Saturday, April 14, 2007

Hanging Around in Chacala

I woke up early in the morning, way before daylight. It was a lovely Chacala morning. The sea looked calmer, but the beach seemed to be filled up with tents and what ever. I think people are here early for the Thursday-Sunday weekend.For various reasons I ended up walking down to my landlady’s restaurant twice before breakfast. She is trying to make sure the rental for her two rentals downstairs is actually paid to her. My part of the program is to let her know if a renter comes to the house, or to bring them to the restaurant.In the second trip down the beach road I met a women with a nice Canon camera. And she gave me some picture taking pointers. One was about moving around the get the best angle, and another was about shadows. Very interesting woman, an artist, who is visiting Mar de Jade this week. Anyway, I had breakfast and then did some tidying up and laundry. And watering.

My landlady came up and started sweeping my steps. I think she wanted me to know she was around the house. Or to help her, or something. She started cleaning out her bodega of moldy men’s clothes. I provided the plastic bags and carried them down to the street. Then, after an apple juice break on my patio, we doing a bunch of “cleaning” in the area behind the house.
She used a machete to chop down a small tree, about five inches in diameter, with four whacks. She is a strong woman for her (my) age. We dragged it away, and then she used the machete to chop down another couple trees and some tall weeds. She also whacked to pieces a giant agave-type plant I was trying to convince her to let me transplants to the front. She said it wouldn’t transplant and she probably knows. Then we piled the debris into piles and set them on fire. And she went back to the restaurant and I went interneting.I had some nice visits going to and from the place I was interneting. First, I stopped for a Coke at Esparanza’s. Her husband told me leave my unfinished Coke in the cooler so I could drink it on the way back. That was nice, I thought. I took some photos of the beach. The waves are still large and loco.I visited with some people who remembered me from camping there last year. They were in my old spot on the beach. It made me homesick for my beach camp, for about a minute. Too many people, too much trash. On the way back from interneting I visited with another family at their beach house. I took photos of their flowers and plants and we reminisced about how things looked around Chacala right after the October 25 20002 hurricane here. I especially liked the coco palm starts in the yard, and the gladiolus.One of her grandchildren, my very favorite little boy in Chacala, was there and I showed him how to look at the camera screen and to push the button. He was pretty proud of his pictures of his Auntie and Grandmother.Then I came home for lunch, took a nap, and edited and trashed some photos. I started out keeping under 1000 photos in I Photo (the Mac photo program), and somehow I had 2500 photos there yesterday. I am down to 2000 now, and still working at it. If I have posted the photos on a blog I delete it unless I just love it. I am trying to delete photos from the camera before I download them, and then seems to be working. I can’t believe I need to have 2000 handy. I can put them in Flicker or on disks or delete them. I am mostly deleting. I think I probably keep about 10 or 12 out of 100 attempts, if that.I wanted to check at the internet to see about a reservation for someone. But the Telmex connection was down at the internet place on the beach, so I was hanging around visiting people and generally entertaining myself taking photos. Mostly of the fish at Chico’s.

I ended up having a slice of Victor’s Pizza and visiting with a gringa friend. We sat on the shady steps overlooking the beach, and had a nice visit.

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