Hillsboro is a hard scrawny town on the way from Truth or Consequences, where I used to live, to Silver City, New Mexico..
In the old days Hillsboro was a gold and silver mining collage of wood shacks, shovels, dynamite, barbed wire but today it has lost its luster.
When its precious metals played out, there were copper mines left, but they were shut down too and moved overseas when costs and government regulations became too onerous.
Hillsboro used to have apple orchards and a popular annual Apple Festival that peddled apples, arts and crafts, food and live music but that disappeared after management stole money and absconded to Europe.
At one time, main street here had a biker bar that drew Harley Davidson enthusiasts from Albuquerque and Las Cruces but that attraction closed when the bar’s owner sold the liquor license for a ton of money.
A recent couple, trying to bring magic back to the town, have opened a winery on Main Street, the highway you take to Silver City, but this morning they are packing their belongings and have driven a For Sale sign in the front yard.
Today, becoming gold prospectors,my friend John and I use gold detectors instead of picks.
Working our way up hillsides, we wave our battery powered wands over rocky soil. We have tried the detectors around the house with loose change to practice before getting serious. We haven’t found gold yet but we have found barbed wire, nails, bottle caps, and rusty beer cans.
Tomorrow will be yet another gold hunting day. Expectations will be lower, but hope refuses to die.
Those yesteryear miners were tough S.O.B.’s and more stubborn than their donkey’s.
For every gold nugget, there is a trail of blood, sweat, and tears,
For every dream, there is heartache.
Buffalo’s are not small, short, slender animals. In fact, they have a reputation for hardiness, tolerance for adverse circumstances, and supported Indian’s on the Great Plains for hundreds of years.
The Lady Buff”s of Texas A&M College in Canyon, Texas are slender and wiry and are playing in the Regional Championships for the NCAA Women’s Division 11 College Basketball, 2015. Last year they went all the way to the National Championship and were beat in the last minutes by only a few points. This season has been dedicated to attaining those lofty heights again.
The Lady Buff’s are short, trim, and athletic. They can push the ball down the floor, play ball control when needed, hit outside three’s if the shot is there, and play a great defense that keeps opponents from driving on the basket. They can make free throws and have a bench that can add to the score instead of losing a lead. For this game they are playing an eighth seed and are favored to win the game though nothing is to be taken for granted in sports.
Canyon, Texas is a small town outside of Amarillo. The college has a National Champion Women’s Softball team, a volleyball team that went to the elite eight last year, and, of course, a woman’s basketball team that wins a lot more than they lose. Colleges and women’s sports have been married a long time.
This evening fans are decked out with pom pom’s, clap hands, wear buffalo horns and T-shirts, and stomp in the stands complaining about bad calls by the referees, errant passes, and missed free throws.
We have our tickets and give our support to the team whether they are down or up. This game is entertaining and, in the end, the Lady Buff’s win handily. .
Getting to the championship is hard enough the first time. To go a second time you really have to have something.
A cool morning in Surprise, Arizona, you can hear paddles striking balls several streets away from the Happy Trails pickle ball courts.
“There are 15,000 pickle ball players in this area,” a woman educates me as she sells new pickle ball paddles and takes names for her E-mail list at her vendor stand by the entrance to the courts.
This morning, while much of the park sleeps, men over 50 warm up, talk strategy, stretch, get their game faces right. Once individual games start there are paddles slammed into the ground, curses, and strained expressions. All the results of the pairings are written down on a bracket board by the scorers table. This is a tournament to crown the Happy Trails Pickle ball Champions in doubles, men over 50, 2015.
Pickle ball goes down on a small court with lots of stretching and reaction, strategy and competition. Even old guys don’t lose their desire to crush other old guys, even if they all have beers after the tournament and talk about good shots whenever and whomever they came from.
Having your name engraved on a silver cup becomes for some, at some point in their life, a great prize. Bragging rights can be some of the best.
After watching the tournament, I still don’t know where the name pickle ball comes from?
Nobody here looks like a cucumber.
As our tour boat moves slowly through the water, paralleling Stone Island, we see mangroves form a wall to our east. We leave the marina and head north past large shrimp boats, tuna ships with miles of net piled on their decks, one of the largest fish canneries in Mexico, the Pacifico beer bottling plant, some ship repair yards and ocean going vessels in various shades of rust.
Rounding the northern tip of the island, we head now, towards the south, on the opposite side of the island from where we began. You can look further south and see breaking waves as waters of the Pacific meet waters of this estuary fed by rivers. Mangroves grow where salt water and fresh water meet and they are crucial for this aquatic environment.
While we chug along, a pelican flies down to the deck at the bow of our boat and looks at Polo, our guide.
Pelicans are odd looking birds with huge beaks, beaded eyes and bald heads, huge jointed wings. This visitor’s webbed feet splay out on the deck and he isn’t going anywhere.
Polo reaches for his microphone and tells us a story.
“This is my friend Juanito,” he begins. “He comes and joins us on most of our trips. I will give him fish later for a reward …”
“Some years back,” Polo continues, “we found this pelican who was covered with oil and couldn’t fly. So we wrapped him in a coat and took him home and my family cleaned him up and fed him till he could fly again. We had him at home a year before we brought him back here and let him go. His home is over there …”
Polo gestures at the mangroves.
“He joined us on a tour one day and now he always comes to see us. He is a very smart bird. When I feed him he knows which fish to eat and which fish to leave alone.”
After telling us about the value of mangroves to the ecosystem, and stressing the importance of fishing to the local economy, Polo feeds Juanito his first treat.
For a bunch of tourists, on vacation, Juanito is a high point.
It isn’t every day you are visited by a Pelican and get to watch him grab a fish in his beak, wiggle his long neck to get the fish down to his stomach, then look back at you with contentment and anticipation, as his friend, Polo, reaches into a white five gallon paint bucket for yet another snack.
Juanito takes this fish gently from Polo’s hand, and swallows.
He has become, and he knows it too, our official trip mascot.
Every night, downstairs, the Hotel Playa offers entertainment.
It is sometimes a DJ spinning tunes. Sometimes it is a duo of classical guitars. On certain nights you can hear song smiths warbling out popular melodies. This particular evening we get flashy dancers in the restaurant (La Terraza) performing for elderly guests who are in town for a bridge tournament.
The four dancers, two male and two female, wear sequined outfits and very little fabric.They are as lean as you can get and from staff we learn they are part time employees of the hotel who are paid to perform at night and practice for pay during the day.
For old men these are young women with good figures and for older women these are young men who wear frilled outfits, have good physiques and lift the girls easily over their heads. One supposes the male performers are gay but these days, considering the proclivities of show business, it doesn’t matter. The girls carry the show from where we sit.
Full of energy and movement, the dancers perform as a quartet, a duo, and even solo. Stage lights change from red to blue to green and at the end of several numbers the dancers run off stage and go back to a little room for a quick change of costume.
The dance revue, Alan, Dave, and I agree, is entertaining and we stay the whole show. We hope we see the women on the beach tomorrow but agree that that probably won’t happen.
Lifting even these light girls into the air while doing dance steps is no easy task and it isn’t something I could handle on even my best day.
When the show is over, it is past eleven and sleep hits me over the head.
Not much of a dancer myself, I can still appreciate someone else’s talent.
Fortunately and unfortunately, we don’t see any wardrobe malfunctions.
Golf and sunshine walk hand in hand in Arizona in 2015 like a retired couple on a perpetual honeymoon.
The Happy Trails RV Resort surrounds a golf course and its golf holes wind through the development like a snake doing a break dance. The greens are good but fairways need attention with new owners cutting doglegs to trim overhead and maximize profit.
Walking down streets named Trigger, Spur, Lariat, there are yard decorations in abundance.
In a golfing area, one is not surprised to find Golf Ball Man, a curious combination of super sized golf ball cells held together with wire skin and topped off with a driver, golf cap, sunglasses, and a determined look.
He shoots under par, sinks thirty foot down hill putts, has no trouble with sand shots, drives like a twisting desert dervish. If you ask him, he will tell you you have to give him five shots a nine plus one mulligan an eighteen. He can up the bet on the eighteenth hole if he chooses, and you can’t tee up your ball in the fairway.
Roy Rogers and Dale Evans are patron saints of this place but Golf Ball Man says his prayers in the pews.
At night I hear golf ball man practicing his putting, and, whistling, ” When the Saints, Go Marching in….. ”
The Temple of Music belongs in a different time and place.
This edifice is in a downtown San Jose, Costa Rica city park where music is performed and people congregate. This afternoon there is a group of young gymnasts practicing handstands under the temple dome, entertaining those who are passing through.
A young man with tattoos seems to be the leader, and, while I am watching, he is instructing another young man who is practicing handstands with wooden blocks set on the ground directly in front of him.
While doing a handstand, the student lifts his right hand off the right block and supports himself with his left hand. Then, he drops his right hand back to the right block, supports himself, and lifts his left hand in the air, off the left block.
It takes practice to learn to stand on one hand.
Passersby take pictures and one girl says she only wishes she could do half the things these gymnasts are practicing.
Pigeons, roosting on the outside edge of the dome, an upside down bowl, are nonchalant.
They don’t have to work on their balance and keep people below them on their toes.
The early bird gets the worm, and, the early fisherman gets the fish.
One of the activities popular around Salto, according to TripAdvisor, is Dorado fishing.
One of the guides that receives the best write ups is Gianni Juncal, who speaks English and maybe writes it too.
All the reviews I’m seeing on my computer praise the Captain, who, reviewers say, works hard to give everyone a chance to catch fish. That is all you can do with fishing. Fish bite when they feel like it and they just don’t care about you standing all day in a boat showing them what you think they will like.
The best fishing grounds on the Rio Uruguay are up north, towards a huge hydroelectric dam that provides over 80% of Uruguay’s electricity. These world class fishing grounds also reach into Argentina which means special permits to wet a hook are needed to fish there. Gianni refers to La Zona in his E-mail reply to my fishing inquiry.
Because I leave Salto tomorrow, I send a declining thank you e mail back to the Captain.
The only way this fishing trip would have happened is if I had shown foresight and arranged it before I got to Uruguay.
Planning has never been one of my strong suits so I compensate by spending inordinate amounts of time and energy pondering things that have already happened and writing prose about it.
An opportunity that gets away is never as bad as an opportunity seized that doesn’t get its own write up.
Punta Del Este is still a ghost town this time of year, in November.
This town by the ocean comes alive in December, January, February and March. Prices go up, locals rent out their homes for triple prices, hotels make enough in a few months to make it the rest of the year when weather is less sunny and people don’t want to go to the beach. I have been told April is a good time to visit too. You can see the town getting ready now for high season. A McDonald’s is opening and workmen are repairing broken tiles in sidewalks in front of shops.
Today,surfers,who wear black wet suits, patiently paddle out towards the bigger waves breaking further off shore.
Off Emir beach, there are as many as thirty surfers in the ocean. I follow their bobbing heads, black wet suits, arms and legs paddling towards shore as a good wave catches them from behind,prompting them to stand up on their surfboards and hold out their arms for balance, riding all the way to the beach if they are lucky.
There are sun lovers on Emir beach who spend most of the day face up/ face down on towels, lounge chairs, or just plain sand. They wear sunscreen and bake. They drink and eat, listen to music, visit with friends and family. But, always, they concentrate on getting darker.
Wall sitters, where I sit today, hang out and watch who is wiping out in the waves, watch bikinis, joke around, and move as slowly as possible.
The beach today is full of vacationing families who have come to enjoy the Christmas holiday season together with many more to show up here in the next few months.
People are drawn to the beach like iron particles being attracted by a huge magnet.
I am, I freely admit, one of these particles.
It would take a bigger magnet to remove me from my wall seat this morning because I don’t, at this precise moment, have any place I would rather be.
Piriapolis is a small Uruguayan town an hour bus ride from Punta Del Este.
A one way ticket on the bus lines COT, or COPSA, runs ten dollars. This is one of those side trips that gives a bigger vision of the country.The beaches at Punta Del Este are well spoken of but the beaches in Piriapolis are smaller, more accessible, with calmer waves.
Walking a wide boardwalk that runs parallel to the beach, I look down and see, peeking out of the sand, the head of a young woman. Her body is completely buried. I don’t know if she is asleep or her partner covered her while she was awake? I don’t know if she protested?
He is about to pounce when he looks up and sees me. I point at my camera. He kneels down and gives me a thumbs up.
It is a beautiful day and this couple has time to do whatever they choose. He chooses to cover her up like a kid playing in the sandbox and she chooses to let herself be covered up because it means he is paying her the attention she wants.
They have the beach to themselves.
Precious moments whiz past our heads all day, like bullets. A few hit us hard enough to be remembered,and, even fewer, get written down.
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