We are starting to understand why April and May are considered the worst months here.

The temps get up into the high 80s during the day. When we wake up it is still nice near the mid-60s. And of course it is dry, which is good. But the air is hazy with smoke and dust that never clears up due to lack of rain. We have a rental house high above the lake with an expansive view but with all the haze you can’t see much. All this is due to change early June when the rains come. Apparently, it cools down the very next day to highs in the 70s. The air clears. The thunderstorms put on a show every day. We are looking forward to it. Everyone says it is the best time of year.

To beat some heat, renew my tourist visa, and have some fun, we are thinking of going to Yellowstone National Park late May / early June. That time of year is possibly a little early for Yellowstone but I have to be out of Mexico by June 5th because of the visa renewal. I’m choosing to work around the tourist visa while Leigh has a resident visa because of some additional restrictions with when and how you can move your household goods to Mexico duty free. It’s a little complicated and this seems like the best solution for now. I don’t know yet if we want to move everything down here. We only really miss a few things. I lean towards staying mobile; Leigh would like all the nice stuff we collected. It’s a tough call. And there’s not much urgency at this point.

We are in the new house. The first two weeks were a bit tough with things in not quite as good a shape as we expected. I did some plumbing, used a bit of WB-50 (like our WD-40), found and eliminated a propane gas leak in the living room, etc. We both did a lot of cleaning and organizing. The landlord said he had moved his stuff out but when houses are rented furnished, one’s persons furnishings are another persons junk I guess. We moved everything we didn’t want to the garage and he seems to be cleaning it out little by little. Most everything else is up and running well. We like it and the landlord is fine. Just those first two weeks…

The new house is about a half-hour from the hub-bub in Ajijic. When we tell people we are out here, everyone says, “Oh that’s nice out there - but the drive…”. With the unsupervised horses and cows near the narrow (but paved) road - people with poor night vision have some right to be concerned. It’s in one of those gated-communities that I never thought I’d be in but my attitude has changed somewhat. It’s true that most of our neighbors are gringo but there are Mexican households too. The gate provides some control for vehicles, but anyone can come and go on foot through any number of different entrances.

The move to our new house has been our main focus recently of course. Right before that we took a trip to Manzanillo, on the coast near Colima. We took an introductory scuba lesson, complete with ocean dive. It was a great experience. We started with a dive in a swimming pool. Otherwise it definitely would have been too overwhelming. Equalizing the pressure in the ears seemed to be the hardest part. Adjusting buoyancy was tough too. The instructor had to spend a lot of time finding rocks and weights for both of us to make us heavier. We’ve seen much better fish on some of our snorkeling trips, but learning how to use the equipment was fun and challenging. Not sure if we will ever do more scuba or not at this point.

We are starting to venture into Guadalajara a bit more recently. Like any large city, driving is a hair-razing experience at first. Our friends here say it is one of the easiest cities to get around in once you get the hang of it. We’ll see.