We are almost unpacked, now just little piles of stuff...on counters. I had no idea I had accumilated so much bathroom crap...lotions, perfumes, etc. I don't even wear perfume but have been given it as gifts over the years so they all stay pretty full. The only exception to that is some given to me by my ex brother & sister in law from Germany. I really love them; they were always so much fun. He is Palestinian (like my ex husband) and she is German. He speaks Arabic, English, Spanish, & German, but she only speaks German. I speak no German but they would come and stay with us for like a month at a time and she and I got along great! We laughed our heads off, ok ok usually drunk as girl skunks but laughing our heads off. Then they had a beautiful little girl whom I also love, who, at least the last time I saw her- a few years back- didn't speak English. I always remember when Simona and I were alone in the car going to the store and I wanted to say we need onions. I made hand motions like I was holding something small and round in one hand and cutting it with the other. Then I rubbed my eyes saying boohoo boohoo (crying right?), and she yelled..well she yelled whatever the word for onion is in German. So...yes once in a while I use a little dab of one of the perfumes they brought me from Germany.
The guy never came yet to hook up the tv. We lucked out with the internet- they came on Friday just like they said they would. It's the same company for the tv, and they said they'd come Sat or Sun, but here we are Monday afternoon and no tv. It's ok, I'm happy to have the internet first. But the truth is I'm getting sick of watching movies at nite. We watched Finding Nemo after a couple of nites of the black & white 50's movies, and the last 3 nites we've used that website Watch32 that has free movies online and Everardo hooks up his laptop to the tv, but I hate looking for a movie to watch. I never liked picking movies from On Demand when we had cable either. If they don't come today we'll try to call them tomorrow.
I've walked each day with Sam either down the road behind us that goes past the estuary or along the beach. The beach here really is amazing. The sand is so soft, and it glitters gold, like little gold flecks in the sand. Almost no debris, not alot of shells like Playa Ventura or Penasco, but really beautiful, much prettier than Penasco, and in some ways, more than Playa Ventura as well. Playa Ventura has a beautiful coastline, rocky and jagged at some points, and beautiful sandy beaches at others. It's open ocean, with the waves crashing onto the shore. Ok maybe just different, not better. Here we are in a bit of a bay, the land naturally curving inward, but this morning there were pretty big waves. You can see little neighborhoods or towns along the coast and also up in the hills. This morning there were this little birds on the beach- sandpipers I think; they have long skinny beaks that they put down into the sand. They look like little brown birds but when they take off and fly you see white and black under their wings. They didn't really mind Sam and I until I threw the ball, then mostly they just scurried the other way. I tried to hold off with the ball until we were past them, but Sam is jumping straight up in the air asking "now? now? now? now? NOW? NOW? NOW? as if he will literally die if I don't throw it. So I do. The other day I saw a seal with her baby- actually it could have been a sea lion, whatever it was I was very excited!
At nite the view is really beautiful from our house. We can see the beach out the side windows of the living room, and then the lights of Ensenada. I just love the little group of houses nestled together on the hillsides; some close to the bottom, some mid way, not alot of them on the top ridges, except right at the beach south of us. And so far almost all the people around here really really like it. They like the serenity, the calmness. There's alot of Americans, in Penasco I only interacted with a few; 3 or 4 from the English speaking AA, and then Deb & Rick. A couple times when doing something with Deb I'd be with a couple of ladies, but mostly we were with Mexicans. And of course in Playa Ventura, all Mexicans. I walked Sam up to the corner to go down by the estuary on Sat and there was a little flea market, well just 6 or 7 people set up, mostly Americans, and I chatted with them. We've met a few of our neighbors and except for the family who owns most of the land, they have been Americans. We don't have too many neighbors; most of the houses in our campo are vacant. Either owned by people who vacation here, or just plain empty.
Part of that has to do with the crazy devil woman who is the family who owns most of the land in this campo. At first I thought she owned all of it except for ours, but a few places are otherwise owned. So some houses own the house and the land, others own the house but lease the land from her, and many are owned by her and she rents...some of them. There's probably 25 or 30 houses here, but that is a pretty uneducated guess, maybe a few more. Maybe as many as 10 are occupied full time, but it feels like to me that number is closer to 5 or 6...5 I am sure of, so maybe a couple more. So these neighborhoods, or "campos" have sprung up over time, maybe 40 years ago someone built a house here and leased the land from the family who owns it. When enough houses are in one place, they give it a name, like ours in Agua Caliente. There's La Jolla next to us and La Jolla 2 across the street from them. That's where we looked at 2 other houses. I don't know how many houses or people determines when a camp is formed, but I think one Mexican family owns most of the coastal land around here..their name might be Pacheco or something close to that. Ours is owned by a different family who's name I won't use because they are pretty fucked up people, and well at this point I just don't want to. But I will write about this crazy devil woman so ha ha I guess it's kinda the same thing.
The beaches in Mexico are all public, anyone can go on any beach. Us having "rights to the beach" for our Playa Ventura house simply means if a hotel goes up next door they can't use the beach in front of our house for their purposes. But here, people own the land right up to the beach, so even though it's public, you must cross private property to get to the beach. So for the La Jolla camp for example, if we want to go to the beach there, they'd charge us $3.00 to come into their camp. Now here, if we were renting from devil woman we could go to the beach no problem..it's less than a 5 minute walk, and I can see it from where I'm sitting on my couch right now. But, did I mention she's a devil? Yeah and in this case simply a F'ing greedy bitch. Right after we said oh we want this house, the realtor said, oh yeah- you have to pay the land owners here $50 a month to have beach access. This pissed of Everardo, but we said ok, well we'll just use a different access. And we found one yesterday walking down towards the estuary, so a 10 minute walk instead of less than 5. However, things changed when we got here, and suddenly the fee was beach access AND access to our house! The realtor was no help there, she said "I tried". She then said she'd pay half so now it's $25 to us. So we went down and talked to the devil. I mean this woman is pure evil. She has a cold dead aura around her. I mean I was spooked. If we didn't love this house I would have told her to fuck off and just gone somewhere else. As it turns out we really don't see her so I'm no longer upset about her like I was that first day. She smiled and I swear I thought a knife was about to go in my back. At one point she said she was a christian woman and I peeked upward to see if a lightening bolt was on the way or would she simply burst into flames. Anyway, she told us this big long story about the people who lived in our house for 40 years or something like that, they were their friends and the devils parents gave them access. But then they died, and the Canadians came- the current owners and they never asked for access to their house or the beach...yadda yadda yadda and some big long thing about who "really" owned the house, and how she'd like to buy it...oh and would we like to rent from her....She told us that all the land here is her family's so technically we do not have access to our house. She said it all with a smile on her face and in a way that we would "understand what is fair", and what has happened to her family that has not been fair...
So we heard elsewhere that she thinks some big company will buy all this land from her for a billion dollars (or some such number), and she will be filthy reach. So she doesn't want people in these houses, although she is renting out a couple. She wants this house because she doesn't own the land and she needs it, but as I said, I know she doesn't own at least one other lot. She has a terrible reputation around here. We have been warned or given "the look" and always told to be careful. Apparently her brother and his son are crack heads or meth heads, and empty houses get broken into. But we've talked to some people who've lived here for years and although they had nothing good to say about the family, their homes have never been broken into. I guess one of them is a drug dealer, but as long as they stay away from us I'm ok. I mean, there's crime everywhere, drug dealers everywhere- this is not cartel- just loser criminals. So she's talking away to us about how they are a "family" here, and we can be a part of that family. That she could rent a house to us cheaper than this one...like I would EVER make a deal with a devil. I told her we had a lease but she said oh you can break it and get all your money back. Yeah right. She was like an evil snake...can you tell I don't like her? So she tells us that she is not going to negotiate this fee with us. It is with our realtor. That she is just talking to us a neighbors, inviting us to be a part of the group. Then she says, in fact you do not have to pay, and the realtor does not have to pay, but you will not be a part of the neighborhood, you will have to just stay in your house. But she will have to tell her older brother and he is not as nice as she is. That he may have a problem because we do not have access to our house, so how can we be allowed to go there...anyway the words were something to that effect...and I took it as intended- as a threat! I said, look, we are going to have our realtor pay, we just want to live a quiet life and I want to walk my dog on the beach every day. She said, oh I don't mean anything by this, I just like to be honest and be sure everyone is on the same page. Everardo didn't get what she was saying at first and when I told him as we walked home he got mad...really mad- he said send her brother over..and some other things I won't repeat...Did I say she's a devil?? So- we want to live here, a week later we really like it here. We don't see her, and we are chalking it up to our rent is $25 more a month than we thought.
We did ask around and all the camps have a fee to use the camp to get to the beach if you don't live there She figures since she doesn't own our land she's gonna get something from us. Ok I know my readers are shaking their heads and saying- what? Move somewhere else! Well we're gonna stay 6 months; that's the lease we signed. Actually our realtor offered to refund our money, but we don't have another place right now, we finally found this place. She will let us break the lease in a couple of months if we find something else but we lose the security deposit. And the thing is- we really really like the house. So we're staying for 6 months, and probably a year, and who knows, right? Ok there's another thing that makes all this easier to swallow- we saw the paperwork from one person and then have heard the same story from 3 or 4 people (but seeing the court papers gave it some authenticity), that she is under investigation for numerous criminal acts, I think the one that they're going to get her for is that she doesn't pay her property taxes on all this land. She's so greedy that she takes takes takes, but she's not paying the gov't. Now she has an "in" somewhere; she's paying off somebody because they were supposed to start auctioning off some of her land a year ago and it was delayed, for a year. So something may happen soon. Or not. This woman I was chatting with on the beach; she lives in another camp down further and has 4 dogs- she lives alone. She had all the same stories when I told her where I lived, and then told me that the devil actually did some black magic spells on some people to get them to move out of their houses, and that this woman's friend does "cleaning" I forget the word but like when you burn sage to get rid of the negative energy or "bad spirits". Actually I burn sage around my home, and will do it here; I just found my sage last nite when emptying yet another bin ha ha.
So we are ok. I think if we just mind our own business & give the devil and her family a wide berth we will be fine. Oh and we're gonna get another big dog to keep Sam company and to bark real loud in our yard. That's one thing, most Mexicans are afraid of big dogs, the culture here about dogs is different than the US. Not for everyone but for many people here, they can barely feed their family, so a dog is an animal that hangs around the house, fends for himself where food is concerned. I know I've written before about the huge dog overpopulation problems here in Mexico- Penasco was terrible. I haven't seen too many strays here but have read on the local web bulletin boards that it is a problem here as well. Once the darn tv guys come we can run errands together and we'll head down to Paco's animal rescue and see what we can find- I heard they have a lot of dogs. I do know many Mexican families do have dogs as pets, and take good care of them, but there's just so many strays. One huge issue is getting the dogs spayed or neutered. It's like they don't mind with the females, but with the males it's some how some macho thing! Even Everardo was hesitant about getting Lucky fixed- but believe me- he would have gotten neutered.
So the plumbing problems are not totally resolved, now it's tomorrow. The guy who will empty the septic is supposed to come, and Mike needed to go to "town" (Ensenada) to get the stuff to finish fixing the toilets. So another day of having to go downstairs if we want to do anything besides pee....but that's better than the day & nite we couldn't use the upstairs toilet at all!! Remember our living room and bedroom are upstairs. Since the house was not lived in for so long the pipes are messed up, but Mike is a good guy and seems to know what he's doing so it's all good.
I moved the couch around this morning and like it much better. It was here when we got here and is one of those sectionals with a corner. The 2 ends have a foot rest that pops up, but my end doesn't work right, although we did get it to come up, so just leave it up! Anyway I pull the corner section out, and put one section between the 2 ends so we have basically a regular couch with foot rests, and my end? Well if I look to the left out the window- I can see the ocean!! It's an ok view, over one house and past another but hey- I have an ocean view from my couch. And we're far enough away that it's not real loud. Sounds crazy, but in Playa Ventura the ocean was so loud! I longed for silence.
Well it's 4pm so it looks like no tv today. Ha ha jokes on me- we went to Telnor (Telmex of Baja, both owned by Carlos Slim), in Ensenada and saw they offered Dish tv! So it was one stop shopping! In fact they offered to put it all on one bill, which we can receive by email, so we said, sure that would be great! It will be over 200 pesos cheaper than Sky tv for about the same number of channels. The only disappointment is they do not offer BBC Int'l News, which I really like, even much better than CNN Int'l. The guy did say that the CNN that they offer was out of Europe not Atlanta, but, oh well, we'll see.
My husband has been amazing, dragging things back and forth for me, moving furniture, AND cooking. Yum we had lobster a couple of nites ago, and whatever he's making tonite is a surprise cause he's downstairs in the kitchen now...where I should go ask if I can help. (the answer will be no- but at least I asked!)
Ok kinda caught up now, so catch ya'll later!
Mexico fun fact:
While bullfighting is Mexico's national sport, fútbol (soccer in the U.S.) is currently more popular
The guy never came yet to hook up the tv. We lucked out with the internet- they came on Friday just like they said they would. It's the same company for the tv, and they said they'd come Sat or Sun, but here we are Monday afternoon and no tv. It's ok, I'm happy to have the internet first. But the truth is I'm getting sick of watching movies at nite. We watched Finding Nemo after a couple of nites of the black & white 50's movies, and the last 3 nites we've used that website Watch32 that has free movies online and Everardo hooks up his laptop to the tv, but I hate looking for a movie to watch. I never liked picking movies from On Demand when we had cable either. If they don't come today we'll try to call them tomorrow.
I've walked each day with Sam either down the road behind us that goes past the estuary or along the beach. The beach here really is amazing. The sand is so soft, and it glitters gold, like little gold flecks in the sand. Almost no debris, not alot of shells like Playa Ventura or Penasco, but really beautiful, much prettier than Penasco, and in some ways, more than Playa Ventura as well. Playa Ventura has a beautiful coastline, rocky and jagged at some points, and beautiful sandy beaches at others. It's open ocean, with the waves crashing onto the shore. Ok maybe just different, not better. Here we are in a bit of a bay, the land naturally curving inward, but this morning there were pretty big waves. You can see little neighborhoods or towns along the coast and also up in the hills. This morning there were this little birds on the beach- sandpipers I think; they have long skinny beaks that they put down into the sand. They look like little brown birds but when they take off and fly you see white and black under their wings. They didn't really mind Sam and I until I threw the ball, then mostly they just scurried the other way. I tried to hold off with the ball until we were past them, but Sam is jumping straight up in the air asking "now? now? now? now? NOW? NOW? NOW? as if he will literally die if I don't throw it. So I do. The other day I saw a seal with her baby- actually it could have been a sea lion, whatever it was I was very excited!
At nite the view is really beautiful from our house. We can see the beach out the side windows of the living room, and then the lights of Ensenada. I just love the little group of houses nestled together on the hillsides; some close to the bottom, some mid way, not alot of them on the top ridges, except right at the beach south of us. And so far almost all the people around here really really like it. They like the serenity, the calmness. There's alot of Americans, in Penasco I only interacted with a few; 3 or 4 from the English speaking AA, and then Deb & Rick. A couple times when doing something with Deb I'd be with a couple of ladies, but mostly we were with Mexicans. And of course in Playa Ventura, all Mexicans. I walked Sam up to the corner to go down by the estuary on Sat and there was a little flea market, well just 6 or 7 people set up, mostly Americans, and I chatted with them. We've met a few of our neighbors and except for the family who owns most of the land, they have been Americans. We don't have too many neighbors; most of the houses in our campo are vacant. Either owned by people who vacation here, or just plain empty.
Part of that has to do with the crazy devil woman who is the family who owns most of the land in this campo. At first I thought she owned all of it except for ours, but a few places are otherwise owned. So some houses own the house and the land, others own the house but lease the land from her, and many are owned by her and she rents...some of them. There's probably 25 or 30 houses here, but that is a pretty uneducated guess, maybe a few more. Maybe as many as 10 are occupied full time, but it feels like to me that number is closer to 5 or 6...5 I am sure of, so maybe a couple more. So these neighborhoods, or "campos" have sprung up over time, maybe 40 years ago someone built a house here and leased the land from the family who owns it. When enough houses are in one place, they give it a name, like ours in Agua Caliente. There's La Jolla next to us and La Jolla 2 across the street from them. That's where we looked at 2 other houses. I don't know how many houses or people determines when a camp is formed, but I think one Mexican family owns most of the coastal land around here..their name might be Pacheco or something close to that. Ours is owned by a different family who's name I won't use because they are pretty fucked up people, and well at this point I just don't want to. But I will write about this crazy devil woman so ha ha I guess it's kinda the same thing.
The beaches in Mexico are all public, anyone can go on any beach. Us having "rights to the beach" for our Playa Ventura house simply means if a hotel goes up next door they can't use the beach in front of our house for their purposes. But here, people own the land right up to the beach, so even though it's public, you must cross private property to get to the beach. So for the La Jolla camp for example, if we want to go to the beach there, they'd charge us $3.00 to come into their camp. Now here, if we were renting from devil woman we could go to the beach no problem..it's less than a 5 minute walk, and I can see it from where I'm sitting on my couch right now. But, did I mention she's a devil? Yeah and in this case simply a F'ing greedy bitch. Right after we said oh we want this house, the realtor said, oh yeah- you have to pay the land owners here $50 a month to have beach access. This pissed of Everardo, but we said ok, well we'll just use a different access. And we found one yesterday walking down towards the estuary, so a 10 minute walk instead of less than 5. However, things changed when we got here, and suddenly the fee was beach access AND access to our house! The realtor was no help there, she said "I tried". She then said she'd pay half so now it's $25 to us. So we went down and talked to the devil. I mean this woman is pure evil. She has a cold dead aura around her. I mean I was spooked. If we didn't love this house I would have told her to fuck off and just gone somewhere else. As it turns out we really don't see her so I'm no longer upset about her like I was that first day. She smiled and I swear I thought a knife was about to go in my back. At one point she said she was a christian woman and I peeked upward to see if a lightening bolt was on the way or would she simply burst into flames. Anyway, she told us this big long story about the people who lived in our house for 40 years or something like that, they were their friends and the devils parents gave them access. But then they died, and the Canadians came- the current owners and they never asked for access to their house or the beach...yadda yadda yadda and some big long thing about who "really" owned the house, and how she'd like to buy it...oh and would we like to rent from her....She told us that all the land here is her family's so technically we do not have access to our house. She said it all with a smile on her face and in a way that we would "understand what is fair", and what has happened to her family that has not been fair...
So we heard elsewhere that she thinks some big company will buy all this land from her for a billion dollars (or some such number), and she will be filthy reach. So she doesn't want people in these houses, although she is renting out a couple. She wants this house because she doesn't own the land and she needs it, but as I said, I know she doesn't own at least one other lot. She has a terrible reputation around here. We have been warned or given "the look" and always told to be careful. Apparently her brother and his son are crack heads or meth heads, and empty houses get broken into. But we've talked to some people who've lived here for years and although they had nothing good to say about the family, their homes have never been broken into. I guess one of them is a drug dealer, but as long as they stay away from us I'm ok. I mean, there's crime everywhere, drug dealers everywhere- this is not cartel- just loser criminals. So she's talking away to us about how they are a "family" here, and we can be a part of that family. That she could rent a house to us cheaper than this one...like I would EVER make a deal with a devil. I told her we had a lease but she said oh you can break it and get all your money back. Yeah right. She was like an evil snake...can you tell I don't like her? So she tells us that she is not going to negotiate this fee with us. It is with our realtor. That she is just talking to us a neighbors, inviting us to be a part of the group. Then she says, in fact you do not have to pay, and the realtor does not have to pay, but you will not be a part of the neighborhood, you will have to just stay in your house. But she will have to tell her older brother and he is not as nice as she is. That he may have a problem because we do not have access to our house, so how can we be allowed to go there...anyway the words were something to that effect...and I took it as intended- as a threat! I said, look, we are going to have our realtor pay, we just want to live a quiet life and I want to walk my dog on the beach every day. She said, oh I don't mean anything by this, I just like to be honest and be sure everyone is on the same page. Everardo didn't get what she was saying at first and when I told him as we walked home he got mad...really mad- he said send her brother over..and some other things I won't repeat...Did I say she's a devil?? So- we want to live here, a week later we really like it here. We don't see her, and we are chalking it up to our rent is $25 more a month than we thought.
We did ask around and all the camps have a fee to use the camp to get to the beach if you don't live there She figures since she doesn't own our land she's gonna get something from us. Ok I know my readers are shaking their heads and saying- what? Move somewhere else! Well we're gonna stay 6 months; that's the lease we signed. Actually our realtor offered to refund our money, but we don't have another place right now, we finally found this place. She will let us break the lease in a couple of months if we find something else but we lose the security deposit. And the thing is- we really really like the house. So we're staying for 6 months, and probably a year, and who knows, right? Ok there's another thing that makes all this easier to swallow- we saw the paperwork from one person and then have heard the same story from 3 or 4 people (but seeing the court papers gave it some authenticity), that she is under investigation for numerous criminal acts, I think the one that they're going to get her for is that she doesn't pay her property taxes on all this land. She's so greedy that she takes takes takes, but she's not paying the gov't. Now she has an "in" somewhere; she's paying off somebody because they were supposed to start auctioning off some of her land a year ago and it was delayed, for a year. So something may happen soon. Or not. This woman I was chatting with on the beach; she lives in another camp down further and has 4 dogs- she lives alone. She had all the same stories when I told her where I lived, and then told me that the devil actually did some black magic spells on some people to get them to move out of their houses, and that this woman's friend does "cleaning" I forget the word but like when you burn sage to get rid of the negative energy or "bad spirits". Actually I burn sage around my home, and will do it here; I just found my sage last nite when emptying yet another bin ha ha.
So we are ok. I think if we just mind our own business & give the devil and her family a wide berth we will be fine. Oh and we're gonna get another big dog to keep Sam company and to bark real loud in our yard. That's one thing, most Mexicans are afraid of big dogs, the culture here about dogs is different than the US. Not for everyone but for many people here, they can barely feed their family, so a dog is an animal that hangs around the house, fends for himself where food is concerned. I know I've written before about the huge dog overpopulation problems here in Mexico- Penasco was terrible. I haven't seen too many strays here but have read on the local web bulletin boards that it is a problem here as well. Once the darn tv guys come we can run errands together and we'll head down to Paco's animal rescue and see what we can find- I heard they have a lot of dogs. I do know many Mexican families do have dogs as pets, and take good care of them, but there's just so many strays. One huge issue is getting the dogs spayed or neutered. It's like they don't mind with the females, but with the males it's some how some macho thing! Even Everardo was hesitant about getting Lucky fixed- but believe me- he would have gotten neutered.
So the plumbing problems are not totally resolved, now it's tomorrow. The guy who will empty the septic is supposed to come, and Mike needed to go to "town" (Ensenada) to get the stuff to finish fixing the toilets. So another day of having to go downstairs if we want to do anything besides pee....but that's better than the day & nite we couldn't use the upstairs toilet at all!! Remember our living room and bedroom are upstairs. Since the house was not lived in for so long the pipes are messed up, but Mike is a good guy and seems to know what he's doing so it's all good.
I moved the couch around this morning and like it much better. It was here when we got here and is one of those sectionals with a corner. The 2 ends have a foot rest that pops up, but my end doesn't work right, although we did get it to come up, so just leave it up! Anyway I pull the corner section out, and put one section between the 2 ends so we have basically a regular couch with foot rests, and my end? Well if I look to the left out the window- I can see the ocean!! It's an ok view, over one house and past another but hey- I have an ocean view from my couch. And we're far enough away that it's not real loud. Sounds crazy, but in Playa Ventura the ocean was so loud! I longed for silence.
Well it's 4pm so it looks like no tv today. Ha ha jokes on me- we went to Telnor (Telmex of Baja, both owned by Carlos Slim), in Ensenada and saw they offered Dish tv! So it was one stop shopping! In fact they offered to put it all on one bill, which we can receive by email, so we said, sure that would be great! It will be over 200 pesos cheaper than Sky tv for about the same number of channels. The only disappointment is they do not offer BBC Int'l News, which I really like, even much better than CNN Int'l. The guy did say that the CNN that they offer was out of Europe not Atlanta, but, oh well, we'll see.
My husband has been amazing, dragging things back and forth for me, moving furniture, AND cooking. Yum we had lobster a couple of nites ago, and whatever he's making tonite is a surprise cause he's downstairs in the kitchen now...where I should go ask if I can help. (the answer will be no- but at least I asked!)
Ok kinda caught up now, so catch ya'll later!
Mexico fun fact:
While bullfighting is Mexico's national sport, fútbol (soccer in the U.S.) is currently more popular
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