Checking out the photo album from the last few weeks

PUERTO VALLARTA, Jalisco, Mexico - As the Admiral and I get ready to launch for the wilds of upstate New York in two days, I've been going through the 1,000 or so photos I took since December to make several slide shows.

With different audiences, different slides, of course.

For my beer-drinking-boating-fishing-sailing-motorcycle-riding buddies, I'm pulling together some of the gratuitous bikini shots I took to be part of their slide show.


Tying up loose ends

For those folks I want to be sure to come visit, I have a huge collection of stuff like this:


Sunset from La Manzanilla's beach

And for the people who have already told me how Mexico really isn't a place for them, do I really drink the water?, etc... Well, I throw in a few slides like these:


Crocodile looking for lunch


One pissed-off scorpion

Still, going over the last 30 or so shots has made me nostalgic already for Arroyo Seco and La Manzanilla. One photo I had forgotten about was taken at the vivero last week where we went with Arroyo Seco amigos Chena and Chon to buy 8 palm trees and at least 16 bougainvillea plants. Oh, and a lime tree and some kind of shade tree that Chon said wasn't too big of a mess when the leaves start to fall.

It was hot. Damn hot. But Chena came equipped with some bumbershoots (that a nod to my British readers, Marcia and Rick Hein) from her truck that I suspect both belong to Chena's daughters, though perhaps, not.

Chon and I toughed it out with our baseball caps on. I don't know about Chon, but I got my 14th or 15th sunburn of the season that morning. And my dermatologist is going to be less-than-pleased.


Girls at the vivero

I took some other photos of practical things, too, like barbecues.

When we return in the fall, it is highly unlikely we will do much food preparation inside the Grey Goose Express, but a nice outdoor cooking area, with or without propane would be very handy, and a lot cooler for the chefs.

I saw the setup below on the beach near Valentina's in La Manzanilla.


Simple cookstove

But even that seems sooooo sophisticated when you consider how one of the workmen at Arroyo Seco cooked his lunch every afternoon when not pitching tiles up on the roof to the guys building our palapa.

He declined even a plastic chair to sit in most days, preferring to feel the earth, I suppose. And his lunch always smelled fantastic cooking.


Not available at Home Depot

The last week also featured a visit by the Admiral's cousin and her partner, as well as their California amigos Randy and Karen. The foursome visited La Manzanilla in January, fell in love with the place (of course) and came back for another visit and to scout about to see if they could afford to buy a piece of the paradise.

As the photo below shows, they fit pretty well into the lifestyle.


Walk on the beach