts food donations together so that every month we can give each family a considerably large food package along with necessary supplies like soap, shampoo, and toothpaste. One little girl in a wheelchair didn’t have a bed; she was sleeping on a cement floor and we were able to get her a bed. Three families didn’t have fridges so Costco donated fridges. Then in August, when it was time to go back to school, they didn’t have money for back to school supplies. We quickly got donations together, and Steve, a friend and I went shopping for 20 back to school packages. Then we put them all together. The kids were so excited to have their very own school packs fully stocked.

 Some of the kids have to travel to Guadalajara (5-hour road trip each way) for treatments, so we are now looking at ways to cover the cost of some of their treatments, plus the travel and accommodation for one of their parents to go with them.

Good friend and volunteer colleague

We are continuing with our spay and neuter clinic work with the number of animals increasing as word spreads. Yesterday there were 101 surgeries, and we had to turn 30 animals away because we just didn’t have the resources. It was our biggest clinic so far. We usually like to do around 70 to 75 because that’s a comfortable number for our three regular vets and volunteers. Yesterday we had to add a 4th vet. The Facebook page that I host and have to keep monitoring has been very active, so the word is spreading. The posts have to be in both Spanish and English, so that’s requiring extra time. Information is also spreading through people who have been very happy with the aftercare that we provide for the animals, so they tell their friends and families about our clinic.

The increased number of animals tends to create a bit of chaos for our volunteers because it’s intensive work for long periods without a break. We only have a small number of people who can take the vitals, and the animals have to have heartbeat, respiratory and temperature taken every 15 minutes. When you have fifty plus cats to work on for five to six hours, it’s quite tiring. The dogs usually come around sooner, so it’s a two-hour watch. We put together a list of protocols, and I started up some training sessions for our volunteers so that everyone can be working from the same page during the clinics. We’ve had 3 in English and 1 in Spanish, and so far, everyone who has attended loves them. And I put out a call on the Facebook page for local volunteers. We’ve had a great response, so I need to plan some more sessions in both languages.

In addition to those tasks, Steve has taken over the finances for the clinic and I’m working on sponsorships and making sure that we cover all expenses plus a contingency.

The last two months I’ve been working on a conference that will start this week in Denver. I will fly out on the 9th, which happens to be Steve’s birthday. But I’m giving him a whole week to himself without my nagging (oops – reminding) him of anything so what better present could I give him? Plus I'm bringing him back some techie toys! The conference has 10,500 registered, and the topic is supercomputing. They have spent the last month building a supercomputer in the exhibit hall. You can imagine how complex the logistics are for that many people. I’ve mainly been working on the off-site parties, so that’s been a lot of fun. I went to Denver the first week of October to meet with some of the committee members, and also to walk through the venues and meet with the caterers. I’ve also done some work on a meeting that this same group will have in Tucson in January plus have started working on a conference that will be held in Baltimore the 3rd week of January. I’m not working all day every day, but it’s still keeping me busy with all my other interests and activities.

I just wanted to get in touch to let people know that we are well and just very busy. We are located several hundreds of miles away from where the earthquakes took place but thank you to all of you who checked in on us. Thanksgiving is almost here and we’ve not made any plans. Several friends will be meeting at various restaurants but we can’t decide what we want to do. I just know that I want some real stuffing! I miss having stuffing!!

Condo Cures in Mexico

A month of moving hell has passed already, and the new condo is slowly becoming ours. This last move seemed to be the worst. Maybe we are just getting older? The distance was probably less than 1 kilometer, but moving things went on for a whole week. Our new car got a good workout with every inch being loaded and then making the climb up our steep hill.

Steve packed most things while I was in the US, leaving my "things" for me to sort out, also leaving out hardly any kitchen dishes, utensils, etc. except for the pans. It made for an interesting week of trying to figure out what to fix to eat. He did the slepping of boxes from Paramount Bay while I unpacked. I realized after a couple of days of this that the two of us have very different packing methods. I like to pack everything from one room and then know that I'm finished with that room before going on to another. Steve had gone around the condo and looked for things that would fit into an empty box until it was full. One of our friends explained that it probably was because Steve was using his physics background and wanted to be sure that every possible centimeter of space packed into a box most efficiently. That may be true, but it makes for horrendous unpacking. I must have walked miles and miles just going from room to room while unpacking one box.

Our owners, very thoughtfully, “decorated” the condo with way too much furniture and artwork which wasn’t to our taste. Since we already had too much, our first challenge was to figure out what to do with everything. Initially, we thought that we’d have to have a bodega built, but we managed to squeeze quite a lot into the closet space of the TV room. This closet is the whole length of the room, so it’s quite big. One of the owner’s sons came to our rescue and picked up what we didn’t want to keep. It was such a relief to have the closet so that we could fill it with our things. 

I can’t remember if I said in the last blog that our owners are Mexican and speak almost no English. Sorting out the contract was “interesting”! We love having “the other son”, whose name is Salvador, keeping in touch with us because his English is pretty good. He’s married to an American lady. Both are sweet, and Salvador is our savior as we are sorting out all the glitches! The owners won’t pay for any of the maintenance work that we are doing because they consider them upgrades, but this is very typical of Mexican owners.  A lot of the maintenance repairs should have been done long ago, but they never happened. In our climate, things tend to deteriorate very quickly.

Boxes were unpacked and cleared, and we began sorting out things such as finding which light switch worked which lights and what power points worked. You wouldn’t think it would be that complicated, right? What we thought was an abundance of both switches and power points turned out to be about half the number of what it originally appeared to be. When we realized that several didn’t work, Steve started removing the plates discovering that some of them had nothing behind them while others had wires just twisted together but no caps. Almost all have now been replaced – by Steve. He wanted to put LEDs in our overhead lights, which are spots so when he began this process, he found that each of the spot-lights had a transformer, which was completely unnecessary. He’s now pulled all of those and put in LEDs so he’s happy.

There have been all kinds of similar discoveries. There is an internal phone system here so that residents can call security or contact each other. An old phone was plugged into it, but neither the phone nor the connection worked. Our friends upstairs kept trying to call, as many as ten times in one day and finally came down to see if we were OK. It hadn’t been a priority until our friends checked on us. We threw the phone away, and we have a new one that I tested out today.

TV room

In addition to fixing a lot of things, we had to sell some of our furniture, and then buy some new pieces. None of the bedrooms had any dressers or drawers, and neither did any of the bathrooms. A lot of our new condo’s features are beautiful but not functional! For instance, we have a frosted glass wall between the main living/dining room and the TV viewing room. It has lights inside, and it rotates. On the other side is a huge TV. I can’t see that we’ll ever be rotating it, or using the awful lighting. Also on our not practical list is that our closets are frosted glass and the bottoms are glass as well with lights in the bottom. They are very pretty at night but not practical to put anything on them. The closets didn’t have any shelves, so Steve built some into two of the room-sized closets. 

There’s still so much to do such as painting almost every room, more repairs, installing ceiling fans and blinds and then polishing the marble floor. Oh yes, and getting the marble vanity fixed in the main bathroom. There’s a 3-4 inch bit that goes around the front and side, and we noticed that it was coming off, so we pointed this out to the owners when we did our walk-through. Following that, Steve propped it up with a board. A few mornings ago at 5 am, we heard an earth-shattering crash. Thinking one of the cats had knocked off something heavy and might be trapped underneath; we jumped up and started searching the condo. The last place to look was our bathroom and there on the floor in several pieces, and lots of black dust was the marble piece that had come loose and fallen.

Balcony half were cats made their escape

One of our main concerns was getting the cats to adjust since they had been happy in the other condo. Ali is such a trooper and adjusted immediately, Kato took about 1-2 days, and Sadie seemed fine after about three days. That was just adjusting to the inside. Our next big hurdle was getting them adjusted to the balcony.  It stretches the full length of the condo, and the cats love the space but are perplexed by the pool. Our problem is that half of the balcony overlooks the roof of the neighbor’s balcony below and the top fits right up to the bottom of our balcony. Our friend’s three cats on level 11 come and go to their neighbors using the roof. Everyone seems fine with it. Our neighbor has a dog, and our cats have never seen a dog, so I’m not sure what they would do. Ali was the first to try his escape, but Steve caught him and then put up netting. Kato has made two unsuccessful attempts and one successful one. He went over to the neighbor’s side, and we had to coax him back with treats. Steve has now set up an electric wire to keep Kato from climbing over. So far he’s not tried it, but I’m sure he’s just waiting until we aren’t watching. Sadie managed to catch a bird on our bedroom balcony and left it in our closet for us.

Dipping pool overlooking the bay

I’ve just had a dip in our dipping pool on the balcony. At first, I thought the water was too warm to be refreshing, but I was wrong. It felt heavenly, and since it was overcast this afternoon, it was perfect.

The past couple of months have seen unfortunate health issues for a couple of our friends. One of them had a major heart attack and was rushed to the hospital here in PV. They put in stints but then sent him to Guadalajara for a triple-by-pass. The night before he was to go into surgery, he had another heart attack so was admitted immediately. They managed to stabilize him for the night and did his triple-by-pass the following day. He’s now doing very well! Another friend found out two weeks ago that she had a tennis ball-sized tumor on the right side of her brain. They scheduled her operation for a week later. She had her surgery here in PV with the neurosurgeon from here and another from Guadalajara. She is doing remarkably well and went home from the hospital two days after the surgery. We are just so impressed with the medical care here. Both friends had major surgeries that would have cost 100’s of thousands of dollars in the US and their total bills, doctors, surgery, and hospital, have been between 22,000 and 25,000 USD. And they both have raved about the care that they had from doctors, nurses and hospital staff – 24-hour nursing care and private rooms that were like 5 star hotels. And as I was writing this another friend is having a major surgery the first of this week. It’s all so alarming that so many of our friends are having major health problems but they have the best of care here and the support of a large network of gringo friends, probably more so than in the US or Canada.

A friend of mine today suggested that I video our condo “maintenance”/upgrades and call it Condo Cures in Mexico. It could be almost placed in the comedy section because we keep finding “Mexican fixes” that just defy any logic! This of course drives Steve nuts. We should have started a month ago recording the before and after. Oh well, there’s our fortune lost.

2nd bedroom with balcony

Master bedroom with blacony

We are now already into the heat and humidity of summer here and it's hit us with a blast. I can’t wait for those ceiling fans!

New Home and New Car and All Change!

Last PuRR Project Charity Event

April is a time of new beginnings and it brought so much change to our lives with friends leaving, a new car, and a change of home! We filled days with leaving dinners, get-togethers and meeting up with friends who only live here during the winter months. And there were a couple of late charity events as well. Many of our friends go back home or stop by home and then travel to other countries from April through September. It’s quite a busy time of saying good-bye until they return next October or November. We also had a good friend come to visit for a week in April. She’s thinking of retiring next year, and Puerto Vallarta is on her list. We tried to show her what “real life” might be like if she decides to move here, so it was trips to a market, a grocery store, other shops and markets and of course, we did do a bit of touristy stuff too. We spent part of a day at the local botanical gardens.

New Mexican Car

April also brought the delivery of our new Mexican car. We are going to be applying for our permanent residency soon, so that means that we had to get rid of our American imported Japanese car. Steve did his research, and because of the surrounding hills, 4-wheel drive is a must. Also, a must is high clearance because of the serious topas (sleeping policemen, speed bumps, traffic calming – whatever you call them in your country) in some areas and pot-holes in other areas. We placed an order for a Kia Sportage and were told to expect delivery in 4 to 5 weeks. Steve next had to plan to drive our Honda Fit back to the US to sell it. Timing was critical when booking his flight.

As it turned out, we were notified over 10 weeks later that our Kia had arrived, and we were to take possession – but first, they needed full payment in cash. Steve said he wouldn’t pay until he saw the car. When he went to inspect the new car, it wasn’t the right spec, because the interior was the wrong color, so they had to find a new one. More delays as they searched for one in Guadalajara!! A couple of weeks later, we were notified that the new car was available and again, they wanted full payment in cash before releasing the car. This time the car was correct, needed some polishing and buffing out a scuff that occurred in transit but that only took a couple of days. So Steve was off to our bank to get enough cash in pesos to pay for the car. Where else would you be withdrawing thousands in cash to take to a car dealer? You have to love Mexico!

Steve then drove to San Antonio, TX to sell our Fit. Of course, he’d done his research so he knew exactly where to go for the best deal. After driving for 1 ½ days, he spent 1 ½ days in San Antonio, then had the deal done, did a bit of US shopping and was on a plane back to PV.

 

Balcony - ready for a party!

Main room looking out over bay

Jazzuci and view of bay

About the same time as all of this was happening in April, the owners of our condo notified us that they would be moving back to PV so of course, they needed their condo back. It’s an incredibly difficult time to find long-term rentals as it is still considered peak time. Peak season rates means that most condo owners won’t consider a long-term rental. We are friends with several real estate agents, so I put the word out, plus we went to several rental agents downtown the very next day. One agency had a condo that we were very interested in, but the specs said they didn’t accept pets. I’m friends with a couple who live in that same building who have 3 cats, so I emailed her to ask if that was true. She said no – not true, and immediately got on the case and got us an introduction to the owner (through a guy who lives next door and also rents from them – everything in Mexico is a long story).

But bottom line is that our friend is Chairman of the Board at the condo complex so things progressed quickly. The owner is a lovely Mexican woman and her son. We started dealing directly with them, and a couple of weeks later, we had a new condo. It was a bit of a challenge as they don’t speak much English and our Spanish is very limited. Also at the time, it was occupied, and the residents wouldn’t let us in to see the condo. We were able to view the condo on the day they moved out, and the deal was signed then and there.

We are excited about the move, and everything is already packed. The new condo is so much bigger, more than 1,000 sq feet bigger than our townhouse in Maryland, plus it has a large outdoor area with our own dipping pool/jacuzzi. I can’t wait to see our cats’ reaction to the pool. We also have a much broader and better view – didn’t think either of these was possible (within our price range). It is further up the hill and not as close to the beach, but then neither of us are “beach people”.

Several of our friends have all moved within the past few weeks too, so we’re planning a whole round of house-warming parties. Guess this won’t be a boring summer!

Seattle bay

Flower Market - Pikes Place

Fish Market - Pikes Place

I went to Seattle the end of April to work a conference for a company that I’ve provided on-site management for now for nearly 5 years. I went a couple of days early to do some shopping and then had the grueling hours of a week-long conference. The conference went well, and I managed to escape early on the last day to explore down-town Seattle. It’s a lovely city, and I especially loved Pike Place Market. It was also great to catch up with colleagues and clients.

As soon as I arrived home, it was packing time for our move. Stay tuned for more moving episodes and photos!

This was written just before our move so there will be a “moving episode” coming up shortly!!

2017 Is Already Flying By!

Celebrating a friend's birthday.

Here we are into our third month of 2017 already and it’s been two months since I’ve posted a blog! As usual, we’ve been incredibly busy with various charity events and outings which means the time is going by so quickly. The busy season should be starting to wind down now – or we hope it is.

Just like real Mexico!

Much of our time has been taken up with various PuRR Project activities.I started taking tour groups to our PuRR Project Ranch every other week; some really great people have been able to enjoy an hour plus of cuddling lots of cats. There is a 45 minute ride out to the ranch so it gives me a chance to find out about the people on the tour; to tell them about the non-profit and to hopefully get them interested in adopting a cat or helping to find a forever home. On our way back, we stop off in a small village at a taco stand where everyone can have a real taco experience. One woman commented “I love this – it’s like real Mexico”. It certainly is!

Dog recovery

The first Sunday of February, and again yesterday, it was our regular Spay and Neuter Clinic and we processed 72 animals in February and 71 yesterday. In addition to the PuRR Project, much of my time is spent in trying to get the clinics more organized and run more professionally as well as promoting them to the locals. Steve has now been drafted onto the organizing committee as well. One of the initial organizers felt we needed “a man” in the meetings to help keep control. He’s a good addition because he’s very logical and forward thinking.

A friend who organizes some of the PuRR events talked me into modeling at the PuRR Fashion show. This was so much fun and I got to try on a lot of clothes. One of the benefits that I took advantage of was a discount at the stores that were featured. Plus, I took advantage of pampering treatments such as nails, pedicure and having my hair done. Who wouldn’t say “yes” to all of that?!?

Mid-February, two more friends were each organizing charity events so I agreed to help with both. The first one was a day-long medical event with speakers and a small exhibition. This event was the seventh and each year it grows tremendously. We had well over 4,000 attendees this year. I was able to help out by coordinating 30 volunteers on-site and making sure everyone was where they were supposed to be. It was an incredibly successful day!

The next day was the Corazon de Nina annual Gala. For this event, I was able to help my friend with the silent auction, and helping out at the event on the evening. Steve was drafted in to help out that night too but he didn’t mind. 

We’ve both been battling colds and a bacterial infection. Steve came down with his cold a couple of days before the grandsons arrived just after Christmas. Not wanting to put a damper on their holiday, he kept going and participated in everything apart from the snorkeling. After they left, he hit the meds pretty hard but still had his cold for a couple of more weeks. I was taking vitamin C while he was sick so I managed to avoid the cold until a week after he was better when I stopped taking the “C”. Around the first of February, I came down with a cold and it continued on through all of the crazy charity event schedules and got a lot worse during our time in Mexico City. It could have been partly due to the high altitude.

The third week of February, Steve and I went to Mexico City for a few days and then on to a butterfly reserve up in the mountains.ur time in Mexico was spent visiting museums, churches and archeological sites. Our private tour guide filled our heads with as much Mexican history names, dates and events as she could fit into five days. We were able to climb one of the pyramids at Teotihuacan – actually, Steve climbed two but the high altitude got to me so I could only manage one. They are a very steep climb on little steps and quite high.We also visited the Basilica – the new Basilica where supposedly the original image of the Virgin of Guadalupe on Juan Diego’s tilma (like a cloak) is housed. This has become one of Mexico’s most popular religious and cultural symbols. The new Basilica was built because the original structure begun in 1695 was sinking.

New and old "sinking" bascilica

Castle where Maximilian lived

 

Horse back for part of mountain climb

Millions of Monarchs!

This one posed for us

The Monarch butterfly reserve, El Rosario, is a 3 ½ hour drive out of Mexico City and up in the mountains. We spent a very cold night in a lovely hotel in Angangueo. It seems there is not heating in any of the hotels in Mexico (or so we were told). But we had a lovely fire to warm our room before going to a very cold bed. The following morning, we headed up the mountain, first by car, then by horseback and finally a 1 mile trek to the reserve. The trek to the reserve was all uphill but what I couldn’t understand is the trek supposedly “down” all seemed to be uphill. Doesn’t seem logical! The Monarchs usually stay anywhere from 9,000 to 11,000 ft. above sea level. It was definitely worth the climb as there must have been millions of monarchs covering the tall oyamel fig trees and just flying around.

Once we made it back down to a car, we headed for Toluca. We knew nothing about it but it has an airport so it was going to be quicker to stay the night there than go back to Mexico City. We were right in the center of town and there was a beautiful Botanical Garden just a few blocks from the hotel so on Sunday morning, we walked to the garden. The building was originally a market but when the market disbanded, stained glass was put in and the gardens were planted. It was a great end to a wonderful week!

This coming week, we are looking forward to our daughter’s visit. It will be her third within a year and she’s getting more and more comfortable and used to our area and way of life. She found a really cheap flight so it seems to make more sense to fly down here and relax in the sun and have the beach than pay for expensive accommodation and food in the US.

Not sure this will work but here's a video of the monarchs