travelswithcharles: ¡Feliz cumpleaños Charlie! digger Gracias, Digger and Mary!

Charlie and I helped Fundación Ayuda Niños La Paz’s relief efforts today at the poor community of Colonia Laguna Azul. He handed out relief bags and helped interview residents, while I took photos and video. Eye-opening to see long lines for drinking water, rice and beans. A few photos below. More on Picasa .

travelswithcharles: travelswithcharles: See what you … I can edit this (I’m hoping only comment via… I can edit this I can add things here.  This is a reblog from my computer. Kimberli – I deleted all of the test posts from my blog — no problem. I’m editing this. I think the lesson is to mark posts as “private” if you want people to be able to read but not write/edit. P.S. Had more mariscos … more →

Judy Peterson, founder and chair of Fundación Ayuda Niños La Paz gave Charlie and me a tour of Colonias Laguna Azul, one of the impoverished “colonias” on the outskirts of La Paz (see photos here).The colonias were hit hard by Hurricane Odile, and will be among the last to receive power and water. Most of the people live in ramshackle cardboard-and-sheet metal houses with open roofs and walls. The houses we visited lost almost everything … more →

That’s how I’m measuring heat, by the number of showers I take a day. Today it was was (so far): In the morning, your run-of-the-water ordinary shower Around noon, when I returned from Se Hable La Paz after my 11 am Spanish lesson, having biked there, to meet a realtor (to look at another possible rental property), to get cash (to pay for my Spanish lessons), and to Got Baja?, my favorite coffee shop for … more →

Update: ~24 hours later I took the second photo, which shows the meter at 2 ___________________________ Simon our property manager tells me that the cost of electricity is “.80 Peso per Kw which is around 0.06 to 0.07 US per Kw.” Our electric meter read 2400 when we moved in on Sept. 2. Today, Sept. 8, it reads 2599, so we’ve used ~ 200 Kw. Figuring .80 pesos/Kw, that means we’ve used 160 pesos worth … more →

It turns on to Palmira, which in a short distance leads to the Malecón and Sea of Cortez. To the north are the tennis courts and entrance to the Hotel Araiza Palmira where last week the U.S. baseball team playing in the Pan-American games stayed (yes, a random fact). Not much to look at but offers some orientation to our hood.

The road to our house, Golfo de California, is nothing special – dirt and rocks that turn into mud and more rocks when it rains. The road runs more or less east-west. The first photo shows the entrance to our road from La Palmira. The middle photo, due east, captures our private if not entirely charming neighborhood. In the last photo you’ll see the boulder-field entrance to our driveway, one that we take slowly and … more →