Sunday 19th

 . . . The little girl from upstairs and little Natalia were with us for breakfast. One of them wanted pancakes and the other asked for omelet and beans. Natalia and the girls fixed both and I got my share too. After breakfast we all worked getting the kitchen cleaned up then Natalia and I took a can of ‘tire fix’ to where her car was parked and got the tire inflated enough to drive to the shop nearby. We had locked the girls in the house and told them to not let anyone in. When I got back they were nowhere to be seen. I became concerned until I saw the closet door in Natalia’s room move a half inch. I then went in the kitchen and cleaned up a couple of pots that had been missed after breakfast. A few minutes later they got tired of hiding and came out to the kitchen. I said ‘Hola’ and left it at that. After I was finished in the kitchen I had to use the bathroom and was gone for several minutes. When I emerged from there I noticed again that the girls were missing. This time I found them inside the large portable  closet I had in my room. The tall one 7-9 years old was standing on my dirty laundry and the other had crawled into my shirt closet and was sitting there. It was not tall enough for her to stand. This time I made a big deal out of finding them and that created some merriment all  artound. Natalia returned shortly after and I left to wander around to see what was going on down at the beach. The main street was blocked off and the parade floats were already lining up for the 4:30 parade, hundreds of chairs were in place along the sidewalk with different families names on the backs of them. Some of the chairs were already occupied. I walked to a nearby market and picked up some more cereal and delivered it back to the house. Later I found myself at the Blue Port for lunch and since I had my book with me I read on that for almost an hour. Things were starting to get busy on the street by 2:30; a lot of people were arriving. By 4:30 the first part of the parade started moving. This consisted of local merchants driving by advertising their existence [the largest of them being Pacifico Beer] and tossing candy out to the viewers. At 4:50 that ended and a police car pulled up to the starting line where I was standing. Everything stopped at that point until 5:30. That is when the real parade began. I was tired already. And getting cold. And unhappy because the sun was sitting very quickly. I took pictures of all that I felt might produce an acceptable view of whatever it was I trying to create a view of. It got darker and darker, colder and colder and later and later.  The parade would move 50 feet and stop for the longest time then move another 50 feet. The sunset was nice so I took a couple of pictures of that then started walking toward the end of the line of floats. I took pictures all the way to the end of the parade and at that point found myself two hundred yards from the house. I went home. Natalia and the girls were still out. I posted my blog and called it a day. BTW, someone asked for Natalia’s recipe for her rice dessert. I can only say that she cooks the rice in a mixture of water and canned milk, After that is completed she adds sugar and Cinnamon, two well beaten eggs and puts it all in a baking pan and covers it before putting it in the oven. That is all I could get out of Natalia so perhaps with a bit of experimenting you can figure it out. It is really delicious and I like the fact that it does not have raisins in it. Give it a try.