Green Mountains, Lights Out and Hermann Goes for a Wild Walk

Since we've moved here, we've been told repeatedly "oh, wait til the rains start!".  Everyone who lives here year round continually gripes about the oppressive heat in May.  O.K., I realize that many people are suffering right now with temps near 100 or much worse and that most of us wouldn't classify 90 degree days with low humidity like we have here in May as "oppressive" but something happens to people when they live in a mild climate year round.  They seem to expect perfect temps as the norm.

Well, as promised by mid=June the rains have started.  They have started to cool off the "high" daytime temps and evenings are wonderful, muy refresco.  We took the picture below during one of our walks around town soon after we arrived.

Yesterday we took this picture from our mirador.  You can see how the mountains are starting to really green up.  Some people describe it the mountains in mid-summer as looking like giant heads of broccoli.  

With the rainy season, comes a not so pleasant surprise.  All the rains tend to send scorpions into the houses.  We've been vigilant after all the stories we've heard (including one man who had the unpleasant surprise of having a scorpion crawl up into the roll of toilet paper....and he didn't find it until he had already used the paper, with the scorpion in it, for it's intended purpose).  But after nearly two months we hadn't seen a single one so were starting to get comfortable, until Friday.  Matt  found this little guy hanging out by our washer/dryer.  Evidently our housekeeper sprays something to kills bugs during her weekly visit, because every bug that makes it's way in our house is dead or dying by the time we see it.  And the stuff must work on scorpions as well, because this little guy was on pretty much done for.  He is small, but w'ere told the little ones have the most toxic venom.

My favorite neighbor is little Camila,  She's four years old and lives in a series of little shacks right next door to us.  This is normal in Ajijic....and pretty much anywhere in Mexico.  You'll have some beautiful homes, and then right next door the most humble of homes.  That doesn't mean they aren't good neighbors.....at least most of the time.  Little Camila loves to go for walks with Herm and me.  When we're shopping,  I will usually pick up little gifts like coloring books, bubbles and little toys, for her and her 6 year old brother Ubaldo.  Camila loves to come over and visit....usually she'll have something for me as an excuse to come over - like flowers she picked or some cookies.  It's fun for her to play out on our terrace and put her feet in the fountain and she absolutely loves our mirador with the hammock chairs.

Well, last week we received our electric bill.  No post office here, instead the utilities have someone that walks up and down the streets of the village and drops off the bills at every house.  We received two bills:  one was for mid-February thru mid-April and the second from mid-April thru mid-June.  We arrived on May 3rd so the only bill we had any responsibility for was the April/June one.  It was a bit higher than I expected (about $200 USD for the two month period) but not too outrageous.  But the earlier bill, was very high, about $500 USD for two months, and for much of that time no one had been living in our house.  This immediately got the attention of Coco,  our property manager and she sent over our two handymen to check it out.  Didn't take long.  Sweet little Camila's family was swiping our electricity.  They had a wire strung from our power pole over to their homes.  My theory why the February/April bill was so high was that it was probably cold here and they needed space heaters.  The handymen called  Coco and she said "call CFE".  The handymen said that would result in a $40,000 peso fine for Camila's family (about $3,600 USD) and someone might be arrested.  Matt asked them not to do this, so the second option was to talk to them and then disconnect the wire.  No one was home so our handymen just disconnected and left it at that.  Later that evening the wire was reconnected.  At this point Coco was definitely calling CFE.  We talked to one of our other neighbors who speaks excellent English about the problem and he said he'd talk to them.  Well the result was that they did disconnect before CFE came out to check on the problem, but the result is that all of Camila's family is in the dark.  We both feel terrible about this when we look down from our mirador and see our neighb ors navigating around their series of shacks just using flashlights.  Hopefully they'll figure out how to get their own electricity soon.

Saturday we went to lunch with a couple we met who live in San Juan Cosala, a little town about 20 minutes from us.  Had a great time and Vern and Kathleen did a wonderful job showing us around that area.  We had lunch at a great Mexican place in their village and then we ended up having dessert at a restaurant in the hills that looks out over the lake.  Very elegant!

And then there was Hermann's wild walk!  On day last week we started out for our normal morning walk.  Sometimes we head east and stay in a very residential area; other times we go to the west and walk down to the plaza.  This day was a plaza walk.  On the way to the plaza we pass a carnaceria (meat shop).  There are always several very large dogs hanging around outside the carnaceria as the butcher always throws scraps to the dogs each morning.  One dog we've seen there often is a huge great dane.  No problem, as he's always very friendly to both me and Herm.  As we neared the carnaceria that morning I saw the great dane and he immediately headed right to us....tail wagging.  He greeted Herm and they did their sniffing thing and the great dane walked on by....and that's when it got interesting.  He came up behind us and grabbed the leash out of my hand.  He started dragging poor Herm around the plaza like he was a toy.  No way Herm could keep up with those long legs so he just kind of got drug along.  The kids started yelling "Paco! Paco!" so I assume that was the dog's name and then the butcher came running out yelling at the dog as well.  But he was having too much fun to stop.  I managed to catch up with them and grabbed the leash but couldn't get it out of Paco's mouth...and he thought I wanted to play tug or war.  We were getting no where.  I finally decided to just unhook Herm's collar; once I'd done that Paco started to run off with his new treasure with the butcher chasing him.  Paco soon decided the leash was no fun without Herm or me at the other end so he soon dropped it and the butcher brought it back to me.  From now on....no more walks past the carnaceria!