We Are Inundated

Yes, we are inundated and no, it is not with water this time.  It is because of my own soft heart or soft head, not sure which. lol
I am sure you all know that there are lots of street animals here.  They abound, some well fed by the neighborhoods, some very undernourished and ill.  I have to say that this street is pretty good, everyone puts out their leftovers for the animals to eat, so we rarely see any that are too bad off.  Some areas it is really sad.
A few weeks ago I felt sorry for one of the local cats, a Calico mama who has 2 babies.  So I put out some food for her.  Well, silly mama, instead of keeping the fact that there was food available to herself, she had to go and tell her friends.  The street animals on our street are VERY good about sharing their finds.
We now have lots of cats coming around.  The other day when I went out there were 5 cats laying in various places on the steps, just waiting for a meal to appear.  Now when mama cat sees me come outside she runs up the stairs to check for food, it doesn't matter how many times a day she sees me.  Too funny.  Anyway so far both the babies have survived and have now started eating the hard cat food that I have been buying.
Before I get a bunch of comments about just contributing to the problem instead of letting nature take its course, as in the tough survive, I know this.  I just couldn't help myself.

The Strangest Thing Just Happened

I was just poking around in the guts of my blog here and discovered a whole bunch of comments that I never knew were sent. Very strange. Some of them were from way back in February!!! Why they weren't sent on to my email box the way all the others are is a mystery. So if you have made comments in the past and I never answered them now you know why. Some of the comments were from regular commenters and some were from new ones. Anyway if I didn't answer a comment you made it was because of this, not because I was ignoring you.
Blogger can be very strange sometimes. I will have to remember to poke around more often.
Have a good day.

Dinner Out

Usually when one of us has a birthday or we want to celebrate something we will head down to the Bay area in centro and the restaurant Club Nautico. You can either eat inside or eat outside in the bar area. We always choose to eat outside and enjoy the view.

Last night we decided it was time to go out to celebrate both our birthdays so Roy met me uptown after my Spanish class and we walked over to the new malecon. The photo below shows the statue of the Pescador which has been moved to a new location and has a new base. He is now in the center of a traffic roundabout, overseeing all.

We then stood and looked out over the bay and the boats in the new marina. Roy is looking at the pirate ship, El Rey del Mar.(Note to Wayne: notice Roy without cowboy boots lol)

Below is one of the shrimping boats that is past its prime.

Below is a short video of the view from the restaurant. If you can't relax here, you won't relax anywhere.

What We Have Been Doing

It seems like we have been busy; but haven't got much to show for it really.
It is time to renew our FM3's so we got together the documents that we thought we needed and headed to immigration. This year they told us that we needed a rental contract. This is our third year for our FM3's and we have never needed to provide that before, so home we came. We chatted with our landlord about it and we typed up a document, signed it and took it back to the office. The lady looked at it and said, "no sirve", in other words, no doggone good. lol. Back home we came and chatted again with the landlord. At this point Tropical Storm Jimena intervened and things came to a standstill for awhile. The landlord said he was talking to a notario or a licenciado but nothing was happening, so we explained that we needed this to happen quickly. After we explained the circumstances more completely things started to happen and Saturday morning we went with them to an office of a licenciado and after hanging around for awhile we were presented with the stamped documents ready to sign. We got them photocopied and presented them to immigration on Monday morning and hopefully our FM3's will be ready in a month or so.......
A month or so ago the landlord was getting his air conditioners (mini splits) cleaned and recharged so we had them do ours too. Ever since then both of them have been spitting out water droplets to the point that it was extremely annoying and messy, along with that the bedroom one developed a horrible sound in the fan. So yesterday we got the name of a fellow from my Spanish teacher and she phoned him for us while we were chatting to her. He showed up in the afternoon and looked at them and said he would return in the afternoon when his worker finished his job on the shrimp boat. Sure enough later on they returned. He looked at them and decided that the post holding the fan in the bedroom one was broken, probably from being forced on by the previous guys. At first they were going to replace it with a used one; but found out that the used one that they had was smaller than ours, so no go with that. He then said that they could either try and glue the post back in or we could buy a new fan. We chose to have them try and fix it. They disappeared and reappeared with some crazy glue and baking soda lol. They put the post in glued it, sprinkled it with the baking soda and voila it was in there hard as a rock. Too funny and ingenious. Back into the mini split it went and quiet as a mouse it works. The one in the living room they decided that the previous guys had cleaned the exterior of the coils but not the inside and so the water was not draining properly. He had a small pressurized hand sprayer and re cleaned it. Put it all back together, had a glass of coke with us and chatted about the price of shrimp while we waited to see if there was any water coming out, nada (none). Asked him what the bill was and he rubbed his head and thought for a minute, mumbling to himself about what they had done (they were here about 2 hrs.). After some deliberation he decided that the charge was 500 pesos. No problem, we paid and they left. This morning both air conditioners are still working fine, thank goodness. Before anyone asks me for this guys phone number, remember that neither of them speaks any English, so be prepared to do business in Spanish.
A big surprise this morning, a front end loader appeared and began to repair the damage to our street. I didn't expect this to happen for a long time as there are many areas in the city that are in much worse shape. We actually didn't mind as there was no traffic and it was nice and quiet. Anyway he fixed it up and it is drivable again.

We Have Drinking Water

Water of any kind is in short supply right now here. The word from the authorities is that we may be without water for 15 to 20 days. Our city water came on for a little while yesterday morning, so we both showered and I washed a load of clothes. It then went off again, I haven't checked it this morning so far. We do have a tinaco (holding tank on the roof); but are trying not to use much out of it, as it won't last forever.
Drinking water is the same, apparently there is only 1 purifier company working at the moment in the whole city, I read this and am not positive it is true as there are lots of rumors flying around right now. Anyway it is almost impossible to buy drinking water anywhere. We have been drinking lots of coca cola to conserve on our water and have not been cooking at all. This morning we heard the distinctive sound that our water mans truck makes and rushed outside. Sure enough, there he was, all smiles. He said that he was worried about his clients as it has been 4 days since he could work. He apparently went to Empalme, over the almost destroyed bridge, to get the water to do his route. We got our water, and also for the same price that it always was. Got to love the spirit of this place and its people. Just reinforces to us why we live here.
This morning we are going to attempt to go to the immigration office to hand in the documents to renew our FM3's, we will see how that goes. We are not sure if they will be open or not.

Cleaning Up After Jimena

Here is an excellent site with photos and videos of the damages in Guaymas, Empalme and San Carlos.
El Portal de la Noticia
The following 2 pictures are taken from the above site and show the damage to the Iglesia de San Fernando in centro Guaymas.




Lots of work to be done cleaning up.
The above site says that more than 500 milimeters of rain fell here, which would be about 19.685 inches. Lots of rain, wind and damage.

After Tropical Storm Jimena

We did fine during the storm. We had a bit of water coming in around the door and one of the windows; but it wasn't a huge problem. We fared a lot better than most of the people around.

I went with the landlords for a drive through some parts of the city this morning. The oldest son had to go to work at CFE, so we were in the area of town called Guaymas Norte. Not good. The brand new paved streets are pretty much totally ruined by the water rushing down from the hills. Lots of mud and still rushing water this morning. We then drove through some other streets. Some streets look impassable because of gullies caused by rushing water and lots of piles of mud and rocks. Some large signs are down, windows in Seguro Social are broken, some roofs torn off, etc.. Lots of damage to repair. We were driving and didn't stop too much so I didn't take any photos.

Lots of stores were closed, OXXO had signs in windows saying that they were closed because the system was down. Most small stores were sold out of bread and milk.

We have internet through MegaCable and it went out last night and hasn't come back on as yet. The landlord tried phoning them and they are not answering their phones. The landlord has wireless through TelMex so I am using that with my laptop.

Our electricity stayed on throughout the storm, so no problem with that.

I just started using the computer again a few minutes ago so haven't surfed around to see what is online for damage estimates, etc.. Did hear a rumor of possibly one death; but am not sure about that. Have to do some searching to find out more.

Highway 15 between Hermosillo and Guaymas was closed yesterday morning because of road problems and I was told that the highway to Empalme and south was also closed because of a problem at the bridge/puente between Guaymas and Empalme.

All in all it looks like a fair amount of damage done. We got a LOT of rain; although at this point I am not sure how much.

That's it for now. More to come later, if I stay connected.

Tropical Storm Jimena

Photo below taken last night before the rains started.

It started raining last evening and rained all last night. Still raining this morning and some wind; although not as much as when Henriette went through a couple of years ago.
According to one site the storm center at around 7 AM this morning was 104 miles from us in Guaymas. At 8 AM the winds were supposedly around 46- 93 KMH or 29 - 58 MPH.. At times there are some pretty good gusts. It is still raining fairly hard here at 10 AM and it is expected to continue like this until sometime tomorrow.
Earlier this morning the street light blew off of the pole right beside the corner of our house. Our landlords son (who works for the power company CFE) ran out and picked it up and took it with him.
Below shows the storm center and its effect.

Water running down our street in front of our place.

Every time it rains hard here the water running down the hill gouges out the street. This ditch is about 2 or 2 and 1/2 feet deep right now by the look of it and the water is running fast.

I read online that we had had 5 inches of rain from last night until early this morning. How accurate this is I am not sure.





DSCN4417.MOV