Mambo gear....

The Mambo...my how we love the Mambo.  It's a daily stop for us on our way to the refuge. Did you know that there are bathrooms just behind the seating area outside. I had never noticed that until yesterday. It is, without a doubt, one of our most favorite calmados on Vieques.  Although you'll normally see me walking out of the Mambo like below, the Mambo is more than just a pitstop for cervezas and heilo.




At first one might assume that the Mambo is an agglomeration of items that seem random, when in fact it is a very refined cache of exactly what one would consider "island" essentials. i.e. - I was in need of a small notebook, they had 4 of them. We needed crushed tomatoes for the marinara, we bought all they had, which was like 5 cans (little did we notice that one of the cans was labeled "picante"...well let me rephrase that, we did notice after the first bite of the marinara).  Need some Galliano, the Mambo has it. Noodles, both for cooking and for swimming, they got ya covered. Champagne to  fresh ginger to beef jerky. All this crammed into  a tiny little store that would be a playground for an ADA attorney.

 

That's Brad above, I tried to capture just how tiny the aisleway is. They need some kind of one way sign because your not go pass someone, just not enough room and don't spin around too fast or your bound to knock something off one of the shelves.

But there's another treasure hidden in the Mambo. One I didn't know about until Becky showed me. Glow in the dark Mambo tee shirts. You have to ask cause their locked up in a back room. Thank you Becky...we now have our Mambo gear!



Brad and Becky flew back home this past Saturday to 2 inches of snow and freezing temps. We miss them and are doing our best to endure these 80 degree days. I'm still going through all the pictures they took. I had never really given it much thought, but and added benefit of taking friends with you on your vacation (even moreso if you blog) is that they can take all the pictures. And take pictures they did. I have over 1k pics I'm still going through. Thanks you two.



There is one thing Brad is going to have to learn. That being, you NEVER EVER take a picture of your wife from behind, it's an unspoken rule. If you do,then you absolutely have to do some editing. Brad took the picture below and right as he was snapping it, Becky turned around. Brad was caught in the act.



And no, your not seeing double in the below picture. There are 2 cabanas set up. Brad did a great job of gathering the materials to create his own.








As usual, we've gotten lots of comments on them.

Yesterday Judy ask me if I wanted to paint one of the shells they have for the land crabs. They have some water based paints, actually just a childs set of non-toxic paints, that they used to paint the shells. Then they lay them out and sometimes one of the land crabs will decide to abandon his current abode and take up residence in a painted one.  They've done it for years and it's interesting to see a painted shell scurrying away. So...i was game and took to painting. The shell I had reminded me of a volcano, so that was what I was trying to create. In cleaning out one of the brushed I inadvertently splattered paint over my masterpiece in progress.  By accident I had moved into a Jackson Pollock method, and I liked it. So...I continued to splatter paint, getting more on myself than the shell. I presented my creation to Judy and Andre which they added to the gallery showing for the crabs.

And guess what....one of the crabs took my Pollock Volcano.




If you ask me, he has really good taste.

Other than that excitement Lorrie and I have settled down into our normal routine. Cervezas and heilo from the Mambo, morning yoga and swim on La Plata.

I did explore the cliffs again.



and the blue rope is still in the same place since I drug it out of the water 3 years ago. I need to work on getting it back and into the trash bins.



But basically things are more or less the same (hence the reason we keep coming back). Once change that we really are not liking much is the addition of golf carts to the transportation options on Vieques. The reason is the terrain and the existing driving hazards. We can now add golf carts to the milieu. So your going to deal with horses, scooters, bicycles, and now golf carts, all on the winding crazy terrain of Vieques.  We are not really digging it too much.

Went to Jortas again, man that's good food. $31 for Lorrie and I and that included  a $6 tip. I think it's the best food on the island right now when you include the price point. BYOB at Jortas.

I'll end this post with a couple random pictures Becky took. She really has a good eye for photography:












See you manana...

:-)