Tierra de Tortugas

What we did this year…

Our Dear Friends,

I hope the year now ending finds all of you in good health and doing as well as can be expected, given the economic sleigh ride the country’s gone through in recent months. 

Hopefully, with change on the horizon, things will start to get better for everyone in the country, although it’s likely to take some time to accomplish. Most estimates I see predict recovery in a couple of years (ouch!). Meanwhile, let’s do our best to be happy with what we have and work to make life as good as possible under the circumstances.

We’ve had a very good year, so this is a summary of how things are going in retirement. Living well, and inexpensively, in Sonora has made it possible for us to enjoy many of those things we put off while still working. We have some income from our little “inn,” or whatever it is, here at Casa Tortuga, although we put it in a reserve account and use none of it for living expenses. We live modestly and efficiently here, and we resist the temptation to spend money on newer cars and such. A brand new car, we can’t even imagine. So far, so good. 

Here’s some of what we did this year:

We began the year by taking our reliable old Nissan Quest van (with 250,000 miles on it!) on the ferry in February from Guaymas across the Sea of Cortez to Santa Rosalia. On the ferry, we met Tulio Manicardi, a retired mechanic from Milan. He travels to warm places in the cold months because it’s cheaper than trying to heat his apartment in Milano. He spoke no English, but it was an all-day ferry ride and we had lots of time. so we cobbled together enough butchered Italian mixed with Spanish to make the conversation work. After a night in Santa Rosalia, we headed northwesterly to meet up with our friends Richard and Alana Eager for a bit of camping out at a ‘low-impact’ place called Kulima, on the Pacific side, and pet the whales in Laguna San Ignacio. It was pretty cool to hang out in small pangas while huge whales, with calves, surfaced around us. When you touch them, they feel like a gigantic rubber chew toy – sometimes, a well-used rubber chew toy! But a very close encounter with these huge animals can be a breath-taking experience. Richard even has a picture of Alana kissing one. She’s very passionate!

The little town of San Ignacio is about 50 kilometers inland from the Laguna, and it’s a quiet and beautiful tree-filled oasis in the desert along the Transpeninsular Highway. It must have seemed like a mirage to those early Spanish settlers crossing the barren wastes in creaking old carretas pulled by oxen. The narrow streets are lined with stone dwellings with walls several feet thick. The most exciting thing that happened the day we were there relaxing at a little restaurant by the plaza was when a dog got up from sleeping in the street and wandered over to pee on the church. 

From there we drove southerly back to Santa Rosalia for a few days. It’s an old French (!) mining town made up mostly of wooden (!) buildings with a odd little prefab church built by Gustav Eiffel (!) in the center. The church was built for display at the Paris Expo where they debuted the Eiffel Tower as an example of how the same iron truss-work technology could be used to build smaller structures for the masses. Apparently the church was to have gone to some place in Belgium. We don’t know the whole story, but the would-be recipients may have backed out after they got an eyeful (eiffel?) of the ungainly thing. At some point, the Rothschilds, who owned the town and mine at Santa Rosalia had it shipped the New World, and there it sits today. There’s a big effort underway to turn the huge old ore mill into a museum. It should be ready in a year or so. We enjoyed several nights at the charming Hotel Francés with the whistling parrots in the courtyard. The whole town of Santa Rosalia is not something you normally see in Mexico, but this country often surprises us.

We drove onward through Mulege, southward past the beautiful shores of Bahia Concepción (with several fine sailboats at anchor), and then across the desert on our way to Loreto. The town of Loreto is a very nice place to visit, with a beautiful church, good restaurants, a good coffee house or two, a few fine hotels, and a pretty malecón, or walkway, along the seafront.  A fine and gentle on-shore breeze cooled the town every afternoon and rustled the long, trailing, fronds on the coconut palms while we were there. Dinner on the second floor terraza at Augie’s Bar and Bait Shop was delicious.  Augie Dagostino himself was the main attraction. It’s worth spending a few days in Loreto on your way down the long spine of the Baja Penninsula.

Then we were off to La Paz, a flavorful Mexican port city with a beautiful broad malecón looking over a sheltered bay. When we arrived, Carneval was underway, and we had a great time wandering through the huge crowds. A band was playing at every corner along the Malecón, so the music was nonstop. I think we were the only gringos in town at the time.

After a few days of revelry, we drove southwesterly to Todos Santos to spend a few days at a very nice B&B outside of town, owned by friends of Richard and Alana. The owners tried (with great success) to over-feed us every morning. The town of Todos Santos is old and charming, and is the (widely rumored) site of the Hotel California, of Eagles fame.  The hotel’s been there since the thirties and has a very good restaurant and a bar that’s fun to hang out in. The place looks like Jackson Browne or Bonnie Raitt could walk in any minute. And we all had a very good dinner at Tre Galline, a Tuscan-style eatery in town.  

Then further south to the famous Cabo San Lucas, land of Californios and cruise ships. It was an interesting place, nevertheless, since we found Plaza Wilkes, named after a well-known teacher and descendant of English buccaneers and freeboarders. Sounds like the Wilkes Clan, alright. When we visit cities, we like to park the car in some reasonably safe place and spend our time walking. So that’s what we did in Cabo.  It’s good that most of what we really wanted to see was within walking distance. Much of the older part of town is worth seeing, and there’s a huge (and actually interesting!) waterfront mall for the turistas. We found a fun and funky place just a few blocks away, called the Cabo Inn, to rest our bones.

After a few days of that, we left to drive through San Jose del Cabo, around the Eastern Cape, past Cabo Pulmo, Los Barriles, and through some small, interesting mountain towns. Then back up to La Paz for a few more days before catching the huge ferry to Topolobampo.  They use the La Paz ferry to carry freight to the Baja, and we counted seventy heavy trucks aboard (40 of them semis!) when they unloaded. Aboard the ferry, we met a couple of Brits who were winding up a 3-month adventure on BMW motorcycles. From Britain, they had taken a ship to Brazil, and were on the last legs of the journey – scheduled to end when they boarded a ship in Houston.  One was a Barrister, and the other was a London cabbie, and they had done several epic journeys before. From Topolobampo, they were headed eastward through the Barranca de Cobre to Chihuahua, and then to the US border at Ojinaga/Presidio. We had been on that long, deserted road across the desert about ten years ago and told them not to expect much (in fact, almost nothing) in the way of services along the way, after they leave the charming little town of Aldama. 

In my travels I’m often reminded of that Dr. Seuss line, “Oh, the people you’ll meet!”

After a night in Topolobampo, it was a day’s drive back north to Kino. We usually break up the trip with a stop at “Libros y Más” in Ciudad Obregón. It’s a very good book store with high-quality jigsaw puzzles and an excellent deli on the second floor where you can eat outside on the veranda overlooking the main street. 

Back in Kino, we spent the next few months enjoying (some would say, ‘enduring’) Semana Santa (Holy Week) and Semana Diabla (Mexican Spring Break), and the many other things that keep us happy in Kino. Among these was a trip with the Hilkemeyers, Kino friends of ours, into the mountain country along the Rio Sonora, and to the hot springs at Aconchi. We were looking for Padre Lalo who’d been transferred from Kino to the beautiful old church in Baviacora (founded in 1639), but we missed him because he had to go to Hermosillo for the day. So we spent the time wandering through the old mountain towns ‘looking for Padre Lalo.’  A high point was lunch at our friend Alfredo’s place in the former Sonoran capital of Ures. He was kind enough to share a bit of his best Bacanora with us, and he can never resist an opportunity to pull out his guitar and sing a few songs for the few gringos who find their way to Ures.

And then in May, we went back to La Paz to enjoy a weeklong sailboat charter with cousin Gary and his wife Renee, from Placitas, NM. Since we had three very qualified sailors aboard, the four of us had a Moorings 40-footer to ourselves – and that was about the right size for a weeklong charter. Since we were able to drive to La Paz, Carolyn and I provisioned the boat with lots of very good food, premium rum and gin, and 20 bottles of good wine. In short, it was a floating gourmet extravaganza. Plus, we spent the entire week hanging around Isla Espiritu Santo, a large island and wildlife preserve that the Nature Conservancy helped put together.  There was good swimming and snorkeling, and the sunsets were stunning. Afterward, we all went to Cabo Pulmo to snorkel the only living coral reef on the Pacific side of North America. After C and I took Gary and Renee to catch their plane out of Cabo, we went back for another couple of days at Cabo Pulmo, where the food is generally excellent, for such a small place.

After a two-month break in Kino, we were off again.

In July, we went north to Oceanside towing a small sailboat for our nephews, the Bockman boys, to love and care for in years to come, She’s the small boat that their cousin Eliot and I bought in the Spring of 2001. I had a wonderful time sailing with the boys and ‘showing them the ropes,’ as it were. Then I got out onto the dock and it was their turn. There’s nothing like someone handing you the tiller and stepping out of the boat to give real meaning to the lessons you’ve just had. I’m proud to say they did just fine.

Then it was north to Oakland to see the daughter.  We spent some great time with her and her friends enjoying all the gourmet wonders of the Bay Area. After coming back through Las Vegas (and seeing a couple of very good shows) we were back in Kino until October.

As Fall touched the Rio Grande Valley, we headed north to Alburquerque to vote. But first, we took a detour through the city of Chihuahua to see Placido Domingo in concert.  That was an absolutely wonderful experience! We were in the new Olympic-sized stadium with 30,000 people listening to the fabulous voice of Placido, while vendors hawked elotes down the aisles. It was so Mexico! The town has also grown and improved quite a bit since I first started going through there about 30-40 years ago on my travels further south. There are some pretty neat things about the place these days.

As for the election, this was a very important one and we didn’t want to take any chances. It’s amazing how difficult it is to vote absentee if you live outside the country – unless you’re in the military, where it’s easy. After voting, it was wonderful to see family and friends and spend time at many places we miss.  We even attended a homecoming game at my old alma mater, Sandia High, with Jay and Ann (who both graduated from there also, though a few years later!) and Jay’s “little brother,” Raymundo, who gleefully consumed more ballpark junk food than we could hardly believe!

So, we’ve had a busy year. Writing about it, I realize just how many wonderful things we were able to cram in and how fortunate we are to be able to do this. As far as paying guests go at Casa Tortuga, it’s also been a very good year. We don’t seem to be affected much by ‘the crisis’ up north. And the peso has been dropping against the dollar, so things are cheaper down here than before. In the past month, the peso has dropped from 9.5/$ to 13.5/$. That means your dollars will also go about 40% further here these days, so please remember to pick out some time that works for you and come to visit. Most of the sibs seem to live on or near a beach these days, so that may not be the draw it once was, but you can probably use the time away.

So I want to wish you all the very best of Holiday Seasons and remind you that the door is open here, if you need to get away to a beach on the Sea of Cortez. Just check our on-line calendar for room availability. Or just email us for more exact info.

Love and hugs from Kino,

Perry

Long time no blog!!!

It's been a long time! Life in Mexico has taken over, and we've become so engaged in our daily life that things like updating a blog keep getting put on the back burner.

But it's time to turn a new page! The house is fully functional now, if not entirely finished (one can always find another project!), and we can at least show you how things look for the present. So welcome to Casa Tortuga!
You will find more photos in the new Album: "Our House 2008."

We took a trip to Baja California recently, and we'll get a little info about that up on the site soon. It's an indicator of what's in store. We're beginning to dream of and plan for some serious traveling, so we'll do our best to take you along as it unfolds. In the meantime, check out, also, the "Fiction, Poetry, Essay, Books" section for more stories.

Nice to be back.

Summer Days in Kino

Summer is a special time on the Sea of Cortez. Each morning the seven mile crescent beach at Bahia de Kino is bathed in hues of pink and orange as the burning sun rises over the Sonoran desert. Nearby Isla Pelicano glows in the dawn. Curtains are pulled aside, and morning light floods over polished floors of saltillo tile, and geraniums in large brightly-painted pots, called macetas. Coffee is brewing in the cocina and the day begins.

Weekdays are quiet here in Bahia de Kino, the small town at the end of the road from Hermosillo. Warm waves quietly lap the shore, nudging the land to wakefulness. A solitary figure walking far down the beach is outlined by sunlight glinting from the water. The beach walker at dawn is first to see the shells left in the night by the Sea as gifts upon the shore.

This town conducts its business just as any small town. Maria, a woman living in the village of Old Kino, rises early to make breakfast for her family, and she walks her children to school. Then she boards the bus to her day job, cleaning and cooking for an Anglo couple living on the beach. Her husband, Juan, finds work as he can, usually related to tending for animals at a local ranch, sometimes in the construction industry. He and two of their older sons are now in Tijuana working on an apartment project. They’ll return in three months.

Two blocks away, Luis wheels his old bicycle out to the rutted dirt road in front of his house. From there he begins the five mile ride to his job, watering and tending the plants at a beach home owned by a wealthy family from Hermosillo. He saves the five peso bus fare every day he rides to work, money he and Lupe need to feed their five growing boys. Lupe works as a maid just across town in an office that rents departamentos to weekending families from Hermosillo. Some gringos also prefer to stay in Old Kino due to the lower cost and the proximity of good cheap places to eat. Lupe lived in southern New Mexico when she was young and she speaks decent English. That skill helped her get an office job.

The families of Maria and Luis each live in tarpaper shacks in the “Invasión Libertad,” an area of vacant desert land “invaded” by peasant squatters. The process is a modern Mexican version of the US Homestead Act where landless families organize to take over an area of unused land for homesites. While technically illegal, it has been codified by the Mexican bureaucracy to relieve the enormous pressure to provide housing for a growing population of working poor. If the invasion is on public lands of little value, the government requires them to improve the property and build homes before granting title. But if it involves private lands, the owner may resist forcefully, or make a deal to sell the land to the government for distribution.

The lots are now divided equally and fenced and each family built its own crude shelter. Water is bucketed in and there’s a rudimentary outhouse in the back. A kitchen sink rests on a ricketty platform and drains to the dirt street, and power lines lie on the ground to provide light to each home. To a well-off foreigner it may not look like much, but for these hard-working people it’s a start.

Winters can be quite cold here, as strong winds sweep south across the desert. And almost every winter one or more of the tarpaper shacks of Old Kino is burned to the ground, sometimes claiming the lives of the entire family inside. In recent years, there has been a joint effort by the Mexican and Anglo communities to replace these shacks with flameproof concrete. The organization, called “Familias Unidas,” runs a low-interest, “micro-credit” program to provide money for materials, and counseling to get the job done in a reasonable time frame.

Today there is a stack of concrete block and a pile of sand standing on each of the lots occupied by the families of Maria and Luis. Each family has constructed several rooms and removed much of the old flamable tarpaper. There are gaping holes where doors and windows will go someday, if there’s enough money. But the rooms are livable, after a fashion, and each family is much safer now. Life goes quietly on.

On weekends in Kino, the beach fills with families from Hermosillo and as far away as Nogales and Tucson. The weekend carnival begins as early as Thursday evening, hits its stride on Saturday, and continues into Sunday afternoon, when large numbers of cars start leaving for home. Those who can afford the cost, rent houses on the beach or on nearby streets. Other families pitch tents or colorful plastic shade structures on the beach. Young adults sleep in or beside their cars after long nights of noise and revelry. A local joke goes like this:

“Where did you stay this weekend in Bahia de Kino?”

“At the Hotel ‘Camarena’!”

In English, camarena, or cama de arena, means sandbed. It’s a common joke among the middle class, most of whom (like most of us) worked their way out of youthful poverty into good carreers and decent jobs.

By midmorning on a typical summer’s weekend, the water is filled with people, and the air is filled with the squeals of young children playing in the waves. Every imaginable kind of floating toy can be found in the water and on the beach, and the family dog barks at kids riding the waves just out of reach. The afternoon winds pick up and the warm waves build to challenge the older kids, while young ones frolic in the shallows. Mom watches from her beach chair under the shade structure.

Vendors walk the beach under the hot sun hawking everything from ironwood carvings and jewelry to Oaxacan dresses. A panga (an open fishing boat common to most Mexican beaches) tows a long banana float just offshore, looking for riders. People are parasailing down at the public beach area by Restaurant ‘La Palapa.’ A small plane buzzes the beach no more than thirty feet over the water.

In the evening, the boistrous daily wind drops to a cooling murmur, and the moon casts flecks of silver upon a quiet Sea. Beach fires dot the shore, there’s a smell of spicy cooking in the air, and the faint sounds of singing can be heard in the night.

Much of the tranquility returns to Bahia de Kino on Sunday evening, with the last stragglers heading home on Monday morning, concocting their excuses as they drive east back to jobs, classes, and families, in Hermosillo. As they leave, they pass Maria riding to work on the nine o’clock bus, and Luis riding his bike in the morning heat. —PRW

How’d We Get Here Anyway?

Kino Bay, Sonora, Mexico

Perry and Carolyn retired in the Spring of 2004. Some dear friends helped us load everything we owned (about 60 boxes of books, three sailboards, household goods and tools, and very little furniture) into a U-Haul truck. It was so neatly packed that it was an impresssive sight to behold.

Then we all went to a local watering hole for afternoon nachos and drinks. Afterward, we thanked our friends and hugged them profusely for a long day of hard work shoe-horning everything into the truck. We said our goodbyes in the parking lot of the restaurant.

We were ready to leave in the morning, headed to a storage unit in Green Valley, Arizona that we’d rented over the phone. Then Perry noticed the tires on the truck seemed to be bulging ominously. A sign in bold letters beside the door read, “Maximum Weight: 11,000 lbs.” That surely sounded like more than enough for what little we owned. But still...

In the late afternoon, we drove to the closest truck stop to find a scale big enough to weigh the truck so we’d have peace of mind on our long road trip. It was another unnecessary thing we didn’t need to worry about. We paid $8 to the cashier, and drove onto the scale. When we went back to retrieve our weight slip, it read 16,000 lbs!

We were more than a bit shocked, and drove carefully back to the U-Haul place to rent a bigger truck. But all theirs were gone. After several phone calls we found one across town and gave them our credit card info. We left the truck at our now-empty house and drove our car over to get the new truck. I drove while Carolyn made phone calls to arrange with a moving company to cart everything out of one truck, and into the other. They could do it, but they had another moving job first thing in the morning and weren’t sure when they’d arrive. We’d meet them in front of the home of some other friends who had a long lot and a very long curb. We’d back the trucks up to each other to make it as easy as possible. Carolyn spent the day with last minute details and I waited with the trucks until the crew arrived in the early afternoon.

They were three of the biggest Native American guys I’ve ever seen and they were already exhausted from the earlier job, that included moving a grand piano (really!). I couldn’t help but think of that classic Laurel and Hardy movie, although these guys looked a lot more competent. I primed them with ice-cold Cokes to get their energy levels back up, and they started the long process of loading the new, and much larger, truck – which ended up looking only about half full, but drove a lot better.

We paid the movers $300 for an afternoon of heavy work, and later, when I dropped off the first truck, I signed a credit card slip for about $175 for the priviledge of storing everything in the truck overnight. We were almost $500 poorer but now we had a truck that could carry the load safely. We figured we’ll eventually share this story with the friends who helped us load up in the first place, but not just yet. Maybe someday, when it’s funny.

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We arrived in Green Valley (about 20 miles south of Tucson) after a couple of days on the road and we hired an outfit called the “Packrats” to unpack the truck. Then it was off to our new (if somewhat old) house on the beach in Bahia de Kino, Sonora, Mexico. We had packed the van with the things we’d need when we arrived in Kino in June. The winter clothes could wait for a while.
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Temperatures in Kino were consistently in the high 90s each day, with a wet breeze blowing in from the Sea in the afternoon, and we had no electricity. Any kind of artificial cooling was not an option. We wore shorts and t-shirts and went barefoot to stay cool as a hot steady breeze blew through the house and moisture collected on the tattered screens to run in rivulets to the floor. We’d take long walks along the beach in the crisp morning light. And each day, in the late afternoon, we’d dive into the Sea of Cortez just outside our door to wash the sweat off, followed by a cold shower before dinner. We’d linger in the warm waters of this fertile Sea, transfixed while the setting sun painted glorious colors across the sky as it dropped below the jagged horizon of Isla Tiburón. At night, we’d toss our cushions and bedroll on the floor in front of the door, spritz ourselves from a spray water bottle, and sleep to the sound of the ocean right at our feet – or so it seemed.

Life was good in a simple and carefree, ‘sandrat,’ beachcomber kind of way.

The house was part of an estate. It had been mostly unoccupied for a decade and poorly maintained longer than that – a recipe for problems in a saltwater environment. We’d seen the house only briefly, six months ago on a visit when we found that it was available. The utility of the house itself was questionable. It needed to be completely rewired. Badly deteriorated insulation hung from heavily corroded lines leading to the nearest power pole. The coolers had been corroded beyond usability by the salt air. There were leaks in the carport’s concrete roof and large chunks of plaster had fallen to the floor. And there were serious structural problems with most of the concrete columns and beams along the sea porch. But the estate would sell it for the price of the land. It seemed like just our kind of place, and we called the lawyer from a pay phone on the street.

We knew the house was only marginally livable when we bought it, so we tried to arrive as prepared as possible. We’d figure the rest out after we got there. We carted the cooler and the camp stove into the house, Carolyn dug out the candles we’d bought in Hermosillo, and we set up housekeeping. We’d be ‘camping out’ inside until we got reconnected to the power grid.

Since we’re not wealthy enough to afford another house (or two, or three) elsewhere, this would be our only home (not counting an REI puptent we keep in our old van). To our eyes, this simple, neglected concrete house was the essence of beauty. The toilet flushed, more or less, and the roof didn’t leak all that much, so we weren’t really roughing out – in the strictest sense of the phrase. And being right on the beach at an affordable price didn’t hurt, either. We’d happily make do with what we had. This next adventure in our lives would be a ‘romantic interlude.’ It’s amazing what you’ll put up with if you just phase it right.

There was much to do. Our days were soon filled with activity: arranging for Victor the electrician to work us into his very busy schedule (can you find the fingernail moon in this picture?), for Gordo the welder to fix the ‘reja’ (the large rolling front gate), for Fernando the door man to get our old, corroded sliding glass doors to work and to repair our screens to keep some of the bugs out. We’d sort out the water heater later, but it wasn’t an issue in the heat of summer.

Eventually we got the house in livable order. Victor installed a higher quality copper supply line and untangled the other wires leading to our house. To our surprise, the very old Admiral refrigerator worked just fine, and so did the old Frigidaire electric stove. And now we even had lights at night (instead of candles), and fans to help move the hot air around a bit. Gordo, an impish grin upon his face, got the reja working. And Fernando made the doors glide as they had when they were new.

We reveled in the luxury of simple gifts.

Now we had a little time to relax, except for long days spent drawing plans to incorporate our latest ideas for remodeling the house – an ongoing process that will continue until concrete is poured for the new footings.

It was time to attend the annual gathering of the “Summer Survivors.” Most of the ‘gringo’ community (maybe the sensible contingent) leaves Kino by June to escape the building heat. The hard core holdouts have a party to make light of the blistering heat of the coming summer – kind of like whistling past the graveyard.

The local Mexican community, by contrast, heads for the beach in large numbers starting with the Easter weekend, one of the biggest holidays of the year. They look forward to summer at the beach to cool off from the heat of Hermosillo, Nogales, and other inland towns. The shore is dotted with encampments, and whole families spend the entire day in the water, followed by laughing and singing around a campfire late into the evening.

The local joke goes like this:
“Where are you staying at the beach this weekend?”
“At the Hotel ‘Camarena (Hotel ‘Sandbed’)!’”

We were there only for the beginning of the summer season, then it was time to leave on a 12,000 mile odyssey across most of the eastern US and up into Canada.

But that’s another story... — PRW

We Blog!

It's time to start telling stories from Bahia de Kino -- sunny Kino Bay, on the Sea of Cortez in Sonora, Mexico. With this "blog," we enter a new area of communications -- for us! We look forward to sharing our experience here, keeping friends and family informed of goings on, the progress on our house project, and the many things we are learning and experiencing. Both of us are writing randomly about all sorts of things. You may get a poem, a treatise on the state of world affairs, detailed directions for getting to our portion of the beach, or even a recipe (we just had a lesson in making flan!). We'll post photos, as each of us has a digital camera. Look for lots of stunning sunsets!

Since this technology is totally new to us, we may start out slow, but then we'll probably overwhelm you. Most of all, we hope it will give you a chuckle from time to time and inspire you to come see us on the lovely Mar de Cortez (Sea of Cortez).

Abrazos, y ¡vamos!
Perry and Carolyn