Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween, everybody! No costumes or parties this year, just finishing touches on the place as it goes on the market.

Today is our good friend David's birthday. Sadly, David is no longer with us but his spirit lives on and on nights like this - rainy and stormy - breaks through. The photo is of David's favorite glass at Ola Lola's and his favorite drink.

David loved having his birthday on Halloween. He was so honored and humbled that people all over the world were having birthday parties for him. Plus, he always had a party for himself.

David was a golf course designer. He designed Royal Isabela here in Isabela. And he created the concept drawings for Ola Lola's.

One Halloween/birthday he was nearing completion of a golf course project. He threw a party for the construction crew and the course staff and their families. They cleared out the cart house for the party. The only rule was you had to come in costume. Well into the evening, the course owner and his wife came to the party, both dressed in regular street clothes. David met them at the door and said, "You know the rule: everyone must be in costume."

"I'm dressed as guy who signs your paychecks," the owner said.

"Great costume!" was David's reply.

Here's hoping your Halloween is spooky and fun. This Medalla is for you, David. Happy Halloween and happy birthday!

Diving drought

October has been a terrible month for diving. In fact I haven't been in the water in a month! The last time I went diving a group of us went to the south of the island to dive The Wall off Guanica.

There are several dive operators who go out to the wall but our favorite is Island Scuba in Guanica. The Wall is about two-and-a-half miles off-shore. For 28 miles it wraps around the southwest corner of the island. Last time I checked there were 16 marked dive sites on The Wall. The top of the wall is at about 65 feet. From there it plunges to between 160' to over 200' depending on where you are on The Wall. For a number of reasons our "floor" was at 100 feet.

One of the great things about the site we dove is there are frequently sharks along The Wall. Two Caribbean reef sharks hung out with us along The Wall. Two more joined us at the top before we headed back to the boat. (See the video above.)

Scared? No! Fascinated? Absolutely! Caribbean reef sharks are not aggressive. They were mildly curious about us but that's it. And what amazing beautiful creatures! I will dive with them any day.

Other than that there hasn't been much diving. I used the phrase "diving drought" but the lack of diving has been in large part because it has been a rainy summer and fall, especially up in the mountains. All the rain - and the silt it washes into the ocean - plays havoc with visibility. ]

And then in early/mid-October, hurricanes Matthew and Nicole started bringing waves. Much of the time storms don't interfere too much with diving but both of the storms drove waves from the northwest. Swells with a "lot of west in them" screw up diving everywhere.

But they did bring surf - and that's a story for another day.

Ola Lola's for sale

If you or someone you know is interested in moving to a beautiful tropical island, here's your chance.  There is more on our website, www.olalolaspr.com. Feel free to contact us with any questions! ola_lolas@yahoo.com or 787-629-3988

Feel free to share this far and wide. Thanks.

Viw through my horse's ears

Nine years ago on the night of the October full moon, Elaine rode Chocolate on the beach. She want me to ride, to feel the magic. It was windy, occasionally spitting rain but the moonlight and the ocean truly were magical.

We - Chocolate and I - turned to look back and to wait for Elaine to catch up with us. We'll never know what spooked him - a flash of moonlight on a wind-tossed wave, the "strange" shape of Elaine jogging toward us, whatever - but something did. He spun and bucked. I was a very green rider and wound up on my back in the sand. Chocolate took off running the other direction.

It was one of the longest nights of my life. We searched and searched up and down the beach for him. Our friend Tito (who gave Elaine Chocolate in the first place) came out to search on his horse. Sometime after midnight we agreed to give it up for the night but to meet again at first light to look. Of course Elaine couldn't and was out again by 2:00 am. By first light. all of us - Elaine, Tito on horseback and me - were already out.

Sometime after sunrise, Tito found Chocolate tied up in a yard across the main road and nearly a mile away. We couldn't figure out why he didn't come home or go to Tito's (where he lived for a while). Most horses know the way back to their barn. We figure in his fear he got confused and ran up the wrong road from the beach.

Word finally got to us on the beach that Tito had Chocolate and was headed home with him. Elaine ran home. I turned and started home on the beach. Like something out of a movie, as I walked on the beach there was a full double rainbow in the sky ahead of me.

Last night, the night of the October full moon, we decided to go for a sunset/moonrise ride. It was truly magical!

Chocolate and I are a very different team now. I've been riding him bareback a lot lately so I decided to forgo the saddle and ride with just a bareback pad. We were comfortable together, riding and even trotting easily. As the light fell into dusk, there was no anxiety from either of us.

It helped that it was a different night. No wind whipping up the waves, no funny lights reflecting off strange surfaces.

It was a beautiful, easy, comfortable, magical ride. I love it.

'tis the season

 

 Ah, Hurricane Season! Hurricane Matthew, the fifth hurricane of the season, was briefly a Cat 5 early this morning. Since then, Matthew has slipped back to a Cat 4 and may weaken even further before it hits Jamaica.

When then-Tropical Storm Matthew went by well south of us, it brought us winds up to about 35 mph, rain and one of the most beautifully intense thunderstorms I've ever seen. If the storm hadn't frightened the dogs so much, I would have loved it.

Even as we send positive energy into the universe for people in Jamaica, eastern Cuba and Haiti, we are also grateful for what Matthew was - small - and was not - big and dangerous - when it went by us.

We are actually very fortunate here in Puerto Rico and especially here on the west coast when it comes to hurricanes. Most of the time the storms that form off the Horn of Africa are either tropical depressions (winds less than 39 mph) or tropical storms (winds 39-73 mph). Puerto Rico is usually the wedge that divides storms going north along the east coast of the US or south into the warmer waters of the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico.

One reason these storms don't usually develop in to hurricanes until after they pass us is slightly cooler ocean temperatures between Africa and Puerto Rico. For one thing, the Atlantic is deeper and colder that the Caribbean. But there is another factor as well: Sahara dust.

Dust from the Sahara Desert streams across the Atlantic in the upper atmosphere. At times this dust cloud is heavy enough it can be seen from space. (A friend of ours used to work at the observatory in Arecibo. Part of his job was to monitor the Sahara dust.) This dust cloud actually shades the waters of the Atlantic just north of the equator. This shade keeps the water several degrees cooler than it would be without the cloud. This in turn means the tropical storms crossing the Atlantic have less warm moist air, which they depend on for development, to feed on until they hit the Caribbean. Thus, they frequently remain tropical storms, not hurricanes, when they hit Puerto Rico. (Another aside about the Sahara dust: this stream carries nutrients from the Sahara that help feed the Amazon forest. We are connected in ways we can can't even imagine!)

On those rare occasions the tropical storms do become hurricanes before they hit Puerto Rico, they are usually small and not well developed. Because they travel from east to west. they expend a lot of their energy - and rain - crossing the island. That means the eastern third of the island gets hit much harder than we in west do. A few years ago when Hurricane Irene passed over, the east side of the island had 60 mph winds and nearly 13 inches of rain. By the time Irene got to us there was no rain and 40 mph winds. That's what I meant by being fortunate here in the west.

And one more digression if I may: we had 40 mph, even 60 mph winds, when we lived in Michigan., usually when it was somewhere between 0 and 10 degrees. Here we 40-50 mph winds - and it's still 80! It's much easier to tie stuff down when you're not wearing thick gloves or your fingers aren't numb or sticking to whatever it is you are trying to tie down.

Here's hoping everyone in the path of Matthew hunkers down and is safe.

Black out- schmack out!

Meanwhile, underwater, Mother Ocean don't care about no black out.

Actually, this was shot the day before the Big Black-Out. We did two dives with Island Scuba in Guanica on the south coast of the island.  Our first dive was on The Wall to a max depth of 100'. The Wall continues down for another 100' or more.

We saw the barracuda and two reef sharks on the first dive. The barracuda were there but not interested in us. The reef sharks were curious but they see divers a lot so we didn't freak them out. They swam around us and kinda checked us out but that was it. Scary? Not a bit of it! It was incredible to hang out with these amazing creatures.

Our second dive was on a shallower (55') reef. It is a beautiful reef but the most interesting part (besides two hiding nurse sharks) was the coral farm. We noticed big healthy patches of staghorn coral. We have tiny bits of staghorn coral at Shacks but nothing like this.

And this was just one of several patches like this. We were wowed. Then we saw this:

The local dive community and the DRNA (Department of Natural Resources) are cultivating the staghorn coral on these frames.

Then they transplant the coral to new locations to start new colonies. We have a friend who is doing something similar with coral reefs in Hawaii. I would love to do this locally.


We did dive at Crashboat the day of the Big Black-Out.

I still don't think Mother Ocean cared if the lights were on or not.

36 hours of the Apocalypse

So you may have read (or maybe not considering how "The Media" treats Puerto Rico) that we had an island-wide black-out. The details depend a little on which account you read, but the basics are a fire started at one of the electric authority's (AEE) generating plants. As a self-defense mechanism, the rest of the system shut itself down. It was 36 hours of the Apocalypse.

People lined up at gas stations like this was the last tank of gas they could ever get. It was like the 70s and gas shortages and rationing all over again. People stocked up on water and canned foods like a Cat 5 hurricane was coming straight at us. Traffic lights were out. On an island where stop signs and traffic lights are sometimes more suggestions than actual rules, people didn't know what to do when there were no lights at all. I must say, from what I saw, the police did an unexpectedly excellent job handling traffic.

It was difficult to get news since almost all news comes electronically, either on TV or via the Internet, so no one really knew what happened or how long power would be out. Really, there was very little to do but make the best of it and ride it out. It was kinda like camping.

I want to copy something here a friend of ours wrote and posted on Facebook:

For my English speaking friends I am translating a post from this morning regarding the blackout. Everybody specially the media and the government have been continuously saying since yesterday that this is a crisis. Well I'm here to say that this is not a crisis, this is an inconvenience, a big one btw and an uncomfortable situation. No, having to recharge our phones in the car is not a crisis. Not being able to turn on the a/c is not a crisis, no, having to eat out because you have an electric stove is not a crisis either. I'm afraid to break the "terrible" news but having to put away your groceries in a cooler with ice is way far from being a crisis. A crisis are situations like the one that our Venezuelan brothers and sisters are living where they have to make lines that can take hours and even days just to try to get something to eat, not to mention that they don't have medicine. A crisis is having a car and not being able to move it because there is no gas anywhere like what happened in Cuba at the beginning of the 90's. A crisis is having to wait for a water truck because there is no such thing as water in your homes like in Ghana. A crisis is loosing family, friends and even the bed you would sleep on because of a natural disaster like a tsunami, an earthquake or a huge flood. Nothing like that is happening here. Traffic is flowing without any problem thanks to the excellent work the police is doing, our grocery stores have everything as usual, nobody has died because the battery of the laptop died etc. Let's be grateful for all our blessings and stop calling any inconvenience a crisis.


Mimi is absolutely right. this was an inconvenience, and really, a small one at that. For all the bad-mouthing of "the system" in Puerto Rico - and goddess knows there are enough problems with the system - the folks working on the problem restored electric service to most of the island in 36 hours. I think that's pretty damn good. In Michigan we could go 36 hours without electricity in the wake of a winter storm. Back there, we depended on electricity to heat homes. Back there, it was below freezing, often below zero degrees. Here it was still in the 80s. Yes, it was hot without fans and air conditioners. But nobody froze to death.

As Mimi so correctly pointed out, we have SO much to be grateful for. A few hours without electricity is a pretty minor inconvenience.

And there was a bonus: the night sky was beautiful without all the lights!

The path to PATH

A couple of days ago I wrote that Elaine has been working on certifications in equine assisted therapy. She is working with the Professional Association of Therapeutic Horsemanship, P.A.T.H. International.

Here is a short overview video of what P.A.T.H. is and does. By the way, this video was recorded at Fieldstone Farm in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, That's where Elaine was training in August. I had the opportunity to visit the facility - wow! What a beautiful operation!

Elaine has completed her first PATH certification and has started a second. She is also taking a class in October that deals specifically with working horses and veterans. Since by percentage of population Puerto Rico has the greatest number of people in the U.S. Armed Forces of any state or territory, there is a need here.

This is our Next Great Adventure. This is why Ola Lola's is for sale.

Fire and smoke

Today is THAT day when we remember and mourn the horrific events in 2001.

By my friend Linda's birthday (happy belated birthday, by the way!) on the 7th, the memorial postings are ramping up. This year the big post was this year's high school freshman class will read about 9/11 as an event that happened before they were born. By my friend Vicki's birthday on the 10th, probably half the posts on Facebook are about 9/11. There will still be posts tomorrow on my friend Stacy's birthday.

"Never forget!" "Remember!" Photos of the WTC. Photos of firemen and other first responders. Those of use how were born then get to relive the horror.

But there are also reasons to celebrate on this date. Today is my love's birthday.

 Not everyone thinks it's appropriate to celebrate anything on this day. For first couple of years we struggled with it too. But then I realized 9/11 was her birthday long before 9/11/2001. Celebrating a life and remembering, honoring, respecting the victims in the WTC are not mutually exclusive.

So today I am celebrating her birth and her life with huge joy and gratitude. If they didn't scare the dogs, we'd have fireworks

Happy birthday, mi amor, mi dushi, mi querida!

How I spent my summer vacation

Now that Labor Day is behind us, summer is "officially" over. Schools started here the first week of August so that was effectively the "end" of summer here. But then, we live on a tropical island so it's always summer here. Right now it rally feels like summer - hot, muggy and threatening thunder storms. We've got lots of thunder, just waiting on the rain.

Of course with the end of summer and the return to school comes the "what I did on my summer vacation" assignment. Since I haven't written in a while, I thought I'd take that on.

After Amber's birthday (my last post) I had a birthday. No, it is not the something anniversary of my 21st or 29th birthday. I have 65 years and am proud of it. I'm still here, still, kicking, still diving and riding and taking Amber (and the other three dogs) for his daily walk on the beach.

I got a bouncy house for my 65th birthday party. I've been in bouncy houses at other people's birthday parties, but I've never had one for my own party.

 

(One of the many reasons I don't do selfies!

And a cake that had it all!

Thank you, mi amor!

There has been some diving...

(Oh goddess - another selfie!)

but honestly not as much as I'd hoped for. It's been a very wet, rainy summer (this time last year we were in the midst of a terrible drought and they were rationing water). Lots of rain - especially in the mountains - screws up visibility by washing lots of mud and other stuff down the rivers and into the ocean. But there have been some really good dives.

Elaine was gone for a week in June and three weeks in August back to the States for training as we work towards the Next Great Adventure (more on that in a bit).

While Elaine was gone the first time, her mare KTJ was in a clinic in Arecibo for surgery on her leg. That was a rough time for all of us. Elaine was gone and her horse was having surgery. I was here without her taking care of the "ranch" and Ola Lola's. (That's one of the reasons I didn't do more diving.) Chocolate and Zip really missed KTJ and were glad when she came home.


It's taken KTJ some time to heal but she's doing fine. Elaine is finally able to work her nearly every day and has just started riding her again.

While Elaine was in northern Ohio staying with Amy and Miguel and the grandkids doing her second round of training, I got to sneak away to join her and visit.
 

Ola Lola's - to many people's chagrin - has been closed since the first of August with no hard deadline to reopen. We're doing maintenance and repairs that we can't do when were open and getting the house and business spruced up to sell. Yep! Ola Lola's is going on the market. If you or anyone you know is interested in "living the dream" on tropical island, get in touch with us. We may be able to help make that dream come true.

Of course, the big question everyone asks is "Why?" Very popular, top-rated bar/restaurant - why sell? For one thing I've been doing this for nearly 10 years (!),This is the second longest I've ever had a job. And, we're moving on the the Next Great Adventure.

We're looking for some land near here. We are creating a non-profit to have horses assist in therapy for people, especially veterans, and people assist in therapy for people-damaged horses. Elaine's work in the States this summer was toward two certifications for equine assisted therapy. She just completed the first (YAY! Congratulations!) and is on her way to the second.

So summer is over. I would say it's back to work and in a way it is. It's just different work with a different focus. We (half-)joke that you know you're truly on island time when you don't know what day it is any more. Elaine and I were talking today that we really don't know what day it is. For now we don't have that hard deadline of 3:00 pm Friday to open Ola Lola's so what day it is doesn't mean much. Our lives revolve around the animals and occasionally diving and working to get Ola Lola's ready. Not a bad life!

Happy Birthday

Happy Birthday to one of the sweetest, wisest old souls in the universe.

Today Amber Ale turned 16. For years in Michigan he was an amazing therapy dog, working with both kids and adults.

Now his muzzle and paws are completely white; he's partially deaf. He has liver disease, maybe cancer. His back legs sometimes give out on him: he has trouble going up and down steps, But he has a great huge beautiful boundless spirit. He wants to GO - not as far and not as fast as he used to but still GO! He wants to be part of things, to share stuff with his two- and four-legged pack. Everyday he gets his walk on the beach with the other dogs. 

I hope there is somebody to take me for walks on the beach when I'm his age.

Happy birthday, Amber!

Caballos del mar

Of course, four-legged horses are not the only ones. As I said in an earlier post, I also love hanging out with caballos del mar.

And at some point, they are all sea horses!

On horses

Way back in the last century, I took a riding class for a PE credit in college. I learned a little about grooming and tacking and caring for horses. Mostly we did trail rides on Western saddles and gear. We didn't train the horses at all. We just got them ready, got on and rode off.

I imagine that's kinda most folks' initial construct with horses: yes, there are some fancy show riders and jumpers and some horses race around a track and some prance in the Olympics. But basically, horses are for riding.

Fast forward a few years (decades) and I found myself in Puerto Rico, helping to care for Elaine's horse, Chocolate. When we only had one horse, he was her horse. I helped out occasionally, feeding and all. I learned a little about caring for him, but only enough to do what I needed to do to help. I was not going to be a rider. While Elaine's passion was the horse, I was learning to scuba dive. That was kind of deal: you ride, I dive. When the opportunity presented itself, I did a little riding. Eventually, Elaine became a certified scuba diver. We both did it so we could spend time together doing what the other loved. Don't get me wrong: I like to ride; I just wasn't very good at it. Elaine likes to dive but if it's a choice, she'll ride.

Then we got KTJ, our - Elaine's - big dark bay Thoroughbred rescue from the race track. She is a sweet smart girl and training and working with her quickly became Elaine's focus.

When Elaine went to St. Lucia to work three years ago. I stumbled along doing the best I could taking care of both horses. When Elaine came back, I decided I wanted to get more serious about this. She was working with KTJ so more and more Chocolate became "my" horse.

Most of what little I knew and what I read talked about the need to be the "Alpha horse," the herd leader and to become this, I had to dominate. Those of you who know me know that's not my strong suit. But I tried because that's what you're "supposed" to do with a horse. We had some success but many "training" sessions ended in all kind of frustration for me, but more importantly for my horse. I talked about these frustrations with Elaine and other horse-people friends but didn't really get anywhere.

One night, Elaine handed me a book and said, "I think you're ready for this." The book is Horses Never Lie by Mark Rashid. Simply put, we mostly look at our interactions with horses from our point of view, not the horses. And they are very different! In a herd there is a dominant horse who gets his way by, well, dominating the other horses. But there is frequently another horse Rashid calls the passive leader that the other horses follow because they trust and respect this horse.

This was an eye-opener, a game-changer, for me! I don't dominate well. Maybe I could become this trusted passive leader for my horse. Now, nearly a year later, I have a relationship with my horse.

And that's what this thing with a horse is about - a relationship. It's not about riding; riding a mutually agreed upon part of the relationship. It's certainly not about "breaking" a horse. It's about working together with trust and respect. That means listening to what the horse is telling me. Sometimes, I have to trust him more I trust myself. He has to learn to trust me that I won't put him in danger, that even if his prey-animal instincts say, "RUN!" he'll stay because he trusts that I won't let him get hurt. Sometimes he has to do training things he doesn't like (circling on a lunge line for example) because it helps get us in sync with each other. (Sounds the demands and requirements - and joys - of any great relationship!)

I can't believe how far we've come together in such a short time. Not having to or trying to dominate is so freeing, so relaxing. There are lots of trainers now doing some variation of "gentle" training. This feels so much better to me. I keep reading more, watching more and practicing more. Chocolate is a very smart, very sensitive horse. Now we both enjoy our time together and look forward to it. We are working on a great relationship!

Loving people and our dogs I understand. I am totally surprised at how much I've come to love this horse.

By the way, I just uploaded a whole bunch o' photos of the horses to Flickr. You might want to take a look. Enjoy!

Happy Hurricane Season

Happy first day of Hurricane Season! It is a happy first day because there are no hurricanes or storms on the horizon. Okay, there is a low off the Carolinas headed out to sea but that shouldn't affect us - unless it produces some waves.

I read a forecast for this hurricane season. Based on current conditions and computer models, we have a 45% chance of a more-active-than-normal season, a 45% chance of a less-active-than-normal season and 9% uncertain. Who knows what the other 1% think. NOAA says 45% chance of near-normal season, 30% chance of above-normal and 25% chance of a below-normal season. A "normal" hurricane season in the North Atlantic is 10-16 named storms, 4-8 hurricanes, and 1-4 major hurricanes. We already had one hurricane, Alex in JANUARY!

One issue is the ocean temperatures. This winter our dive computers didn't record anything below 80 degrees. In previous years we've gotten don to 78-79 degrees. Most of the winter was 81-82 degrees. That's warm! Tropical storms and hurricanes feed on warm moist air over the ocean so having the  ocean this warm this early is a little scary.

I love my island

So. One of the documents we need to do business here is the "Excepcion de Comerciante." In the States this would exempt us from paying sales tax on business purchases. Here it allows us to claim a credit for sales tax (IVU) paid against the sales tax collected when we sell stuff at Ola Lola's  Without that exception, we wind up paying sales tax twice. It's a pretty useful, important document.

The Excepcion must be renewed each year. Officially, ours expired on May 14 but we have until the end of the month to renew it. I went to the local Hacienda (the tax collection department) office on May 19. Other than waiting in line, the renewal process takes about 20 minutes. they check to make sure you don't owe any back taxes, print the paper and off you go.

Oops! They found a glitch. The income tax office in San Juan disallowed a credit in our 2012 (!) income tax and said we owed $205 in overdue tax and interest. This, by the way, was the first time we'd heard about this. We have receive NO communication about this from the income tax office. Anyway, pay or resolve this debt or no renewed Excepcion.

Our choices: Pay the $205 or take a bunch o' documents to San Juan and try to get the ruling reversed. I chose to take a shot at going to San Juan. At 6:00 am on May 24, I left for Hacienda in San Juan. Whatever happened, I needed this resolve by Friday, May 27. It's Memorial Day weekend and any holiday spells doom for getting anything accomplished.

I expect this to be an all day dragged out affair. I was prepared to do battle, like Don Quixote but in broken Spanish. A note here: a friend suggested I put down my windmill-tilting lance and armor and instead smile and in a friendly manner ask for help. I did this and I think it helped. We got through the documents and the very nice lady said she would review the case and let me know the result. I asked her, "Ahora? Hoy?" ("Now? Today?") "Ah, no. Uno mes." ("No. One month.")

I explained - in Spanish - that I needed this resolved today and explained the problem with the Excepcion and paying IVU twice and all that. She told me they could give me a letter telling the local office the case was under review and to go ahead give me the Exception. Brilliant! I was out of there in about an hour! Everyone was very nice and helpful. Must have been my smile and friendly, non-combative demeanor.

On May 25, armed with my letter from the income tax office in San Juan. I got up early to be at or very near the front of the line at the local office. I was in fact fourth in line. They called my number. I went to talk to the Gate Keeper. I didn't get any farther.

I didn't need to get any farther. Somewhere sometime between May 19, when I first started the process, and May 25, when I went to (hopefully) finish it, the powers-that-be, by administrative declaration, decreed all existing valid Excepcions are good through December 31!

Nearly a week of scrambling, running around, fretting, gnashing of teeth done by administrative declaration.

I love my island!

Love is in the air...

and in the water! We have manged a few beautiful dives this month, despite the rain and crappy visibility. We've made some new friends like these two incredible sea horses. So beautiful! I love playing with horses!

You can see more photos from this month's dives on our Flickr site. Come check 'em out. Enjoy!

Zika - what's Zika?

"The MEDIA" made a big deal out of the Zika "epidemic" on the island.

What Zika epidemic?

Two years ago when chikungunya roared through the Caribbean, everybody knew about it. Everybody knew SOMEBODY - or a dozen or two dozen somebodies - who had it. This Zika thing? I don't even know somebody who knows somebody who knows anybody who had it. On an island where we wear our tropical diseases like badges of honor, I have heard not one peep.

Except from THE MEDIA. Apparently this is a manufactured epidemic. The conspiracy theorists are putting out that the island governor, hoping to score big $$$$s from FEMA or CDC or somebody, announced there is an epidemic of Zika.

If true, the ploy backfired big time. Not only is there no Federal money coming to combat the non-epidemic, tourists, conventions and big, high profile events are canceling and staying away. So, no new money and we're losing money that was committed.

All because of a pretty much non-event.

Is Zika real? Of course it is. For a certain segment of the population - women who are pregnant or hoping to get pregnant - it carries potentially serious dangers. For most of us catching the Zika virus is about as bad as a mild case of the flu. In fact, flu is worse.

With all the rain we've had mosquitoes are at their worst. As soon as the rain stops and the winds start to blow again, the mosquito population will go dormant until the next rainy season. Maybe all the Zika hullabaloo will dry up too.

Making the best of it

After that amazing up-and-down dive-then-surf-then-dive spell, the rainy season came a month early. For two weeks it has rained - and rained hard - nearly every day. Lago de los Caballos (Lake of the Horses) in the corral and paddock hasn't been totally dry for two weeks, despite running a sump pump 24/7. We keep  trying to find dry spots for the horses to giver their hooves a chance to dry out.

There's no surf. And even if there was, I wouldn't take my camera out in the driving rain.

The rain messes up diving, not because we can't dive in the rain (sometimes that's fun as long as there is no lightening) but because of visibility. Rain, especially hard rain up in the mountains, washes silt and "stuff" down the rivers. That screws up visibility until it has a chance to either settle out or be washed out by currents.

Can't ride. Well, we could ride, but I can tell you for experience riding in the rain is not much fun. Besides, the trails are all muddy and/or covered with pools of standing water which unfortunately become mosquito farms.

That doesn't mean there's nothing to do. Lots of mopping, sweeping up, trying to keep the horses and dogs dry and clean. But that's part of life when you choose to live outdoors in a treehouse. That is our choice and we'll keep making the best of it. Anyway, when it rains here, it's still 80 degrees not 30 or 40 degrees. So that's not so bad.

Everything old is new again

We are about to start a new chapter in the the continuing Ola Lola's adventure.

This past Monday we said "adios" to Danny and Marie who have been running the Ola Lola's kitchen since February, 2015. It has been a little over a year of fabulous food and fun. Their lives are taking them in new directions and so they are leaving Ola Lola's.

We have learned so much from them, so many things we will carry forward as we take over the Ola Lola's kitchen again. 

Beginning this Friday, we have a new menu and new nightly specials.

We kept some things from Danny and Maria's menu, most notably the amazing Fish Tacos and french fries. We brought back some favorites from our menu, like the Jalapeno Popper Dip and the Gourmet Gringo Burger. We added some new things like the Black Bean Dip and the Tropical Dream Ice Cream (that has no cream and is actually vegan),

And we're adding new Happy Hour specials, different each night.

There is lots going on as we get ready for this new chapter in our adventure. Watch for more new stuff coming soon.

Coming back

We've been away from here for a while. Not that there's nothing to write about, There is so much to write about! So much is happening so fast. It's been our best season in several years at Ola Lola's. For all the negative press the PR economy has been getting, we're still here and open for business.

It has been an up and down surf season - and that's a good thing. The upside is there have been some great opportunities for some great surf photography.

The "down" surf is also an upside: between swells, there has been some great scuba diving this winter.

So, surf-dive, repeat. You can see all the best of both surfing and diving here, on Flickr.


Lots more to come. We promise!