My Life in a Hammock with Iguanas and Plants

My lunch today was my first meal since I got sick a couple of days ago (Wednesday) . I haven’t really gotten my appetite back from my episode of TD (Tourist diarrhea,) but I had V8, celery, and peanuts for lunch and it settled in all right.

I love living mostly outdoors, a few feet from the sea, and in the shade of palm trees and my ramada. After lunch today, eating with my toes in the sand, I relaxed in my hammock, strung between two palms right next to my ramada, daydreaming and feeling so lucky I am to live in Chacala.

It’s amazing to me how many people in Chacala know how much I like Coca Cola. I have had at least ten people tell me the last two days “No more Coke”. People around town, gringo and local, seem to know lots details of my everyday life. The upside is, lots of people seem to know I am moving and I have had lots of offers to help move my stuff up to the new house. Pretty nice. Lose some privacy and gain some help and support. It’s worth it for me. At first I had a hard time here with having little or no privacy, but I have gotten used to it. It seems normal now. And I had lots of visitors the past couple of days, checking to see how I was doing. The gossip mills is really, really fast here.

Back to the hammock.

While I was lying there I was kind of meditating, sort of, on the amount of animal life that surrounds me here. Three raven-crows birds were pecking away on my sandy floor, two of the dogs that live at Esparanza’s were sleeping on the reed mat in front of my tent door, and a little cluster of baby chicks and their mom were running around under the table. Lots of little crabs run out in the morning and evening, and the palms are full of singing birds. Also scorpions and rats. At least that’s what people tell me. I haven’t actually seen any.

Then I noticed the three iguanas that live in the rocks in front of my campsiwere perched up on the rocks, enjoying the sun, and maybe watching me in my hammock. I went over to my fridge and got a piece of old melon and put the pieces on the rocks near the iguanas, and then went back to the hammock. In a few minutes the iguanas were out and eating away. When they finished the melon pieces they disappeared the rinds and sat there looking at me.

Then Euloiao, my old landlord, came around selling fried bananas a few minutes later, and I bought one. I tried to palm it off on Esparanza’s and her daughter-in-law, but neither of them were interested so I put it on the iguana rock. Soon the three of them were gobbling it down. I hope the grease didn’t upset their stomachs.

Right now I am watching the iguanas from my tent as I type this, and I think they are watching me back. Probably thinking “When will that dumb waitress get her act together and bring out the main course?”

But, really, I am going to miss being on the beach. The sun, the sky, the moon and stars, swimming every day, the sand, the ocean, the families right here, the hot water in the showers (hot from the sun), the shade of the ramada and the palms, and the kids.

And my plants. I can see my little plant garden from the tent and the hammock. I just gave E. all my plants (with buckets and dirt) except two Desert Roses and some succulents. I will start over in a few days. I walked up to Susana’s today and she gave me a ride home. I was really glad. It was my first outing since I was sick, and I felt very tired and didn’t want to be walking in the heat of the day.

Anyway, when we went by Aurora’s I noticed how lovely the plants she and I planted two years ago are looking. They look so pretty. Especially the bougainvilleas. She has done a great job and adds more plants all the time.

When we arrived at Esparanza’s Susana noticed how much nicer E’s looks. She and I have been working on keeping the junk and trash from being piled up in front of her flower garden, and have added a whole bunch of plants. Its looks really nice, especially compared to six months ago. She is a great gardener. She has three areas of plants now, and there are lots of blossoms. The favorite special plants with gardeners in Chacala seem to be roses. Which I would never even bother with in this climate, but they seem to do okay for awhile. E even has some blossoming hydrangeas, which seems kind of amazing to me. The plant lady who sells plants from a truck around Chacala gets her plants in Tepic, which is in the mountains. Tepic has no saltwater laden-air, and is cooler climate without much humidity. So roses and hydrangeas do okay up there, but they don’t seem to last long in Chacala. Look nice for awhile though.

I am going to take my daily siesta now, and then when the sun goes down a little we are going to take the wheelbarrow over to the arroyo near Mar de Jade and get some dirt, and look for some sprouted coconuts. The Semana Santa people (deliberately?) killed half our new palms, even thought we had built little rock walls around them and watered them everyday so people would see they were not weeds or something. Oh well.