A Walk Through Town....

We like to go for a morning walk...  this little town comes alive fairly early.  Not as early as when the roosters start crowing, but to me and Bill, those sounds are like being back on the farm.

As you walk along the streets, you'll see folks sweeping up from the night before...

There are a lot of tiendas (shops) along every street.  A lot of them are what we'd call "Mom and Pop" kind of shops.  Small convenience stores, a lot of restaurants, quite a few fresh vegetable stands, and our favorites, the panaderias (bakeries) and tortilla stands.  Another that I like to see are the carnicerias (meat markets)...

Some have huge cauldrons set out on the sidewalk with pork boiling away in the oil...

I should have put something alongside to show you how big this kettle is...  but that's a normal size bucket at the middle right.  That paddle that stirs the meat is huge!  What will it be?  Chicharron!  which is pork cracklings.  These have a lot more meat on them (as opposed to being mostly fried fat) than what we've had in the USA....  tasty for sure, but probably not real good for a person.

We had a destination this morning...  we'd been told that there were flamingos living in the lagoon.  We didn't think flamingos were native to this area so had to check it out.  The sun was way too bright coming up from the east so our view wasn't the best looking into it...  but...

We're almost certain that folks are seeing Roseate Spoonbills...

Nothing to sneeze at themselves... quite beautiful and we love to watch them.  We'll go back there soon, but probably wait until evening when the sun will be behind us.  Heck... for all I know there really may be flamingos there...  but......

It was just a short walk from the lagoon back to the main street, then down to the ocean.  

My favorite photo of the day...

This man was riding his horse along the beach.  We've seen him ride before (I'll be writing about the Christmas Parade that went down the street last evening)...  and this horse can dance and do all kinds of amazing steps.  We were told that the man trains horses and is pretty amazing.  But there was something about the man and his horse, with the sand and the sea that just felt right.

We walked past the turtle camp...  all those baby turtles were gone.  Guess there must have been a release last night.  Maybe we'll actually see one sometime.

We walked down the beach for a while...  watching the birds...

and saw this family sitting on top of a small dune...  looking at the sea.

And then we came to where the river flows into the ocean...

Looks almost like a pastel drawing...

But that's my shadow (with the big hat) taking a photo....

Yup...  that's Bill's shadow beside me.

There a lot of birds to see today...  I didn't realize how rusty I am with identifying shore birds.  But  their names are coming back fairly fast....

I believe this is a Little Blue Heron

Probably the one I saw yesterday...  which I IDed as a Tri-color.  But today we had our binoculars and my Leica camera, so got better views.

And there was a Green Heron....

Patiently waiting for breakfast to meander by....

A Flycatcher...  not close enough to know which one.  

And a bird we haven't seen for a while...

A Northern Jacana

We watched him for a while...  and then this came out of the underbrush...

A Juvenile Northern Jacana

Pretty neat for us to see the whole family!

I kind of like this shot.....

A Great Egret on the left and a White Ibis on the right

They were on a sandbar in the river... quite a distance away, but it's easy to see the difference in their bills.  

We didn't walk through the RV park this time, but kept on the trail along the river...

There's so much to see...  lots of different kinds of trees, and flowers and such.  I don't know what this is but liked the way the dew hung off the leaves and the way the stems look so hairy.

The trail eventually made a turn through a residential area, bringing us out at the town plaza.  We had been wanting to stop at the pescaderia (fish market), and found him open this time.

That's a MauiMaui or Eldorado (same thing) he's holding.  Our purchase is on the scales...  1 kilo of filleted eldorado.  I'd forgotten we had plans to eat out tonight, but will freeze it for later.

Notice down in the lower left corner?  Looks like someone else is interested in that fish, doesn't it?

We walked on home...  kind of fast walking this time to get our fish in the fridge...

But we're always looking at the various houses, shops and other buildings...

Isn't it great how this building just keeps on going up...  using all levels so efficiently?  It looks like a lot of folks use their roofs for gardens as a place to hang out their laundry.

Anyway, we had a great walk...  as you can tell, we're really getting settled in and loving it here.

That's All For Today!