Still Settling into SMA

—Blogpost written by Bob 

In this blogpost, we continue our 6-month winter excursion to San Miguel de Allende (SMA).  We arrived by car on October 15, traveling from near Annapolis, Maryland where we live on our sailboat.  This has been quite a change in our life style!

Friday, October 22

I woke up at 5 AM and couldn't get back to sleep.  So, I made a hot sauce (what else is there to do at 5 AM?) using the Mexican cream guava fruit we purchased yesterday, combining it with some chopped shallots, about 2 ounces of white rum, a generous tablespoon of pizza sauce, some green A&B pepper sauce, and dashes of sea salt and course ground black pepper (the last three items we brought from home).  (I didn't blend it yet because I didn't want to wake up Maggie.)  This was my first experience with guava.  For the hot sauce, I took out the seeds and removed most of the skin from the fruit.  (I probably should have googled this before I did it because I didn't have to do this!  This sauce should be very similar to one I made using fresh peaches several days ago but I didn't use chopped shallots nor salt and pepper.  By the way, I didn't expect to find fresh peaches in Mexico like we did recently.)

A simple collection of Mexican fruits on our kitchen
table.  The small round yellow fruit in the center
of this image is a Mexican cream guava.

While on the subject of food, I feel compelled to expound on the virtues of avocados.  Avocados are a big deal here in Mexico--they are served in one from or another with almost every meal.  Even though they are soft when properly ripe, I have yet to find one with any brown spots like is typical of the ones we buy on the East Coast.  (I'm sure they are great in California as well.)  We ran across a small street-side storefront yesterday that sold only avocados.  Most of the vendors in the local markets sell avocados as well.  

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Outside, the temperature at mid-morning was 58 degrees but it was supposedly heading for 77 degrees (somewhat cooler than yesterday) in the afternoon.  The sky was partially overcast. Again today, we expected to be tourists but to try to get duplicate keys for our apartment made along our travels.

This is the lock on the front door to the apartment
building.  We have seen these same locks all
over our neighborhood.  Metal doors are
very common.  Older doors are
usually wooden.

We accomplished our goal of getting duplicate keys for our apartment pretty quickly--the locksmith was about 0.3 mile away.  On the way back, we did some exploring of our neighborhood and found a nice little food store called Tienda de Gil.

Tienda de Gil, a little food store in our
neighborhood, was our "find"
for the day.  I believe the
owners live upstairs.

A basket of onions
in Tienda de Gil.

Dry goods on the shelves
of Tienda de Gil.

Maggie, all masked up, leaving a little
organic market in our neighborhood.

We came back to our apartment just before noon and both new keys worked!  We went out for lunch at Gambos Pizza, next door to our apartment and then went out on another walkabout.o90i0-

This was an interesting doorway.  Note how
the doorway has been cutout on the
right side to clear the doorknob.

Saturday, October 23

Today was my younger brother's birthday--he lives in Montana.  Almost my entire family has birthdays in October.

One of the prettiest homes in Guadeloupe,
our neighborhood of San
Miguel de Allende.

Maggie and I discussed our plan for next winter and we might just stay on board in Annapolis (at the town dock) like we did last winter.  While San Miguel de Allende is nice, it is a long haul getting here and back by car.  However, we could always change our minds before then...

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I planned everything for today around watching the Penn State-Illinois football game at 11 AM (local time).  The game was televised on ABC which we can get here on our TV--this was a real treat for me to be able to watch a Penn State game on TV!  Penn State's first string quarterback, Sean Clifford, was injured in the game against Iowa 2 weeks ago.  The back up quarterback was completely ineffectual and lost the game against Iowa (even though we had a 14 to 3 lead when he took over) and he may be starting this week.  So, there was a lot of drama leading up to this game.

This was the best picture quality
we had the entire game.

The above image was the best quality we had all game--most of the time the picture was pixelated.  So, we listened to the game on my iPad and watched what we could on TV with the sound turned down.  Penn State lost the game to an inferior Illinois team by a score of 20 to 18 in the ninth overtime.  Sean Clifford played the entire game but you could tell he certainly wasn't 100%.  The game was as sad as the pizza we ate during the game.  Next Saturday Penn State plays Ohio State.  I have to learn to take these games (and pizza) less seriously...

Sunday, October 24

Outside temperatures here in San Miguel de Allende continue to be in the high 50's during the night and high 70's during the daytime hours.  On Monday we expect about 1/4-inch of rain, the first we will have experienced here.

A Google map of our walkabout area.
(The blue dot is our apartment's
location. The street arrangement
dates back to the 1500's.)

Usually, when we walk about town, I take my camera with a single lens--I have three lenses: 20mm f2.8 (wide angle), 24-120mm f4 (probably the most versatile), and 85mm f1.4D (my all-time favorite), all Nikon.  I have taken each of these lenses on my recent walkabouts.  I almost have to adjust my viewpoint to match the lens I happen to have with me.  I have carried my 20mm wide angle lens most frequently and have been using "live view" and the tilting viewfinder of my Nikon D750 to capture most of my good photographs--I like the "almost magical" effect of the tilting electronic viewfinder.

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To me, this trip has been a lot more about our future than a mere winter getaway.   How much I have recovered and how able I am may determine where our future lies?  How long we continue to liveaboard and where we spend our winters?  This is where my head is at currently.

Lola taking a Sunday
afternoon siesta.

We watched some NFL football this afternoon--the Green Bay Packers vs. Washington Football Team.  Maggie made a delicious meatloaf--one of our best meals since we arrived!

I didn't even go outside today...and tomorrow we expect some rain...

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