Month: February 2015

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Back in the Saddle

My friend Janet organized a beach trail ride for today with two other friends and myself. This was her first time inviting me and we are going to try to make it a weekly event for the four of us since we get along well and the cost is only 100 pesos for an hour!

There are lots of horses on Isla, but some are better cared for than others. The ones right on my street are sickly and dirty with protruding ribs. I would not have felt comfortable riding such a horse.

Lending a sharp contrast, the horses we rode today appeared nearly as well tended as any horse I’ve ridden back home. They were obviously well fed and groomed and had decent saddles.

Janet is a very experienced rider, having owned a horse for years. Next up with experience was myself, and then one lady who has been riding casually on Isla the last few years and another lady who has only ridden two or three times.

Our handler paired us with a mount suited to our experience and off we went to the beach. I regret not bringing my camera because what a memory that would have been, the tide low, the sky bright blue, and the palms and ocean framing us. Wow. How did I get to be so lucky?!

We mostly walked and trotted, but we did get in a good canter in both directions. It was absolutely exhilarating!

My horse, Diamante (Diamond) and I fit well together. I had no trouble posting at trot and was well seated for an exceedingly smooth canter. My only complaint was the stirrups digging into my ankles since I had to wear my Keens, not having had the foresight to bring my cowboy boots to Mexico.

Our guide was hilarious, joking about how lucky he was to be riding with four gorgeous women. Between our guide’s limited English and my Spanish, we were able to banter back and forth, learn about each other and Isla, joke, and have a great time.

I still have no complaints about my Mexican life, the recreational opportunities available to me, or the cost of living. 😀

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Banking Misadventure Update (and an Early Morning Town Run)

Back in late December, I had the misfortune of requesting money from an ATM, the money being taken out of my account, but not actually receiving the cash.

I called (actually Skyped) my bank as soon as I found out and the representative was very sympathetic and said that she would start an investigation right away for me. However, I was warned that the Mexican bank had 30 business days to respond to the investigation and an additional 60 business days to actually give me back my money. Oy.

A month later (fewer than 30 business days), I Skyped again to see if the investigation was till in process. I had been told that I would either get a letter saying that the investigation had concluded against me or that I would see the money back in my account. Since I don’t have access to my mail, a quick call was the best option to know if this was resolved or not.

This representative told me that the investigation was still pending and that the Mexican bank had not replied. Moreover, this representative was a bit more familiar with Mexican banks and said that Bancomer is notoriously difficult to work with. I should hang in there. As soon as the initial 30 business days were passed, CIBC would be able to get nasty.

I decided to call CIBC once again at the start of February, but the days got away with me. And to be honest, I’d mourned the loss of that money, made up for its lost, and had moved on. I just wasn’t expecting to see it again.

So imagine my surprise this morning when I logged onto my online account and found not only the missing 2,000 pesos, but a sufficient additional amount to cover related fees and interest related to this whole fiasco! Thank you, CIBC!!!

That sure put a spring in my step! I was trying to drag myself out the door to run to town to withdraw cash at Santander and also get a few groceries, but I hadn’t had enough sleep and was facing a full day and was moving sloooooowly until I got the good news!

I left home around 7:00 and didn’t waste any time getting to the bank. Maz is super quiet that early in the day with almost nothing being open, so there were no distractions. I made a nice big withdrawal that could last me a month, then went around the corner to Panamá.

There, I picked up a ham, cheese, and jalapeño sandwich to eat right then, an almond croissant to enjoy with a cup of coffee when I got home, and a pineapple stuffed thing to eat later this afternoon.

Next stop was Ley for few groceries. I’m doing a big Soriana run possibly tomorrow afternoon, so it was more of an emergency top up of things that were on sale than a proper stock up, including getting a container of my favourite yoghurt for only 23 pesos!

Then off I went home, where I arrived at bang on 9:00. The day was already getting hot, a brutal shock after the wet and chilly weekend we had, so I was glad to get into my cool home.

Now, a bit of work, a fun excursion, and then lots of work. Might as well make hay while the sun is shining. Literally.

Life in my tropical paradise continues to be wonderful beyond measure.

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¿Mande?

I learned very proper European Spanish when I was studying it as a teenager. As an adult, I took private courses from a Chilean lady and she went to great lengths to keep me on track and not introduce Chile-isms into my vocabulary.

Well, the European Spanish has pretty much been out the door since I got to Mexico. I had to tone down my accent quickly because I was having a hard time being understood here. What I was taught is pronounced ther-bay-tha is pronounced ser-vay-za here. I’ve also had to learn new words for common things; durazno rather than melocotón for peach, jugo rather than zumo for juice. It’s rather like a Brit learning to say pry-vacy rather than pri-vacy, truck and eraser rather than lorry and rubber.

One of the first Mexican Spanish-isms that I encountered when I got here was ¿Mande?

I took this to mean “What?”, as in a rude “I didn’t hear you, repeat yourself” because I could recognize that it comes from the verb “to give an order.” I heard ¿Mande? quite a bit when I got to Isla until a kind neighbour informed me that the problem wasn’t my use of language, but my accent and I started to work on toning it down.

But as the months here in Mexico pushed on and I kept hearing ¿Mande?, not just directed at me, I figured that there is no way all Mexicans were rude. Tonight, after an encounter this morning, I finally researched the phrase.

Lo and behold, ¿Mande? is the absolute most polite way in Mexico to let someone know you didn’t understand them! It can mean “What did you ask?” or “Please repeat yourself” or “What can I get you?”, among many other nuances.

The opposite of ¿Mande? on the politeness scale is ¿Qué?, which is literally “What?”

What happened this morning was an encounter at the grocery store. They have a new gal attending to the deli counter and she is really putting me off from shopping there. First of all, she has no sense of hygiene, using her bare hands to handle the cheese and meats. EW. Even though the City Deli has the best price I’ve found for Chihuahua cheese, I no longer buy it there because of that.

But more on point to this post, whenever I order from her she asks me ¿Mande? at least three times before fetching my order. I thought she might be hard of hearing except that her tone really is harsh and bordering on rude and she has no trouble hearing the other customers the first time they speak.

Since no one else I encounter in my interactions is saying ¿Mande? to me regularly anymore, I really didn’t think the issue is the quality of my language. So I began to suspect that she was just not happy to be serving a Gringa and was being purposely rude.

This was pretty much confirmed to me this morning when I carefully enunciated ‘Veinte pesos de tocino’ and she replied ¿Mande? A man came out of the back of the store and addressed her sharply, saying that he had heard me clearly the first time on this visit and on all preceding visits!

Holy smokes, my assumption was correct, that she was being purposely rude to me! And by using a polite form of “What?” she was actually being doubly rude.

For more information on this Mexican phrase, check out Mande in Spanish is not Monday.

And finally, back to ther-bay-thas for a moment, European Spanish pronounces the soft C and Z as the English sound T-H.

One of my absolutely earliest memories is of being in grade one, still very much learning English, and flinging a pencil across the room because I could not pronounce the TH sound and would never be able to pronounce my last name!

So thank you, English, for paving the way to my apparently gorgeous, but almost impossible to understand in Mexico, Spanish accent!

 

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Lunch at Lety’s

I’m afraid that this winter is turning out to be all about the FOOD. 😀

I’m in a funny little eye of a hurricane right now, not much in the queue, but it’s most certainly going to explode, so I took a long lunch on the beach today.

I went to Lety’s for the first time and ordered one of the most expensive things on the menu, their shrimp brochette (kebab). I’m sorry I didn’t bring my camera because, OMG. 🙂

I read a bit while waiting for my meal and chatted with the blanket guy, who was shocked to see me reading a Spanish magazine. He tried to sell blankets to ladies at the table next to me, but refused to sell them blankets like mine for less than 300 pesos! I’m trying to figure that one out since I’ve been told that my 250 pesos wasn’t a great price and he turned down two sales at that price! So maybe I did get a good deal. He told me that if I want another one, he’ll honour his 250 peso price. I’m more than tempted!

Back to lunch, my only complaint food-wise since I’ve been in Mexico is that I’m pretty much eating the same flavours in various combinations. This was the first time since the mole that I felt that my taste buds were getting something truly different.

There were two brochettes made up of shrimp, onion, green peppers, squash, and onions, all grilled to perfection and brushed with a BBQ-type sauce that was sweet with a bit of kick. As sides, there was a good rice probably cooked in chicken broth with carrots in it and also a huge green salad with radishes.

In addition to this, I got a basket of tortilla chips so I could indulge in the four salsas that came with the meal.

One was your typical pico de gallo, with tomato, cilantro, jalapeño, and onion.

Next, there was a pineapple salsa with something really spicy in it. Thanks to the sweetness, I was able to eat quite a bit of it. It was my favourite of the four.

After that was another tomato-based one that was more smokey than spicy. If it had come as the only salsa, I would have gobbled it up, but it wound up being my least favourite.

Finally, there was a syrupy tamarind salsa that reminded me of thick prune juice. I would have found it a better match for plain yoghurt than chips, but will confess to stealing a final spoonful to quench the fire from the pineapple salsa when I was done. 🙂

With a beer and tip, lunch came to 175 pesos, and it was worth every centavo!

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Lighting a Propane Stove

I Skyped with my good friend L last night and he brought up something that he has told me before, in relation to my exploding BBQ lighter last night. It’s something that I’ve known for years and which he has shown and demonstrated to me, but which has never stuck. And it bothers me because I could have saved myself a lot of money over the years and also prevented yesterday’s accident.

His words of wisdom?

You don’t need fire to light a fire.

He’s, of course, right. To light propane, all you need is a spark.

I have friends who light their RV stoves with flint spark torch igniters.

I haven’t had much luck with them for propane stoves. They are great for lighting a soldering torch because you can bring the tip of the torch right over the sparking surface, but with a round propane burner, you just can’t get in close enough. It takes me too long to light the stove with one of these and I have a mini explosion each time because the propane has time to build up.

So you need the opposite scenario, a flint that creates a concentrated spark. Guess where you can get one of those? A BBQ lighter.

Which brings me back to my friend L. He has been lighting his RV stove with a depleted BBQ lighter for years.

So guess how I lit my stove the four or five times I lit it today? Yup, with a spark from my now depleting BBQ lighter. It works great and I start the stove on the first snick of the lighter, rather than clicking it several times to get a flame going.

I feel like a complete moron, but I plan to cook with gas for the rest of my life, so I have plenty of time to make up for years of stupidity!