We left for Ensenada on Wednesday as planned. Still have Lucky on my mind, but we had already made this plan, and arranged for someone to stay at our house to babysit both dogs. Well she came anyway to take care of Sam. He always knows when we're leaving, even before any suitcase or backpack come out. And this is the first time we both went anywhere overnite and left him behind- and it was the right choice, it would have been a huge hassle to have him with us now.
So the drive over here took about 6 1/2 hours, and over a road called "La Rumorosa" which crosses the Sierra de Juarez mountains- wow what a trip! There are these huge canyons and the road just winds around and thru the mountains. Now it is a separated road- meaning one direction is 2 lanes and there is a second road going the other way. Everardo says years ago when it was just a 2 lane highway- one lane each way, that you could always see cars that had driven off the road; that all they did was bring the bodies up, and left the cars; it was a really dangerous road. I was not nuts about it when we had to pass or wait behind double trailer trucks, and I was also not nuts about some asshole drivers who thought it was a raceway!
Next time we come I will be in the car with Sam following Poppi who will be in the truck pulling the trailer and not looking forward to it- although now we're gonna go back a different route- heading towards San Felipe and then cutting north on the 5, so we'll see which route we like better. On the way here, we picked up 2 guys right after Puerto Penasco on the road to El Golfo, and they were headed to San Felipe so it was their lucky day since we were going that way- but when we missed the turn they didn't tell us and we went north all the way to San Luis, so we went on that windy road after Tecate. In San Luis Everardo got out and asked them why they didn't tell us we missed the turn and they just shrugged and said, well I guess you wanted to go a different way- too bad for them, we were not going to go way out of our way to take them to San Felipe at that point, so they hopped out to find another ride back the way they came.
We got here early afternoon and so grabbed a cheap motel and headed down to Punta Banda to see the first house that I had been emailing with a guy about. The house was not too bad, but it was on their property and this guy talked our heads off! I thought -oh God- this guy is gonna be talking all day every day! And his son and daughter and law also lived there with their kid...and their places were about 50 feet from our front door....ahhh NO. So good we went there right off so we could write off that area, because in fact we decided that maybe we did want to be in Ensenada the city...Punta Banda was more than a 10 minute drive as we were led to believe. We went back to town and Everardo saw THREE different people that he knew! Can you believe it?? One guy still has his stand in the same place selling jewelery, and he actually put us in touch with the place we'll rent to start. He told us about it day one, but we spent 2 more days calling, looking at, and driving around before we came back to it.
It was very very very frustrating trying to find places to look at; one set of houses I saw that were along a beach, on a website had a woman that seemed like she didn't really want to rent anything. I had emailed her previously, so I emailed and called her to try to set something up. Turned out that the prices were "wrong" on the website, and the house that was available was not really available. Then there was another one that looked good, but when I said we wanted month to month at first since we weren't sure what we wanted- it went up 20% in price! With another website the house was also not available for long term, but another one was- we went to see it and it was awful! She tried to tell us the people had just moved out and it was obvious it had been empty for years...it was near the beach and so the price was ridiculous.
Well ok cause we wanted to be in the city anyway...so we did a combination of driving around and calling places we found on 2 websites for in town. There are SO many streets and thousands of houses. It was tiring and frustrating; the fact is we were tryng to stuff days of work into 2 days. So- we went to see the lady that Antonio (Poppi's friend) told us about. She owns the little store next to Antonio's store. She has a house, still in the city, but far from downtown, starting up into the hills. She could not leave her store and her nephew is there, but sleeping- I think he works at night. So we drove by, and will not see the inside until Sunday morning at 7am. We took a taxi out there, and well, it does have a yard and a fence. It is not the style we're looking for, but it's in the lower end of our price range...so unless something else happens, we're gonna take it so we can move here, and then look for something better from here. She is not in a hurry, and we can have our move in date as Nov 1, and she did not ask for a deposit or anything, she is going on Antonio's word. This means alot, cause a house we wanted to see yesterday afternoon, the woman said we needed a person here to vouch for us- we don't have that. Well later she called back and offered it to us if we gave her 2 months rent, and a security deposit of $1000 dollars- not pesos. We hadn't even seen the place and were tired. We declined.
Ok well there's more to tell but I gotta get up cause we're gonna go look for an AA meeting in English that I heard about...but I'll end with info about a celebration we went to yesterday morning. It's the Day of the Boy Heroes- Ninos Heroes...kinda cool: And the president of Ensenada, the marines and the navy were there- marching and playing trumpets and drums. And of course lots of speeches- which was when we left...
The Niños Héroes (in English: Boy Heroes), also known as the Heroic Cadets or Boy Soldiers, were six Mexican teenage military cadets. These cadets died defending Mexico at Mexico City's Chapultepec Castle (then serving as the Mexican Army's military academy) from invading U.S. forces in the 13 September 1847 Battle of Chapultepec, during the Mexican–American War. One of the cadets, Juan Escutia, wrapped himself with the Mexican flag and jumped from the roof of the castle to keep it from falling into enemy hands.[1] The Niños Héroes are commemorated by a national holiday on September 13.
The Niños Héroes were:
Chapultepec Castle was defended by Mexican troops under the command of Nicolás Bravo, including cadets from the military academy. The number of cadets present has been variously given, from 47[3] to a few hundred. The greatly outnumbered defenders battled General Scott's troops for about two hours before General Bravo ordered retreat, however the six cadets refused to fall back and fought to the death. Legend has it that the last of the six, Juan Escutia, leapt from Chapultepec Castle wrapped in the Mexican flag to prevent the flag from being taken by the enemy. According to the later account of an unidentified US officer, "about a hundred" cadets between the ages of 10 and 16 were among the "crowds" of prisoners taken after the Castle's capture.[4]
The six cadets are honored by an imposing monument made of Carrara marble by architect Enrique Aragón and sculptor Ernesto Tamariz at the entrance to Chapultepec Park (1952);[2] and the name Niños Héroes, along with the cadets' individual names, are commonly given to streets, squares and schools across the country. For many years they appeared on the MXN 5000 banknote. The Mexico City Metro station Metro Niños Héroes is also named after them.
The bodies of the six youths were buried in the grounds of Chapultepec city. In 1947 their remains were found and identified and, on 27 September 1952, were re-interred at the Monument to the Heroic Cadets in Chapultepec.
On March 5, 1947, a few months before the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Chapultepec, U.S. President Harry S. Truman placed a wreath at the monument and stood for a few moments of silent reverence. Asked by American reporters why he had gone to the monument, Truman said, "Brave men don't belong to any one country. I respect bravery wherever I see it."[5]
The Metro Niños Héroes station in Mexico D.F. honors the memory of the cadets.
Several Elementary and Middle schools through Mexico are named after them with their complete names.
So the drive over here took about 6 1/2 hours, and over a road called "La Rumorosa" which crosses the Sierra de Juarez mountains- wow what a trip! There are these huge canyons and the road just winds around and thru the mountains. Now it is a separated road- meaning one direction is 2 lanes and there is a second road going the other way. Everardo says years ago when it was just a 2 lane highway- one lane each way, that you could always see cars that had driven off the road; that all they did was bring the bodies up, and left the cars; it was a really dangerous road. I was not nuts about it when we had to pass or wait behind double trailer trucks, and I was also not nuts about some asshole drivers who thought it was a raceway!
Next time we come I will be in the car with Sam following Poppi who will be in the truck pulling the trailer and not looking forward to it- although now we're gonna go back a different route- heading towards San Felipe and then cutting north on the 5, so we'll see which route we like better. On the way here, we picked up 2 guys right after Puerto Penasco on the road to El Golfo, and they were headed to San Felipe so it was their lucky day since we were going that way- but when we missed the turn they didn't tell us and we went north all the way to San Luis, so we went on that windy road after Tecate. In San Luis Everardo got out and asked them why they didn't tell us we missed the turn and they just shrugged and said, well I guess you wanted to go a different way- too bad for them, we were not going to go way out of our way to take them to San Felipe at that point, so they hopped out to find another ride back the way they came.
We got here early afternoon and so grabbed a cheap motel and headed down to Punta Banda to see the first house that I had been emailing with a guy about. The house was not too bad, but it was on their property and this guy talked our heads off! I thought -oh God- this guy is gonna be talking all day every day! And his son and daughter and law also lived there with their kid...and their places were about 50 feet from our front door....ahhh NO. So good we went there right off so we could write off that area, because in fact we decided that maybe we did want to be in Ensenada the city...Punta Banda was more than a 10 minute drive as we were led to believe. We went back to town and Everardo saw THREE different people that he knew! Can you believe it?? One guy still has his stand in the same place selling jewelery, and he actually put us in touch with the place we'll rent to start. He told us about it day one, but we spent 2 more days calling, looking at, and driving around before we came back to it.
It was very very very frustrating trying to find places to look at; one set of houses I saw that were along a beach, on a website had a woman that seemed like she didn't really want to rent anything. I had emailed her previously, so I emailed and called her to try to set something up. Turned out that the prices were "wrong" on the website, and the house that was available was not really available. Then there was another one that looked good, but when I said we wanted month to month at first since we weren't sure what we wanted- it went up 20% in price! With another website the house was also not available for long term, but another one was- we went to see it and it was awful! She tried to tell us the people had just moved out and it was obvious it had been empty for years...it was near the beach and so the price was ridiculous.
Well ok cause we wanted to be in the city anyway...so we did a combination of driving around and calling places we found on 2 websites for in town. There are SO many streets and thousands of houses. It was tiring and frustrating; the fact is we were tryng to stuff days of work into 2 days. So- we went to see the lady that Antonio (Poppi's friend) told us about. She owns the little store next to Antonio's store. She has a house, still in the city, but far from downtown, starting up into the hills. She could not leave her store and her nephew is there, but sleeping- I think he works at night. So we drove by, and will not see the inside until Sunday morning at 7am. We took a taxi out there, and well, it does have a yard and a fence. It is not the style we're looking for, but it's in the lower end of our price range...so unless something else happens, we're gonna take it so we can move here, and then look for something better from here. She is not in a hurry, and we can have our move in date as Nov 1, and she did not ask for a deposit or anything, she is going on Antonio's word. This means alot, cause a house we wanted to see yesterday afternoon, the woman said we needed a person here to vouch for us- we don't have that. Well later she called back and offered it to us if we gave her 2 months rent, and a security deposit of $1000 dollars- not pesos. We hadn't even seen the place and were tired. We declined.
Ok well there's more to tell but I gotta get up cause we're gonna go look for an AA meeting in English that I heard about...but I'll end with info about a celebration we went to yesterday morning. It's the Day of the Boy Heroes- Ninos Heroes...kinda cool: And the president of Ensenada, the marines and the navy were there- marching and playing trumpets and drums. And of course lots of speeches- which was when we left...
The Niños Héroes (in English: Boy Heroes), also known as the Heroic Cadets or Boy Soldiers, were six Mexican teenage military cadets. These cadets died defending Mexico at Mexico City's Chapultepec Castle (then serving as the Mexican Army's military academy) from invading U.S. forces in the 13 September 1847 Battle of Chapultepec, during the Mexican–American War. One of the cadets, Juan Escutia, wrapped himself with the Mexican flag and jumped from the roof of the castle to keep it from falling into enemy hands.[1] The Niños Héroes are commemorated by a national holiday on September 13.
The Niños Héroes were:
- Juan de la Barrera (age 19)
- Juan Escutia (age 15–19) (?)
- Francisco Márquez (age 13)
- Agustín Melgar (age 15–19) (?)
- Fernando Montes de Oca (age 15–19) (?)
- Vicente Suárez (age 14)
Chapultepec Castle was defended by Mexican troops under the command of Nicolás Bravo, including cadets from the military academy. The number of cadets present has been variously given, from 47[3] to a few hundred. The greatly outnumbered defenders battled General Scott's troops for about two hours before General Bravo ordered retreat, however the six cadets refused to fall back and fought to the death. Legend has it that the last of the six, Juan Escutia, leapt from Chapultepec Castle wrapped in the Mexican flag to prevent the flag from being taken by the enemy. According to the later account of an unidentified US officer, "about a hundred" cadets between the ages of 10 and 16 were among the "crowds" of prisoners taken after the Castle's capture.[4]
The six cadets are honored by an imposing monument made of Carrara marble by architect Enrique Aragón and sculptor Ernesto Tamariz at the entrance to Chapultepec Park (1952);[2] and the name Niños Héroes, along with the cadets' individual names, are commonly given to streets, squares and schools across the country. For many years they appeared on the MXN 5000 banknote. The Mexico City Metro station Metro Niños Héroes is also named after them.
The bodies of the six youths were buried in the grounds of Chapultepec city. In 1947 their remains were found and identified and, on 27 September 1952, were re-interred at the Monument to the Heroic Cadets in Chapultepec.
On March 5, 1947, a few months before the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Chapultepec, U.S. President Harry S. Truman placed a wreath at the monument and stood for a few moments of silent reverence. Asked by American reporters why he had gone to the monument, Truman said, "Brave men don't belong to any one country. I respect bravery wherever I see it."[5]
The Metro Niños Héroes station in Mexico D.F. honors the memory of the cadets.
Several Elementary and Middle schools through Mexico are named after them with their complete names.
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