Meanwhile back on Isla Mujeres Mexico…

 

Dinner at Rolandi's Isla Mujeres.

We’ve been away from our little beach house on Isla Mujeres a lot lately.  

First, we spent three weeks wine-touring in Argentina, returning mid-March, and then we were off again for a week to John and Maia’s wedding in British Columbia, Canada

Sparky, our almost-famous rescue dog, is still miffed at us for disappearing not once, but twice this year. He had two fabulous sets of babysitters while we were traveling, but now that we are back, he’s demanding a lot of attention.   

In mid-February to early March, the weather in Argentina was warm, much like Mexico, as it was late summer going into early autumn.

  

Sparky lying on my lap when we returned home 

British Columbia, Canada, on the other hand, in late March, was cold, damp, and chilly as the temperature struggled to rise above 10 °C (about 50 °F). We’re not accustomed to the low temperatures anymore! 

Sunset in March on Isla Mujeres

While island friends tortured us with Facebook photos of beautiful, sunny weather, we bitched and complained about being cold. 

Our discomfort was partly our own fault for not purchasing the necessary items to bundle up and stay warm. 

Lawrie wore sandals the entire time, except for the formal part of the wedding ceremony. 

He was unable to convince his feet that they should be stuffed into stiff, unyielding shoes. I kicked off my shoes at the wedding once the dinner was served. What a pair of beach-bums we have become.

Lawrie the MC at John and Maia's wedding

With only two days of sunshine among the fog, rain, and drizzle, John and Maia got lucky for their special day. Sunshine!  And a week later, the day before we left was also sunny and slightly warmer.  

Everywhere we went, people were hidden under cozy jackets, scarves, and hats. One restaurant provided fake-fur wraps to patrons who wanted to eat outside on their patio. 

At the end of the day, photographers gathered along the ocean shoreline, snapping pictures of the spectacular sunset similar to the eye-popping colours of an Isla Mujeres sundown. 

Fake-fur wraps for the outside patio

Meanwhile, back on Isla Mujeres, the temperatures were flirting with the lower thirties Celsius (mid to high eighties Fahrenheit). Hot, sunny, and breezy! 

Now we know what it feels like when we torture our northern friends with pictures of people wearing shorts and bathing suits in February. 

Doesn’t mean we will stop tormenting you; it just means we can empathize a tiny little bit…maybe, until we forget what it was like.

Lawrie - happy to be back on Isla

And as a last ‘gotcha’, our Air Canada flight from Vancouver to Cancun did not have heat inside the aircraft. 

Cold! Oh, my goodness, at the end of the five and a half hours, we were darn near frozen solid. When the doors opened on the aircraft, we were happy to be back in the land of warmth and sunshine.

Despite the chilly weather, we wouldn’t have missed John and Maia’s wedding for anything.  

John & Maia. We wish you endless happiness.

It was a beautiful ceremony connecting two extraordinarily happy people and their blended families.   

Hasta Luego

Lynda, Lawrie, and Sparky

Isla Mujeres Mystery series

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Only in Mexico!

Ah, sunset.  The end of another great day.

The pale tones of dusk - mauve, light pink and pale orange – are shouldered aside by the setting sun. A blaze of deep orange, red and purple colours the western sky as another great day is coming to a close. I pour two glasses of our favourite white wine and ask Lawrie to join me on the upper street-side deck for a sunset drink.

“Be right there! I just have one small job I want to finish,” he hollers back. Okay, no worries. I put his glass of wine back in the refrigerator and headed up to the deck. Peace!

Concrete pumper truck arrives

And then it starts.

Across the street, a concrete truck and a concrete pumper truck pull into the seldom-used school basketball court. Several months ago, the local government, in conjunction with school administrators, decided the basketball court needed a covered dome, and now the construction has started. Two sets of air brakes sigh, the hydraulic mechanism starts up as the pumper truck extends its four-sectioned boom out over the length of the basketball court. Nope. Too great a distance to be efficient. The operator retracts the pumping mechanism and moves the truck closer. Okay, let's try again. More noise and shouts as the crew positions the pump's spout and begins spewing concrete into numerous foundation forms.

Municipal worker removing a loose wire

A few minutes later, a municipal bucket-truck stops outside our house, reverses backwards into the thick traffic to stop mid-lane while a worker removes a low-hanging wire; all the while, the truck's reverse alarm is incessantly bleating. 

Beep, beep, beep, beep. 

Our road is currently extra busy with traffic because it is the only route open to drive from one end of the island to the other. The road on the western side of the island is closed for two or maybe three months, more or less, for re-paving.

I lost my sandal

While the municipal truck has nearly blocked the north-bound lane, a woman driving her two children on a moto suddenly stopped in the south-bound lane. Her young son had lost his sandal. Now the non-stop traffic weaves and dodges around a small boy, the back end of the moto, and the stopped municipal truck.

"Be right there, I just have one small job to finish."

But wait, there's more. My handyman husband fires up his hand-held grinder, preparing to clean rust and corrosion from our gas stove burners.

Sparks fly. Particles of old paint and rust float upwards, settling in my lovely glass of chilled white wine.

Noisy dump truck

The last assault on my peaceful sunset enjoyment comes in the form of a large, beaten-up dump truck that rumbles past with a cheeky blast of his Jake brake, the engine retarder, producing a loud, unnecessary blast of noise that is the equivalent of a middle finger salute.

Eventually, everything quietened down. The municipal workers removed the fallen wire, the young boy retrieved his sandal, the traffic thinned out, and across the street on the basketball court, the construction workers finished up for the night.

Working on the foundations for the new dome roof.

Even Lawrie eventually finished his noisy repairs and joined me with his glass of wine, but by then the sun was tucked away in bed for the night.

Tomorrow there will probably be another colourful Caribbean sunset. We'll try again to enjoy our peaceful, end-of-the-day ritual.

Hasta luego

Lawrie, Lynda, Sparky and Thomas

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