Hola from Alamos

Its 6:00 AM (the locals think its 5 but they're wrong) and the roosters are already hard at it - we must be back in Alamos. What a lot of changes 4 years have brought. The road in here used to be pretty scary - narrow lanes with no shoulders, I really wasn't looking forward to herding the moneypit over it. Instead yesterday we found a wide, new highway all the way from Navajoa. In fact the highways all the way down from the border have been considerably improved - on the average much better than Saskatchewan highways, maybe not up to Alberta standards but certainly up to US interstate standards. There's two new Pemex fuel stations on the west side of town which is a major help for us. The old Pemex station is almost right downtown - accessible with the bus but only with difficulty. I wasn't going to bother getting fuel here but now it will be easy.

We walked Carol & Virgil all around town in the early afternoon yesterday and then went looking for Manuel & Delphina. At their house we found a couple of kids from West Virginia who are boarding there while they study Spanish. They told us that Delphina's mother had died in the morning and that the family was at her mother's house but of course they didn't have a clue where that was other than "near the airport". That was too far too walk so we took the truck over there and instead looked for Sergio & Elsira's house which we had been to before. Four years is a long time though & it took us a while to find it. Then Elsira went with us over to Delphina's mother's. There was a huge crowd there - they had the casket in the yard just outside the little adobe house and the women were gathered around it probably reciting the prayer for the dead but I'm not real current on my catholic liturgy and especially so when it is in Spanish. We paid our respects and got out of there because we felt more than a little under-dressed for the occasion. Today we are going into Navajoa to drop off the stuff we brought for the orphanage so we will pick up some flowers and take them around to the house later.

Last evening we went for taquitos in town and then sat in the square watching the evening activity. There was a festival of some kind going on - our neighbours here told us it was a folkloric music festival before we left but it sure the hell didn't sound like folk music. I think it was an excuse for a party occasioned by the arrival in town of a small traveling midway such as you often see down here. All the kids were out dressed to the nines and walking around the square. The guy next to us is quite an authority but I'm not convinced he is as wise as he thinks he is. 3 rigs in this park (that would accomodate 100+) - 1 Manitoba, 1 Sask and one US. There sure aren't many people down here yet and even less Americans. There's 4 RV parks in town - we drove by 2 of them on the way in and saw one rig in one of them, the other looked abandoned. Tonight there should be two more rigs in from BC that we met up with at the border and again Friday night in Guaymas.

I had to thread the needle with the satellite dish through the trees around this site but as usual setting up on SatMex5 was a breeze. I hardly moved the dish from the time I set it up until I had the signal locked. Skype isn't working worth a damn though - I tried to phone mother from Guaymas & that was a complete disaster. Last night I tried to phone Dick to let him know about Delphina's mom and that was a total disaster as well. I "upgraded" Skype last night - not sure what that means other than a 26 meg download but I will try phoning someone today to see if it made any difference. Once the sun gets up I'll get some pictures of this site posted. Its so pretty.

We have a camp cat that is almost a dead ringer for George only smaller. George is more than a little concerned. We fed it a bit yesterday so I expect it will hang around while we are here. I told George he'll have to watch his attitude or we'll trade him in. He seemed a lot more cuddly last night - perhaps it is working.