It's Still a Penis Tree

We have a small courtyard in the back of the house - no trees. But we are fortunate that we have no backyard neighbors. Since we have started having cocktails occasionally up on the rooftop, we have gotten to know our "backyard" much better. Behind our privacy wall is a long and wide piece of property owned by the city. It is like a little mini-parque back there.

There is grass planted, several large palm trees, and a sidewalk that leads to a small covered area for city employees to take breaks/lunch. It is very shaded and tranquil and makes for the best of backyards for us...much better than a bar, brothel, or barking dogs (a reference to a past rental house). Along with the palm trees, there is one big tree probably 50 ft. high. Woodpeckers, doves and the cute little yellow-breasted kissadees love it. Right in the middle of what would normally be winter for us, the mostly leafless tree started budding out and these little green things started growing on it. As they grew, we realized they were sort of oblong shaped. I got excited and told Terry: "I think we may be able to get some of the avocadoes from this tree's branches that hang over our rooftop." He warned me at the time not to get too excited as he didn't think it was an avocado tree.
But as the little green things grew, I was even more excited about the shape they took on. They started looking a lot like cucumbers. I was still thinking they had to be some type of avocado. Being a country girl I know cucumbers don't grow on trees. OK...so after a while I relented. They weren't cucumbers and they weren't succulent, green, creamy avocadoes. But what were they?
We deemed the tree the penis tree. The tree was covered with these penises hanging down from each branch. Penises that were the color, size and shape of cucumbers.

When Sr. P. came over a few weeks ago to go up on the roof and give us the estimate to seal the roof he looked at the tree and shook his head. "No bueno": he said.
I gave up on the idea of avocadoes, cucumbers or penises. It was no longer even a penis tree but just a tree with lots of useless "pods" hanging off the branches.

Now, the words of Sr. P. have come back to us and I realize it truly is a penis tree! We have watched as each of these little pods have grown and burst open. As the skin pods fall to the ground they leave a white, poofy object hanging in the tree. When the wind kicks up, these poofy objects turn into a mulitude of little seeds with "wings" and they float through the air. Wherever they land, they take hold and the seed gets planted to start the process of forming another penis tree.
Yes, the way these seeds get spread so effortlessly, the tree is definitely still a penis tree.

A Crown for the Queen

On Thursday of last week I saw Dr. Cecilia Vasquez for crownwork. I got a temporary crown and an appt.for this past Wednesday for the permanent crown. I do think I am relatively easy to please, but Dr. Vasquez was a jewel. Without going into a lot of detail, it seems the dental community that I have dealt with are all close work associates, personal friends, and help each other out on a regular basis. I had received a recommendation from another highly-respected restorative dentist (Dr. Diana Navarro) when she had no appointments available until the following week she recommended Dr. Vasquez. Dr. Vasquez's office is over in Col. Mexico Oriente and the most stressful part of the first appointment was dealing with our taxi driver when he couldn't locate her office, and then kept getting the wrong directions dispatched to him. They were getting Col. Mexico and Col. Mexico Oriente mixed up. The two colonias are east/west of each other. When Terry and I left Dr. Vasquez's office, we walked a couple of blocks and just rode the city bus back to Centro.
Yesterday we walked the few blocks to get to the bus stop over by the Centro CFE office and took the bus out to Dr. Vasquez's. I had Google mapped to get a general idea of how we would go out there, but of course the busses cut through the neighborhoods and confuse you once you get off the main drags. But we were lucky and had the nicest bus driver. When we hopped on I had told him where were trying to go so he took care of us. It's one reason I love bus drivers. When we realized we were close, we asked to get off. He told me "no"...he would be making the corner and he would stop right on the cross street we would need to walk down. We were dropped off within about 5 buidlings from her office. The appt. went quick and after a few minutes of grinding down and polishing the crown, Dr. Vasquez put it on and told me to go home and enjoy eating anything I wanted.
Dr. Vasquez and I enjoyed talking...family, shopping in Houston, the growth of Merida, etc., etc. She speaks English very well but she also let me brush on my Spanish too telling me that the key to learning and speaking it well was "practica".
Thank you, Dr. Vasquez!

Dr. Romeo the Endodoncia

Yesterday I went to get my root canal at the Dental Studio Merida out in Colonia Mexico Norte. The endodoncia, Dr. Edgar Rivas Urcelay, was young and very handsome with lots of credentials on his wall. He was thorough, professional, friendly and confident. He explained each step to me as it was about to take place and warned me when there would be noise, vibration, drilling, and the estimated times along the way to the end of the procedure. When he took x-rays along the way he said it was a really good root canal job - he was confident in his work. His office was immaculate and had all the latest technology. Unfortunately, I have had to endure other root canals in the U.S. and the service, professionalism, techniques used, and technology was at least equal to and/or surpassed that in the U.S. This was, however, the first root canal where tooth pain had preceded the visit, and made it somewhat of an emergency. Now, for the difference when comparing Dr. Rivas to the endodontist I had in the U.S. - Dr. Rivas was much younger, much more handsome, and he sang jazzy love songs (in English) the whole time he was working on my mouth. My U.S. endodontist in Victoria, Tx never sang love songs to me.

Dr. Rivas is pictured second from the left....this picture was taken from www.yucatanliving.com

 I fell in love with my endodoncia! 

Since I had the choice of doing the entire root canal in one sitting or breaking it up into two appointments and elected for the all-in-one, I was in the chair for over two hours - that was two hours of love songs. It didn't help that Terry had instructed me earlier to "just picture him naked" if I got uptight and needed to think of something to take my mind off of it. Now, I am thinking maybe I should have broken the visit up into two appointments. I probably would have had more love songs sung to me that way. Darn!

Tomorrow, I go the the dentista specializing in restorative dentistry for the crown work. SHE is also young, well-trained, and very attractive and Terry is anxiously awaiting the visit. He got up this morning, had a haircut, and trimmed his mustache...don't know if this means anything! Will find out manana.

 

Hurrah to the New Progreso Boardwalk!

Note: We are dependent on free internet from the parks, mostly Parque La Ermita, and there is a major overhaul of the internet service gratis going on in Merida. A lot has gone on in the past 2 weeks+ since our last update so I will break down the blog accordingly.

This is part 4 of the 4 parts...finally catches us up to date!

Progreso Boardwalk

This past Friday we took off and went to Progreso. Had it really been over 3 weeks since we had been there? We didn’t realize it had been so long since we had been there, but it had been long enough ago that they had finished building the boardwalk underneath the bridge that goes out to the industrial/cruise ship dock. It is really nice! It is nice and wide and winding with benches everywhere - just really nice! Progreso should be proud of it.

 

We did our usual – laid out at our usual spot on the beach and then headed to Los Henequenes for cervezas and botanas before coming back to Merida. It was a glorious day!

 

 

Holy Mole!

I have been talking about making mole sauce for quite some time. It just seems so all things good and Mexican to me.  I had never made it before and had only eaten it a couple of times. Neither Terry nor I were sure we would even like it, but I had ordered an omelet with mole sauce while we were in Cozumel and it renewed my interest in making it from scratch. I had searched and searched and found several recipes...many way too complicated for me to even attempt trying. I was looking for a 2-diaquiri recipe...not one where I would spend the whole day in the cocina. I found one that was "middle of the road" but had all the ingredients I wanted to see - lots of garlic and onions, cinnamon, Mexican unsweetended chocolate, chili powder, etc., etc. One thing I liked about this recipe was that it had the traditional deep brown color but wasn't smooth like traditional mole sauce. It had had chunks of garlic and onion in it. Maybe it wasn't totally traditional but it sure was good - served over chunks of braised pork with carrots and white potatoes. Terry said he liked it as much if not more than the Pibil Chicken and Pibil Pork we have been preparing with the achiote.

Would be happy to share it!

Ouch...

This morning Terry and I got up, ate breakfast, and went out to walk the bici-ruta early. We left the house before 9am and beelined it all the way to the end and back in no time. I have finally admitted that I don't feel 100% and need to go ahead with experiencing the Merida medical system for the first time. Since our visit to Tulum I have had teeth problems which I blamed on clenching my teeth at night. The discomfort of oversensitive teeth on the left side of my mouth is now narrowed down to pain in one back molar. Ibuprofen helps but the pain isn't going away on its own. I'm thinking cracked filling, infection, root canal....but we will see. I have a list of possible dentists I will be calling tomorrow morning. I am no more apprehensive than I would be if waiting to call a dental office in the US. More to come on this experience!

Note: We are dependent on free internet from the parks, mostly Parque La Ermita, and there is a major overhaul of the internet service gratis going on in Merida. A lot has gone on in the past 2 weeks+ since our last update so I will break down the blog accordingly. The following 4 parts includes all of our lastest updates. Enjoy and thanks for reading!

Part 3 of 4-part update

Chicken Talk and Cenotes

On Saturday night Tisha and Lisa flew in on United from IAH. They landed on time, but Tisha was one of the unlucky "red lighters" going through going through customs and got her bag searched. No biggie. I had taken a taxi out to meet them and we all three rode a taxi straight back into town to the house. It was after 11pm. We had drinks and started talking - lots of catching up to do. It was around 3 in the morning before we called it a night.

On Sunday we all slept in, ate a leisurely breakfast, and decided to take the bici-ruta stroll since it is such a great time to take in downtown sites sans traffic. We did a lot of browsing the Mayan coopertivos in downtown, and Lisa and Tisha were able to find some treasures to take back home....jewelry and Mayan textiles. We never quite made it as far as Paseo de Montejo. In fact, we stopped off at La Parilla and started drinking margaritas - that was as far as we made it. It was a great place to people watch, catch up, and take a few pictures.

 

I love my friends. They are up for anything or doing nothing at all. They really didn't want to do the "touristy" Chichen Itza thing but Lisa had said David mentioned that going to see a cenote was pretty cool. We were in. As many places as Terry and I have gone to in and around Merida, we had never been to a cenote either so it would be a new adventure for all 3 of us - Tisha, Lisa and me. We looked in the latest "Yucatan Today" and found Cenote San Ignacio - after asking around at San Juan park we found out a combi leaves from the nearby San Juan area to Chochola. We were going on Monday. We spent Sunday evening lounging around. Lisa took a siesta and Tisha, Terry and I spent the evening up on the roof having cocktails and talking about the future mirador. When Lisa woke up, we drank pina coladas on the patio, and a mention of Charlie, Key West and Charlie watching chickens coming in and out of his house while sitting in his underwear lead Lisa to tell us more than we ever wanted to know about chicken encounters. All four of us laughed so hard....I start laughing today when I think back on the conversation. We went inside and ate "chicken" with tortillas, rice, and beans before we all went to bed exhausted from laughing so hard.

Monday morning we got up and had a small diversion. Tisha came out of the bathroom and announced she couldn't get the toilet to flush. Hmmmmm. We should have a plunger handy, but we just never had bought one. After using Google Translate for this one, Tisha, Lisa and I headed out looking for a toilet plunger.  First stop was Boxito and after using the Spanish words for toilet plunger and pantomiming the hand motions for plunging a toilet, the cashier looked at all three of us quizzacally. Another customer repeated the exact words I had used, and also pantomimed to the cashier and he understood instantly. No, they didn't have what we needed to go to El Poblano on the next corner and they should have one. We aren sure but we think Boxito must have called down to El Poblano because we walked in the door and said once again what we needed along with the same hand motions, and the guy waiting on us turned to the female inventory-taking/paperwork lady sitting at a small desk a few feet away and she never looked up at us, but reached directly behind her and with one sweeping motion brought out a plunger. Catorce pesos later we were on our way back home. When we got to the house, Tisha took it upon herself to do the "dirty job", but came out of the bathroom laughing to tell us all she had to do was flush....no plunging needed. Oh Well! We needed a plunger to have around anyway. Ha!

Sr. P. stopped by and Tisha and Lisa got to meet him. He offered to drive us to a cenote but we declined since our adventure was already going in a different direction. Although we would have been just fine riding with Sr. P. in the back of his truck to see a cenote...maybe next time. We put on our swimsuits and cover-ups, gathered up some towels, bags, and we were off to find the combi station, Chochola and the cenote. All worked out like clockwork and we only had about a 5-minute wait before we loaded up in the combi and headed to Uman and then to Chochola. In Chochola we got on a one-seated motocicleta combi for the short and crowded ride to the cenote. What an experience!

 

 

The cenote was completely underground with a set of maybe 25 steep stair steps down to it. It was well-lit with beautiful clear water. We swam then headed up to the restaurant for cervezas, salbutes, and empanadas cazon. After the leisurely break, we caught a waiting motocicleta combi back to the combi stop, again had about a 5 minute wait then made our way back to Merida.

I insisted on taking Tisha and Lisa to the big mercado....oh, my! it seemed extra crowded. Tisha, having a problem with claustrophobia did really well on the combi rides, and did really well in the cenote, but she couldn't quite handle the closeness of all things mercado. We grabbed some nice-looking avocadoes and were out of there. We ended up at the Plaza Grande having sidewalk cold beers. It was decison time - pizza and beer at the house or going home/getting dressed and going out to eat. We elected for beer and pizza at the house - La Ermita pizza with weiners, chorizo, ham, pineapple, lots of onions, and I can't remember what else. Yes, I said weiners as in "salchichas". It wasn't bad.  Visited and laughed about chickens some more.

 

Tisha and Lisa's flight left out at 6am - Yes, I said 6am!!! We had a little confusion since Texas had gone on Central DST on Sunday, but Merida doens't do that until April. Luckily, it meant we all got up an hour too early rather than an hour too late. It resulted from Lisa's phone time being set to that of her home base, ie, Texas time. It was cool outside and too early for taxis hanging out in Parque La Ermita so we called and a taxi was dispatched in no time. "Adios, Mis Amigas!". Terry and I really enjoyed our visit from Tisha and Lisa and they are more than welcome to come back anytime....seriously! But, it's going to be hard to top the cenote adventure and Lisa is going to have a hard time beating chicken talk!

Note: We are dependent on free internet from the parks, mostly Parque La Ermita, and there is a major overhaul of the internet service gratis going on in Merida. A lot has gone on in the past 2 weeks+ since our last update so I will break down the blog accordingly. The following 4 parts includes all of our lastest updates. Enjoy and thanks for reading!

Part 2 of 4-part update

Cozumel - You Guys Sure are Looking Mexican

We arrived in Cozumel in the early afternoon on Wednesday. Ken and Lorraine were coming in on the Carnival Paradise from Tampa, Fla. on Thursday. We ate dinner at La Mision, one of our favorite eateries in Cozumel. Seafood mixed platter for Terry and the coconut shrimp with mint salsa for me. We then walked to Wet Wendy's. It was live music Salsa Night! We thought we were such damn good salsa dancers....with a little help from those margaritas at La Mision. Either we got worse at dancing or the margaritas started wearing off because towards the end of the night a group of Cubans showed up and they showed up all right....they showed us up! But we had fun and we didn't really care how good our dancing skills were or weren't.

 

Thursday morning we woke up and Terry went out looking for coffee. We had requested our promised breakfast early - 7:30am as that is how we roll. But, we never got breakfast nor coffee through the hotel - La Vista del Mar Boutique Hotel downtown on the waterfront. We didn't care. No complaints from us...we were just happy to be spending a couple of nights in Cozumel and spending a day catching up with Ken and Lorraine. Finally got coffee at a small coffee shop around the corner, went for a great breakfast on the waterfront, and started walking to the Carnival terminal. Ken and Lorraine were to arrive at 11. But, that was actually 10 our time. We did meet up after catching a taxi. All four of us headed downtown for a day of talking, with a small amount of listening going on, a little shopping, some drinking, some eating, some drinking, some eating. The guys headed to a little upstairs bar along the course of the day, and Lorraine and I met up with them later after doing some shopping. The  waiters were a hoot and kept us in stitches...not to mention they made some mean mojitos followed by complimentary tequila shots. Thank you Willy!

We ended the day at Fat Tuesday's down by the terminal watching spring breakers pole dance and discussing how lucky we had been to have been able to drink and pole dance if we wanted without the fear of appearing on You Tube. We also saw a young version of brother Neal - looked just ike him! 
 

Great day with Ken and Lorraine with lots of laughs. We said our goodbyes and they headed down the walk way to the cruise ship. We walked back downtown stopping along the way to take sunset pictures and cruise ship pictures. After regrouping at the hotel, we went out to eat at Gaido's - another one of favorites. Lasagne for me and linguini with carbonera sauce for Terry - and homemade sangria. During dinner I kept seeing this woman looking at me and smiling. Finally, she said: "We saw you at Wet Wendy's last night. You looked like you were having a great time." Reply: "Yes, we did. Hope you're enjoying your dinner as much as we are". After dinner we acknowledged the couple again and left. We ended up at Woody's listening to a young Cuban play the guitar and sing. He was unbelievably good. Hung for awhile then headed in.

Friday morning we got up, went for coffee, went for breakfast, then walked out to Papa Hog's - another Cozumel favorite. We made ourselves comfortable in the lounge chairs that overlook the water and enjoyed watching the goings on. The two J-boats semi-racing kept us entertained as well as the snorkeling/diving boats, crew and people coming and going.

We had already check out of the hotel and had our traveling backpacks with us. We stayed as long as we could, then changed from swimsuits to traveling clothes and started the walk back to the ferry terminal for the trip to Playa del Carmen and to the ADO bus station. We ran into the same people that had hung out at Wet Wendy's and later we had seen at Gaido's. Stopped and talked with them and exchanged emails. They had recently bought a condo in Cozumel and spend half the year in Cozumel and half the year in Atlanta, Ga. Hope to see them again someday! There was a 5:30 bus back to Merida. As we had walked the main tourist street in Playa del Carmen on our way to catch the ferry to Cozumel, we had discussed how the street vendors tended to ignore us. We decided it was because of their training, ie, they look for women with jewelry on and also look at their handbags for name brands. As for me - I travel with very little jewelry on and my handbag was the red and yellow plastic tote given to us by Gaspar and Lupita at our local Merida Cerve Frio. When we walked the main tourist street on our way to catch our return bus to Merida we knew for sure we had been right on about our assumption when the Mexican guy laughed and hollered loudly out at us: "Hey You Guys from Merida! You Sure Are Looking Mexican!!!" Yes, he had checked out the Cerve Frio "handbag" and knew it was from a Cerve Frio in Merida. And, we were very proud to be looking Mexican...we took it as a compliment. Especially since this exhange happened a few days after we had been stopped  on Calle 64-A by three visiting Mexican tourists. They wanted us to take their picture in front of the Cantina - the one that became famous for the many scenes filmed in it in the novela "Abismo de Pasion". We laughed and said we had come a long way since being in Merida as now we were the ones taking pictures of the Mexican tourists visiting our little La Ermita neighborhood in Merida.

We got home a little after 9pm and started getting fired up about our company coming in the next day.

Note: We are dependent on free internet from the parks, mostly Parque La Ermita, and there is a major overhaul of the internet service gratis going on in Merida. A lot has gone on in the past 2 weeks+ since our last update so I will break down the blog accordingly. The following 4 parts includes all of our lastest updates. Enjoy and thanks for reading!

Part 1 of 4-part update

A/C but No Hot Days

Sr. P and his nephew got the a/c installed on a Sunday morning. They worked efficiently and furiously after a few days of us wondering when they were going to show back up. No worries! Funny thing was that by the time it was all installed, the weather had turned cooler and has remained cool. The times we have run the a/c to check things out I make Terry turn it off because it gets too cold in the house.

Roof is Sealed and Bedrooms are Painted

 

On a Tuesday morning Sr. P. and his helper showed up and Sr. P. put his helper to work bright & early as Sr. P left and went about his day. I can't remember his name but we could hear the worker scraping all day long as he went about cleaning the old sealer and other debris off the roof. He worked from about 9 in the morning until dark with a short lunch break in the early afternoon. While work was taking place on the roof, I was scraping peeling paint off the walls to prepare them for painting. We made a trip to Comex and totally relied on "Jaime" to tell us what we needed for scraping, cleaning, sealing and painting the walls. Jaime was patient and took the opportunity to talk a little English to us while we took the opportunity to talk Spanish with Jaime. We wanted to get the bedrooms painted prior to leaving for Cozumel to meet Ken and Lorraine, and head back home for a visit from Lisa and Tisha. All went well! Terry and I worked diligently and completed the painting of both bedrooms. We left for Cozumel early Wednesday morning from ADO while Sr. P. and his helper continued the work on the roof.