Final Days in the highlands.

Yet another Spanish Courtyard, the guard called it a Placillo or Patio

The meek shall inherit the earth, so everyone should give me their money and land.

Zapatista dolls. One is Comandante Marcos

Soldering Skills

I tried

I did find a replacement electrolytic capacitor and soldered it onto the legs of the old one that blew up but this didn't work. The soldering job isn't the problem. I think the integrated circuit is also toast. I hooked it all back up and nothing happened except a little static came from the alarm speaker. This may be the end of my decade old alarm system. I put the new cap on both controllers and neither one worked so it's toast.

But in other projects I'm finishing before my escape from Mexico

Gourmet Coffee. (I put so much honey, condensed milk and chocolate in it that it barely qualifies as coffee)

Native Spirit and a new strap courtesy of a sheep and some local macrame artists. Gracias.

Chicken Bus Fever Part IX Coming Full Circle

I promised I would not write anything about Antigua because the town should be experienced. And I will only share one photo of the Ex-Convento.

Tranquility defined

I will design a house for myself and that house may or may not be built but I will have the plans. And part of my research into this dream house is seeing interior open courtyards are designed. There are actually Hacienda or "Spanish Courtyard" blueprints online for free...

too complicated

but if I want to see exactly how the monks lived in 1700 then one needs to walk where they walked. The number of Exconventos I've visited in my quest for the perfect representation of Spanish Colonial Spiritual Retreat Simplicity could fill a book. There was one in Huaqechula...and one in Tochimilco that

Huge Tochimilco Courtyard. Pretty Ridiculously pretty.

 I had completely forgotten about and a few in Leon and an epic Spanish Courtyard in Granada. Epic!

Sunday Soul Day

Nothing beats Otis on a Sunday.

Vansanity Part II

Is there ever a time when the van is completely trouble free? No, and that is why I am comfortable with its limits. I know what it can and can not do and I know when it is too far from a friendly parts store. It communicates to me. I thought I had tackled the major problems with the stalling and erratic idle that turned out to be related to the ignition condenser/capacitor and not at all related to the fuel. For once, the fuel was fine. I wonder if the problems I had back in Guatemala were not related to the condenser and points but I remember seeing the empty fuel filter and identifying that as a fuel delivery problem. I don't know. It's one mystery after another until I can't keep them all straight.


Well, I decided to go to a nearby town where they sacrifice chickens to cure problems and I was going to ask them to kill a chicken to ward off evil gas spirits. That makes sense. Kill a few chickens to protect the van. And I drove up there to Chamula and the van really drove like a dream, like a youth in Spring. The transmission was shifting perfectly. The idle was perfect. The acceleration was smooth, the timing sounded perfect. I gave myself a metaphoric pat on the back for solving yet another puzzle. But my smug self satisfaction was soon replaced by grief and agony...