Dias Patrias

Tropical Storm Lowell never quite got up here to Santa Rosalia which is just as well by me. The day before all the giant-squid fishermen hauled their boats up on the parking lot by the port. We have been told that for $20 you can go out on a squid boat and watch them haul their catch in, then when you get tired of it for another $20 they will bring you back to shore. The squid fishing all takes place at night, and all these squid guys have a big light hanging out in front of the boat to lure the squid up from the depths. Most nights their boat lights out on the water look like a small town, so many of them are fishing close together.

We are getting ready in Santa Rosalia for the national holiday, 16 de Septiembre, the foremost Mexican independence holiday. Cinco de May is independence from the French, but 16 de Septiembre is independence from Spain and is really the real biggie. In any event it is very hard to park downtown these days as everyone in town is selling jewelry, flags, and whatnot. Kids are in the big barnlike structure that houses some historic photos and are practicing folkloric dancing for the big parade on Tuesday. We have Monday and Tuesday off. Esperando bought a big Mexican flag to hang in front of the house. Monday is a full moon so any partying and I can tell you there will be a lot from the looks of the plaza and the banners in the streets, will have that as its influence! Esperando and I plan to watch the parade.

Yesterday we had the kitchen fumigated to keep the ants at bay. It was pretty gross with chemical smells and I got a sore throat from it. We had to empty everything out of the kitchen and then of course the cook wanted to go home as there was nothing for her to do, and I had to tell her no. The pets don’t seem to have been adversely affected, and my sore throat is gone today. I also had them spray the patio for ants, which unfortunately doesn’t seem to have had any affect on the flies.

We brought some hummingbird feeders down which haven’t had much action until last night. We apparently have an indigenous hummingbird that doesn’t know anything about feeders. We haven’t seen them for a couple of days so they must have started south. However last night a larger hummingbird showed up and drank a couple of times from the feeder and was quite calm about our presence. Maybe we will have a big hummingbird winter with migrants from the north!!