December 19, 2008

Hi all,
For those of you who are following this on a daily basis.....sorry!!! Where did the last 3 days go??? How is it possible that the time can speed by so quickly when all I've done is sleep and eat and lie in a hammock and snooze and read and drink a margarita or two and then have another snooze and then maybe another drink and then hit the hay for another day....it's such a tough life here in this tropical paradise :) Seriously though....I don't know where the last 3 days went!! They've flown by and as much as you think I'm joking about what I do in a day..... I'm really not embellishing life here by much at all. My eyes never seem to open before 9 or 9:30 in the a.m. and I always manage a snooze mid afternoon in a hammock or a lounge chair at the beach and I usually have at least 2 or 3 margaritas in a day (one does get thirsty in the heat you know and I always wait till after noon to have the first one) There is usually a walk in there somewhere and maybe another walk in the night after dinner at Dona Rufie's where the best sopes in the world are created for the bargain price of about $1.50 for a plate of 3 sopes. (It was Dona Rufie who chopped the garlic for my scorpion medicine for those of you who have been following along)

Last night (Thursday) was turtle night.....Lynda and I helped Carlos carry the buckets of babies down to the ocean's edge and then talked to tourists as the babies were released to the ocean at sunset....a very special opportunity to be able to participate! Later, we walked with Carlos (Roberto's son who is 15 and hopes to become a marine biologist some day) looking for signs of turtles having come up to lay their eggs that night....found one turtle track but couldn't locate her nest of eggs so either she did a super job of camoflage or someone or something had beat us to the nest. Carlos does this every night and it's all just for the conservation and his love of nature. He had to get a permit to do it and is doing a great job. He doesn't get paid anything for doing it and I think it so cool that someone his age takes the time to volunteer like this. In nature only about 2% of turtles survive but with the help he is providing it is estimated that as many as 50% may make it to adulthood. After they reach the age of 7 years they return to the place they were born to lay their own eggs and start the cycle over again. Lynda says that we'll all have to be here again 7 years from now so they know they've come home to the right place when they see us all looking at them from the beach :)

Tonight, we decided it was time to do a margarita tour/competition so began at a high end yoga retreat down the beach a ways called Present Moment. Luckily, we hit it at Happy Hour so drinks were 2 for 1 and very strong so we had a good start to our evaluative trail. Present Moment is a lovely spot and very high end but not the cultural experience that I prefer. However, it's garden entrance is really lovely and I'm glad we took the opportunity to check it out. From there, we staggered to the Tropic of Cancer (not the line of latitude....it's a restaurant here) where Celia (Dona Rufie's daughter) is the host. She took great care of us and gave us double when we really only wanted 1/2 a meal of fajitas...but boy were they good!! Of course....we also tried the margarita's there and Guadalupe (yes, that was our servers name) did a great job of taking care of us too. Interestingly, Guadalupe remembers me from a month ago when I went into another restaurant where she was working at the time (Mi Casa es Su Casa) so it was like old home week. I think Lynda hit it on the head tonight when she said....."You're a local now Lorrie". Not only am I being recognized by the servers but the vendors on the beach are giving me local prices and restaurant owners are greeting and treating me like family. I'm very lucky to be having this experience!

Tomorrow night is the Fiesta at Roberto's so hopefully there will be lots of customers again. On Thursday, when everyone was there to see the turtles released....it was so busy that Lynda even volunteered me to go behind the bar to help Viri with the backlog of dirty dishes. I was happy to do it and it felt good to be behind a bar again. Maybe tomorrow will be a repeat performance....it's the least I can do as Roberto and his staff are amazing and really do treat us as family.

On that family theme.....one of the servers from Roberto's is a man named Candy who had a new daughter a couple of weeks ago. She will be christened in early January and we've been invited to the Christening. Celia's daughter, Liz, will be turning 15 in January too and a 15th birthday for a girl here is a huge deal....we've been invited to that family event too. It's fun to be a part of the local community!

Must run for now....hope this finds you all well and able to dig your way out from under the snow. I hear there has been a lot of it already this year along with some really cold temps. Not sorry to be missing any of that and I'll do my best to bring the nice weather back with me when I return in the new year! Hope the holiday season is going well for you and I'll try to write again in a couple of days.

Lorrie