A Beautiful Sunset

Tonight was a beautiful sunset, the colors so vibrant and brilliant. I could only sit there on our rooftop and watch the sun set. Well I did run down and get my tripod and camera.

A Turn Around Day

Last Friday my wife Jo Ann left for a week and a half to visit her parents back in Minnesota and to change the Realtor that we are using to sell our home there. I was very sad to see her leave as we have been having a wonderful time together since our move toSan Miguel de Allende in June.

I spent Friday night moping around trying to find things to do. After a while I put on a play list on iTunes that I had put together for Jo Ann and it just contributed to my sadness.

Saturday morning I woke up still feeling down and was missing Jo Ann tremendously. It was so quiet at the Rancho, we had no one working on the property that day and since we are so far from any other homes, I was feeling very isolated.

There I am cleaning up the burro pen and feeling about as down as I ever have, I mean this week I flip my bike and get ten stitches and a concussion, Jo Ann leaves for a week and a half and I am really struggling with my langage classes. But all of a sudden, the children of our maid show up at the gate of our Rancho and yell to me if I wanted to take them to a futball game in San Miguel de Allende. The youngest son's team was suppose to play but thier father had to work and they had no way to get to the match.

You would not believe how much fun it was to get away from the isolation (although the task of cleaning up the burro pen was still there when I returned). Just being around these children and all of the laughing and playing that they do, it really turned around my whole weekend.

Dual Postings on Vox and Blogger

I am trying a new blogging service called Vox and will be posting messages to both sites for a period of time.  The Vox site is located at sanmiguelphotos.vox.com so please take the time to look at this site and give me some feedback.  The reason that I am looking at this site is better integration with flickr and the ability to use tags to categorize postings.

I am also trying out a new blog authoring tool from Microsoft called Windows Live Writer.  I have written this posting using the new application and will give a more detailed review after I run it through the paces.

Hasta luego.

Bike Ride to Hospital de la Fe

Jo Ann and I headed off today for a good bike ride and went out to Palo Colorado, however on the way home, something bad happened. I really don't recall the whole chain of events but I was going too fast over a tope and the next thing I know I have a Mexican family helping me up. They were so helpful, getting some hydrogen peroxide for my cuts and some tissues for my bleeding. I have no recollection of falling or hitting the ground but I was a bloody mess.

We walked home and together with our maid we headed off to the Hospital de la Fe to get stitched up and to check on the potential of a concussion. Well six stitched later and some antibiotics and other meds, I am at least walking around albeit sore. I don't have a concussion but I have some serious sores that are going to keep me off my bike for a good week or so.

The help at the Hospital was excellent and I really want to say thanks to the family that helped me up. Jo Ann remembers where they live, even if I don't, so we are going to go over tomorrow to say thank you. This fifty plus year old body is no longer able to ride like a youngster and I better start remembering that. Maybe the sores and aches can help me.

Reforestation, Research and Social Programs?

These three words may seem like an unlikely grouping of activities. Just try googling the words and you will not find many topics that match such a request.

During the past 400 years the desertification process has progressed in central México. Where lands have previously been covered with temperate forest, sub-humid tropical forest and semi desert vegetation these have been gradually transformed into agricultural and rangeland systems, which are managed as monocultures. As a consequence, native vegetation is disappearing despite the needs for timber, forage, medicine and other derivates from native shrubs (such as honey and colorants used in local industries of rural areas).

A few weeks ago my wife Jo Ann and I commenced a project to reforest our rancho. It is located about twelve miles from San Miguel de Allende and has been severely depleted by farming, deforested and used as grazing pastures. Through this research we discovered an amazing governmental organization located just outside of Celaya. The organization is called the Instituto Nacional de Investigaciones Forestales, Agricolas y Pecuarias (INIFAP). The section of INIFAP that we have been working with is headed up by Dra. Rosario Terrones Rincón who has her Ph.D. from Cornell University and has been running the organization for the past five years.

We were first introduced to INIFAP a few weeks ago when we attended a lecture on pruning and caring for native plants at el Charco del Ingenio jardín botánico. During this lecture Kirti Mathura, curator of shrubs at the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix AZ, lead a discussion on the beauty and benefits of using native plants. We have significant experience gardening and landscaping with plants native to both Northern and Southern California, but we have never landscaped with plants native to a higher desert elevation. We asked a number of questions and several people directed us to a book written by three people from INIFAP, including Rosario. The book has many photos which give great examples of the various plants and shrubs that are native to the state of Guanajuato. It is written only in Spanish so be prepared to spend some serious time with your translation dictionary as many of the topics are of a technical nature and not part of your normal Spanish conversational repartee.



After reading portions of this book we commenced our journey to Celaya to look at the nursery that is located at INIFAP and see what plants they had available to purchase. When we arrived we were directed to Rosario’s office where she spent several hours explaining the benefits of using native trees and shrubs as well as background information on her research. This is truly an amazing program where Rosario takes a team from INIFAP out to rural communities, (which have been identified by social workers). These communities have agricultural and ranching lands that have been severely deforested and can not sustain the local residents. In many of the cases these communities are maintained only by the women of the village as most of the men are up north working to provide for their families in México. During these sessions Rosario will teach the women about the benefits of planting native trees and shrubs, how to propagate seed for future plantings, what is the proper way to prune the trees for wood so that the tree is not destroyed and how to plant for agricultural production that does not diminish the land.



Rosario showed us some photos of these research sessions and explained to us that in many cases the plants had to be planted in newspaper and garbage. This is because all normal compost materials are fed to livestock and there is no other source of material to plant the trees and shrubs as the ground is tepitati and as hard as concrete.





After another week of discussions with Rosario we have now agreed to move forward with our reforestation project. We have purchased around 350 native trees and shrubs consisting of over 25 different varieties and are planning our order for next year’s plants to continue our efforts in reforestation. Rosario has asked us to assist her with her research regarding the use of drip irrigation on native plants as we have significant experience in working with this manner of irrigation. She has never had the funding to incorporate irrigation into her research so we will be jointly monitoring the effects that it has on the growth and development of the plants. At least I have a couple of months before I have to worry about installing the drip system should we have an average rainy season here in San Miguel de Allende.







I will continue to write about our progress with the plantings over the next several weeks with many photos on the plantings and the changes to our rancho. But if you want to just watch the progress, I will be posting a lot more photos than what will show up on this blog at my flickr set on reforestation at flickr reforestation

Traffic Jams in San Miguel de Allende

I wonder if they have any reported road rage?

Mountain Biking Nirvana

Chicken



Turkeys

Cattle



Pigs

Children



Cacti

shepherds

Dogs

Cats



Interesting Casas



Beautful Flowers



And who knows what else?

One of our favorite activities here in San Miguel de Allende is to trail ride on our mountain bikes in the vast compos outside of San Miguel. We have over eight different trails that we have identified all of them starting from our rancho, some go to Atotonilco, to Las Cañas, to Las Palmitta and to Palo Colorado. We enjoy the colors, the plants, the people we met, the scenes we see. We always are carrying some extra candy so when we see some children we will stop and talk with them. It is such a great way to practice our Spanish as they are so direct and honest.



The terrain in some places is difficult and now with the rains upon, it can be very messy at times. Lately we have been coming home looking like we have been rolling around in the mud, but usually it is just the rooster tails we get from going through the wet areas, and as I said last Monday, one of the times I just slipped and fell into a large and dirty mud puddle.



No matter what the weather is like we always look forward to going for a ride, and when ever possible to stop and talk with the people we meet.

If you want to follow our mountain biking adventures you can see all the new photos at the flickr set I have set up for mountain biking at http://www.flickr.com/photos/sanmiguelphotos/sets/72157594224440572/

Can you top this excuse for being late to a dinner party?

I would like to hear if anyone can top this excuse for being late to a dinner party. Last night we were invited to a small gathering of people, some we knew and some were from NOB, for a little gathering and then dinner at a traditional Méxican restaurant.

Jo Ann and I were waiting for our maid to finish up for the day so we could drive her home when I noticed that our four burros had gotten loose. When we had brought them into the corral yesterday afternoon, we must not have properly closed the gate and there they were running around our pasture foot lose and fancy free.

One of the men who are helping us with our reforestation project and I took off with the tethers to catch them. I still can not believe how fast they can run given how large and heavy they are. After chasing them for about 20 minutes, I finally was able to catch two and put the tethers on them. I gave these to Luis to handle while I continued my chase after the other two. Although I was not able to catch them, I was able to herd them back to the corral where Jo Ann lured them in with allusions of alfalfa.

I then had to run back to the far side of the rancho to help Luis bring the other two back as the small one refused to move and he could not get them to budge. So another ten or fifteen minutes pass and we finally have all of them in the corral.

Off I go back to the casa to change again and we finally head off to the party. We finally make it there about 40 minutes late, even after considering the normal socially accepted time of arrival. Our story was told several time and always got a good laugh as this can only happen in México. It sure would not be a good excuse in New York, Chicago or San Francisco.

So can you top it?

It has been a bad day

Try to top this for a bad day, this morning I was head butted by a burro (and I mean the burro tried to push my nose through the back of my head), I fell of my mountain bike into a mud puddle (not a small one), spent four hours planting native shrubs and trees only to come in and have someone ask me if we had planted all 350 plants yet (we only have 43 in the ground) and then on the way in tonight I get kicked in the knee by the same burro that head butted me.

It was a good day in that we got a lot of work done around the rancho but I can leave this other stuff out of my normal day.

We love carnitas

Last night we went to the Fiesta in La Palma, the small pueblo near our rancho. I will have a further discussion of the fun we had at the fiesta but first I must let my taste buds proclaim one of new finds. One of our friends in La Palma took us to this small carnitas shop that is off the main road, or should I say the only road in La Palma, to introduce us to the lady who runs this shop.

She gave some samples of the carnitas, and it just melted in your mouth. Of course we had to purchase a kilo of it for dinner last night, and a kilo was only 100 pesos, amazing.



The store is only open on Saturdays from noon until she runs out of the carnitas. We were told that she buys one pig for the carnitas and if it sells out, then for the next week she can buy two. If she only has one pig that week, the carnitas can be gone by 1p, so come and shop early.

It is such a joy to find a jewel like this store and to meet people who enjoy their occupations so much.

Desert Flowers

Today was a beautiful day here in San Miguel de Allende, the weather after last nights storms was most enjoyable and there was a calming sense of tranquility on our rancho.

So I decided to pull out my camera and put on my Lensebaby 2.0 lens with one of their extension tubes and go shot some macro shots today. It was a wonderful time to go out and just walk through the fields and the cactus, looking for colors and scenes that I have not shot before.

Because I was using the extension tube, my camera lens was about two inches from each of the subjects so when you see some of the images with thorns and stingers, please know that I escaped unharmed.

Below is one of my favorite flowers that we had in both Southern California and Northern California, Mexican Sage is so colorful and really easy to grow.



I found several stands of different cacti, each which had it own unique message. I thought that the following image was extremely interesting with the thorns but also the defect in the plant that looks like an eye is staring at you.



All of the cacti shrubs are now full of berries, and these look so inevitable, except for that darn thorn sticking out from the top.



Even though we are past spring, some of the Napali cactus are still flowering and the one below was only two days or so from when it first opened it's blossom.



Of course the bees are always out and about, today they seemed extra busy. No matter what I did the one below did not care that I was only an inch or so from where he was doing his business.

The Vonage Saga Continues

So this past weekend my friends who went up to San Antonio Texas to scout out some real estate for Sensual Chocolatiers picked up a new Vonage router for me. On Monday they gave it to me and I was most excited to try to get back on line to communicate with the world again. Well I obviously set my expectations too high, thinking that it would work out of the box.

After five hours of working with the Vonage technical staff in India and the Linksys/Cisco technical staff both somewhere in East Asia and Irvine, they came to the conclusion that this router was not functioning properly and I would have to return it to the retail store where I bought. No they can not just send me one from Linksys the manufacturer, I need to go back to CompUSA in San Antonio to return it. Well that sure is not very convenient as it is a nine hour drive each way.

At least I talked with CompUSA in San Antonio and they will mail me one and will credit me when I finally get to return the non-functioning one to them. I guess this is what has happened to our technology companies, they treat customers like dog poop and now turn out commodities and not quality products. As someone who has spent over 15 years in the software industry, I am ashamed and embarrassed that these companies call this "service" customer service, it is a dis-service. I remember when you use to be able to call Dell, Microsoft and other major companies and actually talk to someone and get a problem solved. Not any more you now talk with a junior tech rep living somewhere in Asia who has less knowledge of the product that I do, how can they help?

And the problem is not just software, I also recently purchased a Epson RX600 printer and the printer jams about every fifth page. I can see what the problem is, there is a small piece that has a slight bent to it and catches the paper when it runs through the printer. So when I call Epson they tell me I need to send in the printer as they can not send the small part. However when I explain that I am in Mexico they say I need to return the whole printer to them but they can't return it to me as they can't ship to Mexico. This is an unworkable solution as the cost of all this shipping will cost me more than the entire printer, again they just don't get what it takes to give quality customer service.

Good Morning San Miguel

Last night we had some rain together with thunder and lightening, however, this morning the skies are clear and the colors vibrant. I just love the mornings here with the sounds of the chickens, burros, and birds waking up and of course the joyous cries of the children. This is a wonderful place.

Vonage Customer Service Sucks!

I know that the purpose of this blog is to present visual images and to describe the joys and difficulties of living in Mexico. So this one may be a little off base, but Vonage provides us our telephone service with a US number so friends and family can call us regularly. I have been a
subscriber of Vonage for almost three years and have been happy with the service. In fact, I would say that I have recommended five to six people to become subscribers of Vonage.

However, over the past week I have been ready to scream at them. Last weekend my Vonage router started to fail. I spent almost all day Monday on the phone with them talking to their
customer service group in India but could not get anywhere close to getting the service back up and running. Then at the end of each call, the tech rep would try to sell me more services, phone lines, new products, etc. I could not believe what I was hearing. Here I was a customer with a non-functional product and they want to sell me more and new services, I am sorry but I don’t get it.

Then twice I was able to getthem to transfer me to Level Two service, and both times I was on hold for overan hour, once someone picked up but then hung up on me and the second time I just gave up.

Finally I sent an email to them asking for a new router or to have someone call me who could help me fix my problem. Guess what response I got (yes I did get one) your equipment is out of warranty, you must buy a new one at a retail store and then we can help you.

This is the type of support that you give to a customer who has expanded your customer base and supported the company. No wonder the company’s IPO has been one of the worst in the history of stock offerings. This company just does not get customer service 101.

As a friend asked me, how I would compare their service to companies in Mexico and I have to say there is no company in Mexico that provides worse customer service than Vonage.

Another Friday Night and we ain't got no power

Last night we had a wonderful rain in San Miguel.  It was steady but not too hard.  The gardens cried in happiness and I am sure the farmers were rejoicing in celebration as it has been unusually dry this summer.

However, for another Friday night (well this time it was a Saturday evening) we lost our electricity. This time it came back after about 15 minutes so it was not like last weekend when we were out of power for over 12 hours.

But after a rain like last night, we get a morning that is just spectacular, the sunrise, the clear vista and the clouds.  I just wish I sit here all day and enjoy this view.



By the way, the reason that my posts lately have been so sparse and infrequent, is that I have become a partner in Sensual Chocolatiers (www.sensualchocolatiers.com).  This is a very exciting opportunity as the company has built a factory in Jalpa, outside of San Miguel de Allende and we are expanding into the US.  We have just raised a equity round from some angel investors and over the next couple of months will be opening retail stores in the US and implementing a internet store front and a chocolate of the month club.  If you are interested in receiving more information on Sensual Chocolatiers please send an email to info@sensualchocolatiers.com.  I do hope that I will be able to get my posting frequency back up to two or three posts a week, but now they will include updates on the progress of Sensual Chocolatiers.

Happy Birthday Alicia

This past Friday we were invited to the birthday party for the daughter of one of our friends who lives in the village near our rancho.  Alicia was celebrating her 11th birthday and we thought the party was going to be from 4 to 5 p.m.  Of course everyone needs to understand that we were told this in Spanish and although our language skills have improved greatly, we are still novices in many forms of communication.

We show up at the socially acceptable time of around 4:20 and we find that there is hardly anyone there.  Thus we help Augustina, Alicia’s mother, set up for the party and help entertain some of the children who have already shown up.

It is a lot of fun as I have my camera and Jo Ann gets some of the children to do gymnastics in the yard.  As they are doing summersaults and headstands, I am able to show them the images on the LCD viewer on the back of the camera, it was a lot of fun, and a great way to practice your language skills.

As the party starts to unfold, some of the children bring out Alicia’s pet hamster.  The kids have a great time playing with the hamster, although I am not sure it was reciprocal. 

Around 6p Alicia’s father Arturo comes home and is greeted joyously by both of his daughters.  Although Mexico may not be a wealthy country financially, it is so amazing to see how many families are truly happy and content with their lives.  


Jo Ann and I talk many times about the various places we have lived in the US, from SoCal, to NoCal to Chicago to Minnesota and never have we seen some many communities that financially do not have much, but emotionally and spiritually have so much.  Maybe a number of my fellow boomers should come to Mexico to see what happiness can be all about.

The fun of the birthday party moves from the yard with all the children running around to dinner, where we have a wonderful meal of grilled chicken, rice and these absolutely sinful Rancho Beans.

After the meal, Arturo brings out the piñatas, one for the girls and one for the boys.  Now I have never been to a party where there is an authentic piñata so this was a real treat for me.

Even Jo Ann got into the action and was blindfolded and swung at the piñata, however, I promised to keep those photos hidden as her swing did not look at all like Barry Bonds.

After both of the piñatas are opened and everyone has picked up their candies, we move back to the dinner table for cake.  As you can see below Alicia only had to blow out one candle which she did just fine.

 

However, after the candle was out, her friends helped her to “enjoy” the cake by pushing her face into the frosting.  It was great fun.



Both Jo Ann and I feel so grateful to have been invited into the village of Las Palmas and our adopted new country of Mexico.

Chasing the Burros

Yesterday morning I was running late and was in a hurry but still had to move the four burros out from their pen. So I tried to handle more than one at a time but then our dogs got in the middle of the pack and guess what I only got two of them tied up. The other two, well lets just say that they started traveling around our 50 acre rancho.

I was running after them and they would just bound ahead and then stop to eat. Jo Ann was watching this and I could not tell if she was crying or laughing, probably both. After about twenty minutes of chasing them, they decided to gallop off toward the house. But guess what Jo Ann had left the gate open and they were able to run out of our property into the large (and I do mean large) ejido property that borders our property.

We were lucky that some of the masons working on our house were able to help us, but we finally corralled themand brought them back to where we wanted them to graze for the day.

Such is the daily adventures of living on a rancho in Mexico. Of course those of you who may remember me from my time living in California,will probably not believe that this is where I have evolved to, but it is great. Sorry no photos on this adventure, but I just did not have the foresight to bring my camera nor did I have the time to stop and go get it, maybe another time and place!

Dia de los Locos

Yesterday was the Dia de los Locos here in San Miguel.  What an amazing event where it seems that the entire city is either in the parade or standing along the streets watching the parade.  As you can see below, the streets are packed with people, and this was almost an hour before the start of the parade.


The parade was initiated many years ago, some say in the 18^th century but it originated with masked farmers who marched through town handing out fruits to the wondering residence.  The festival in San Miguel is one of the year’s biggest festivals with over 10,000 people who danced, marched and handed out candy for almost three hours. 

Many of the masks focused on futball this year with the World Cup matches going on in Germany and of course the Mexican Presidential election.  I was surprised that there were no burning effigies of the US President George W. Bush, given the hot issue of immigration.  The following is some images of the various masks and costumes that we saw during the three hour parade.























What a great day to have a festive, the crowds were
wonderful, the colors splendid and the weather almost perfect.  What a great way to spend a Sunday in our
newly adopted Mexican town.