Rodeo in Celestun

Steer chasing a Celestun cowboy after his lasso missed the mark

Celestun cowboy readying his lasso

A new event began in Celestun earlier this year that I was finally able to attend yesterday.  It is a "rodeo" of sorts with about a dozen local "cowboys" and a couple hundred spectators.  It was a very festive, family event with food vendors, and of course muchas cervezas being sold out of coolers.

In a field 1 km north of town, across the road from Casa de Celeste Vida, a large ring was built with a low, rough wooden fence.  Red, plastic chairs surrounded the fence with their backs against the boards so that the kids can stand up on them to see over.  People started gathering around 5pm and they were almost ready to get started when we arrived after dark around 6:30. Motorcycles and cars were parked all along the road so we joined them, parking our Honda Fit on the roadside and then walking into the field, carefully finding our way in the dark through the dozens of parked motorbikes, taxis, horses, etc.

The grounds were lit with just one spotlight, tied onto the top of an extension ladder, which was tied up against the railings, and a wire was strung from the roadside electric lines that someone had bravely climbed up and pirated for the event.

Everyone crowded close to the railing as a bunch of guys climbed up onto a wooden structure at one end.  It was apparently a sort of chute and after a lot of struggle, a small steer eventually was forced to walk out and then it just stood there.  Each cowboy rode around on a horse and tried to lasso the lazy steer, taking turns throwing their ropes at it.  Eventually a couple of cowboys were successful and then there was just as long a struggle to get the steer to leave as there had been to get it into the ring in the first place.

We waited for about 15 minutes for the next event and were rewarded with a little more excitement.  A much larger and aggressive steer ran out of the chute this time and immediately started chasing the cowboys and running full-speed around the ring, with large, pointed horns nearly scraping along the top railing causing everyone, including us, to jump back quickly before we were gored or the animal crashed through the rickety boards.  Luckily, nobody was injured, the cowboys managed to rope the steer and then they got it to leave again much more easily than the first one.

Apparently they just repeat this all evening until enough guys are drunk enough that they start climbing into the arena and let the steers charge them.  To the best of my knowledge, nobody has been killed or even seriously injured, yet.  But we had seen enough after 30 minutes so called it a night and headed home.

150th Birthday of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

This morning, sitting here in Celestun with my coffee, Google alerted me to the fact that today would be Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s 150th birthday, had the bohemian artist not died in his 30s.  The French artist, who is best known for his painted scenes of wild, bohemian Parisian nightlife, including his posters for the opening of the Moulin Rouge.  I shot this photo of the famous Moulin Rouge while in Paris last year.

The Moulin Rouge nightclub in Paris

Henri Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa (24 November 1864 – 9 September 1901) was a French painter, printmaker, draughtsman and illustrator whose immersion in the colourful and theatrical life of Paris in the late 1800s yielded a collection of exciting, elegant and provocative images of the modern and sometimes decadent life of those times. Toulouse-Lautrec – along with Cézanne, Van Gogh and Gauguin – is among the most well-known painters of the Post-Impressionist period.

At age twelve Toulouse-Lautrec broke his left leg and at fourteen his right leg. The bones did not heal properly, and his legs ceased to grow. He reached maturity with a body trunk of normal size but with abnormally short legs. He was only 4 1/2 feet (1.5 meters) tall.

Toulouse-Lautrec was drawn to Montmartre, the area of Paris famous for its bohemian lifestyle and the haunt of artists, writers, and philosophers.  When the Moulin Rouge cabaret opened, Toulouse-Lautrec was commissioned to produce a series of posters. Other artists looked down on the work, but Henri was so aristocratic he did not care. The cabaret reserved a seat for him and displayed his paintings.

Toulouse-Lautrec was very much an active part of this community. He would sit at a crowded nightclub table, laughing and drinking, meanwhile making swift sketches. The next morning in his studio he would expand the sketches into brightly colored paintings. In order to join in the Montmartre life - as well as to fortify himself against the crowd's ridicule of his appearance - Toulouse-Lautrec began to drink heavily.

Throughout his career, which spanned less than 20 years, Toulouse-Lautrec created 737 canvases, 275 watercolours, 363 prints and posters, 5,084 drawings, some ceramic and stained glass work, and an unknown number of lost works.

 

An alcoholic for most of his adult life, Toulouse-Lautrec was placed in a sanatorium shortly before his death. He died from complications due to alcoholism and syphilis at the family estate in Malromé at the age of 36.

Paintings by Henri Mahe decorate the entrance to the Moulin Rouge in Paris

Paintings by Henri Mahe decorate the entrance to the Moulin Rouge in Paris

Paintings by Henri Mahe decorate the entrance to the Moulin Rouge in Paris

Sunny Days

In between the occasional short Norte with its accompanying cooler, windy and sometimes wet weather, we're having fabulous days, close to 30 c, calm and sunny.  The fishermen stay ashore during the Nortes but yesterday was a beautiful day for them and we enjoyed it too, ending our day with a walk along the beach up to Casa de Celeste Vida to have supper with Kenn, Karen, and Wanda.  Jorge and Fabiola (who have a vacation home next door to Celeste Vida) joined us too and we had a great meal followed by one or two drinks and hours of dominoes.  We all learned several Spanish words for "cheater!" and Fabi's new favourite English phrase is to describe herself as a "tough cookie!".

Fishing boats and sunset in Celestun

Earlier in the day my reading/snoozing in our TV Sunroom was disturbed by a flock of parrots in the trees outside our windows.  These green, yellow and blue birds (parakeets actually) are really chatty and a flock of them can be pretty noisy.

Olive-throated, or Aztec Parakeets

I was able to just open our windows wide and wait for some good photo ops as the birds hopped from branch to branch, snacking on seeds and berries in our trees.

Today is a little warmer, 30c+, and we had some new bougainvillea, spiny palm-like plants, and a new coco tree delivered by our local gardener friend, Wilbur Ruiz.  We decided to redo our roadside plantings to make them a little more attractive and colourful as well as adding some colour along our beach-side fence.  The new coco was to replace a bug-infested one that snapped off last month.  Poor Wilbur had to dig a HUGE hole and chop through a very heavy tangle of roots to remove the old stump before finally planting our new tree.

Bougainvillea thrives here, needing very little
water and producing beautiful, dramatic colour

Wilbur digging out the coco stump to plant a new one

  





I had to skip my afternoon nap today in order to watch our nephew Greg play hockey.  His BCMML team from Kamloops, BC, the Thompson Blazers, was playing in Kelowna, BC.  Luckily we can watch most of his games streamed online through www.playfullscreen.com and with texting back and forth with Chris' brother Murray and her Mom who were at the game, it was almost like we were there!

Greg firing one at the net (in a previous game)

Well the hockey game is over and my blog is done, so I think I can just fit in a short nap before supper.  Then I guess I'll have to repeat this hectic schedule all over again tomorrow!  :)

Settling back into Celestun

Our pool and pool house at Casa Piedra

We arrived back in Celestun a couple weeks ago, on October 28, and it already feels like home.  And like any home you own, there are always things to buy and things to fix and this one is definitely no exception!  But after a few repairs to my driveway gate motor, roof patching, etc., etc., I'm almost ready to start having those afternoon siestas on a regular basis!

This is the first year that we are here in time for Dia De Los Muertos (Day of the Dead) November 1 and 2 coinciding with the Catholic All Saints Day.  We didn't actually get out and see anything though as I was still a little under the weather from my recent shoulder surgery.  But we certainly heard celebrations around town. Dia de los Muertos is a holiday for remembering and honoring those who have passed. It is a festive, joyous time of celebration.

Day of the Dead is Mexico's most important holiday, which means they invest a lot of time and money into celebrating Dia de los Muertos, more so than any other holiday.  In homes, people create altars to honor their deceased loved ones. In graveyards, families clean the graves of their loved ones, which they then decorate with flowers, photos, candles, foods and drinks. People stay up all night in the graveyards, socializing and telling funny stories about their dead ancestors. Musicians are hired to stroll through the graveyard, playing the favorite songs of the dead.

This will be the first year that we are staying the whole winter here so we haven't done much in the way of decorating before now or even buying some "basic" creature comforts....like a new large-screen TV!  A necessity of course.  We also bought a few other items to make life a little more comfortable here, new ceiling fans for our bathroom and the outdoor kitchen, Chris got a new mixer, and we did a little furniture shopping at Marbol on Buen Fin.

El Buen Fin (Literally the "The Good End" but implying "The Good Weekend") is an annual nationwide shopping event in Mexico, in existence since 2011 and taking place on the third weekend of November in Mexico, and the beginning of the Christmas shopping season.

Jose and Richard holding their bananas

The Marbol furniture factory and showroom is our favourite spot for furniture and with everything 20% off we didn't miss that opportunity.  And after a long day in Merida, it was a great relief to be able to take a break half way back to Celestun at Hacienda San Jose Pachul in Kinchil to have a great meal and a visit with our friends Jose and Richard.  I shot this photo when they were giving us some of the bananas that they grow there on their own trees. They also have some smaller ones that taste like a cross between a banana and an apple; a "banapple" I guess.

We've had a little time to visit with other friends already too, Karen, Kenn and Wanda at Casa de Celeste Vida of course, as well as stopping in to see Jacque and Vincente one day and of course our Friday night expat dinners at Peter's restaurant at El Hotel Gutierrez at the foot of Calle 15 on the beach.  

Friday night expat dinner at El Hotel Gutierrez

We also have had our maids in a couple of times scrubbing down every inch of our home from top to bottom (why did we buy such a big house????????).  And our new caretaker has worked many hours already pulling and burning weeds, dead plants, tree prunings, leaves, etc., (why did we landscape such a huge yard????) and he even managed to repair my leaf blower that has been dead for a year!

We have a few other little improvements planned around here and this winter we'll be looking forward to some Canadian friends visiting as well as seeing more and more of our new Mexican and expat friends here.