Pickleball, exploring and Guachimontones

March 4

This morning Ron left to play pickleball with a neighbor. I walked to the neighbors with him to return their ironing board and iron; then, I took off from there to go explore more neighborhoods. I passed through neighborhoods where locals live, neighborhoods with wide streets and haciendas that look that they were constructed in the ’20s and '30s with large lots beautifully landscaped and neighborhoods with recently renovated traditional homes that preserved the character of the home.

I may have mentioned that all the streets here are cobblestone. The one exception is the highway that goes through the center of town. This highway goes around the lake. It is currently under construction and has created a lot of dust and congestion in town. Some of the streets have narrow sidewalks and some have none or intermittent sidewalks. It is best to watch your feet when walking here. This is typical of any developing country.

At 10:00, I met Marianne, a neighbor, at a restaurant. She had breakfast and afterward, we went to the farmer’s market that is in town. It was a wonderful array of vendors with leather goods, produce, prepared foods, clothing, crafts, kitchen utensils...you name it they were selling it. It is very popular and crowded although it was more crowded when it opened at 10:00.

I came home, made a simple lunch and Ron helped me make black bean soup. I had made several trips to the grocery store to get all the required ingredients. After three hours and 40 minutes of cooking the beans were hard as rocks. I had soaked them overnight, too.  On-line we learned that this happens when beans are old (I just bought them this week), the cooking water is hard or there is an acid in the recipe. Who knows, but I was tired, disgusted and frustrated. Neither of us had slept well. I had hoped to have several meals from the effort. Ron, St Ron that is, went back into the kitchen and started separating the beans from the soup by first straining the liquid and then scooping out the beans.

We went down the hill and I took him to the neighborhoods I had visited in the morning. Then we dined at a place on the highway that had been recommended by Marianne. We had a good meal but couldn’t finish it so we brought home the Pico de Gaia and eight large shrimp.  I see a salad in our future.

March 5

Sunrise over Lake Chapala

I woke up at 4:00 and couldn’t get back to sleep so around 5:00 I got up and wrote emails and worked on the blog. The alarm went off at 6:15 and we got moving. A quick breakfast we headed down the hill and took a bus down the highway to meet up with the tour bus going to an ancient pyramid. The city bus was crowded and we squeezed in. A short ride and we spied the Walmart and across the street was our pick-up point. We were early, so we ducked into a very upscale coffee shop and ordered a bagel.

At 7:45 we boarded our bus. There were 11 of us; one A Canadian couple, an 85-year-old woman with her three sons and their wives. One couple moved here almost a year ago from Camus WA, one couple lives in Waldport OR, and one in Portland OR. Small world indeed. We drove for about 90 minutes to Teuchilan to visit an archeological site of circular structures named Guachimontones. The site consists of 3 identified pyramids, but the archeologists suspect there are many more.  Only two have been restored. 

These circular pyramids were built around 350 BC and the society was thought to have existed until 900AD. The pyramids were discovered by an American archeologist in 1997. We spent a long time walking around the site viewing the many restored structures and ended the tour in the museum. We view a film regarding the history of the culture and development of the site.

We drove to a nearby restaurant that was located on a lake that was totally overtaken with

water hyacinths. White egrets were walking on the mats of these invasive plants and fishing. It was a lovely setting…outside, of course.

We were returned to our drop off point and did a little shopping for some groceries before catching a bus home. I threw together our supper of black bean soup over brown rice and a salad. We were supposed to go to Marianne and Peter’s tonight to play a game but we were exhausted. I went over to tell them we were too tired but visited with them briefly before coming home.