Everyone is on the Defensive

Old Buildings Need Love Too...

Expo Canino '09

Cruisers are in town
Mazatlán is a multi-faceted town.  We have a huge shrimp fleet.  We are the home of Pacifico Beer, Café Marino and Coppel. But tourism is a large part of what sustains the town, and part of those tourists are visitors from cruise ships that visit the port. Usually on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday there are cruise ships in town.  This month there are 24 cruise ships expected.  That’s great, because for every cruise ship of 3,500 passengers, approximately

Nana’s on her way…
It seems to me that Halloween is catching on here in Mexico, but that doesn’t mean that Day of the Dead is taking a lower profile. Kids walked around Centro in costume but they basically called out “Halloween” here and there, not really expecting candy.  I think if anything it is another day to wear a costume an have parties, and that makes for a popular day for kids. All the blogs here in Mexico seem to hav

A bit of old Mazatlan…
I’ve always been a lover of old things.  Before we moved to Mexico I always had a lot of antiques in my house. I even restored a 1907 Craftsman bungalow in a previous life!  One of the shocks when we moved here and we had a big house to furnish was how little vintage furniture there is in town.  Almost none! Long time readers of this blog are aware that we have done a couple of projects lately that incorporated the use of salvaged architectural elements into the work. In our back yard, we turned crumbling cement  into a lovely tiled porti

This climate is amazing.
My last post was about Tropical Storm Rick and how all my plants had been affected.  Everyone said they would recover, and while I was hopeful, I was somewhat skeptical, especially with regard to the bamboo.  Take a look, I am amazed. I guess I knew the banana would do all right, but after just 4 days it already is sending up a new leaf!   The handkerchief plant is

The plants took a beating…
Tropical Storm Rick really gave the vegetation in Mazatlán a beating.  Walking the dogs this morning I realized that the west  side of every tree we passed by was burned and blackened or bleached looking. A lot of the plants at our house are in pots, and those most affected by the storm were on our upstairs front patio.  Keep in mind that as the crow flies we are about 4 blocks from the water but we are behind Icebox Hill, which shelters us from a lot of the weather.  Our timber bamboo really took a beating, though.  Planted in the ground on the side of our back yard, it has grown to more than three stories high and p