Chacala Days

I had a very nice day today. Today is Constitution Day and it's a bank and school and postal holiday and lots of people are here on the beach. First thing this morning Gilberto, a four year old neighbor boy came over wanting to "pintura". Some wonderful people, Lonnie and Carolina, had just brought three really nice sets of watercolors down, and Gilberto went crazy went he saw the brand new paints. He is very careful not to mix colors and is a great with doing beautiful color washes with really nice colors. He worked quietly for more than an hour, and then we glued his pictures to the palm trees that hold up my palapa shelter (his idea). Nice morning. He arrived about 7am, and we shared some bananas while we worked. The cold nights and cold early morning have abated and it was very comfortable and warm at 7am. And it's about 7pm and still nice. This is the week of the big fiesta in Las Varas. No one seems to know which night the town of Chacala marches in the parade but lot{s of people are planning to go. There are lots of booths and bands and food places and a talent show that goes on and rides like bumper cars and special masses after the parades each night. It's really fine and it's hard to believe it's Las Varas, it's so full of booth and people And fireworks every night. Something happened that I am interpreting as another sign of Chacala growth as a town. Government growth, or a sense of authority, and an attitude that seems to be like "this is our town and we are taking responsibility for keeping it clean and protecting it's citizens." In this case, some sort of scuzzy looking young people arrived in town a few days ago. People noticed them arrive, and noticed that they didn{t have any possessions with them. So when they started walking out of town later, carrying a bunch of stuff, including a stereo, some citizens noticed and stopped them. After some conversations they confiscated the stuff and took it to Juans (the new Juez). Meanwhile, Juan the painter went home to Ana's house up the hill from town and realized his stereo was gone. He went to Juan's to report it, and there was his stuff. Pretty good I think. I course, this is mostly second hand, so I may have it completely wrong. But I like the story. And I think if it's true it bodes well from Chacala. Some people believe that the governor's promise of a real water source for Chacala by April might be true. Hope so. Speaking I misunderstanding what is going on....which happens to me all the time. Today some people arrived and set up one of those huge oil filled vats where they deep fry pork producsts of a big gas burner arrived at one of the palapa´s at Esperanza's. Somehow I jumped to the conclusion that they were going to open a restaurant or food stand and I quietly freaked out. Then I left to run errands and came back and saw that it was just a family party. A nice quiet family party, mostly women and kids.

It's a beautiful Monday, about 85 F degrees mid afternoon. It was about 62 degree at 7am, which is cold in my opinion. The ocean is perfect and a lovely green blue color. Pretty guiet around town. I am still waiting for my computer to get repaired and brought back down to Chacala. I miss it alot and can't wait to get it back. I am looking for someone to bring it down from Seattle. There are a couple of wireless areas around town now, but you would have to hunt to find them. The broadband hookup at Koko bongos is working well and open all the time. The new hotel is still pretty empty, with not very many guests and the pool seems to be greenish lately. There was a tour bus of people unloading yesterday, moving into Mercede's place (the new place with the small blue pool, across from Casa Azul. It appeared that 8 and 10 people were staying gin each of the 6 units. Not my first choice for a place to stay. I am happy and busy. The Sufi's are at Mar de Jade. For the tenth or eleventh year in a row, I think. One of the Sufi's told me there were sixty Sufis staying there, some in the massage rooms at the new spa, which is very nice. This is all discouraging news, I guess. The good news is there are alot of very nice visitors this week and its very fun to meet them and hang around with them. But my favorite thing is still being at my camp doing my things that I like to do.