Changing seasons

Here we are back in Santa Rosalia after almost 3 weeks away in the US of A. It’s nice to be back, especially considering that fall, albeit a mild and pleasant fall, came upon us in Denver. We had a good time seeing everyone, though our visits were all too brief. Tonight they have a freeze advisory in Denver while it looks like we may have a hurricane advisory down here this weekend for Hurricane Norbert. It was certainly much cooler last night, down in the 70s, and the wind is already picking up today from the hurricane’s reach. It is not expected to make landfall until this weekend. Who knows what that will mean? This is expected to be a hurricane and not a tropical depression as the last two were. It will strike on the Pacific side and cross over (or not) the mountains so that may diminish it a bit. Not many guests at the house for the moment which makes for a pretty relaxed week ahead.

At the airport we met a young woman to whom we gave a ride as far as Mulege where she was on her way to teach sea kayaking at a NOLS campus. NOLS is US-based outdoor skills school with campuses worldwide, a bit like Outward Bound, with the goal of teaching leadership skills through outdoor endurance and self-reliance training. The campus was very low key in appearance, but well equipped with both kayaks and sailboats, bulk food that the participants package to take along with them to cook and eat in the evenings, and various staff to cook and clean the camper-dormitories. Our acquaintance actually expects to be teaching NASA astronauts in a couple of weeks but was bemoaning how poorly she gets paid (about $24K a year).

The big news is that while we were gone Winnie learned how to open the screen door and let himself out. He met up with little Frida on one of his wanders, and the Storyteller who was sitting in his room, heard a lot of cat yelling and snarfing, and went racing out the door just in time to see the two of them touch noses. Now Frida sits outside and calls for Winnie to come out and play. Although I don’t mind his occasional escape, I am reluctant to let him became an outside cat, what with the other male cats that may want to fight, the fact none of these cats have been inoculated against any kind of cat diseases, and non-friendly stray dogs should he wander into the street. Frida is a lot friendlier than she was when I left. I can sit on the wall and put food down 2 feet away from me and she will eat it, but she won’t come any closer. We seem to have a new adult black and white cat, Señor Mustache, that doesn’t look that hungry but is also young and quite handsome. I only saw Penelope briefly yesterday and no sign of Diego so far. Pretty soon I will probably be feeding all the cats in town just to get my hands on Frida.

Tomorrow I will venture downtown to see what kind of unusual groceries I can find, and then I will probably start looking for some new gringo recipes to teach the cook.