Mexico

A Pleasant Goodbye to Mexico

As we prepared to (finally!) leave Mexico, our friend Van took us on an excursion to the Agua Termales (hot springs) in Puertecitos about 90 km south of San Felipe. We drove about an hour south from the house, paid the 200 pesos entrance fee and turned into a pretty shabby looking settlement of houses and outbuildings. As we drove up to the springs we had a gorgeous view of the Sea of Cortez.

The springs themselves are a carefully created set of pools, built into the hillside, each slightly higher than the last. The hot springs feed directly into the top spring, bringing the water temp to a scalding level. This scalding water feeds down into the lower pools and finally directly into the ocean.

At low tide each of the pools are isolated from the ocean water and are thus all quite warm. As the tide rises the pools begin to fill with sea water and the thus become cool enough to sit in and enjoy. The trick is to move up the hill to each successive pool thus staying in the balmy water. 

As noted, the highest pool which is fed directly from the hot springs and is scalding hot. The only time you can sit in this pool is when the tide is at is peak and washing enough cool water in to make the temperature manageable and it is lovely.

As you might have already guessed, as the tide turns and begins to go out, the top pool gets increasingly hot and eventually you are forced to move back down the hill to more suitable temperatures.

Since it was a full moon, the tides were very dramatic while we were there. We hopped from pool to pool while enjoying a cool beverage and, in general spent a lovely day in the Agua Termales!

Adios, Mexico y hasta la vista Sam!

 


 

Sunset San Felipo
Mexico

Creating a Time Lapse Video in Mexico

Now that the list of house projects has dwindled and the dune buggy is purring, I’ve had some time on my hands (thanks COVID). So I decided to try my hand at creating a time lapse video. All of the images were captured on my GoPro Hero 5 Sessions mini cam

I did not have a tripod, so I borrowed a floor lamp from the house, clamped the GoPro to it and set it up on the rooftop deck.

After a bit of setup, I got the cam to take 1 high resolution image every 5 seconds, so ended up with 1,300 photos at 1.2 meg each. I imported all of the images into the Luma Fusion video editor and merged them into a video. From there, I color corrected (Bonnie said I got a little too much purple in the sky). At this point the video was still more than 20 minutes long, so I had to shorten the length of time each image was shown until I got the length down to about 1 minute 30 seconds.

I needed to add some music, so I searched around in the library of license free music on YouTube until I found an audio clip I liked, imported the audio into LUMA fusion, shorted the clip and tailed off the audio at the end of the movie.

 

Finally I produced the video, as a high resolution file and saved it. I must say that the high resolution file looks much more impressive than the one with all the compression that happened when I loaded it to YouTube, but it still looks pretty cool….

 

 

 

 

Mexico

Sheltering in Place

When we planned a quick visit the the states to visit family and friends between house-sits COVID was still just something happening in China. As we got on the plane in Liberia, Costa Rica, the virus had starting spreading and by the time we reached Washington DC we realized that we needed to make some major adjustments to our schedule. We cancelled visits to family who were considered at risk and headed south. After short stops in Shelbyville and Atlanta we landed in St. Pete Beach where we spent several weeks quarantining with our friends Leslie and Becky. Our next house-sit in Costa Rica cancelled, but we decided follow through with our planned trip to San Felipe, Mexico and headed to San Diego. 

After a quick conversation with Christopher and Van about where we were heading and how COVID was affecting our plans, they generously offered the San Felipe house to us for as long as we needed. Two and half months later, we’re still here….

   

So about San Felipe: we are staying in an amazing home on the beach called Casa Aramara, it is in a quiet gated community about 25 minutes south along the coast from the actual town of  San Felipe. The “house” consists of a main house with two bedrooms and 2.5 bathrooms. Out front is a courtyard bordered by 3 guest rooms and 2 more bathrooms. Beyond that is a three car garage that houses a dune buggy and other toys such as a collection of four wheelers. The community is gated with a 24/7 guard, has two pools, a hot tub and tennis courts. Our backyard is the beach with the Sea of Cortez as the backdrop.

While we are here, George has keeping himself busy puttering around the house working on this and that. Bonnie has been experimenting with new recipes. The increasing heat during the day has slowed us both down. Daily highs of more than 110 degrees Fahrenheit (43 C) have encouraged us to adopt the slightly slower pace typical of this region.

We can’t begin to express our gratitude to Christopher and Van and Connie and Mark for allowing us to quarantine/shelter in their beautiful home. It has been a spot of tranquillity during the craziness that has been occurring in the world – while it seems like the world is on fire, we’ve landed in paradise….how surreal.