Figs to die for

Mexico has figured out the merchant’s dilemma: how to make money and not waste time and energy on customer service. You simply do not accept anything in return or exchange. All questions can be answered with a smile and an elastic conscience: tomorrow for sure, if not today. Alternatively, where this approach does not work: right down the street, across from the green tree. With these simple tools gringos are sent on their way, either elated with the promise or despondent with unfulfilled gratification. If all else fails, the advice is to call a certain telephone number, where magicians will solve your problems.
And, yet, it works. We have electric power, and the lights glow as if to celebrate the Fourth of July. It took six days. It took a long trip to the office where we found out that all of our previous requests had been canceled because the crews could not find our house. Not surprising, because records showed directions not entirely approaching reality. Anna argued with the gerente to change directions to our house, but his computer was adamant.
Somewhat downcast we returned home, full of doubt and with serious loss of confidence. But there they were, two hours later: two guys with a truck and a ladder, who re-connected us to the net with the optimism and determination of men on a first date.

The ‘fridge hums, the espresso maker, when plugged in, no longer throws the house into depressing darkness.
Who would have thought that flipping a light switch could be so satisfying?
On Sunday we went to the Gene Byron museum, an old hacienda where musicians play lovely Sunday afternoon music in colonial splendor. How we felt at home again. We missed Branko and Vincent, but made new friends. After wine and tapas in the hacienda courtyard, we went into town, and visited everyone’s house, until we ended up in Santa Rosa, way up in the mountains, where we ran out of wine and where the only restaurant was closed. Down the mountain, to Sandra and Ron’s house for an impromptu dinner and muchas bebidas. They drove us home, thank heavens, for I would have never found my way back.
Anna has been sewing with needle and thread (the seamstress across the street closed shop) and made us a table cloth for the garden.

We did not manage to change the owner’s name on the water bill; we blew out the computer modem as well as two wireless phones and a TV, and met Julie, who runs a gardening center in Marfil. Her great grandfather fled Germany’s Black Forest to avoid the draft in the 1870’s, and her family ended up in Vancouver. Somehow, the way our lives are constructed, she married a Mexican architect she met in Puerto Vallarta, and here she is with the smile of a mother and the gentleness of voice which seduces. This morning she pulled up at our house (“I am a Norte Americana and I show up on time), in a 20-year old VW bus, bringing us the pots and plants, and bags and bags of soil we ordered from her. The dirt is still under our nails, but the garden and patio look wonderful.
Now that electrical problems are behind us and we no longer have to stay at home to meet and greet phantom repairmen, we walk the streets and feast on the richness of daily life here.

Joan and Lud arrived yesterday afternoon, wonderful to share with them our life in Gto. Anna made dinner, we sat in the garden and sipped, then walked downtown. Tonight a concert in the Teatro Juarez, and dinner at Frascati’s on the main square.
The street vendors offer riches, the market seduces, and we feast like kings.
Shrimp with salsa verde for tonight, made by Anna.
And figs for desert, figs with Roquefort.
Figs to die for.