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What makes for a more exciting afternoon at the beach than

a dog surfing contest?

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The recent 3rd annual Dog Surfing Competition at Los Cerritos was definitely a hit with all who attended. This contest is a fund raiser for Pescy Dogs, getting its name from the town El Pescadero, where it’s located.

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Our community’s organization, Pescy Dogs, works 24/7 to provide shelter, medical care and most importantly love for sick, injured and/or homeless dogs in the El Pescadero area, BCS. http://www.pescydogs.org

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Kim of Baja Zen http://baja-zen.com works tirelessly to put on this fun event.

Thanks, Kim!

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Even if you missed the dog surfing contest at Los Cerritos on June 5th,

you still have a chance to donate to the Pescy Dogs.

 http://dogsurfcompcerritos.com/donate/

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We’re just a hop, skip, and jump from Todos Santos, but Pescadero has a different flare because we are more of a farming and beach community than our neighbor to the north.

 

Surfers share the beach with the fishermen too.

 

Danito, a local farmer.

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If you’re a surfer anywhere on the west coast of North America you’ve most likely heard of Los Cerritos. Any day of the week you will find people and dogs enjoying the beach, but on June 5th it was all about the canines!

 

 

 

 

 

Local surfer, Perry, helps Marshmallow get out for a wave in the first heat.

The dogs were into it.

 

Here goes Marshmallow again!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Back to the contest: Sully is Tillman’s brother. And Tillman was a famous canine surfer, better known as a skateboarder. He has his own Facebook Page too: https://www.facebook.com/TillmanSkates

Sully has lots of spunk and style. See for yourself.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cala brings home the prize for Carlos and Paula of Todos Santos Surf Shop. Way to go!

 

 

 

 

 

1st Place: Cala of Todos Santos—sponsored by Todos Santos Surf Shop https://www.facebook.com/todossantossurfshop.activities/ and Explora Baja https://www.facebook.com/explorabaja/?fref=nf

2nd Place: Pirata from our local Cerritos Beach—sponsored by Baja Zen and La Katrina Surf Shop.

3rd Place: Sully from Scorpion Bay—sponsored by Tillman.

Best Wave award went to Pirate sponsored by La Katrina Surf Shop https://todossantos.cc/shops-and-business/la-katrina-surf-shop/ .

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See you all next year at Los Cerritos for another fun dog surf contest.

Visit the official Dog Surf Contest page if you like: http://dogsurfcompcerritos.com

 

Purée a bunch of mangoes in a blender or food processor.

Add a little sugar to the mangoes and blend some more.

Pour this mixture into a shallow pan.

Let freeze for 2 hours.

Blend this mixture again. Set aside.

Whip some heavy whipping cream with sugar and vanilla till it forms peaks.

Add the blended frozen mango mixture to the whipped cream.

Mix well and then return to the freezer

in the container you want to keep your ice cream in.

Freeze for 3-4 more hours and voila–Mango Ice Cream.

Invite your friends over and get ready for a treat.

It’s the creamiest, best thing we’ve ever eaten.

 I know I did’t give you measurements** for the ingredients,

because I often just wing it.

That’s what I did here, and I think I should have used more

mangoes to how much whipped cream I used.

Next time.

Trust me, that next time will be soon.

You get the hang of it, right?

**I used about half what is in this bowl with about 2 cups of whipping cream.

Sugar it up, but mangoes are super sweet. You don’t need much.

No matter how you do it, if you love mangoes, you’ll love the end product.

Go for it!

 

 

Millions of mangos! Our friends, Bill and Shauna have mangos coming on their old 3-story tall mango trees. These close neighbors open their beautiful place for friends to come pick mangos.

We got two five-gallon buckets FULL of the gorgeous fruit yesterday. We’re in mango heaven right now.

These mangos below are going to “Hippy Steve” to feed his pigs.

Steve doesn’t live far from Bill and Shauna’s place.

 

I estimate that they have 15-20 beautiful mango trees, not to mention all the palms and ornamentals and agave (for tequila). The agave are in the forefront of the photo below.

 

 

Heavy with Mangos.

The trees and the ground are covered in this tasty fruit.

 

 

 

See the buckets in Little Red (our Polaris)?

 

This place is lush with beauty and talk about peaceful.

It doesn’t get better than this.

You can imagine how many birds show up here.

 

 

Below are the pits and peelings (looking down inside the bucket yesterday).

I actually love this photo for some reason. Maybe it’s just me, but I think it’s pretty.

Tomorrow’s post will show you the ice cream and I’ll explain how I process mangos for using in our smoothies, etc.  Come back tomorrow for more mango news from beautiful Pescadero in Baja California Sur.

 

 

 

Riding in my VW Van down the dirt road, I’m singing that old Elvis Presley tune, “I’m all Shook Up.” That’s because dirt roads are anything but smooth. Everywhere we go here in the Baja, except for the highways and a few select roads here and there, we’re bouncing around getting all shook up.

 

Taxes in other countries are in sufficient amounts that the roads get paved. Nice. Smooth. Dreamy roads. But where we live, the roads have ruts and dips and holes and copious amounts of bumps and rocks.

 

You get used to it. Sort of. Some days you don’t think about it and other days it drives you crazy.  Not that I need much help to be crazy. But that’s another issue.

 

Taxes also pay for libraries, police, fire fighters, parks, etc. Consequently the services here are minimal.

 

 

 

There are several reasons to think of our home in the Baja as paradise, but don’t be fooled. There are drawbacks. More than just dirt roads too, and I don’t usually write about them. I’m not going to go on and on about them now either. Maybe some other day.

 

Instead, I’ll just sing. These are my four words for today: “I’m all shook up!”

 

Oh wait. One thing: when #^*!! people drive 100 miles an hour on the dirt road in front of my house, the dirt comes in through my open doors and windows leaving a nice thick layer of dirt over everything. Oh, how I hate that.

What are they thinking? This is the Baja 1000?

 

 

After I sweep for the 3rd time today, I’ll get back to my zen.

Happy singing again: I’m all shook up!

 

 

Rhythmical flow,

movement of rolled stone,

rocking my world.

Waves crashing,

ocean gifts of stones and shells

rocking my world.

Peaceful waves

 pounding, resounding,

rocking my world.

Searching shoreline,

plucking treasures from warm sand,

rocking my world.

Reconnecting stones,

nature’s pattern reinvented,

rocking my world.

Susie’s Rock Mosaic January 2016

Susie’s Wave Mosaic January 2013

 

Recently a dear friend of mine passed on a book to me entitled, Four Word Self Help, Simple Wisdom for Complex Lives. Don’t get me wrong. My life isn’t all that complex anymore, but this is a sweet book. I have chosen the four words: JUMP UP AND DOWN as my four words today.

Life has provided many opportunities for jumping up and down. I was a cheerleader in high school and did a fair amount of it. Don’t laugh. It was the only “sport” that girls were allowed back in my day. Title IX came long after I graduated from high school. Congratulations to all the girls and women who have been entitled to play sports since then. I’m jumping up and down for you.

It’s funny, but even as a 69 year old woman, I still jump for joy often. I’ve never stopped doing it and I highly recommend it to you. Let go! Show your happiness.

Here’s a photo of my 48 year old son and his 36 year old wife when they went on the whale shark trip in November last year with us. I didn’t ask them to jump up and down. They just did it.

 

Happiness is catching.

Makes you want to jump up and down, doesn’t it?

 

 

 

Each morning and each evening we are given the gifts of sunrise and sunset,

but they are especially full of nature’s song when you live by the ocean.

I greet each day with soft eyes, sometimes placing my hand on my heart. Sunrises will do that to me.

 

With each new day, we are offered a cessation of anxiety–if we take in the show.

Here is an offered gift from Nature telling us to be calm.

Moon set, early morning.

Sunrise means a pink sky and a pink ocean. How can you not be happy?

Lovely view from the beach to the mountains through the palms.

~~~

On the East Cape, Baja Sur, the sun rises over the ocean.

It’s hard to wrap my mind around that fact, as I’m originally from Southern California where the sun rises over the mountains.

But, it does indeed rise over the ocean on the East Cape.

It’s a glorious, full show of color with the morning birds looking for breakfast.

~~~

When the day leaves us,

I experience an overwhelming joy

that almost makes my heart ache as

I watch the sun fall into the ocean.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And then there’s the green flash.

We see it all the time from our deck. We see it more as a green glow, but the photos below were caught with our GoPro.

It does, indeed, appear as a flash in these shots.

We had it set to shoot every five seconds.

~

 

These are from different days. A green flash? Believe.

 

 

 

Things I learned about the green flash:

• REFRACTION: the bending of rays of light in passing from one medium to another (e.g., air to water)
• Green flashes are by-products of the large varieties in astronomical refraction near the horizon.
• Green flashes occur because the atmosphere can cause the light from the sun to separate out into different colors.

 

 

 

In my Baja world,

join me as

I take a deep breath

and

savor the moments of sunrise and sunset.

 

 

“On June 6, 1995 the President of Mexico, Mr. Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de León  declared the waters of Cabo Pulmo as a National Marine Park.”

“In a study by Octavio Aburto, a scientist at the Scripps Institute in San Diego, the biomass of sea life has increased over 460%,  [since making it a reserve] making the Cabo Pulmo National Park the most recovered marine reserve in the world.”

from Oceanhealthindex.org

 

play hard

smile big

laugh loud

but don’t take the rocks

(it’s a marine reserve…Cabo Pulmo in Baja California Sur)

bring the dog

a couple of sandwiches

some oranges and a soda or two

but don’t go taking the shells or the coral or the rocks home with you

from Cabo Pulmo, a marine reserve in Baja California Sur

Check it out:

http://news.discovery.com/earth/oceans/most-successful-marine-reserve-cabo-pulmo-110812.htm

http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2012/06/09/cabo-pulmo-national-marine-park-bajas-miracle-threatened/

http://www.cabopulmo.com/

 

 

 

 

“Fly! Fly higher!” Kathy yells to me. We are six and four; cute little girls, both of us with blond hair and blue eyes.

 

The water meter on the side of my house stood only about 20 inches off the ground, but to us it was so high that we were certain we could launch from it, flap our arm-wings and soar. After an hour, we tired of this game, and moved on to more excitement as we bragged to each other of our long and harrowing flights.

It is when thinking of my childhood in the days of bumble bees and watermelon that I am reminded of a time when water did not seem such a precious resource.

Sprinklers meant to water lawns would often go unattended while water spilled onto the street. This runoff became a swift, running river to us kids. Kathy and I would carefully choose blades of grass to serve as boats for a race.

 

 

As luck would have it, we had only a short walk up to the top of our street. Not much of an incline really, but good enough. “On your mark, get set, go!” We tossed our little blades of grass into the street’s river and watched as our boats maneuvered between the debris dotting the channels of water. When our little boats got stuck, the rule was to wait to the count of three before dislodging them, thus allowing the race to continue to our designated finish line. I don’t think we were extremely competitive, but I remember the taste of victory as being especially sweet. These childhood games were the stuff of our cheap thrills.

 

What happened to childhood innocence once we grew into mean, junior high school girls whose main concern was the latest gossip? The competition was hot and heavy in those days and the games were as different as the rules.

 

 

Whatever were we thinking when my girlfriend and I agreed to meet after school and play strip poker with three boys we barely knew? Were their any brain cells popping? Probably not.

Filled with fear and hard-driving adrenaline, mixed with very little poker skill, one item of clothing after another fell to the floor. Knowing that I would become the fodder for gossip scared me almost more than exposing my teeny, tiny breasts. More like bumps with nipples really. But for some reason I had difficulty rallying the courage to call an end to the game. What was I doing there?

My shoes came off. Next my socks, my skirt, my half-slip. My reputation would be next. My heart was trying to escape my chest. Enough. I just can’t do this. Game over.

 

Thank God those boys were not of a violent nature. They did not harass us girls to stay in the game. We retrieved our discarded clothing, wrapping them haphazardly so as to cover ourselves, and escaped to the bathroom to dress.

 

Calling an end to the game meant we avoided a danger as real as if we had fallen and narrowly escaped from a pit of alligators.

 

Truth be known, I think the boys were as relieved as we were to be finished with our game of strip poker, before it stripped us all of what little intelligence and common sense we could have possibly possessed as adolescents.