Pigeons call from the palapa roof, a throaty collective giggle. Oh, ho ho ho, it's a beautiful morning.
John emails that coffee is ready so I pad down in my slippers and lounge gown and meet him on their back porch. He gets interrupted by a call from Christine, a former patron of Las Flores, who wonders what has happened with the old place. I say hi to her but I don't think she recognizes me. Now, if that had been Vicente...
I scurry back upstairs. Tiny yellow birds (finches?) flit back and forth in the garden below me. A pelican lazily rides the air currents, head turned seaward in his relentless search for fish.
The shore here has slowly inched up, worn away by a couple of monstrous hurricanes over the years since we've seen it.
Nowadays the beach is a short mound that slants toward the ocean far more quickly. Googly-eyed crabs still clamber back and forth and John did see my friend the willet the other day. I wrote a book called the Curlew and the Willet, because I loved the way they worked the sand food together. Never got it published but...
Before long, John appears at the top of the stairs, balancing a coffee pot, milk, sugar, and a tray of fruit for breakfast. Could anyone start a day better than this?
Oh, wait - it does get even better. Pat and Bill have made mimosas!
We spend all day in this mode. Relaxed, quiet. Reading, blogging, talking and laughing now and then. Dip in the pool to cool off, stretch the limbs. Watch the ocean for a while as it swells, breaks, retreats. Listen to Grackle tell us the news.
Once in a while I try to call the whales, but so far they're not listening. In previous years, we've been treated to humpbacks and their offspring playing. They'd breach, lobtail and dive, baby and mother side by side, and it wasn't hard to get hooked. So we keep alert to signs of spouts that signal we might receive this privilege again.
Vince, John, Pat and Bill do some shopping, while Maire and I simply sit and bask. Spoiled? Oh yah.
Dinner is an adventure. We walk across the street to the little Italian restaurant. Unfortunately the waiter is very new (perhaps even to Earth), the cook is late, and the boss shows up too late to salvage the mix-ups. We do eventually get our food at various times. We kindly eat salads we didn't order. Bill's meal is served at least 30 minutes after me, and I am the last of the others, so he gets his for free. The food is good, though, and the poor waiter is young and a cutie, so what can you do?
Afterward we sit on our balcony and drink wine and Jameson and talk until well past nine. Tanya would be shocked.
The next day I literally spend all of it in the backyard. Floating in the pool for hours. Doing my editing, which turns out to be far more fun with the sound of waves in the background. Maire and I do some aquafit moves. John, Bill and Pat go off to the baseball game, but the three of us stay put. Though Vinnie does go out and do a little shopping, so he really doesn't qualify for the whole day in the backyard thing.
Magnificent frigates and a few turkey vultures sail overhead. The frigates are beautiful from below, sculptured wings and the flash of white bodies, graceful and calm. Even from here, the vulture's hooked beak looks threatening, though its flight is elegant.
Our little hummingbird flits around enjoying the flowers.
I watch some yellow-breasted birds for some time. They're bigger than finches. There's a couple and, I think, a young one. When I look them up on the Internet, I think it's a tropical kingbird or a tyrant flycatcher. If I were that bird, I'd pick the former for my name.
Later we watch that game on TV where a whole bunch of men run up and down a field chasing a ball and sometimes jump on each other. The half-time entertainment, however, is worth it. I love Chris Martin and Beyonce and Bruno Mars. Because I am cool.
I've got a video and a picture from our dinner at El Vaquero and the parade (if they upload).
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