A visiting Moroccan dignitary

This solemn looking guy is Sultan Abdul Habani, who flew in to Chelem to attend Moroccan Night hosted by Taco Maya. He was a little testy at first, but after a few slugs of tequila and a couple of glasses of vino tinto, he loosened up and was quite friendly.

Here he is with our fezzy friend Rick.

This character with the luxuriant moustache has just escaped from the French Foreign Legion and is scraping out an existence waiting tables while exiled to the Yucatan Peninsula. He looks happy enough right now, but don't cross him. He is considered quite dangerous, despite his innocuous appearance.

High tide

Well, Hurricane Ida decided to go to the east of us, through the Yucatan Straits between Cancun and Cuba. We have had no wind, no rain,just a beautiful suuny day and really high tide. Now it's 9:45 and high tide is in an hour. The palapa is flooded, the firepit is under a foot of sand and the water is within ten feet of the porch.

A present from Mother Nature

Here is a view looking west from the 2nd story beach facing porch. There is a bit of seaweed on the beach. Now look at the second and third pictures. This is our beach and those piles of stinky seaweed are at least four feet high. Nobody else has them Just us. Guess we are special, huh? Well, it wasn't all bad; the shore birds had a feast and Tuli had a couple of good rolls, which made her smell really bad. Then Mother Nature took it all away...we watched it disappear in the space of a half hour. No wonder we never go anywhere; we could watch the ocean all day.

Our new baby

There's a hurricane coming. Maybe. In the meantime, we have acquired a new toy! It should be able to power the fridge, computer, lights, water pump, etc when we experience a power failure, which are not as common as you might think, though they do happen. Our neighbors up the street were without power for almost a week and everybody around them had power. We aren't quite ready to live without power if we don't have to. Anyway, we both sleep a little better knowing our bright metallic blue generator will keep the lights on and the food cold.

Weather Report

The clouds over the Gulf are always mesmerizing. You can't look away; you might miss something.

YUCK!

We had a nice clean beach a few days ago...then we had a norte. It started out as "a significant wind event" and continued with an hours worth of rain that flooded the upstairs bedrooms- even with the sliding doors shut! Then the wind increased to about 35 mph for three days (so far) and then a whole bunch of seaweed was deposited on our beach. Two good things: Tuli thinks it's wonderful to roll in and a ton of shells came with it. Just like last year, we seem to have been blessed with the most seaweed. Aren't we lucky. At least it doesn't smell too bad!

Custom paint job

I just know that this vehicle was painted with house paint, and maybe with a roller! It is very cute, however.